Looking Back, Looking Forward
Blog postLast year was a year of waiting for Drupal 8 and working on big changes at Drupalize.Me. Now that we’re into 2016, I want to take a break to reflect on 2015 and take a look at where we’re headed next.
Release Day: Our Drupal 8 Theming Guide
Blog postToday, we're super excited to publish our Drupal 8 Theming guide, a collection of tutorials that will teach you everything you need to know to create amazing Drupal 8 themes. We've put hundreds of hours into researching, digesting and understanding the Drupal 8 theme system. We've poured over the existing documentation and helped to update it whenever we could. We've read the code that makes it all possible, we've dissected core and contributed themes, and talked with front-end developers at Lullabot about their experiences, in order to learn about best practices and unique challenges. And then we boiled it all down into the ultimate Drupal 8 theming guide.
Drupal 6 was released in February of 2008 and on February 26th, 2016, after 7 years, Drupal 6 was retired, in accordance with the Drupal community’s policy of only providing active support for two major versions of Drupal at any given time. While it is possible to migrate a Drupal 6 (or 7) site to Drupal 8, the tools are still in flux. While simple sites make for simple migrations—since most sites are not simple and require considerable research, planning, and effort to migrate—migration remains a complex process. Continue reading to find out more about how Drupal 6's end-of-life impacts Drupal site owners and what options you have if you still run a Drupal 6 site.
Release Day: Theme Hook Suggestions
Blog postWe just added 2 new tutorials about Theme Hook Suggestions! First learn the concept behind this topic in our tutorial Discover Existing Theme Hook Suggestions. Then learn how to add them in our tutorial Add New Theme Hook Suggestions.
New Tutorial Format Feedback
Blog postLast year we launched a new written format for our tutorials. We’re really excited about this format because it gives us the flexibility to present information in whatever way makes the most sense. With text and video on the same page, it's easy to find what you need, and it gives you the option to learn however you learn best.
Today I'm happy to say we've added three more tutorial to our theme guide that expand on JavaScript Libraries in Drupal. We now have tutorials that provide some orientation and basic exposure to Modernizr.js, Underscore.js, and Backbone.js and how to use them in a theme or module.
So far, 2016 has been a great year for Drupal and Drupalize.Me. We started off as our own company, and we’ve been heads-down on lots of new Drupal 8 tutorials. We have a deep love for Drupal and the community around here—so in addition to working hard at our business, we encourage each other to roll up our sleeves in the wider community as well. Here’s a little rundown of what’s been on our team’s radar recently.
Dig into Drupal 8 at DrupalCon
Blog postDrupalCon is almost here and it’s time to start filling out your schedule. There’s a lot to do and see (not to mention eating lots of great New Orleans food!), so we definitely recommend having at least a rough game plan for how to use your time. Here’s a look at things you should be considering, especially if you are looking to take away a lot of Drupal 8 knowledge.
Site Update: Navigation for Tutorials
Blog postWe've been working hard to improve the navigation on our new tutorials. Today we released a new and improved design that makes navigating tutorials much easier. See it in action in our Drupal 8 Theming Guide.
Drupal 8.1 now provides a user interface (UI) for conducting a Drupal-to-Drupal migration. Since there is no direct upgrade path for Drupal 6 or 7 to 8, you should become familiar with the migrate system in Drupal, as it will allow you to migrate your content from previous versions to Drupal 8.
This week we have a fresh batch of tutorials that cover how to configure Drupal 8 theme settings, how to add a screenshot to your theme, and several methods for how to clear Drupal's cache.
This week we're starting a whole new guide covering Drupal 8 migrations. We'll look at what migrations are, how they work, planning for a migration, the contributed module ecosystem, and performing a Drupal-to-Drupal migration.
What's New in Drupal 8.1.0
Blog postDrupal 8.1.0 was released on April 20th. There are a few things that are exciting about this release; in particular the 2 new experimental modules BigPipe and Drupal Migrate UI.
Google Summer of Code 2016 is on!
Blog postSummertime in the northern hemisphere means it’s time for Google’s Summer of Code (GSoC). In this great program, Google pays students to work on various open source projects for 10 weeks. Drupal was once again selected to mentor students. Our 11 students are working on some pretty cool projects with 26 community mentors.
Learn Views in Drupal 8
Blog postOne of the big changes in Drupal 8 is that Views, the most popular contributed module in Drupal 7, is now included as part of core. Learning Views is a key component of learning to build Drupal sites. Aside from having this tool built in core now, the beauty of this new feature is that it is almost identical to Views in Drupal 7. You can get started site-building with Views in Drupal 8 without waiting for any fancy version-specific instructions.
Release Day: JavaScript in Drupal 8
Blog postWe're happy to announce the addition of several JavaScript-related tutorials to our Drupal 8 Theming guide. These tutorials, along with our other tutorials on defining defining and attaching asset libraries will help you understand Drupal's JavaScript API and help you make sure your custom code follows the established best practices.
Free Hands-On Drupal 8 Lessons
Blog postThere is a lot of new ground to cover in Drupal 8, especially for developers. For those of you who are already familiar with developing in Drupal 7, these free Drupal 8 Activity Cards will help you with the leap. The cards were created by Tanay Sai and his study group while they bootstrapped themselves on the new code. They’ve done an awesome job covering the main topics you’ll need to know for the switch from Drupal 7 to 8. Each card is a lesson on a new development topic and altogether they cover 21 days of lessons.
Drupal 7 Critical Security Update Today
Blog postOn Tuesday, July 12th, the Drupal security team issued a Public Service Announcement (PSA) about
a *highly* critical security release that happened today, Wednesday, July 13th at 4pm UTC. This security release gets the extra push of *highly* and a PSA because this very dangerous vulnerability will allow an attacker to execute their own PHP code on your site. Here are a few important things to know.
When Drupal 8.1.0 was released it included some additions that broke our Get a Service from the Container tutorial in the Drupal 8 Module Development Essentials series. But don't worry, it's fixed now.
Why Is Learning Drupal Hard?
Blog postWhen it comes to learning Drupal I have a theory that there's an inverse relationship between the scope of knowledge that you need to understand during each phase of the learning process, and the density of available resources that can teach it to you. Accepting this, and understanding how to get through the dip, is an important part of learning Drupal.