Read our roadmap to understand how this work falls into priorities set by the Drupal Association with direction and collaboration from the Board and community. You can also review the Drupal project roadmap.
Drupal.org Updates
Drupal’s 20th Birthday Year
As we close out the first quarter of 2021, we continue the celebration of 20 years of Drupal with #DrupalFest and #DrupalCon!
#DrupalFest is a month-long celebration of all things Drupal, taking place online all around the world. DrupalFest lasts throughout the month of April. Most events are free, and we encourage everyone to attend, and even submit your own!
DrupalCon is right around the corner from April 12-16, happening online. This year’s DrupalCon reflects a renewed focus on the strategic initiatives that drive innovation in Drupal. Each day has a half day of live programming for and then a half day of contribution, and all personas are welcome! Join us!
Increased focus on Strategic Initiatives
Speaking of strategic initiatives, the current primary initiatives being highlighted at DrupalCon and beyond are:
Decoupled Menus – This initiative focuses on creating standardized tools and libraries for decoupled Drupal, starting with the menu system. This is the first step in making JavaScript front-ends a central part of the Drupal project.
Easy out of the Box – This mega-initiative combines the efforts of Layout Builder, Media, and Claro to help empower content editors in Drupal to take advantage of the best that Drupal can offer.
Automatic Updates – This initiative is focused on the #1 most requested feature in Drupal: automatic updates. The initiative is building a robust and secure system for automatically updating Drupal, starting with security and patch releases.
Drupal 10 Readiness – The Drupal innovation train keeps rolling! The Drupal 10 Readiness initiative is rallying the community around what we need to reach our Drupal 10 release date, and helping site owners ensure they’re ready for the upgrade when the time comes.
In addition to the content at DrupalCon, you can find ways to get involved in any of these initiatives by checking out the Drupal Strategic Initiative section on Drupal.org.
Decoupled Menu Initiative Support
General projects are a new content type on Drupal.org for code that does not fall into the neat categories of module, theme, or distribution. Instead, these can cover things like JavaScript Components, Drush Extensions, Install Profiles, Libraries, etc.
This is the first step in making Drupal a project greater than just PHP. This capability leans into Drupal’s future in Decoupled applications, and in digital experiences beyond the web browser.
At DrupalCon North America the Decoupled Menus initiative leads invite you to a hackathon to begin to create applications for this work.
The rapid movement on this initiative shows how quickly the Drupal community can pivot into more robust and standardized Decoupled implementations, and furthers Drupal’s lead in the marketplace.
Easy Out of the Box Support
For the Easy Out of the Box team, the Drupal Association has been focused on connecting the initiative leads to the Drupal Contribution Mentoring team, so that at DrupalCon there will be a variety of onramps to help new contributors support this work.
Easy Out of the Box is effectively three initiatives in one, focused on Layouts, Media, and the Claro administrative theme, so people with interest in any of those areas are more than welcome.
The Drupal Association Engineering team continues its close collaboration with the AutoUpdates initiative team. Because AutoUpdates requires a server side component that will live on Drupal.org infrastructure, the engineering team needs to be closely involved.
This initiative has also had a heavy focus on cross-project collaboration – with three CMS partners in the PHP ecosystem collaborating together on the basic principles of supporting securely signed update packages.
We’re also collaborating with other partners, such as the Cloud Native Computing Foundations ‘TUF'(The Update Framework) team, and the team behind Composer.
At DrupalCon North America the TUF team will be presenting about securing software package delivery – a topic that is sure to be interesting for all.
Drupal 10 Readiness Support
Drupal 10 is slated for release in June of 2022, which is only a little bit more than a year away. Fortunately, Drupal 10 follows the continuous innovation model of Drupal development that was so successful in the transition from Drupal 8 to Drupal 9. In essence, so long as site owners are up to date with the latest version of Drupal 9 they should be able to make the jump very easily. The only area of concern is deprecated code.
To that end, the Drupal Association engineering team collaborated with Gábor Hotjsy to set up automate code deprecation checking using the DrupalCI infrastructure. This allows the team to understand the most used instances of deprecated code, so that contributed module maintainers can be made aware of the need to update, and so that the Drupal Rector team(supported by Palantir.net) can begin creating automatic deprecation patches.
GitLab Merge Request Updates
Last year, Drupal.org migrated our community contribution tools to GitLab, by integrating the existing Drupal.org issue queues with GitLab’s merge request functionality.
Thanks to these improvements, the complete contribution lifecycle can be completed entirely in the browser. As a contributor to Drupal you no longer need to use command line git, install a local development environment, or use a local IDE in order to make your contributions.
Since the initial launch, we’ve received feedback from many people in the community about improvements to usability with the Drupal.org issue queue integration. Looking at the child issues of this issue, we can see rapid usability improvements that have sped the pace of contribution.
More recently, we worked with our partners at Tugboat.qa to release live deployment previews of your code changes – first for Drupal Core, but now available for contributed projects on Drupal.org as well. This means that even reviewing visual changes or seeing your code deployed to a site can all be done without leaving your browser. This is a huge boon to all contributors, but especially to usability and accessibility experts who can much more easily view the impact of changes across issues.
