I started my career in web development by using Drupal 7 on every project. I just assumed that WordPress could not meet my needs, and that it could not be customized as well as Drupal. However, after working within WordPress for several years, I’ve learned that WordPress can match Drupal’s functionally, and can almost always meet my needs no matter what the project scale.
Read MoreWhen you upload a video to Drupal from YouTube or Vimeo, an automatically generated thumbnail will be created. This is normally not a big deal, but wouldn’t it be nice if you could have complete control over the thumbnail that is associated with the video? Thankfully, with Drupal’s File Entity module, you can. In this tutorial, we will add the ability to add a custom video thumbnail to a video in Drupal. As an added bonus, we will use the ImageCache Actions module to automatically add a play button to each video thumbnail.
Read MoreDrupal’s Calendar module allows you to page between months. However, it can be frustrating for a user to have to page several months in either direction if they know what month they want to view. For example, if the current month is June but a user wants to see upcoming events in December, they would need to click through 5 times. In this tutorial, we are going to solve this problem by creating a menu where each menu item will link to each month. As an added bonus, we will make sure that the menu updates annually by using Menu Tokens.
Read MoreLet’s say you want to create an image gallery on your site. Let’s say that each image also needs a caption and a photo credit field. One solution would be to create a field collection of and image, text and long text field. However, the most image galleries contain many images. It would be very time consuming to have to upload each image individually. Enter Field Collection Bulkupload. With Field Collection Bulkupload you can drag and drop multiple images onto the page and have them automatically uploaded.
Read MoreDrupal’s Flex Slider module allows site builders to add rotating slides with captions. Using custom CSS, site themers can adjust the caption’s position and color. This is useful when the caption color might be hard to read against the slide, or is positioned awkwardly. However, wouldn’t it be nice to have complete control over the caption’s color, position and background color right within the CMS?
Read MoreLet’s say you have a content type with a date field and term reference field. This content type could be specifically for events. Because of this, you most likely would like to display this content type in a calendar format. Luckily, Drupal’s Calendar module does just that. However, if a user were to visit any of the term pages associated with that content type, they would simply get a list of content by default.
Read MoreDrupal’s Calendar module allows an easy way for site builders to display events in a month, week day and year format right out of the box. However, I recently needed to add an additional tab to the view display to list all upcoming events.
Read MoreThis tutorial will assume that you are somewhat familiar with the Search API module. It also assumes you are using the Search API with the Search API Database Search and Search API Pages modules. The goal here is to ensure paragraph and field collection fields are being indexed by Search API and associated with their host node.
Read MoreAt this point, there have been many great tutorials written about configuring Drupal’s SMTP Authentication Support with Gmail. However, these tutorials are out dated, and do not take into account Google’s added security settings. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to configure Drupal’s SMTP Authentication Support module and update Gmail’s security setting.
Read MoreLearn how to correctly display repeating dates in Drupal using the Date Repeat API
Read MoreSometimes you need to edit a field’s configuration once there is already data store in the database for this field. If you try to do this, you’ll get the following message.
Read MoreSite performance is crucial to a good user experience, and also is a factor in SEO. Because Drupal sites can be very query heavy at times, their performance can suffer. Luckily, there are a few caching libraries than can solve this problem and help increase performance. In this tutorial we’re going to install the Memcached library on a Media Temple DV Server, as well as configure the Memcache API and Integration module.
Read MoreOK, so you’ve integrated your Drupal install with Salesforce and are able to pull data from Salesforce into Drupal. Everything’s working perfectly, right? Well, if you’re like me, then probably not. I noticed right away that I was running into and issue where Drupal was not updating records from Salesforce. In this tutorial, we’re going to troubleshoot the issue and implement a solution using by checking the salesforce_pull SystemQueue.
