Today we are talking about The Contact Form Initiative, What it is, and how it helped Drupal with guest J. Hogue. We’ll also cover Local Tasks More as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/499

Topics

• What is the Contact Form initiative
• What makes up the contact form recipe
• Why did you want to run this initiative
• What are the responsibilities of an initiative lead
• Were there any unexpected speed bumps
• Who was involved
• As a non-backend developer, any hesitation to lead this effort
• What was onboarding like
• What was the timeline
• Any tips for others thinking of leading an initiative

Guests

J. Hogue - oomphinc.com artinruins

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303

MOTW

Correspondent

Jacob Rockowitz - jrockowitz.com jrockowitz

• Brief description:
  • Nodes can have too many local tasks. Only the first few, like View, Edit, Layout, Revisions, and Translate, are used daily. Would you like to hide or reorder less commonly used local tasks, which include Usage, Clone, Devel, and Convert. There is a module for that
• Local Tasks More (local_tasks_more)
• Brief history
  • How old: created on November 6th, 2024
  • Versions available: 1.0.0-beta2 r
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • No security coverage
  • Has test coverage
  • Does not require much documentation
  • No issues
• Usage stats:
  • 22 sites
• Maintainer(s):
  • jrockowitz (me)
  • Module features and usage
  • Enter the base routes that support the show more/less task link and alterations.
  • Enter the local task id and the altered title and weight. Set the local tasks to FALSE to remove it.
  • Enter the number of links to trigger show more/less tasks link/icon from primary and secondary tasks (aka tabs).

In this episode of Talking Drupal, we discuss the latest DOJ accessibility ruling and its implications for Drupal with special guest Josh Mitchell. Josh, a seasoned expert who has led teams in digital agencies, governments, and non-profits, sheds light on what the ruling means for state and local governments, the importance of accessibility, and steps to achieve compliance. We also explore the Sa11y module, a powerful tool for enhancing website accessibility, and compare it with the Editorially module. Additionally, we touch on the upcoming MID Camp 2025. Tune in for an insightful discussion on making web content more accessible for all.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/498

Topics

• Can you give us an overview of the DOJ Accessibility Ruling
• Does this apply to federal websites
• When does this go into effect
• How does this affect current sites
• Hwo is Drupal positioned against this
• Does this rule apply to all content such as PDFs
• Any tips to organizations
• JS widgets

Resources

• Announcement of the rule
• Full text of the rule - PDF
• Fact sheet for meeting the requirements of the rule
  • https://www.ada.gov/resources/2024-03-08-web-rule/
  • https://www.drupal.org/docs/getting-started/accessibility/how-to-do-an-accessibility-review
• AXE Core
• Core issue to automate accessibility tests with Nightwatch.js
• Keyboard traps
• COTS - Commercial off the shelf software
• VPATS - Voluntary product accessibility template
• Accessibility Conformance Report (ACR)
• Monsido - Acquia optimize - PDF
• Josh’s blog post

Guests

Joshua "Josh" Mitchell - joshuami.com joshuami

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted your Drupal site to have a built-in accessibility tool that could identify things like potential color contrast issues? There’s a module for that
• Module name/project name:
  • Sa11y
• Brief history
  • It’s worth mentioning that the name is a numeronym, so spelled s-a-1-1-y, which plays off of a common way the word “accessibility” is abbreviated
• How old: created in Jan 2018 by Bryan Sharpe (b_sharpe) but the namespace was taken over in Jun 2024 by Mark Conroy (markconroy) of LocalGov Drupal, so the current 3.0.1 release, which supports Drupal 10 and 11, is a completely different module than the original 8.x-1.x branch.
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained, in fact this module came out of the ongoing work being done on the LocalGov distribution and profile
  • Security coverage
  • Test coverage: no, but the module is effectively just a wrapper for the Sa11y library, which is CMS agnostic and used in the Wordpress and Joomla communities as well
  • The Sa11y library has its own website, which includes documentation
  • Number of open issues: 1 open issues, which isn’t a bug
• Usage stats:
  • 62 sites
• Module features and usage
  • We did cover the Editoria11y accessibility checker as MOTW all the way back in episode #350, almost 3 years ago, and Sa11y was mentioned at that time. Both modules have had major releases since then, so I thought this week’s episode would be a chance to do an updated comparison
  • Sa11y does include some checks that Editoria11y does not, such as color contrast checking and a readability score
  • The Editoria11y module, on the other hand, includes site-wide reporting that would be helpful for site admins, as well as a wealth of configuration options including one or more DOM elements to use as the container to check within, a list of elements to exclude, and so on. Recent versions of Editoria11y also include an option for live feedback as you edit, which should work with CKEditor 5, Paragraphs 5 or newer, and Gutenberg
  • At the end of the day, however, both projects are intended to provide your content editors with immediate feedback on the accessibility compliance of what they create. So, it’s worth looking at the feedback each tool provides and deciding which one is more useful for your team in particular