Major improvements to Community events
In collaboration with the Events Organizers Working Group, the Drupal Association has updated the Drupal.org Community Events section. This new section represents a central repository for all of the events taking place across the Drupal Community, and will ultimately be the replacement for Groups.Drupal.org.
This section allows anyone in the community to submit their events, whether online or in-person, and provides a variety of views to help people find events they’d like to attend. Events can be filtered by type(con, camp, meetup, training, etc); proposed events can be submitted to help avoid scheduling conflicts; and calls for content/speakers can be promoted.
A feed of these events is made available for 3rd party tools built by the community, which is already being used to feed Drupical.com.
Local events are the heart of our community, so we hope that you’ll help us by submitting your local events to this new tool!
Documentation updates
Led by community volunteer u/jhodgdon, Drupal.org’s documentation tools have seen a variety of updates. In particular, the Drupal contributor guide is now much more complete, helping folks who are new to contribution in Drupal find a place to fit in and get started.
We’ve also deployed improvements that make it easier to understand whether the documentation you’re reading is up-to-date, and how to report problems if you find them.
If you’re looking for somewhere to contribute – helping to update documentation is a wonderful place to start!
Coming soon: Discover Drupal Portal
Coming up at DrupalCon is the announcement of a new program: Discover Drupal. This program is part of the Drupal Association’s talent and education initiatives, and represents the Drupal Association’s commitment to growing the Drupal talent pool and increasing diversity in our community.
With the official announcement just around the corner we won’t spoil the details here, but very soon you’ll be able to check out the new web portal for the Discover Drupal program and find out what it’s all about.
Infrastructure Updates
Over the course of the last quarter the Drupal Association engineering team has provided a variety of feature updates for the Drupal project in terms of testing infrastructure:
PHP8 Testing support – The Drupal Association provided PHP8 testing environments in DrupalCI, and so Drupal versions 9.1 and beyond are all fully PHP 8 compatible.Staying on the leading edge of compatibility gives Drupal the advantage of improved performance and security, and sets us up for success when it’s time for Drupal 10.
Code Standards test for Drupal Core – Drupal Core tests now provide code standards testing results, saving a laborious manual step when reviewing core contributions.
GitLabCI/Pipelines – The Drupal Association has also enabled GitLabCI/Pipelines for these new general projects. This is a precursor to moving to GitLabCI for all Drupal CI uses. With direct maintainer control of the CI configuration for these projects, we can see automated workflows to support a wider variety of projects – allowing for more innovation. However, we need to be cognizant of cost controls as we open up this capability.
The year is off to a fast-paced, productive start and as always it is humbling and gratifying to see the great work that the community accomplishes with the tools the Drupal Association provides.
———
As always, we’d like to say thanks to all the volunteers who work with us, and to the Drupal Association Supporters, who make it possible for us to work on these projects. In particular, we want to thank:
This guide is an extension of the first ever published book with the step-by-step, technical details you need to search engine optimize a Drupal website. Originally written by Ben Finklea (Volacci’s Fearless Leader) in 2017, it is the first step to digital marketing excellence that will reward you with increased ranking, traffic, customers, and sales.
While these instructions were written for marketers, developers can also benefit. The ability to provide a more easily SEO’d website to a client will always be in demand. Should you wish to partner with Volacci on SEO services for new websites, please feel free to reach out to us.
Bookmark this page! We will keep this section updated with the latest Drupal release instructions, but please be patient — research and writing takes time.
What this guide is.
If you were sitting at the desk next to us right now and needed help with a Drupal SEO technical problem, we’d just tell you how to solve it, walking you through the necessary steps. That’s what this guide is.
What this guide isn’t.
We won’t go into detailed, basic explanations on what SEO is and why it’s important. There are many great resources online with full explanations of how SEO works, what Google is looking for, and how to win the online marketing game. We’ll link to some good ones so you can dig deeper when you need to. We’re especially fond of Moz.com, and always send people to their Beginner’s Guide to SEO if they’re just starting out.
We explain how we do the technical SEO on a Drupal website. It’s not the only way, but we’ve found it’s the way that works best for us. If you get through this guide (or get too busy to complete it), and your site is still not ranking, then seek professional help.
How to read this guide.
It’s best to install the SEO Checklist module, and check the items off as you complete them. This guide details each section of that Checklist.
Throughout this guide, you’ll find various text styles to help make concepts clearer or to draw your attention to important aspects of a task. Here are some examples:
Italic. Warnings or critical terms.
Bold. New words or to draw attention.
Code. URLs or code snippets
“Quotes”. Interface elements you’re interacting with.
Notes, Tips, Warnings
Extra information that helps you better understand a concept, avoid a misstep, or give additional functionality.
Sometimes, it can be helpful to know how hard a task is going to be, so we’ve included them to make things clear. Here’s what they mean:
Easy: Straightforward and quick.
Normal: A bit more involved, maybe 2 or 3 separate steps but no heavy lifting.
Hard: It’s going to take some thought and time to do this. Still, most marketers should be able to knock it out with some effort.
Expert: This task is time-consuming, technical, or difficult. You may need to get some help from a Drupal developer to get it done.
Do these numbers seem shocking to you? They certainly were for me. And the more unfortunate fact is that these numbers will only grow in the future. So, what should be done? We cannot stop people from getting a disability, that is in no one’s hand. However, we can ensure that that disability should not hold them back. We should endeavour for inclusion, wherein every person on this planet gets an equal opportunity, disability not being a criteria impeding on their life experiences.
