Technology at Forum One

Conditional Fields and Display Suite

William Hurley — Sun, 27 Apr 2014 14:19:15 +0000

As part of our normal Drupal process we use both Display Suite (DS) and Conditional Fields frequently. While building out a site I ran into a very strange issue, when I was trying to output a field through DS it just wasn't showing up. I tried playing around with the formatters, label, etc. ... and nothing changed. So I fired up xdebug and took a look at the render array coming through and, yep, the field was in there. But '#access' was set to false.

Display Suite and Conditional Fields are hugely useful modules. There are some times when they don't always play nicely together. Here's one example of where they don't and how to fix it.

A Closer Look at Entity Forms

Chaz Chumley — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 17:27:40 +0000

Almost every project we work on requires a method for capturing user information. In most cases we have a Contact form and in more general purposes the client requires additional forms for various reasons. In the past our go to for creating forms was the Webforms module. As requirements have changed, so has the need for a web form solution that is exportable using Features.

5 Lessons Learned for Content Migration

John Brandenburg — Thu, 06 Mar 2014 14:16:05 +0000

This past fall I undertook my first content migration effort. This was to migrate an existing site from Expression Engine to Drupal 7. I immediately began looking at the Migrate module to learn it's use and here are some lessons I learned along the way.

First of all, be aware that migrate is a module for developers. It does have a user interface, but this is merely to run the import process. All the real action happens in the code, so you will need to be familiar with object oriented programming in PHP.

Five practical Drupal lessons learned during a recent content migration effort.

Introducing the Pane Module

William Hurley — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 15:28:31 +0000

There are a couple of scenarios we see on pretty much any Drupal-powered website we work on. The first and foremost among those is often that our client wants to, you know, actually be able to easily manage their content. At the same time we need to be able to fit their content into the information architecture and design of the site. When we're talking about entities, nodes, and taxonomy terms it is pretty easy for content managers to go in and edit content. But what about little blocks of text on the home page, in the footer – or featured call-outs on various pages?

We needed a way to have areas of content on pages that we could create, design and export and that our client could then take over and edit as they wanted. None of the modules out there quite fit the bill so we wrote the Pane module.

Manually Migrating Comments from Drupal to Disqus

Keenan Holloway — Fri, 17 Jan 2014 19:32:14 +0000

Even if you've never heard of Disqus before, you've almost certainly seen it. With slick social integration, support for a variety of platforms (including WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and Drupal) and a rapidly expanding user base, Disqus has become one of the most popular hosting services for website comments.

There are two primary ways to migrate comments from Drupal to Disqus. The API way that automates the whole process by directly connecting to Disqus from Drupal and moves the comments for you. The second way is an XML export tool that Disqus migrate provides to migrate comments from Drupal in XML format which you can import into Disqus manually which is what I will show you how to do.

How to Create Front-end Edit Forms Using Gravity Forms

Matt Gibbs — Mon, 07 Oct 2013 12:36:45 +0000

You may already know about Gravity Forms – the popular WordPress plugin for creating front-end input forms (typical use cases include contact forms, surveys, etc.). But what you may not know is that Gravity Forms can also be used for submitting posts and custom Post Type items. This allows for some exciting possibilities, with one noticeable wrinkle: the Gravity Forms plugin does not include the ability to edit existing entries. But thankfully, as is the case with many plugins, Gravity Forms includes plenty of hooks to allow users to extend functionality.

Learn how you can extend your WordPress Gravity Forms to save, add, and edit post entries using a new plugin.

Adding a Relationship to Your View? Your Results Might be Different than you Expect

Aaron Zinck — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 18:25:44 +0000

The Node Access system in Drupal provides a powerful way to provide granular access to individual nodes, but it can occasionally cause unexpected problems.

Consider a case I ran into the other day: I had a View that was supposed to show all files managed by Drupal, however some users could only see a subset of the files. My initial detective work took me the wrong direction (I was using the File Entity module and spent a little time investigating its file access system) but eventually I realized that:

Do you have a View that's not showing all the results you expect? Perhaps Drupal's node access system is interfering with one of your relationships.

Proxying Cookies with Drupal

William Hurley — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 14:28:33 +0000

It's the minor things that get you into trouble sometimes. For instance, when I used drupal_http_request to do some proxying of content I ran into a little quirk of Drupal. If you get cookie headers back Drupal will go ahead and combine them all into a comma-separated list. If you look at the code you can plainly see where it does this and the rationale in the Request For Comments (RFC) 2109.

It's always fun when Drupal behaves according to obsolete RFCs. Learn how to proxy http requests with Drupal and actually get useable cookies.

Generic files Vs. Rendered files in Drupal

John Brandenburg — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 16:10:27 +0000

After you've been working with Drupal profiles for a while, the line between what functionality is a part of core Drupal and what comes from contributed modules tends to blur, but it is important to step back every once in a while and examine these distinctions. I recently had a wheel-spinning moment over the difference between two formatters for file fields: Generic files and Rendered files. Specifically trying to answer the question: Why don't custom Display Suite fields to show up, or why can't I select Display modes (e.g.

A quick overview of the differences between "Generic files" and "Rendered files" in Drupal.

Paraphrasing Panels, Panelizer and Panopoly

Keenan Holloway — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 16:11:35 +0000

I gave this session at CapitalCampDC, to shed some light on to these aspects of Drupal. Panels, Panelizer and Panopoly can seem a bit overwhelming but this session will go over the best features of each one and how they can be invaluable tools. The Panels module alone offers so much out the box and Panelizer and the Panopoly distribution shows just how much this tool can preform. They are long tested tools that have so much built into them in their evolution in Drupal 7. This session will cover:

Panels, Panelizer and Panopoly can seem a bit overwhelming but this session will go over the best features of each one and how they can be invaluable tools.