Today we are talking about Drupal Forge, how it works, and why it’s changing Drupal with guest Darren Oh. We’ll also cover ECA VBO as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/497

Topics

• Elevator pitch for Drupal forge
• What is Drupal Forge built on
• What is the pricing model
• Does Drupal Forge only allow you to install Drupal CMS
• Drupal Forge and templates, was there an influence on Site Templates
• Why offer templates for Drupal Forge Camps
• Is Drupal Forge open source
• What is on the Roadmap
• How can people get involved

Resources

• Drupal Forge on Drupal.org
• Drupal Forge
• DevPanel

Guests

Darren Oh - drupalforge.org Darren Oh

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted a powerful and flexible way to create views bulk operations without writing code? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • ECA VBO
• Brief history
  • How old: created in May 2022 by mxh, a prolific maintainer in his own right, and an active member of the group that has made the ECA ecosystem so far-reaching
  • Versions available: 1.1.1 and 2.1.1, the latter of which supports ^10.3 || ^11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage
  • Documentation: sort of. The README has step-by-step instructions, and the project page has links to both an example model and a tutorial video
• Number of open issues: 7 open issues, 1 of which are bugs against the current branch
• Usage stats:
  • 320 sites
• Module features and usage
  • With the module installed, your site will have a number of Events available within ECA, specifically for defining models that can perform bulk actions on the selected items in a view. In my own experience the most useful event is VBO: Execute Views bulk operation (one by one)
  • From there, you can define the logic of what needs to happen to the selected items. I’ve used it for fairly simple operations like changing content to a specific moderation state, but you could define complex logic that is conditional on field values, site configuration, or even global factors like the time of day
  • With one or more models defined, you can now add a field to your view for ECA bulk operations and then select which eligible models you want available in that specific view
  • It’s worth adding that the ECA model can also include logic to define who should have access to perform a particular operation, which could be as simple as checking the role of the current user, but can be as complex as you need
  • I came across ECA VBO during some recent work on the Drupal Event Platform, which is already available to try out on Drupal Forge, but there should be a more formal announcement on that front soon

Today we are talking about Drupal Basics, Why we got away from them, and what we do to bring them back with guest Mike Anello. We’ll also cover Entity Reference Override as our module of the week.

For show notes visit:
https://www.talkingDrupal.com/496

Topics

• Where did this idea come from
• Why do you feel more basic content is necessary
• How did Drupal get away from the basics
• How can we get more basic talks into Drupal events
• How do we balance basic content with new topics like recipes or Drupal CMS
• How do we entice speakers to take these talks
• Could this adversely affect attendance
• Question from Stephen: How do we address virtual events and that they are preferred by a younger crowd
• Will Florida Drupal Camp have a track

Guests

Mike Anello - drupaleasy.com ultimike

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan
John Picozzi - epam.com johnpicozzi
Kathy Beck - kbeck303

MOTW

Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu

• Brief description:
  • Have you ever wanted to replace a text field on entities you reference in your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
• Module name/project name:
  • Entity Reference Override
• Brief history
  • How old: created in Sep 2016 by Jeff Eaton, though recent releases are by Benjamin Melançon (mlncn) of Agaric
  • Versions available: 2.0.0-beta3 which works with Drupal 10.1 or 11
• Maintainership
  • Actively maintained
  • Security coverage, yes but needs a stable release
  • Test coverage
  • Documentation - user guide
  • Number of open issues: 13 open issues, 2 of which are bugs against the 2.0.x branch
• Usage stats:
  • 2,004 sites
• Module features and usage
  • The module defines a new field type, with associated widgets and formatters.
  • Your site editors will see a normal entity reference field (autocomplete or select) with an additional text field. Text provided in that additional field can be used to override a specific field in the referenced entity’s display, or add a class to its rendered markup.
  • This could be handy in use cases like showing people with project-specific roles, or showing related articles with the summary tweaked to be more relevant to the main content being viewed.
  • It’s not a super-common need, but if you need this capability, it can save having to set up a more complicated content architecture with some kind of intermediary entity
  • I thought this module would be interesting because today’s guest, Mike Anello, is listed as one of the maintainers. Mike, what can you tell us about your history with the module and how you’ve used it?