Our insights on Development

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 16: Unofficial Drupal 7 Security Team

Mark and Chris are joined by Klaus Purer to discuss his proposal to create an unofficial, community-driven Drupal 7 security team!

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 15: What Does Drupal 9 EOL Mean for Drupal 7 EOL?

Mark and Dave discuss how Drupal 9’s end-of-life status relates to Drupal 7 as well as recap some of the Drupal 7 end-of-life discussions that have happened at GovCon.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 14: Acquia Migrate Accelerate

Mark and Chris discuss the recent release of Acquia Migrate: Accelerate and how it can help folks with the content migration piece of their journey from Drupal 7 to Modern Drupal.

Change Drush Command Annotations with an Alterer Service

Change Drush command annotations with an alterer Service instead of overriding an entire command.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 13: Retrofit for Drupal with Matt Glaman

Matt Glaman returns, joining Mark and Chris to discuss Retrofit for Drupal’s launch and future. Previously known as Drupal Bridge, Retrofit helps ease the transition out of Drupal 7. Matt outlines the power of Retrofit and its limitations, and explains the best way to incorporate it into your workflows.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 12: How to Write a Great D7 Upgrade RFP

Writing a great “request for proposal” is often the first step on your journey to successfully migrate your Drupal 7 sites. Mark and Dave sit down to discuss some essential points to include in your RFP so that you can close the trust gap between you and a potential partner, and pave the way for a successful transition.

How to Inventory your Drupal 7 Modules for Modern Drupal Readiness

Custom modules built for Drupal 7 need your attention when you make the move to modern Drupal. This blog post provides an approach for you to follow and highlights some purpose-built projects to help you move your code from Drupal 7 to modern Drupal.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 11: Adopt Your Important Drupal 7 Modules Now!

Chris is back from sabbatical! Mark and Chris outline a series of processes to help determine which modules are most at risk so that you can take action accordingly. Use our linked PDF to audit your Drupal 7 sites.

Introducing the Orange Logic Digital Asset Management PHP Library and Drupal Module

Our team at Chromatic is excited to announce the release of an open-source Drupal module and PHP Library to facilitate integrating Orange Logic’s digital asset manager Orange DAM with Drupal.

Modules That Will Make Your Drupal 7 Upgrade Easier

Install these modules on your Drupal 7 site to determine its readiness for the move to Modern Drupal or Backdrop.

Migrating Drupal 7 to Modern Drupal in 2023

While checking over some of our older Drupal 8 migration content for accuracy, I decided to fire up a fresh Drupal 10 instance and run through its out-of-the-box migration experience, which includes the ability to migrate from older Drupal versions.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 10: Your Roadmap to Drupal 7 End-of-Life

Fresh from DrupalCon, Mark and Dave debrief Drupal 7's recent End-of-Life date announcement outlining processes to make the transition easier. Between sourcing the right advisors to pitching your transition, it’s key to take action now with End-of-Life 18 months away.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 09: New End-of-Life Date Announcement!

Live from DrupalCon, Mark and Dave discuss Drupal 7's new end-of-life date and its implications. While the official end-of-life date has been extended, changes in overall support come into effect as early as August 2023.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 08: Building a Bridge to Drupal 7 with Matt Glaman

Matt Glaman joins us! Mark, Dave, and Matt examine how Drupal 7’s end-of-life challenges are symptomatic of a widespread approach to development. Matt dives deep into the drawbacks behind software maintenance, and unveils his plans to release Drupal Bridge by DrupalCon 2023.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 07: Building Bridges in Backdrop with Jen Lampton

Jen Lampton joins us! As the co-founder of Backdrop, Jen provides plenty of insight into why Drupal 7’s EOL requires a multi-pronged solution for different customer bases. Mark and Jen dive deep into Drupal alternatives and the challenges behind them, taking a closer look at where Backdrop may fill the gap for some users.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 06: Minding the Gap – What Do We Need for a Successful Drupal Migration?

Drupal 7's end-of-life comes with more questions than answers. Chris and Mark discuss the complexities that come with retiring Drupal 7 and outline the basis of the communication gap between the Drupal Association, the Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative, and its users; taking a hard look at the possible steps to come.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 05: Tim Lehnen on Drupal 7 End-of-Life

Tim Lehnen joins us! Tim is the Drupal Association’s Chief Technology Officer and is one of the voices in the room when it comes to decisions around Drupal 7’s End-of-Life. We talk with Tim about that as well as how he thinks about sites still on Drupal 7, modern Drupal’s growth being better than the usage graphs show, and even Drupal.org still being on Drupal 7 (for now)!

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 04: Irina Zaks and the Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative

Irina Zaks joins us! Irina is a web developer, open-source evangelist, and the co-founder of the Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative. Irina, Chris, and Mark discuss Drupal 7 end-of-life, Backdrop, and how to give Drupal 7 users a soft landing.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 03: Who Should Be Most Worried About Drupal 7’s End-of-Life?

