I've been using Drupal very casually, as a hobby, since version 6. I never found any major incentive to learn it deeply and I've always been turned off by how problematic it seems. I use Wordpress extensively which is easier by it's nature. I've also studied Django for a few weeks which presents a clear learning path.
I bring this up because I'm debating using Drupal for minimal-viable-product I am building. I do not know Python or Django well enough yet to solve my problems and I know Wordpress will barely handle my objectives after a year. So I'm wondering if Drupal will solve my immediate needs. However I don't know where to start in order to effectively learn the subject.
Do I have to use Drush? Why do I constantly get errors/warnings in Drupal after any small update or module installation? Is it a bad idea to use Drupal 8 now? Are there free, structured tutorials I can go through? Right now I have a pending database update that simply won't update--"Fix invalid 'negate' values in block visibility conditions." After I update it, it remains. Huh?
If I want to get serious with Drupal what are my best resources or approach?
Comments
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no; depends on the error; in general no; depends on the task; not enough information to diagnose; define serious
The error I have after I do a
The error I have after I do a database update is:
But more importantly I want to learn how to solve these matters more independently. Where should I start in order to better understanding Drupal development? If it's this website, then I'll read through it more thoroughly. If it's another website, I'll look at that.
Support for Drupal has been
Support for Drupal has been fragmented a lot - the 'official' space is here on the *.drupal.org infrastructure but there's been little investment and no want to keep support for forums, although I do hear there is some work lately to improve developer tools. There's IRC channels, Slack channels are busy I hear but I don't and don't want to use Slack, I don't think that's a good way to provide support for Free Software.
There are a number of great efforts out there for example @OSTraining's free sets of videos, and of course lots of sessions on YouTube from DrupalCamps and DrupalCons around the world. Because it's such a large ecosystem it's tough to produce documentation and keep it up-to-date, although recently there has been a lot of work done on the documentation on this site, not finished yet but bold efforts which we can all be thankful for.
To your particular issue, I know Rules development has been slow lately due to lack of funding so that may be the issue - googling the error is always the way forward! There are sites out there which list the status of the top 100 modules re upgrade to 8, however 8 is totally different from 7 with the switch from mostly procedural to mostly object-oriented code, things aren't a case of just waiting for a particular module to be upgraded. For a start, many modules in 7 were made to get around anomalies which just aren't in 8, so many won't be updated. Also many modules are in core now so you can do a lot more with it without having to use contributed modules.
Good luck in your learning... searching module issue queues is always the best place to start to see if someone has had similar problems, and using something like drupalvm.com helps jump some of the setup hoops to make things bit easier.
hmm... maybe it's this issue
hmm... maybe it's this issue which is the rules in core, not the contrib one, my bad!
https://www.drupal.org/node/2789051
Yeah I have felt inspired to
Yeah I have felt inspired to rediscover D8 now that we're dealing with OOP. I am hesitant to build a potential multi-year project on D7 if I'm unable to effectively solve my own problems. At least with OOP I feel more hopeful I can figure out the intricacies of the modern Drupal framework. I did come across that issue you cite. I may need to read more to understand what it means. Thanks.
Hah me too, I did OO before
Hah me too, I did OO before Drupal so super happy with 8!
If that issue does help it says needs review so post your findings & move it along a bit!
Steve can you restate this
Steve can you restate this part?
"but there's been little investment and no want to keep support for forums"
I can't come up with a certain interpretation of that; "no want" is either an expression I'm not tuned in to, or there is a typo or a word missing?
Oh, there was a whole heated
Oh, there was a whole heated debate a while back as these forums have had little love over the years so support has ended up all over the place which is both a Good, and Bad Thing depending on what your angle is. Still, it's good to see people are posting and people are replying, community spirit alive and well!
However I don't know where to
There are training courses etc. It's hard to assess what level you're aiming at.
No, and theres also Drupal Console these days which is very handy. I would ask if you're a PHP developer (or any developer) why would you want to avoid using these powerful and time saving tools?
You don't - lets be realistic, you don't, we don't, I update stuff everyday and run into into issues sometimes - fact of life with all software. What you need to do is debug those issues. Drupal has good tools, the Devel module and Drupal Console can really help out here, and of course a decent editor like PHPStorm.
No, go for it, D8 is far superior in every way.
A big part of learning D8 is simply knowing about classes and methods and whats available. Best to read the docs very carefully and debug, debug, debug - constantly. Drupal 8 is way to big to know the whole code base - so when you need to do something it's more about - OK, lets see what Classes and Methods are available for doing this or that task. You need to dig - this is like any software right? Who can remember all of PHP and every single whacky array function and syntax? No one, same with Drupal 8, expect it's not whacky like PHP :)
Here are what I might call the most important sections:
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/api
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/configuration-management (critical to understand and use CMI correctly)
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/theming
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/core/modules (look out for technical details links to API docs, there is gold here)
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
My involvement with drupal
My involvement with drupal has been similar to yours. I started using drupal about 10 years ago but only a bit for some more or less static websites. Recently I checked it out again and decided to take the plunge on a more involved but still not complex website.
Prior to that I'd spent more time with wordpress for the same reasons you did. I started the new website in wordpress but after a while it started to seem kind of limited; lots of reliance on themes for features, and/or resorting to custom code. I tried drupal again and was impressed by it's evolution. I started building the site in d8. I found that I was hitting a lot of cases where modules were not ported to d8 yet, and as a novice it sure felt like I needed those modules. So I went with drupal 7.