To that accord, accessibility was designed, for inclusion, for equality and for making the differently abled feel that their voices and their feelings value. Accessibility has expanded as a concept since its inception and now, it is also being rigorously practised on the web.
The web or the internet is for everyone, you cannot say that it was designed with a particular demographic in mind because it simply wasn’t. From 5-year-olds watching YouTube videos that are making them prepared for school to 70-year-olds watching a YouTube tutorial on how to update their WhatsApp status, the internet is for everyone and web accessibility ensures that it can be accessed by everyone without difficulty.
This brings us to the meaning of web accessibility, which is to design something on the web that includes the needs of the differently abled. People with auditory, cognitive, visual and speech disabilities amongst others should be able to perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the web with ease. You should remember that accessibility is not just limited to people with disabilities, it also transcends to other aspects of life that may affect one’s ability to perceive what is right in front of them. Old-age, bright sunlight, the size of the device being used and the person’s mental and physical state at one point, all are included when we talk about accessible design on the web. Therefore, when businesses and organisations are able to build such experiences that cater to all of what I just mentioned, only then would they be truly accessible.
Here is a video to help you understand accessibility a little better.
“The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect.”
With Tim’s words at the back of our minds, let’s find out what the fuss about accessibility is for. Here are three reasons that sum up the crux of accessibility and why it ought to be practiced down to the very of the web business.
Do you want to build a wider consumer base?
The paramount reason for practising accessibility lies in the numbers we talked about in the introduction. The close to one billion differently-abled people in the world would be able to access your web project with ease. They won’t feel frustrated or undervalued by your business model, if it is accessible. And can you guess what that means? Yes, you’ll be able to target a market that your competitors might have overlooked. And that is enough to get you the revenue you endeavour for.
Do you want to be on the good side of the law?
You know the United Nations? I’m sure you do. And when the UN says something is important and needs to be followed, you follow it. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities clearly states that access to information and communications technologies is a basic human right. And when you make websites that are inaccessible to persons with disabilities, you are going against the UN and you won’t want that.
Even in the US, the Americans with Disabilities Act also establishes grounds for web accessibility and adherence to those guidelines is important to stay on the good side of the law, don’t you agree?
Do you want your brand image to be positive?
Then, there is the concern about brand image. If I had to describe accessibility’s essence, the only thing that would do it justice would be social inclusion. Including every section of the society and every scenario that may hamper their web experience, and building a web project that takes into account all of that would most definitely get positive feedback from the audience using it. And that is how you build a positive brand image.
Now, tell me are you not on the side of accessibility? Are you not craving to make the entirety of your website truly accessible to the users, whoever they may be, whatever their physical or mental condition be, and wherever they may be?
If that is the case, continue reading because I am going to be talking about accessibility tools that are found in Drupal, a leading CMS, so that you can use those tools and modules to make your site the epitome of accessibility.
Let’s Start by Understanding Drupal and Accessibility as One
Drupal has certain checklists that are used to evaluate the competence of a particular aspect of your project, these are called Drupal Core Gates. There are six in total, ranging from Content to Frontend and testing. And you would be glad to know that accessibility is one of these six parameters, this alone is explanatory enough to let you know how much Drupal prioritises this part of web designing.
Drupal’s Accessibility statement states that,
“As an inclusive community, we are committed to making sure that Drupal is an accessible tool for building websites that can also be accessed by people with disabilities.”
Drupal’s HTML structures also conform to WCAG 2.0 standards;
Drupal also focuses on adequate contrast between text colour and the background;
Drupal stresses on keyboard usability, thus testing a project by only using the keyboard is an important part of Drupal’s accessibility process;
Finally, Drupal emphasises on form fields being labeled to the proper standards.
All of these are proof of Drupal’s compliance with accessibility, meaning that Drupal is incomplete without it. With the additional WAI-ARIA support, Drupal is becoming all the more proficient in building projects that are accessible and rich internet applications.
With that said, let us look at the accessibility-centric features found in Drupal.
The Logic Semantic
The addition of WAI-ARIA landmarks, live regions, roles and properties has equipped Drupal to provide more semantic HTML5 elements that can be leveraged by assistive technology.
Let’s try to understand this, when an assistive device scans a web page for information, it extracts the data about the Document Object Model (DOM), or the HTML structure of the page. No further information is read by the screen reader.
Often these assistive devices only allow a user to select to read the headings on the page or only the links. It prioritizes according to the hierarchy in which the headings and links are presented making browsing easier for users of assistive devices. So, HTML and WAI-ARIA help in achieving screen-friendliness and making the UIs more interactive.
The Readouts
Aural users play a major role where accessible design is concerned. To that accord, Drupal.announce() has been made a part of Drupal core so that timely messages can be delivered to these users relying on a screen reader with different tones as well; you can be assertive or polite, it is up to you. This is the Aural Alerts feature.
The Tabbing Manager
Users that are visually impaired and the ones who cannot operate a mouse can opt for the Tabbing Manager. This is a feature that would essentially become a guide for these users, so that they are able to access all the salient features and that too in a logical order.
