Drupal Development

Setting up Google Analytics for a Drupal 8 powered website is as simple as it is with Drupal 7 website, luckily for us, there is a small and neat module doing the hard work for us. Google Analytics is one of the essential modules to have for any website, see: Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 3, Essential Modules (Pathauto, Google Analytics, Disqus) I have been using Google Analytics to track my website performances more than 10 years ago, and without it, I would be like blind.…

In the third part of Drupal 8, website building from a scratch series I will focus on a few essential must have, modules to boost Drupal website's SEO and usability. Before continuing to learn how to build a successful Drupal 8 Website, make sure to check out previous articles in the series: Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 1 (Domain name, Hosting), Building Drupal 8 Website From Scratch - Part 2 (Content Types, Custom Fields, Manage Display) Despite Drupal 8 has built into the…

To strengthen Drupal websites security I decided to disable one-click automatic module updates from Drupal dashboard, unfortunately, it makes it harder not even for bad guys to compromise Drupal website but it also makes it harder for Drupal devs. Now, there are several options you might choose instead, composer being a top of them. But for this article, I will write down how to update modules using SSH. For Windows, we are going to use Putty: From your Drupal installation go to the modules…

There are a couple of great helper modules for Drupal to learn more about failing security holes - Security Review and Hacked.  Security Review The Security Review module automates testing for many of the easy-to-make mistakes that render your site insecure. Security Review runs the following checks: Safe file system permissions (protecting against arbitrary code execution) Text formats don't allow dangerous tags (protecting against XSS) PHP or Javascript in content (nodes and comments…

In the second part of the series Building Drupal 8 Website from the scratch I will cover details on working with content types and node displays. Make sure to check out part 1, before proceeding. When comparing Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, there is little difference regarding managing content types, except most of the cool features we have been used to have in Drupal 7 by using additional modules and fields, are already built in Drupal 8 core. Which is amazing. In Drupal 8, fields, like taxonomy…

There are many translation project management systems out there, some are better, some are not so good, some are for free or open source while others might be pricey.  Working in a close and good corporation with a translation company in Tbilisi, in the past, I have helped to set up many systems required for a smooth every-day work for a typical translation company. Now I decided to see - could Drupal help us build a translation project management system, and surprisingly but after a little…

It has been a while since Drupal 8 has been around. It took me some time before I actually started to develop Drupal 8 websites, sticking with more convenient Drupal 7 (Which I believe still is one of the best versions of Drupal out there.  If you are familiar with Wordpress CMS, Drupal 8 will feel you comfortable, as the look and feels is pretty similar (This is the thing I don't like about Drupal 8). Anyhow, as I have been developing both Drupal 7and Drupal 8 websites, there is actually no…

Although it doesn't happen often, in rare situations you might get in trouble with GMAP marker sets. The most common case is change with folder permissions or migrating site to another host. How to add Custom Markers for Gmap Module Drupal Here is how it looks: Request for invalid marker set notification And here is how map field looks: Map with a missing marker (s) The default map is displayed. Luckily there is a simple solution - delete gmap.markers.js file from files/js folder,…

There might be a dozen of reasons why migrating your existing Drupal (or any other CMS) website from one host to another. In today's article, I will share my experience migrating Drupal 7 from one host to another before upgrading to Drupal 8 In this guide, I will migrate Drupal 7 between two separate Linode VPS, at one there is Ubuntu 12.04 and php 5.5 version while at the other there is Ubuntu 16.04 and php 7 version. Data copies or Backups Let's start with setting up an environment on host…

It has been more than 4 years since I started this blog. During the years it has evolved a lot, featuring about 1500 articles, extended of using about 60 modules and what's not less important - attracts about 100,000 users monthly. For more than 4 years this website has been running on Drupal 7. Despite me thinking of Drupal 7as one of the best Drupal versions so far, I understand the importance of upgrading to the latest Drupal 8 version. Drupal 8 features a lot of new and cool features, one…