Drupal

The absolute most popular version of the Drupal content management system has reached the end of its life cycle and is no longer supported. Seven was popular like Windows XP, survived the announced end several times, served the creation of many websites and webmasters, from hobby programmers to professionals. Let's shed a tear, reminisce and look at the alternatives.

This weekend I went to Warsaw to the biggest meeting of Drupal fans in our northern neighbours. The program promised lectures in both Polish and English and a wide range of topics, from pure programming to topics more dedicated to marketing and soft skills.

The international meeting of the Drupal community returned to Europe after many years and the first conference took place in Prague. Over 1200 attendees heard where Drupal is going next and discussed interesting facts about the platform.

It's been over a year since I converted several sites from legacy Drupal to Backdrop. Since then, I've implemented a number of sites with Backdrop for my clients as well. So it's time to take a look at the real-world experience with this content management system based on Drupal 7.

The fact Drupal 8 ends this November has been generally known for some time now. I have upgraded some of my projects in time but some of them I have left to the last minute. The reason is quite plain. I assumed the upgrading process will be smoother if I do it later. But was it a right assumption?

I have come to a conclusion that this is a better solution for some older projects than a transition to WordPress or a migration to Drupal 8/9. And I have to say I was pleasantly surprised how smooth the transition to Backdrop is.

Two years ago I was rebuilding a web running on the old Drupal 6 at that time. After I considered the strenuousness of a migration and a large quantity of content updates, I reached a decision that it is not necessary to use a content management system. So I decided to try out one of those popular static site generators. And I ended up with Hugo.

A web should be running on a single one address. You pick an option with or without www and you redirect the opposite one to it. Similarly all webs nowadays should be redirected to a secure https variant. Do you still deal with this by editing .htaccess? You don’t have to.

Links that are added to menu items in Drupal, eventually to other fields controlling a link syntax, have in the default status only a few basic protocols allowed. Which is a problem if you want to add a menu containing e.g. Skype contacts to the foot. How can you alter allowed protocols?

A multisite Drupal installation is an installation where a single folder with the Drupal core and modules is used to run several web sites. We will show you now how to create a main web site with subdomains and common login this way.

Do you create web applications based on PHP or ASP.NET and do you need to test and modify them on your local computer before you launch them in the web environment? There are several solutions; one of the easiest ones is to use the Microsoft Web Platform Installer application. Don't be afraid, it does not offer solely MS technologies.

Anyone who operates a Web site will sooner or later meet with one of the most current head aches – spam in comments. However, there are many ways to prevent it and some solutions allow a fairly simple solution in the form of protection directly on the form to send comments, while other special services are using spam revealing comments.

As you probably know, the new Internet Explorer 8 will support new web parts called Web Slices. These can be added to the toolbar and work as an alternative to RSS feeds on your website.