The CSS Options
Your content can be displayed in multifarious ways; it is up to you to decide how you want it. With Drupal’s CSS classes, you can control the way your content is hidden or not. Would certain screen readers can view it or all of them, would hidden, visually hidden or focusable or entirely invisible, you would get to decide every single nuance.
This is due to the centralised alternative to CSS display:none; and the standardisation of the HTML5 Boilerplate naming convention.
The Accessible Forms
It is important to provide the necessary feedback to users about the results of their form submission. Both the times when successful and when not. This incorporates an in-line feedback that is typically provided after form submission.
Notifications have to be concise and clear. The error message, in particular, should be easy to understand and provide simple instructions on how the situation can be resolved. And in case of successful submission, a message to confirm would do.
Drupal forms have turned out to be impressively more open to the expansion of available inline form errors. It is now easier for everyone to identify what errors they might have made when filling in a web form.
The Fieldsets
Fieldset labels are utilized as systems for gathering related segments of forms. Effectively implemented
The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are a series of specifications developed and maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for the purpose of ensuring that websites are accessible for people who have disabilities. Due to technological advances and evolving perspectives on web accessibility challenges that individuals disabilities face, the WCAG is regularly being updated and revised. The current version of WCAG 2.2 was issued on Nov. 30, 2020, and the WCAG 2 Series is coming to an end with a new WCAG 3.0 under development.
When someone comes to your website with an information need, they have two options: they can either use the site’s navigation to get where they need to go, or they can use the search function. We’re going to focus on the latter for this article.
Many of us do dozens or even hundreds of searches per day without even thinking about it: searching for an email, searching for that song on Spotify, figuring out what to make for dinner, looking up a contact on your phone, finding a word on this page.
We just expect search to work—but that’s easier said than done.
One of the tenets of design is to make things simple. When building a search interface, the goal is to make the interface as simple as possible, while ensuring that users can actually find what they’re looking for.
Before we get into specific design tips, let’s take a few seconds to think about how different users might interact with site search.
Information-seeking needs and behaviours
The type of information need a user has and how that user intends to retrieve said information will affect how they interact with a website’s search engine.
There are four main types of information need:
Exhaustive research: “I need to know everything about this topic”
Exploratory seeking: “I need to find a few good things”
Known-item seeking: “I’m looking for this specific thing”
Refinding: “I need this specific thing again”
When it comes to information-seeking behaviours, we can split searchers into four categories:
Retrievers know both what they need to find and how to find it. If they’re looking for a specific document on a site, they’ll simply type the document’s title into the search bar and expect it to be the top result.
Adventurers have a more general idea of their information need and waiting for something to catch their attention
Wanderers are unable to precisely define their information need
Explorers know exactly what piece of information they need, but they don’t know where or how to look for it
Every search interface will be used by each of these searchers, so keep them top-of-mind as you design.
📅 Free webinar: Designing a user-centric search experience (March 31, 2021). Sign up now!
Now, here are some key steps that’ll help you build out a solid search experience for your site.
We won’t get into the nitty-gritty details here, as you most likely already know who your personas are (and if not, we’d recommend taking the time to think about this before proceeding).
Personas—who your users are, how they think, what their habits look like—are the first step in most UX processes, and site search design is no different. Well thought out audience research will guide almost every decision you make throughout your search project.
2.Map out your users’ search journeys
Conduct user journey mapping exercises to gain insights on how a typical user would interact with the search.
Consider your personas and the types of searchers listed above. Who is using your search interface in each of these ways, and how should search fit into the larger user experience?
Be sure to consider these key variables that influence each search operation:
The user’s level of familiarity and comfort with search interfaces
The type of searcher (wanderer, explorer, adventurer, retriever) and their information need
The type of information being searched (content/page type)
The amount of information that needs to be retrieved
Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that searching isn’t always a straightforward, one-time process. On the contrary, browsing and searching often go hand in hand when a user is trying to fulfill an information need. The Wikipedia page about Cognitive models of information retrieval provides a succinct overview of these types of behaviours, if you’re interested in learning more.
3. Conduct user testing with real-life scenarios
Pick a few real use cases for the search interface and use them throughout the design, development, and QA process. When you conduct user testing, provide your subjects with a scenario-based goal and observe how they go about reaching it.
For example, if you’re testing the search functionality of a university website, you could ask your user something like “You’re getting ready to apply to the MA program in Film Studies. What documents do you need to include in your application?” or “You’re thinking about applying to this school as a non-resident. What fees can you expect to pay?”.
A few tips for carrying out user testing for search:
Work in pairs: one test subject with one member of the research team. One-on-one testing will provide the most valuable information.
During the test scenario, ask the subject to narrate their thought process out loud and take notes accordingly
Be ready to ask the test subject for any clarifications you might need as soon as the scenario is complete, so that it’s still fresh in their mind
4. Scope the search functionality
Start to plan out how the search interface would fit into the overall experience. Are there search pages embedded within specific sections of the website? Or a single search interface that the user is always directed to? Sometimes users want to focus on finding one thing (e.g. a directory of doctors or experts) and sometimes it’s more useful to allow them to expand their search to the entire website.
