Media source plugins provide the link between media entities in Drupal and the actual media asset itself. They are the code that understand the difference between an image, a video, and a Tweet, and perform the translation that allows the media ecosystem to treat all media entities equally. For example, local image files, and remote YouTube videos, can both be catalogued in a similar way as media entities, but they need very different handling when it comes to displaying them.
Media sources are represented as plugins, there are a handful in Drupal core, and a developer can add new plugins to represent any type of media your application needs to catalogue.
In this tutorial we'll learn:
- How media source plugins relate to Media Types
- The responsibilities of a media source plugin
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to define the role of a media source plugin and understand what's required to define your own.
The Drupal core Media Library module provides an enhanced user interface for locating Media entities and attaching them to an article. It's a drop-in replacement for the default entity reference widget which uses a not very intuitive autocomplete field. Using the Drupal core Media Library module requires minimal configuration.
If you want to provide content creators with a gallery-like library of Media entities that they can browse through in order to find the ones they want to add to their content, the Media Library is the easiest way to do it. It can be configured to work with both Media fields and the CKEditor powered WYSIWYG editor commonly used for editing the body field of Drupal nodes. There's really no reason not to use it.
In addition to providing a better UI for locating existing Media entities, the Media Library provides a way to create new Media entities right from the content creation form. This prevents an otherwise confusing requirement where Media entities need to be created, via a different set of forms, before they can be used.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Install and configure the Media Library module to work with Media fields
- Use the user interface provided by the Media Library to improve the experience of finding and selecting Media entities to associate with a piece of content
By the end of this tutorial you'll know how to replace the default entity reference widget used for selecting Media entities with the much improved Media Library UI.
Media entities, like any content entity, work great with all the different features Drupal provides for changing the way things are displayed: view modes, Layout Builder, theme templates, and more. We're big fans of using view modes to create a component-like design system where entity types have view modes representing the different context in which they're displayed. Then we theme the view modes. This works great for displaying Media entities associated with a page and for changing the way that Media assets are displayed within the Media Library browser.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Create Hero and Sidebar view modes for Media entities
- Configure the Image Media type to use the new view modes and style each one differently
- Use the new view modes to render Image Media assets within a Layout
- Update the Media library view mode that's used by the Media Library browser to display additional information alongside the thumbnails used when selecting Media to attach to a page
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to change the way that Media assets are displayed by using view modes and display formatters in a Drupal site.
Drupal 8.8.0 introduced a bunch of new features intended to make it easier over the long-term to maintain a Drupal project using Composer. In doing so it establishes some new best practices, and moves into Drupal core solutions that were previously maintained by the community. This is all good news. But, it means if you're using Composer to update from Drupal 8.7.x or lower to 8.8.0 or higher you'll need to do a bit of additional work to untangle everything.
This tutorial is especially useful if you started your Drupal project using the drupal-composer/drupal-project
template and would like to convert to use the new templates (i.e. drupal/recommended-project
or drupal/legacy-project
) included with Drupal 8.8.x core.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Convert our project to use the new
drupal/core-recommended
, anddrupal/core-dev
Composer packages - Explain which commonly used Composer packages are deprecated, and which new ones replace them
- Learn how to use the
drupal/core-composer-scaffold
Composer plugin - Cover tips for troubleshooting updates
Furthermore, in order to Upgrade to Drupal 9 from Drupal 8, you will first need to update your Drupal 8 site to at least version 8.8, as the upgrade paths for Drupal 8 site from before Drupal 8.8.0 have been removed from Drupal 9.
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to update your Drupal projects using Drupal core 8.7.x or lower to Drupal core 8.8.0 or higher using Composer. And be ready for an upgrade to Drupal 9.
Drupal's development has a regular release cycle consisting of major, minor, and patch releases. Drupal releases use semantic versioning for its version numbers. Since we're committed to making sure our tutorials are kept up-to-date with the latest and greatest version of Drupal we figured it would be a good idea if you knew how to keep your Drupal site up-to-date with the latest "point" releases as well.
This tutorial will cover:
- How to determine the type of update
- The standard update procedure
- Update Drupal using Drush
- Update Drupal using Composer
This tutorial won't cover:
- How to perform a major version Drupal upgrade, for example, from Drupal 6 or 7 to the latest version of Drupal. For that, see our guide, Learn to Migrate to Drupal.
Upgrade to Drupal 10
FreeThere’s no one-size-fits-all path to upgrade from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10, but there is a set of common tasks that everyone will need to complete.
In this tutorial we’ll:
- Explain the differences between Drupal 9 and Drupal 10 that affect the upgrade path.
- Walk through the high-level steps required to upgrade from Drupal 9 to Drupal 10.
- Provide resources to help you create an upgrade checklist and start checking items off the list.
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain the major differences between Drupal 9 and 10, audit your existing Drupal 9 projects for Drupal 10 readiness, estimate the level of effort involved, and start the process of upgrading.
