Articles tagged with "Drupal core"

So we challenged ourselves to contribute back to the Drupal community this year. How are we doing? Here's a simple update on what each of us has done so far. Hopefully we'll see other ComputerMinds team members join this list by the end of the year.

There are some key files like robots.txt and .htaccess which are often tweaked for Drupal websites. These can be considered part of the 'scaffolding' of a site - they control the way the site works, rather than its content or design. Any new release of Drupal core that includes changes to them specifically mentions that they need updating, as those changes may have to be merged with any customisations made on your site. For example, there was a security release that added rules to .htaccess, which were essential for any site to incorporate and the template settings file, default.settings.php...

I was recently tasked with upgrading jQuery from 1.9 all the way up the latest version of 3.x (3.4). And I seriously thought “There is no way jQuery is on version 3 already!”. How wrong I was. Thankfully I wasn’t the only one thinking this, a few of my colleagues were on my wavelength too! So yes, jQuery is really on 3.x and 1.x is actually really, really old! This article aims to help those of you in the same situation as me with some of the common pitfalls you may encounter. Some of this is semi-specific to Drupal 7...

We love making great websites, standing on the shoulders of the giants that have gone before us to make Drupal what it is today. Thousands of working hours from fantastic people around the world have gone into producing this digital experience platform. Many of those gave voluntarily for free, while many were directed by paying customers who gave back so the rest of us could benefit. Everyone stands to gain when innovation, graft and capacity are pooled together. All that functionality in your Drupal site has been written by a real person at some point, who considered it worth sharing...

Update: Since writing this article the EOL of Drupal 7 has been extended from November 2021 until November 2022.

Your current website/platform is built on Drupal 7 and news has hit your ears about 7’s end of life (EOL). Maybe your website is a Drupal 8 website and you want to know what the future has in store for you. Good news is, you don’t have to do anything immediately, but it is definitely a question that you want to start thinking about very soon.

This article is mainly aimed at Drupal 7 builds looking to upgrade to 8 or...

After reading this from Ars Technica, which describes how a developer offered to 'help' the maintainer of an NPM module - and then slowly introduced malicious code to it - I can't help but wonder if the Drupal community is vulnerable to the exact same issue. Let's discuss!

###Please, don't touch my package
NPM modules have been hacked at before, and it's not pretty when it happens. Because of the way we use packages, it's a lot easier for nasty code to get sucked in to a LOT of applications before anyone notices. Attacks on the code 'supply chain', therefore...

Update: this article's suggested method has serious shortcomings, use other methods when you can! For example, run the following with drush to just upgrade drupal core code (leaving database updates to be run separately):

drush pm-updatecode drupal --check-updatedb=0

If you've got a Drupal site, which you need to update quickly (for example, to address last night's security advisory!), here's a tip. Run this from the command line:

curl 'https://github.com/drupal/drupal/compare/7.59..7.60.patch' | patch -p1

This assumes your codebase was on Drupal 7.59 and you're currently in Drupal's root directory. If you're currently on a different version, adjust the numbers in the...

I have honed a selection of commands that I regularly use in the creation and application of patches. Here is a run-down of my most useful commands.

Drupal 7 brought us Entities, and with them the powerful Field API for 'storing, loading, editing, and rendering field data.' attached to them. If you're managing everything through 'manage fields' and 'manage display' tabs of your content type, then every part of that process is rather wonderfully taken care of for you.

We often, however, come across the need to render a field outside the context of it's entity. A common example might include rendering a node's author in a sidebar block. Sure, modules like Panels and CCK Blocks will do this for you, but doing it manually is actually not that hard.

In Drupal 6, if you called node_load then what you'd be returned would be your own copy of the node to change and modify as you pleased, but in Drupal 7 this was changed. By default, what you actually get back from a node_load is essentially a reference to a global singleton for that node. This has the interesting side effect of meaning that if you change anything in the node object, you are probably changing everyone else's copies of that node too. This is explained in this issue: http://drupal.org/node/154859

So, why should you care? Well, in the right circumstances...