People have been searching for information online for quite some time now, which means users have all sorts of assumptions and expectations about search interfaces. Here are a few common ones that are useful to have in mind:
“I just need to type in some keywords and the search engine will do the rest”
“Using this search box will search the entire site”
“If I type in ‘syllabus’, the results will also find pages titled ‘course list’”
“I don’t have time to learn which of these search forms to use”
5. Incorporate incentives to search
The easiest way to invite users to search is to put a big search box on the homepage. Sometimes providing “suggested search” terms helps users get started, or prompting them what to type using a search suggestion. But you can also invite users to search by embedding a search form into other areas of the site, maybe pre-filtered based on the topic they’re exploring.
One thing to keep in mind is that users don’t typically have the motivation to actively figure out your search system. Give them a simple box, and support other information needs by being ready to offer users more options when they’re ready to consider them.
6. Design the results
The first thing to figure out is whether you want to divide or group the results by the form (e.g. the content type or media type). And then what will each result look like? How can you make the results engaging so the user has a better idea of what to click?
If you’re showing ten results on the page, you’re making the user do the final filtering manually, so make their life easier with richer results. And figure out what filter they will use most often and focus on this information (for example, events can prominently display the date and destinations can be displayed on a map).
A couple more tips:
Identify the taxonomy-type filters and make sure the content has this data. Remember that in Drupal, you can combine multiple vocabularies into a single filter.
Faceted search makes your filters more useful, because they will adjust based on all the other search criteria. This prevents the user from finding a dead-end in their search.
7. Add extra features
If you’re using Drupal and Elasticsearch or Apache Solr, it’s fairly simple to add more functionality to your search experience.
Here are just a few extensions that can make your site search more powerful:
Auto-complete
Highlighting
Infinite scroll
Search term correction (spell check)
Fuzzy search
Document search
8. Tweak the boosting
Drupal’s Search API module allows you to easily adjust how each field is weighted when building the search results, which is referred to as “boosting”.
A good CMS can be recognised by how it deals with the URL addresses of individual subpages. Convenient linking attracts users from search engines and has a significant impact on SEO. In this article, I’ll introduce you to the Pathauto Drupal module, which is used to automate the creation of page aliases.
With this module, you can easily configure efficient, maintenance-free aliases for your content, including taxonomy terms and user pages.
Dates
The first version of Pathauto was released in February 2006 as an add-on to Drupal 4. Stable 1.0 version was released for Drupal 5 in 2007. The current code of this module from the 8.x-1.x branch is the result of a long evolution involving many members of the Drupal.org community.
Popularity
The figures from the official statistics speak for themselves – the Pathauto module is used by over 640 thousand pages. And 32% of these are built on Drupal 8 and 9. We’re dealing here with one of the “essentials”, installed immediately at the stage of creating new projects.
Module’s creators
The module is currently being maintained by four developers:
Since the beginnings of the Pathauto module, over 100 people have been involved in its development, creating a total of almost 1,600 commits. The tremendous contribution of the community is further evidenced by over 3,000 reported tasks and bugs on Drupal.org. Unfortunately, many of these remain unresolved.
Purpose of the module
With bare Drupal, you can create URL aliases for individual subpages, but you have to do it manually. If you don’t fill in the field with the alias, the new content will have standard, inconvenient addresses like /node/123 or /taxonomy/term/456.
The Pathauto module automates the addition of aliases by generating them according to the template with tokens specified by you. For example, static pages may have a title derivative address (/foo-bar), and taxonomy terms may contain a vocabulary name (/vocabulary-name/foo-bar).
Unboxing
You can download the module from Drupal.org or join the project by running the following command:
composer require drupal/pathauto
After launching Pathauto, go to its settings by selecting Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Aliases → Patterns.
Module’s use
Pathauto offers a broad range of settings for the methods of generating aliases. It also allows you to carry out mass operations on already existing content. I’ll briefly describe below the most important options available.
URL address templates
The basic functionality of the Pathauto module is creating URL address templates, i.e. strings of characters containing tokens. Individual aliases are generated based on them when content is being saved.
I’ll explain it using the example of a blog. If you want your posts to be available under the address http://example.com/2021/foo-bar.html%20 containing the year of publication and the title, go to the panel Configuration → Search and Metadata → URL Aliases → Patterns and add a new template for the appropriate content type:
Try to create a new blog post now. It should get the address /2021/foo-bar.html. Note that you can still overwrite its URL alias, however by default it is generated automatically:
Transliteration
Page titles usually contain spaces and special characters. Pathauto module automatically converts them to the ASCII format separated by dashes. Then, a title like “How to Make Crème Brûlée?” will be replaced with a simpler version – “how-to-make-creme-brulee”. The settings for this conversion can be found in the “Settings” tab.
I suggest that you leave most of these options at the default position, but pay special attention to the “Strings to Remove” field. It contains strings of characters that will be removed from the address, including numerous English prepositions and articles. If you create a blog post titled “A Guide To Drupal”, you’ll end up with an address like /2021/guide-drupal.html, which is not always the desired result.
The other settings allow for very detailed customisation of transliteration in aliases, which is useful for multi-language support. Here you can, for example, decide on how to handle punctuation.
Mass generation of URL addresses
By default, Pathauto only generates aliases when the content is being saved. This means that if you change the URL template, the modification will not be reflected immediately in the aliases on the entire page. Also, after adding a new template, all its content will not get a new URL address immediately.
When creating large websites, it is often necessary to quickly regenerate aliases for the existing content. This is done with the “Bulk Generate” function, which enables mass operations on URL addresses.