Upgrade to Drupal 9
FreeThere’s no one-size-fits-all path to upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9, but there is a set of common tasks that everyone will need to complete.
In this tutorial we’ll:
- Explain the differences between Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 that affect the upgrade path.
- Walk through the high-level steps required to upgrade from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9.
- Provide resources to help you create an upgrade checklist and start checking items off the list.
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain the major differences between Drupal 8 and 9, audit your existing Drupal 8 projects for Drupal 9 readiness, estimate the level of effort involved, and start the process of upgrading.
Clear Drupal's Cache
FreeKnowing how to clear Drupal's cache is an important skill for any developer. You'll likely find yourself doing it frequently in order to get Drupal to register the changes you make to your code, or other updates you make via the UI. It is also a good first step to trouble shooting problems with your Drupal site: Clear the cache before you do any other debugging to ensure it's not just a bad cache entry.
Note: This tutorial is specific to Drupal sites hosted on the Acquia platform and covers integrating its features to improve performance.
The Acquia platform includes Memcache, Varnish, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) integration. In order for these to be as effective as possible, they should be configured and tuned for your specific use case. This tutorial provides an introduction to these utilities and common configuration. For more detail, you should consult the Acquia documentation.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn what caching utilities are included in the Acquia platform
- Set up and tune different parts of Acquia's application caching level including Memcache and Varnish
By the end of this tutorial, you'll know what application-level caching options exist on Acquia's platform. And how to configure it, and your Drupal application, for better performance.
WebPageTest (webpagetest.org) is a free open source resource that runs performance tests on a site, provides educational reports about what it finds, and suggests optimizations you can make. The tests performed via the WebPageTest interface include Lighthouse tests, performance-specific tests, Core Web Vitals, visual comparisons, and traceroute tests. The tool also allows saving a history of tests if you sign up for a free account. This tool won't make your site faster on its own, but it will give you some good ideas about where to focus your efforts.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Learn how to run performance tests via the WebPageTest web interface
- Learn how to read and interpret the results
By the end of this tutorial, you should know how to use the WebPageTest online interface to analyze a Drupal site's performance.
Lighthouse is an open source, automated tool for analyzing your site's performance. Lighthouse is built-in to the Google Chrome browser. When auditing a page, Lighthouse runs various tests against the page and then reports how well the page did across a broad spectrum of metrics. While Lighthouse doesn't improve the performance of a Drupal site itself, it helps to establish a performance profile and point towards areas that could be improved.
Lighthouse requires the use of Google Chrome. Other browsers include their own performance auditing tools. While the exact usage of each tool varies, the end result is the same: a report that can be interpreted to suggest where to focus your performance-tuning efforts.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn how to run Lighthouse tests against a Drupal site
- Interpret the results of the report generated by Lighthouse
- Provide guidance on next steps to take to address the performance issues Lighthouse finds in our Drupal site
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to use Lighthouse to profile a Drupal site, interpret the results, and know where to start on making improvements.
Apache Bench (ab
) is a tool that comes with the commonly used Apache HTTP server. It is designed to give you an impression of how your current Apache installation performs. It will work for any HTTP server, not just Apache. Apache Bench shows you how many requests per second your server can serve. This metric is in part a measure of how long it takes Drupal (PHP) to process the request and create a response. While there are other things that the HTTP server does too, executing PHP is by far the most expensive when serving Drupal pages.
Therefore, Apache Bench helps profile your PHP code for new features, patches after their application, and PHP libraries used on the site. You can quickly compare before and after metrics as an indicator of the scale of the impact a change has.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn how to run the Apache Bench tool on our local environment
- Learn to interpret the result of the tests
By the end of this tutorial, you should know how to benchmark and profile your local Drupal installation using Apache Bench (ab
).
Sites evolve over time. We're constantly adding and removing modules, modifying content, authoring custom plugins, and changing design elements. All of these changes impact our application's performance -- some more so than others. But if you're not measuring it, you can't know when your site inadvertently gets slower or by how much.
If you are responsible for a site's performance, it might be good to look into benchmarking it and establishing a performance budget early on, then monitor it on an ongoing basis. Many tools, paid and free, allow measuring key web performance indicators and backend code and server performance.
One-time measurements can be useful for immediate debugging, or when figuring out if that big new feature is going to have a negative impact on performance. But for long-term projects, it's helpful to have known baseline values and an established performance budget to see whether your performance improves or declines over time with every new feature.
Establishing the baseline (performance budget) and comparing future measurements is called site performance benchmarking.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn the basics concepts of benchmarking
- Learn a benchmarking process and best practices
- List some commonly used tools for benchmarking Drupal
By the end of this tutorial, you should understand the concept of a performance budget, know when to benchmark your site, and list some tools available to help.
Pantheon uses its Object Cache and Global CDN services to help improve the performance of your Drupal sites. Using them requires a few steps to enable the services and configure your Drupal site to use them effectively.