Read MoreYou probably already know that Drupal offers Views Accordion to display content in jQuery Accordions. This is fine if you’re looking to display specific content in this format, like a custom content type. However, what if you’re simply looking to display field values from a node on the node’s display in an accordion? This would require the use of contextual filters and block views if you were to use Views Accordion. However, there’s a much simpler way to achieve this functionality with Field Group and Field collection.
Read MoreDrupal’s Pathauto is a must have for any Drupal project. This tutorial will demonstrate a simple yet effective way to utilize Pathauto to create custom URL patterns that match the node’s menu position.
Read MoreIn my last tutorial, we integrated Salesforce with a local Drupal installation. In this tutorial, we will continue to build off from what we learned and pull data from Salesforce into Drupal.
Read MoreSalesforce is one of the most popular CRMs used today. In this tutorial we will integrate Salesforce with a local Drupal install in order to access the Salesforce API. This will allow us to map data between Salesforce and Drupal.
Read MoreThe Leaflet Module for Drupal is probably the most popular mapping module. I was recently working on a project where I was mapping locations and displaying them on a Leaflet map both as a field formatter display and a views attachment. However, I was running into two problems:
Read MoreBy default, Drupal offers the ability to search the site with its core Search module. However, this module can be limiting. In this tutorial we are going to configure live results. Below is the final result. When a user begins to type, live results will appear that are linked to a node.
Read MoreYou might be wondering why you would need to track the number of times a link is clicked in Drupal, when this can be done using Google Analytics and the Google Analytics Module. However, by default this just groups all outbound link clicks as “Outbound links”. Also (as far as I can tell), this doesn’t tell you on what specific page the user clicked that particular link on.
Read MoreThanks to CSS3 Media Queries web developers can create a completely different layout for their websites when viewed on small screens. Drupal offers a lot of mobile first, responsive themes such as Omega, Adaptive Theme and Zen that do just this. However, there are circumstances when using responsive design is just not enough. When a user is viewing a website on a small screen, their experience is drastically different than that of a desktop user. Because of this, it might be necessary to move, replace, or even completely hide elements on the page.
Read MoreSites that allow users to post and vote on content such as Reddit and Digg are hugely successful. In this tutorial we are going to create a Reddit style website in Drupal. What do I mean by “Reddit style website”?
Read MoreI recently worked on a project where the site’s URL structure was going to change. This is easy to do with Pathauto, but I wanted to ensure that the old URLs would redirect to the new URLs since this would affect hundred of nodes.
Read MoreI love Drupal, but its media handling is far from ideal. Out of the box, it pales in comparison to WordPress. Most notably, Drupal does not make it easy to batch upload files via a drag and drop interface.
Read MoreLoading content via Ajax can create a great user experience. Instead of loading a totally new page, the desired content is loaded on the existing page in a designated location.
Read MoreDrupal allows you to organize content into taxonomies. This is best illustrated in tagging content, similar to Twitter. Drupal then dynamically creates pages that list content that have been categorized with specific taxonomy terms. By default, Drupal organizes content on these taxonomy pages based on post date. The most recently posted content will appear first.
Read MoreDrupal’s FlexSlider module allows for creation of responsive image sliders and carousels. This is perfect for creating banner slideshows, or just organizing images.
Read MoreIf you’re using the Pathauto Module, you know that you can create custom path patterns for nodes, taxonomies and users. This is great for SEO, as well as keeping content organized. However, one of the side effects of using Pathauto is that the paths to your content can change.
Read MoreLast week I wrote an article about how to use the command line. Now we’re going to put this knowledge to use. Using drush you can set up a fresh Drupal install in seconds.
Read MoreMost websites have a copyright in the footer, like ©2015. However, if you do this using static text, you’ll need to be sure to update this annually. Wouldn’t it be nice to automate this process?
Read MoreWith the launch of this new site, I encountered a very frustrating error. Drupal was unable to send emails, and I was receiving the following error message:
Read MoreEvery Drupal developer knows about the heavy hitters like views, display suite and context. However, this is a list of 5 Drupal Modules that I use frequently, because they save time and make client administration easier.
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