Be very careful not to accidentally overwrite the existing aliases with newer versions. Here I would recommend installing the Redirect module, which saves the redirects between the old and new subpage addresses.
Removing aliases
The Pathauto module also has an advanced panel for removing aliases. Be very careful when using it. Any changes introduced here are irreversible. You’ll probably need the “Only delete automatically generated aliases” option to prevent deleting manually overwritten aliases.
Hooks and integrations
Pathauto from the 8.x-1.x branch allows you to handle any kind of entities with plugins like @AliasType, and also provides some simple hooks:
hook_pathauto_is_alias_reserved() – blocks the creation of an alias if it is reserved by another module. In such a case, a number will be added to the alias (e.g. /foo-bar1).
hook_pathauto_punctuation_chars_alter() – it is used to add new punctuation settings.
hook_pathauto_pattern_alter() – allows you to modify the URL address template.
hook_pathauto_alias_alter() – allows you to change the alias after generating it.
When creating your own Drupal modules, you should think about adding an optional configuration for Pathauto to them. This is quite a common practice, for example in the Group module. As a result, the user receives default, ready-made alias templates.
Dealing with URL addresses in Drupal
Pathauto is an extremely powerful module that is used in most of our Drupal development projects. It keeps URL addresses consistent and frees editors from having to manually form aliases. Its usefulness is confirmed by hundreds of thousands of installations reported in the official statistics. I definitely recommend getting better acquainted with its abilities.
Whether working with a Drupal consulting company on a new web build, or starting out as a Drupal developer, Drupal terminology often emerges as a sticking point. There’s a lot of Drupal jargon that’s not intuitive.
For all, Thursday we have activities to connect with the community, learn, and have fun. We have many pre-set activities, but are holding spots specifically for newcomers to lead their own discussions.
For developers who are already familiar with using Drupal in a local environment, we have workshops on setting up and building NightwatchJS tests.
For new contributors, we’ll start Saturday with workshops to introduce you to contribution and issue forks.
For all, we’ll spend Saturday working on the Olivero, Drupal Recipes, and Feeds/Migrate initiatives.
After that… we’re done!!!
The Whole Time
We’ll have spaces in Zoom, Slack, and Gather.town to socialize, hang, and help each other.
The organizers will be available to help. Mention “@organizers” in Slack, email info@midcamp.org, or tweet at @midwestcamp for general help. Email coc@midcamp.org for Code of Conduct-specific issues.
And now… a word from our sponsor
If you or someone you know is looking for an opportunity to work remotely for one of the world’s leading contributors to the Drupal project and community, Palantir.net is hiring an Engineer! Learn more and apply today.
DrupalCon North America 2021 is right around the corner! Check out the ever-growing schedule of sessions, industry summits, and special events on the official event site, and mark your calendar for these Mediacurrent sessions.
Our Sessions
The Mediacurrent team is proud to support this community event as a platinum sponsor. We’ll be presenting several sessions at this year’s online conference.
Whether you’re a site builder scaling up with multisite, a marketing leader in search of current guidance on open source security, or a Drupal community member of any kind looking for inspiring real-world case studies, we’ve got you covered.
Here’s what we have in store for sessions and case studies in Drupal innovation:
Unlock The Power of Multisite
Join Jay Callicott, Mediacurrent’s VP of Technical Operations, for a comprehensive approach to manage your Drupal sites at scale.
Interested in evaluating multisite options for your organization? Jay will cover several ways to scale your Drupal platform from one site to many dozens or even hundreds.
Register here to join the session and learn best practices for governing multiple sites from one codebase, how to configure a multisite installation, and considerations for your hosting solution.
Open Source Security for CMOs
As open source software continues to become widely adopted, adhering to security standards is becoming more challenging. So what’s a CMO to do?
Inspired by our ebook, The CMO’s Guide to Open Source Security, this session will help you navigate the terminology, expectations, and tools to ensure security is a priority for your web properties.
Imagine a world where everyone has a decent place to live. That’s the vision fueling Habitat for Humanity to create ambitious digital experiences with Drupal.
This session will present a case study covering how Drupal is being used to bring mission-driven innovation to reality for this international nonprofit. Both Drupal site builders and non-technical roles are encouraged to attend.
Stay tuned for scheduling information!
Drupal for Higher Education
The year 2020 called for higher ed leaders to accelerate digital marketing strategies. For many, Drupal was a key part of the equation. This rang true among a spectrum of Mediacurrent’s higher education partners, including an Ivy League university that chose a decoupled architecture for its breakthrough knowledge platform.
Dan Polant, Director of Development at Mediacurrent, will share that story in a co-presented session at the Higher Education Summit. The session will explore the University’s driving mission to build toward a brighter financial future on a Drupal and React-based platform.
‘Retail therapy,’ an extremely common phrase in today’s era, can work wonders on lightening a person’s mood. The new 1000-thread count Egyption sheets, when wrapped around you, can make the gloominess seem distant. The new Clavin Klein perfume can actually make your day seem more fragrant. And the new smart watch you just saw on Amazon has the potential of making you as fit as you want.
So, retail therapy is quite up there on the pedestal of making people feel great about themselves. And retail therapy, if done from the comfort of your couch while watching a Friends’ episode is all the more beneficial. And that is what we are going to be talking about today, the online retail market or ecommerce, if you prefer.