Many performance optimizations are hosting-provider-specific. This tutorial covers some Pantheon-specific methods for increasing your Drupal site's performance. It's only relevant if your site is hosted on Pantheon. For other common providers, and generic performance tuning tips, refer to other tutorials in this course.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Learn how to configure and use Pantheon's Object Cache to speed up Drupal caching
- Learn about the use case for Pantheon's Advanced Page Cache module
- Install and configure the Advanced Page Cache module for better Drupal caching of sites hosted on Pantheon
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to explain when and why you would want to use Pantheon's Object Cache and Advanced Page Cache modules, and how they can help speed up Drupal sites hosted on Pantheon.
Over the history of the Internet, the single Page Speed metric evolved into various parameters that influence user experience. These metrics are commonly referred to as Core Web Vitals. Together, they paint a comprehensive picture of the performance of your site from an end user's perspective. These metrics are considered by Google and other search engines when assigning SEO scores.
Knowing what these metrics are, and what they are intended to measure, is an important part of creating a performance profile for your site. This knowledge can also help you find solutions for common performance issues.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Define the metrics that make up the Core Web Vitals
- Point to additional resources where you can learn more about each metric
By the end of this tutorial, you should know which performance metrics are considered Core Web Vitals and what aspects of site performance they cover.
The performance optimization settings and modules provided by Drupal core are intended to work for the broadest possible set of use cases. From an administrator's perspective they provide minimal configuration options, and are designed to just work by being enabled. But behind that simplicity are some powerful features that will help speed up any Drupal-powered application.
The core Dynamic Page Cache and Internal Page Cache modules are designed to provide a base cache setup for any site. These modules are responsible for the static page cache, dynamic page cache, and lazy loading optimizations.
For developers, Drupal provides a complete and well-designed Cache API. You can, and should, integrate it into your custom code. This integration includes defining the cacheability of any content your module outputs so that Drupal can be smart about how that affects how and when a page that incorporates the output can be cached -- as well as storing and retrieving the results of complex or long-running operations. The API also helps with setting appropriate HTTP headers for the responses Drupal generates for each request so that the user's browser and other layers in the stack can appropriately cache the output.
The entire system is flexible, and there are many contributed modules that can aid in making the default caching system even faster for specific use cases.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn about the caching-related modules in Drupal core
- Review the Drupal core performance settings and recommended values
By the end of this tutorial you should be familiar with the Drupal core modules responsible for caching, their settings, and recommended values.
There's no magical set of right tools to use to monitor a Drupal site's performance and health. While thinking about performance monitoring, you need to optimize your approach depending on the number of applications you manage, their complexity, business needs, and the skill-set of your team. Based on these factors, you may choose to use one of the core or contributed modules, go with third-party solutions and services, or some combination of both.
Drupal core comes with a couple of modules that allow you to monitor the health and performance of the site including Syslog, Database Logging, and the status reports provided by the System module. There are also numerous community-contributed modules, a sampling of which we'll cover here.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- List some contributed modules that are commonly used for monitoring a Drupal site
- Provide an overview of what each module does
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to list a few contributed modules that might be useful for monitoring your Drupal application and define what each one does.
New Relic is a monitoring service that provides insights into your application stack from front-end performance to the server and infrastructure metrics. New Relic uses a combination of aggregating server logs, and pre-built (or custom) monitors to track the metrics that are most important to your application. The collected data can be organized into custom dashboards, and alerts can be set up and issued per customizable conditions.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn about different New Relic modules and their purpose
- Review some default dashboard components and reports
- Discuss how to use the information in New Relic to understand the health of your Drupal application
By the end of this tutorial, you should understand the basics of using New Relic and the insights it offers to monitor and improve the performance of your Drupal site.
Performance profiling allows you to see an overview of how your Drupal application stacks up against your users' needs and business requirements. A good profile will help you understand where the performance bottlenecks are and where you should focus your efforts in order to achieve the best results when optimizing your application.
There are many profiling tools available to help you analyze your Drupal site's performance. Some are free -- like the browser’s built-in development tools, the Lighthouse Chrome extension, and XHProf. Some are paid -- like New Relic, Blackfire, and other profiling SaaS solutions.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Outline the general concepts and goals of performance profiling
- List some available profiling tools and their features
By the end of this tutorial you should be able to describe what performance profiling is, and list the tools commonly used to establish a performance profile for a Drupal site.
When your site is experiencing performance issues, one way to pinpoint the cause is to use profiling tools. Before you can fix the issue you have to be able to identify what's causing it. All profiling tools do roughly the same thing: they tell you what code is called during the request and how much time is spent executing it. This helps to identify the slowest code and dig deeper into the cause. Once the cause is determined you can start figuring out how to optimize the code.
For this tutorial, we’ll use New Relic as a profiling tool, but you can apply a similar methodology using the profiling tool of your choice.
In this tutorial, we'll:
- Learn how to identify and analyze slow transactions
- Look at common things to check for while profiling
- Cover some questions you should ask when looking at profiling data to help track down the slow code
By the end of this tutorial, you should know how to profile a Drupal site (specifically with New Relic) to find performance bottlenecks.