Decision-maker's Guide to Drupal 8: Components

  • Symfony and Drupal

    We like Symfony2, because it's a set of tools that allows you to assemble your own framework.
    You will like Drupal 8 because it's a platform that allows you to assemble your own web application.

    Symfony2 Meets Drupal8

    Performance

    For anonymous users, caching. Varnish. Same as having a flat HTML site, serves all performance problems. Boost module does this for those not able to set up Varnish.

    As few modules as possible.

    (Choosing modules: If you can go without, go without.)

    Host media, especially your videos, with someone who specializes in them.

    Security

    Tip Subscribe to security notices. You can visit that page any time to see contrib and core security updates, and for the RSS feed of the same and for how to subscribe to email by logging in and going to your user profile page. This isn't even so much for the alerts, which you can get with Update module enabled, as it is an easy way to learn about or be reminded of the modules people actually use and care about enough to find and patch security problems!

    Don't fear too much when modules you use geta security alert— it does not often mean your site is at risk. Ninety percent of the time the security announcement will contain a line like This vulnerability is mitigated by the fact that an attacker must have a role with the permission "administer themes" or "administer custom search" or administer something else you'd never grant an untrusted user permission to do.

    Reality Your developer will likely turn off the Update module that alerts you to out-of-date code on any site you have access to. This is fine and avoids meaningless nagging (by Drupal of the administrator, and subsequently by the administrator of the developer) but someone needs to be enabling Update on a test site or local development site and checking for, and getting, needed updates.

    Engaging with the Community

    Tip Get a Drupal.org account. Act now for the street cred of a seven rather than eight digit user ID. Edit your account and under "My newsletters" subscribe to the Drupal newsletter and the aforementioned Security announcements ("A low volume mailing list where all security issues affecting Drupal and Drupal contributed modules are publically announced."). You'll be able to ask (and answer!) questions in the forum and, more usefully, participate in discussions in interest groups on groups.drupal.org.

    What if I want to stay with Drupal 7, but still getting features?

    There's a fork for that. Backdrop is a content management system originally based on Drupal 7 which aims to have all the user-facing benefits coming to Drupal 8 plus, somehow,

    The Community Component: Supporting the People Who Make Drupal

    Sustain a Contributor with GitTip

    Some of the biggest recipients of these anonymous small donations in all of GitTip are people in its Drupal community.

    Indeed, the first two recipients on GitTip are not the founder, but people hailing from Drupal, receiving weekly amounts of $775 and $525 (as of 2014 April).

    One of them is a Drupal 8 core maintainer. And if massive full-time contributions to Drupal core's code isn't enough for you to try to get Alex Pott to a highly paid software engineer's salary in two-dollars-and-under donations, he and Anette Pott named their son Jack.

    Alex wrote:

    I would love to be able to maintain my current commitment to working on core. In an ideal world I would be able to do so by being entirely community-funded. This means my weekly target is $2000. So I'm raising my Gittip target to this level and appealing to the community for bright ideas and solutions.

    At the moment I'm not beholden to any single enterprise's or company's demands because all of the money I receive is donated anonymously through Gittip. Most of the funding opportunities I've been offered over the past few months have had corporate strings attached. I've chosen not to pursue these because I believe in the value of independence and a balance of interests. A diversely funded Drupal core team benefits Drupal and its community.

    The biggest recipient of all?

    Ashe Dryden. Her GitTip funding pitch is that she is making the world better by facilitating conversations about diversity, inclusivity and social justice in the hopes of promoting empathy and equality within the tech community.

    Wow. The community is supporting her to do the sorts of things she'd likely lose her job over at a typical technology company (and hence the very need for her work to change the culture).

    Many people are receiving small amounts, and giving away some (like Drupal 8 maintainer Nathaniel Catchpole) or all of it and more (like myself) and others are purely givers (like Mike Gifford's Drupal shop Open Concept).

    • Chapter

  • BONUS