Buying things with a few clicks on your computer screen used to seem like a novel idea close to a decade ago, but now it is an everyday occurrence. The ecommerce industry has boomed exponentially and these numbers are proof of that.
3.53 trillion USD is an exorbitant amount and that is the value of online retail sales globally. If a pandemic couldn’t stop ecommerce from flourishing, I am certain nothing can.
Now let’s come to matter at hand. The point of this blog isn’t to tell you the value of ecommerce per say, rather I am going to be focusing on one emerging aspect of ecommerce that has made it quite different from the past, and maybe even a little intriguing and that is content. How content has played a role in ecommerce, why it’s important, how it is being used, does it actually have an effect on sales, and finally how does Drupal come into the equation? We’ll find answers to all of these questions. All you have to do is continue reading.
Content and Commerce: Understanding the Dynamic
Words are a powerful thing. It’s words that can make a person the wisest and the most stupid. The right words can have such a profound effect on its reader that it might even change their way of thinking. With such a profound effect, it was only a matter of time that the power of words was being utilised in commerce in the truest sense. This is essentially the meaning of Content-driven Commerce.
If you look at the traditional sense of advertising, you would find it flawed to a great deal. Those TV commercials, the cleaning ads and those ludicrous weight-loss adverts, all of them have hardly any truth to them and the viewers know it. Perhaps that is why they no longer resonate with their target audience. People have become far more difficult to please now than the past.
Cut to the emergence of Content-driven Commerce, with its realistic outlook and clutter-less approach. If I talk about myself personally, I find the incorporation of content in marketing strategies, the best kind of, well, marketing strategy.
Upon searching for nuts on Amazon, you will probably end up on this piece of article in the screenshot above. Now, not only is this article advertising Amazon products, but it is also informative and enlightening. And the latter fact is what makes it a masterstroke of marketing. Someone reading it would have learnt something new and that knowledge is going to spark a craving that would require satiation upon every purchase journey.
Content commerce isn’t just related to writing blogs and articles. You might have thought so, since that is the only thing we go to when we hear the word ‘content.’ This concept is broader than that. It includes everything from infographics to videos, from podcasts to webinars, anything that can instill interest in the buyer and be informative can be considered as content.
The Science of Content Commerce
Content commerce has a lot of thought put inside it. You can just bombard the buyer with one piece of content after the other and expect that he’ll admire them all and be ready to click on that buy now button with a massive cart waiting to be delivered. Nope, that’s not even close.
Consumer data;
Consumer shopping behaviour and patterns;
And industry trends;
These are the three aspects that sum up the science of content commerce. When you know what your customers want, what patterns of behaviour they follow and how your competitors are taking action on that, you will have the most sound content commerce strategy; that would be personalised to the T.
For instance,
At present, being a minimalist is in vogue, with a subtle emphasis on the key features of the products that would be enough to inform, educate and inspire the visitor. With a touch of personalisation, a splash of fun through quizzes and a hint of what’s more to encounter through catalogues, the visitor is more or less hooked. This coupled with customer testimonials and case studies pushes the visitor one step closer to the purchase.
This is how content commerce is being done today and it’s working. The result is better and more interactive and informative consumer experiences.
So, you tell me is Content-driven Commerce a trend that would make people fall in love with advertising and make their buying experience something to remember. If you ask me, I’d most definitely say yes. There are many like me who believe that content driven marketing is going to pick scale and boom in the future.
At the end of day, the consumer would only come to your business only when he’ll find you different from the others, when he thinks that you have more to offer than the rest. And content commerce is the best way to make that happen. You can build your brand’s identity based on the kind of content you deliver on your site and outside it. When people would actually associate you with providing meaningful and rich contextual experience, would your goodwill not enhance? I think it will and that is why Content Commerce has become such a big deal. It allows brands and businesses to leave a strong impression on the audience.
A travelling documentary that was posted on a tour and travel site as a testimonial on its home page could actually make many wish to experience the happiness and exhilaration that the video boasts on and on about, much more than any TV commercial or newspaper ad would ever be able to. That’s the power of content combined with commerce.
In Comes Drupal: The Perfect Blend of Content and Commerce
So now you know the power content has, but how do you leverage it? Having resonating content and having the ability to showcase it are two different things. The former is all you, while the latter mandates the decision of making a choice amongst the varying options. Having worked with Drupal, I know the answer to the leveraging dilemma is Drupal itself.
You must wonder why?
Drupal is a powerful CMS, which is renowned for its ability to handle any kind of content without any glitches. Drupal has a solution for every kind of content type you can imagine, making your experience of content authoring easy and flexible.
Easy Content Authoring: Intuitive tools for content creation, workflow and publishing make it easy for content creators. User permissions, authentication help manage the editorial workflows efficiently. Previews help the editors access how the content will look on any device before the users approve and publish.
Mobile Editing: Team members can review, edit and approve content from mobile devices, to keep content and campaigns flowing, regardless of where they are and what device they’re on.
In-place Authoring: The WYSIWYG editor in Drupal to create and edit content in-place.
Content Revisioning and Workflows: For a distributed team Drupal enables a quick and easy way to track changes, revisions, and stage. It tells you who did what, when, out of the box. Also, it lets you manage custom, editorial workflows for all your content processes. Content staging allows you to track the status of the content – from creation to review to publication – while managing user roles and actions, automatically.
