Talking Drupal
Talking Drupal is a weekly chat about web design and development by a group a guys with one thing in common, we love Drupal. With hosts Stephen Cross, John Picozzi and Nic Laflin.

Today we are talking about Drupal in 2024, What we are looking forward to with Drupal 11, and the Drupal Advent Calendar with James Shields. We’ll also cover Drupal 10.2 as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/430

Topics

  • Advent calendar
  • Selection process
  • Popularity
  • Next year
  • Drupal features in 2024
  • Drupal 11
    • Project browser
    • Recipes / Starter templates
    • Automated updates
    • Gitlab
    • Smaller core
  • Predictions

Resources

Guests

James Shields - lostcarpark.com lostcarpark

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu
Ron Northcutt - community.appsmith.com rlnorthcutt

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu
Drupal 10.2

  • Improvements include
    • Technology Updates
      • PHP 8.3
      • Includes capabilities that previously required contrib projects
      • File name sanitization
      • A search filter on the permissions page
    • End Users
      • Performance enhancements and improved caching APIs
      • Support for PHP Fibers to accelerate handling things like asynchronous remote calls
    • Content Creators
      • Revision UI for media
      • Wider editing area in Claro on large screens
      • The return of “Show blocks” in CKEditor 5, missing until now
    • Site Builders
      • Field creation UI has a new, more visual interface, and an updated workflow
      • Block visibility can now be based on the HTTP response status, for example to make it visible or invisible on 404 or 403 responses
      • Tour module is no longer enabled by default for the Standard and Umami profiles
      • New “negated regular expression” operator for views filters (string/integer), to exclude results matching a provided pattern
    • Site Owners
      • Announcements Feed is now stable and included in the Standard profile
      • The functionality in the experimental Help Topics module has been merged into the main Help module, so the Help Topics module is now deprecated
      • New permission: Use help pages
    • Developers
      • A fairly sizable change is a move to use native PHP attributes instead of doctrine annotations to declare metadata for plugin classes. Work is already underway to get core code converted, and an issue has been opened to have rector do this conversion for contrib projects
      • A new DeprecationHelper::backwardsCompatibleCall() method to help write Drupal extensions that support multiple versions of core
      • A PerformanceTestBase is now in core, to support automated testing of performance metrics
      • A new #config_target property in ConfigFormBase to simplify creating configuration forms
      • Symfony mailer is now a composer dependency of core
      • New decimal primitive data type
      • Expanded configuration validation, Symfony autowiring support, HTML5 output from the HTML utility class is now default, and more
      • In addition to these and the features highlighted in the official announcement, there are three pages of change records for the 10.2.0 release, and we’ll include a link to those in the show notes
Direct download: td-430-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT

Today we are talking about the Drupal Association Board, Its Strategic Initiatives, and The Future of Drupal with guest Baddý Sonja Breidert. We’ll also cover Advent Calendar as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/429

Topics

  • Former member of Board of Drupal Association
  • What does the board do
  • How does the board operate
  • Are there term limits
  • How does someone get on the board
  • Strategic Initiatives
    • Innovation
    • Marketing
    • Fundraising
  • Now that you are no longer on the board what’s next
  • CEO of 1xInternet
  • How did you get started with Drupal

Resources

Guests

Baddý Sonja Breidert - 1xinternet.de/en baddysonja

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Ron Northcutt - community.appsmith.com rlnorthcutt

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Advent Calendar

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to reveal content a day-at-a-time, in an interactive advent calendar? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: created less than month ago in Nov 2023 by listener James Shields, whose drupal.org username is lostcarpark
    • Versions available: 1.0.0-beta3 release, which works with Drupal 10.1 and newer
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release made earlier today
    • Test coverage
    • Number of open issues: 5, 3 of which are bugs, but all but one are now marked as fixed
  • Usage stats:
    • 6 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • James actually created a Drupal advent calendar a year ago, on his website lostcarpark.com. The idea was to showcase a new module every day, similar to advent calendars that provide a chocolate or a toy each day, hidden behind a cardboard door
    • James’ initial version displayed the content in a traditional calendar format, using the Calendar View module. What he really wanted, however, was a way to present the content using clickable doors to reveal new entries
    • The new Advent Calendar module provides a new view display, so you can configure what content type or other filters to apply, and use fields to specify what information to show
    • The module uses a Single Directory Component for display, hence the 10.1 requirement
    • There is also an “Advent Calendar Quickstart” submodule that sets up everything for you, including a content type, view, and 24 nodes to populate it for you
    • Each site visitor gets to “open” the door to new content as it is published each day. For authenticated users, which doors have been opened is stored as user data, and for anonymous users it’s kept in local storage via Javascript
    • In addition to this being an interesting module in its own right, the advent calendar James has created this year is also a community effort. He’s managed to enlist a wide variety of contributors to write about modules or aspects of the Drupal community that they’re passionate about, so it’s a great way to up your Drupal game. You can open a new door yourself every day at https://lostcarpark.com/advent-calendar-2023
Direct download: td-429-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT

Today we are talking about Being a Digital Nomad, common nomadic hurdles, and realized work/life benefits with guests Chad Hester and Shelley Goetz. We’ll also cover Flag as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/428

Topics

  • What does digital nomad mean?
  • When did you first start to think about this
  • What was your physical journey like
  • What do you do for work
  • What is the biggest win
  • How did this affect family dynamics
  • What was the biggest gotcha
  • Tips and tricks
  • Long term plan
  • Why not Europe or South America
  • Question from Stephen: As a Patriots fan what are your thoughts on the 2023 season, is Bill Belichick staying or going

Resources

Guests

Shelley Goetz - shelleygoetz
Chad Hester - chadkhester.com chadhester

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Ron Northcutt - community.appsmith.com rlnorthcutt

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Flag

  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted a simple way to let users bookmark, like, or even flag as inappropriate content on your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: originally created in 2008 by quicksketch, who listeners may remember as the original author of Webform
    • Versions available: 7.x-3.9 and 8.x-4.0-beta4
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, but no commits in the last year
  • Has a handbook, but it’s in the old documentation system
  • Number of open issues: 675, 132 of which are bugs against the 8.x branch
  • Usage stats:
    • Over 38,000 sites
  • Maintainer(s):
    • Recent releases by Berdir, who we recently mentioned as the maintainer of TMGMT in episode #426
  • Module features and usage
    • The Flag module provides a flexible system that can reference any kind of entity, so content, users, comments and so on
    • When you create a flag type, you set the target entity type, and then you can optionally choose specific bundles that can be flagged
    • Flags can be per-user, like bookmarks, or global, meaning that they’re the same for everyone
    • Links to Flag or Unflag content or other entities can be displayed in a variety of ways: in a field, in entity links, as contextual links, and more
    • By default flag links are rendered as AJAX links that flag or unflag content without reloading the page, but you can configure them to display in various ways, including a links to a field entry form, because flag types are also fieldable
    • There is extensive views integration, so it’s easy to list flagged content, for example to show a user content they’ve flagged as their favorites. The ecosystem of modules around Flag includes one called Views Flag Refresh that can trigger a view to automatically update via AJAX as soon as any content in that view is flagged or unflagged
    • Not long ago I used Flag as part of a lightweight task management system within Drupal, and anyone wanting to try that out can install the Tasks module
Direct download: td-428-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT

On today’s show we are turning the tables and Nic and John will be interviewed by our guest host Melissa Bent. We’ll also cover Content Model Documentation as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
www.talkingDrupal.com/427

Topics

  • What made you decide to start the podcast
  • Who does what tasks
  • The first episode was on May 30 2013. What do you know now that you wish you knew then
  • When did the guest host start
  • What has been your favorite episode
  • How did you come to this format
  • Where did the tagline come from
  • What technology do you use in production
  • The show is supported by multiple platforms, would you recommend this
  • What advice would you give someone just starting

Resources

Guests

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi

Hosts

Melissa Bent - linkedin.com/in/melissabent merauluka

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - @mandclu
Content Model & Site Documentation

  • Brief description:
    • Have you wanted to make your Drupal site self-documenting directly within the admin UI? There’s a module for that.
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Jan 2023
    • Versions available: 1.0.23, compatible with Drupal 9 and 10
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained, latest release was a week ago
    • Test coverage
    • No official guide, but there was a recent talk about the module at GovCon, so you can watch that
    • Number of open issues: 43 open, 9 of which are bugs
  • Usage stats:
    • 82 sites
  • Maintainer(s):
    • Steve Wirt (swirt) who works for Civic Actions
  • Module features and usage
    • Allows your Drupal site to generate its own documentation
    • Has fieldable Content Model Document entities that allow you to customize what data will be stored
    • Can optionally document things like your content types, taxonomies, block types, paragraph types, and more
    • Documentation elements can also be associated with parts of your site configuration, and they become available within the relevant parts of your admin UI. For example, if you add documentation for a specific content type, when a site builder goes into edit that content type they will see a link to the documentation as a tab
    • You can generate entity relationship diagrams using MermaidJS
    • Also includes a field search capability originally developed as a separate module by Matthieu Scarset, who was a guest on this show back in episode #298
    • Will also generate diagrams to illustrate your content workflows, showing the states defined and the transitions between them
Direct download: td-427-libsyn.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:00pm EDT