Chris and Mark discuss the wide spectrum of sites still running on Drupal 7 and which characteristics make staying on Drupal 7 more (or less) risky. They then unpack the pros and cons of some Drupal 7 alternatives.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 02: Should Drupal 7 Support Be Extended?

Drupal 7's end-of-life has been extended multiple times but is now set for November 1, 2023. Should it be extended further? Mark and Chris break it down and maaaybe change Chris’ mind.

Drupal 7 End-of-Life Ep 01: Why is Drupal 7's End-of-Life a Big Deal?

There’s been quite a bit of talk about what it takes to upgrade to 'modern Drupal,' but less on what it will actually be like to still be responsible for a Drupal 7 site after that date. Chris and Mark discuss that and more on this episode.

Why is Drupal 7’s End-of-Life a Big Deal?

There has been quite a bit of talk about what it takes to upgrade to “modern Drupal,” but less ink has been spilled painting a picture of what it will actually be like to still be responsible for a Drupal 7 site after that date.

How to Add Tugboat Live Previews to Drupal Contrib Modules

It is now dead simple to add Tugboat to Drupal contributed modules.

Migrate Drupal 7 into Drupal 10

The ease with which Drupal 10 migrated an old Drupal 7 site's content types, taxonomy terms, menu items and content was impressive.

2022 Q4 Open Source Round-Up

As we wrap up the fourth quarter of 2022 and hurtle headlong into 2023, we have compiled a round-up of our team’s open-source efforts in Q4 2022. Happy New Year!

PHP 7.4 End of Life

PHP 7.4 will no longer receive updates from the PHP development team. Let's take a look at what this means, how to know if your site is affected and what to do about it.

Survive or Thrive? Deciding on a Path Forward with Drupal 7

Given there are so many sites still running on Drupal 7 and the upgrade process is more rebuild than upgrade, with Drupal 7's end-of-life past due, it's hard to know the path forward.

Recoupling a Decoupled Site

What if your site is already decoupled, and you are beginning to wonder if it was the right choice? The question becomes, does the higher effort required to maintain and iterate on a decoupled site still match your product or business goals?

Improving Tugboat QA Environment Build Times with Parallelization

Running build commands in parallel with Robo is a great way to reduce build times.

How to Include a JavaScript Library via CDN Without a Hard-coded Version

How to use Sentry's preferred CDN to include their JavaScript SDK while still tracking the package version in your manifest file to allow automated updates.

Cache Busting Drupal Libraries with Versions

Configuring a Drupal library's version may seem mysterious, but it is important for caching.

WWDC 2022: What You Need to Know as a Web Developer

All the new features and enhancements coming to Safari and Web Inspector this year that web developers should know about.

Why we switched to Eleventy + Netlify

Chris shares why we dropped Drupal for the newest version of our website.

Managing Large Menus & Memory Usage during Drupal Cache Clears

Hundreds of menu items can bring cache clears to a grinding halt if not managed correctly.

Guarantee a Single Version of Node.js In All Environments

Struggling to keep your project’s environments using the same version of Node.js? Learn how to declare your Node.js version in a single file and reference it everywhere.

Visualizing Drupal's Configuration Management Process

The missing illustrated manual to the Drupal configuration system and the processes around it.

Getting Started with Continuous Website Performance Monitoring: Gather and Track Consistent Data

Continuous website performance monitoring is critical to optimize speed and user experience. Use this approach to get started with free tools.

Struggling with Your Website Speed Optimization Efforts? It May Be the Way You’re Testing.

It’s not enough to test website performance. You need to test the right way, on an ongoing basis. Learn how.

A Guide for Avoiding Website and App Deployment Problems

Having a clear process is the key to avoiding website downtime and buggy application launches. Read this guide to website and app deployment best practices.

Leverage Repeatability to Build and Maintain Websites Efficiently and Cost-Effectively

You can leverage repeatability to make website development efficient and profitable while allowing time for innovative custom features. Learn how.

Docker on MacOS? Not so fast.

This article examines the advantages and disadvantages of using Docker and Lando for local development on MacOS machines in comparison to a native LAMP stack set-up. It raises questions, looks into common development scenarios and needs, and provides a personal recommendation for a sustainable and speedy solution.

NuxtJS: NextJS's Vue Cousin

Do you love the developer experience of NextJS? Or want to enjoy the benefits of a static site generator but prefer Vue over React? NuxtJS might be the framework for you!

Creating Ready-Made Development Environments Using Lando

Sharing Robo Commands Across Repos

We have been using Robo as our task runner of choice on PHP projects for some time now. Over time our set of Robo commands has grown, and often they are quite similar across different projects causing us to duplicate code and then keep them in sync when changes are made to our commands.