Content Tagging and Taxonomy: Beyond creating content, Drupal’s strength lies in creating structured content. This comes when you define content elements, tag content based on their attributes, create relevant taxonomy so it can be searched, found, used, and reused in ways that satisfy the visitors.
Modules for Multimedia Content: Entity browser, paragraphs, pathauto, admin toolbar, linkit, blog, meta tag, and other content editing modules give the extra lease of life by extending and customizing content features and capabilities. They allow you to choose what features you want for your site.
Yes, Drupal is great for content, but it is equally great with commerce. It’s because Drupal has the innate ability to to integrate content and commerce. It can manage every single aspect of a commerce site, be it its products, carts or financial transactions and then integrate all of it with content and media. What’s even more fascinating is the fact that Drupal helps you build an application that is a perfect fit for your needs today and tomorrow because when times change, Drupal changes too and its third-party integrations are the reason for that.
Let’s now look at Drupal’s commerce centric features to understand its compatibility even more.
Drupal Commerce
When we talk about Drupal and ecommerce, the conversation cannot begin or end without the mention of Drupal Commerce. It is one feature that makes Drupal outshine all other CMSs in the market because it promotes innovation and growth through standards that make you take advantage of everything Drupal has to offer.
With Drupal Commerce, the possibilities are limitless because that is how it is designed; to help you build what you want not be confined to what it can do.
From product types and descriptions to diversified product pages;
From payment gateways to tax calculations;
From organising promotions to managing orders;
Drupal Commerce can do it all for your ecommerce business digital channel.
Decoupled Drupal Commerce
Decoupling works by separating your commerce site’s front end from its backend. You can take up JavaScript for the presentation layer to make it more interactive, while all the backend aspects would be handled by Drupal. All of the benefits of decoupling would be enjoyed without parting with Drupal Commerce.
You will end up with a site;
that is faster and more engaging;
that is richer and more interactive;
that is easier to update and modify, without one end affecting the other;
All of this because you won’t be confined to Drupal to build your frontend, you can take up any of the available frontend technologies. More on decoupled Drupal Commerce here.
Drupal APIs
Where there is Decoupled Drupal, there are APIs, which streamline the separation of frontend and backend as well as provide the connective thread. With the robust Drupal APIs, it becomes all the more easy to integrate Drupal with other services.
Again Drupal Commerce plays an imperative role here, by providing additional modules that extend REST APIs in Drupal. These are;
When we think about content-driven commerce, we have to consider content as much as commerce. Writing blogs and articles is all good and fine, but how do you make them shine on the search engines, that is where SEO friendliness pops in and Drupal is best friends with SEO. There are numerous SEO modules in Drupal that will help in everything you might need, from keywords to tagging, Drupal will have you sorted and ensure that the educational pieces you wrote do just what they were intended for.
Out-of-the-box Benefits
And there is more. Drupal has several other out-of-the-box features that make it totally compatible with ecommerce sites, especially handy, if you are going to be running your site in multiple states or even nations.
On top of these, the fact that Drupal helps you deploy your ecommerce site built with Drupal Commerce within hours is the only silver lining left to make you cave in to Drupal.
Now that you know all that Drupal can accomplish, let’s look at some of the e-commerce businesses that have successfully been able to leverage the prowess of Drupal in this domain.
Timex
Timex is an American watchmaker, you most likely have heard of it. It wanted two things out of its retail site and these were;
A unique site for personifying what the brand identifies itself as, its own style had to be incorporated into the site’s design. This also meant that product, social and editorial content had to be combined to deliver an impressive visitor experience.
Secondly, the Timex team wanted independence, meaning they wanted to be able to create, manage and update content as and when required without a developer.
Drupal effectively checked both these requirements and helped create the perfect Timex site.
Cannabis Yukon
The legality of cannabis is still a contentious issue all over the globe. Therefore, when the Government of Yukon had to build their cannabis retail, their paramount concern was to protect the privacy of its users. That is why Drupal was chosen, to have total and complete control over the consumer data. This along with Drupal Commerce and the fact the Government of Yukon website was already on Drupal, the decision was final.
LUSH
Being a popular cosmetics company in Britain, LUSH had a massive following of users. That meant when it delved into the digital space, there were a lot of clicks per minute, especially during its Boxing Day sale. When its site ended up crashing with such a load of users, it decided to switch to Drupal, which can handle any amount of traffic thrown at it. With Drupal, the code and architecture was rethought and the site made impressively scalable.
King Arthur Baking Company
King Arthur Baking Company is known for its mouthwatering recipes. It switched to Drupal for its transition to the digital space and was able to provide personalised experiences to its audiences, be they pro bakers, first-time novices or climbing the ladder of baking. With the additional support of experts available through expert bakers the site was indeed a success.
Conclusion
Every site that is built has a purpose behind it, for e-commerce sites that purpose is deriving sales. Today, achieving that is no longer a walk in the park. You have to leave a mark on the user’s mind and personalised and informative content is the way to do that.
With Drupal Commerce and Drupal’s impeccable content management system, that aim of higher conversions and better brand loyalty is no longer distant. That’s the Drupal factor in content-driven commerce.