Intro to PHPStorm Live Templates

In this blog post you will learn the basics of live templates in PHPStorm and keyboard shortcuts to avoid repetitive typing while coding.

Quick Win: Zoom Mute Status in the MacOS Menubar

A quick win for your Friday afternoon. Dave leveraged a couple of open source projects to add a mute status to his menu bar.

GatsbyJS: The Easier React Framework

We’re not the first to take one of the most popular React frameworks for a spin around the block, but we are definitely glad we did. GatsbyJS comes packed with easy to use features and plugins.

Edit Once. Publish to Many. Smart Strategies for Content Sharing

Sharing content across multiple sites with a publishing platform offers tremendous opportunities, but it isn’t always easy. Understanding the editorial and technical hurdles is key to creating a solution that works well and addresses the business needs.

Introducing the Template Diff Module

Comparing Drupal template overrides with their counterparts in the base theme doesn’t have to be hard.

Managing Drupal Configuration with Automated Checks

Managing Drupal configuration and keeping it in sync requires attention to detail and process. Automation can add to the problem, but also solve it.

Automating and Standardizing Drupal Deployments with Ansible

Learn how Ansible can be used to standardize and automated Drupal deployments.

Implement 2FA Now

With security breaches proliferating in recent years, it’s more important than ever to protect your users and applications by implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) which was developed to protect accounts and devices by adding security verification to the login process.

Preventing Conflicts when Upgrading to Composer 2

Composer 2 RC2 is now in the wild and the official release of 2.0 is quickly approaching. This is exciting for anyone who has complained about Composer’s performance in the past as Composer 2 brings significant performance improvements.

Limiting the Influence of Third-Party Code

Our guide to improving website performance when using third-party assets.

Getting Started with Open Source

A Strategic Approach to Custom Migrations

Learn some high-level techniques and troubleshooting for handling complicated migration use cases in Drupal 8 and ways to troubleshoot migrations.

Common security vulnerabilities – how to prevent them

Web security depends on following boring ole’ best practices, like keeping your software up-to-date. This makes it fairly dull, unlike Hollywood portrayals of IT security. However, if disaster strikes, you need a plan in place to fix things, fast.

10 Website Speed Optimization Tactics for Drupal 8, 9, & 10

Many of the common website speed problems in Drupal 7 are now a distant memory. Features like Drupal’s built-in Dynamic Page Cache help bring great performance benefits to Drupal's most recent versions. This article will highlight other tactics to assist with getting the best performance out of your Drupal site.

Technical project management through engineering goggles

Some advice for engineers venturing into technical project management.

Debugging Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer still covers a statistically significant percentage of the current market share (as of the publication of this post) and front-end engineers would do well to recognize its caveats in order to solve problems quickly and deliver a great product to stakeholders.

Principles of Test-Driven Development

Summary: Test-driven development (TDD) keeps you focused, encourages critical thinking, and improves code confidence. Here are some basic principles that have helped me write effective tests and which have proven useful when introducing other developers to the practice.

How To: Link to Dynamic Routes in Drupal 8

Properly linking to pages with dynamic routes can be tricky. Here's how to do it right.

Replacing hook_boot and hook_init Functionality in Drupal 8

Adam uncovers methods of firing code on every page in Drupal 8, the right way.

Dependency Injection in Drupal 8 Plugins

Dependency Injection in Drupal 8 Plugins can trip you up if you focus on the Dependency Injection part and forget about the Plugin part. This blog post shows key differences to keep in mind when you're working with D8 Plugins.

Implementing Google Places Autocomplete with ES6 - Part Three

We're taking a deep dive into the Google Places Prediction and Autocomplete API to resolve our bug found in parts 1 and 2.

Dynamic Default and Allowed Values for List Fields in Drupal 8

Discover the hidden dynamic allowed values and dynamic default values functionality of list fields.

Implementing Google Places Autocomplete with ES6 - Part Two

In part one we learned how implement a Google Places Autocomplete widget on an address form. In doing so we discovered a critical bug in the widget that degrades the user experience. Let's take a closer look and resolve this bug.

Drupal Code Standards: The t() Function

This is the fifth post in a series about coding standards. In this post we’ll talk about how to use translation functions in both Drupal 7 and 8. This is so essential that it deserves its own post!

Create a Custom Views Sort Plugin with Drupal 8

Tap into the power of Views with a custom sort plugin in Drupal 8. Code samples included.

Implementing Google Places Autocomplete with ES6 - Part One

The Google Places Javascript API is a great client-side toolset that allows us to use the same database as Google Maps to verify addresses. Let's examine the API and implement Places Autocomplete functionality on our address forms.

The Anatomy of a Good Ticket

A great user story or ticket can mean all the difference in the world. Here's our guide on what makes a great ticket.

Creating Links Within Twig Templates Using path() and url()

Some real world examples of generating URLs from within your Twig templates in Drupal 8.