I am mostly pleased with the choice. I have found these forums, googling, and the issue queues to be the best resources. Most tutorials I found are good for the intro phase but not comprehensive. I have found that the support on the forums is less than I have personally needed. A good number of my posts that were more involved didn't go much of anywhere. Some of them do of course. It means that I have spent many many hours trying to get past a set of hurdles which are almost certainly solvable in drupal. But I can't find existing posts or videos that I can apply to those situations.
Maybe you're better at finding your own way forward than I am and maybe your posts will get more input than mine. I made a "where else to learn drupal" post here last week, similar to yours, and got only one response.
I think drupal is a marvel. At least from my perspective, the only minus so far is that peer to peer support has been less useful to me than other dev communities I'm involved in (I don't particularly mean wordpress, I found peer to peer support there weaker than here). But it sounds like you are going to go with d8 and that's probably a very good choice.
I actually may go with D7 now
I actually may go with D7 now because I have some short term objectives. The problems I'm getting with D8 are completely unreasonable for my situation. I have a local installation. Used it last night. Went to again this morning and URLs are broken. Just not really prepared to resolve these _kinds_ of issues with my short term goals. It's really a shame because D8 is a better direction.
I'm working with D7 now. Testing out the features I need for my project. The modules. No errors. I can focus on sitebuilding for the most part.
Oh, gee, thanks for the reply
Oh, gee, thanks for the reply to my long and thoughtful post to answer your question on "how to get serious about D8", when in fact you were not serious at all. Cheers for that.
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
Well, at the time it was my
Well, at the time it was my intention to focus on D8 but I have admittedly been indecisive. If I felt serious study over a few months could help me achieve specific objectives, I would prefer that. I am now realizing that serious study into D8 over a few months will not be enough time which is unfortunate.
If anything I'll focus on D8
If anything I'll focus on D8 for long term goals.
Drupal 8 is lacking in so many areas...
Despite years of development, rewrites - and most importantly - rewrites of the rewrites, etc..., Drupal 8 is still unprepared for the present and the near future, unless you have budget and team to make the ends meet.
Drupal 8 menu toolbar creates super annoying re-rendering and you need “Toolbar Anti-flicker” module or doing extra x,y,z to fix it. Seriously!
Twig was a good intention but try to print image with style as url in your node template - you can't, unless you do an extra x,y,z in undocumented places via undocumented drupalisms.
Hence modules like “Twig Field Value”, various extenders, benders and the like, douh.
In Django templates you can rely to {% thumbnail image.file 300x300 %} .... for over a decade now.
Entity reference is in core, but, you need an extra x,y,z or modules like “Entity Reference Override” in order to do basic stuff like the ones you've done in Drupal 7, using just the views and entity reference contrib. modules, douh.
Ckeditor is in core, and yet, no responsive inline images and no media library at this time, maybe 2017.
Go to download Drupal 8.2.4 and read in the known issues “Drupal 8 currently has a number of known issues related to incorrect tracking of file usage, which can result in files being unexpectedly deleted from a site.”
...and I will skip the RESTful(RESTfool) WTFs which currently cripples Drupal 8.
After all, they say its open source, so we are suppose to fix it ourselves - right?
Then again, life is short, and Drupal is well orchestrated by established commercial interests.
Have fun and remember, software is supposed to be soft... so no hard feelings.
After all, they say its open
Well, I'd say more "get involved" - the more people join in and help the better the software gets, the more you understand about the software and how to use it better, the more people you know who do different things so you can ask for help and so on.
It took me many years to discover this, and since I got involved it's been a whole load better than just downloading it and using it.
I think it's a misnomer to say it's orchestrated by established commercial interests - sure, there's pressure and direction from certain ones, but there's a bigger often quite quiet but much larger community who all collaborate to maintain and develop the project, it's just they don't have big marketing budgets so the message in the mainstream mediums is one of 'enterprise' whereas I believe this community is more 'enterprising' as a whole.
Drupal 8 readiness
For other equally practical reasons, I do agree that Drupal 8 is not yet ready to implement many essential production site features.
There are just too many essential D7 contrib modules that have not yet been ported to D8, or have not yet reached production site stability and reliability, to make D8 practical for many production site purposes (commerce, media, and hundreds more).
However, consider that D7 took multiple years to reach its current level of stability. My approach has been to learn as much as possible about D8, and to thoroughly document what is and is not ready in D8, to be prepared for the hopeful eventuality that D8 will reach an adequate readiness threshold, both with regard to core stability, and contrib module readiness.
spritefully yours
Technical assistance provided to the Drupal community on my own time ...
Thank yous appreciated ...
Ha ha ha, yeah, sadly all
Ha ha ha, yeah, sadly all pretty much true, except I don't really agree, at least entirely, with "Drupal is well orchestrated by established commercial interests", they also get plenty of push back from the wider community and don't always "win" simply by throwing money at features they want.
The things I tend to care about are stuff like the lack of responsive inline images and non-existance of a media library, mainly because I am a programmer and I can do whatever I want, but thats a real hard one to get around for site builders.
In all honesty I predicted D8 would be a lemon, or at last suck for a couple of years. That's panning out...
I have grave reservations about contrib also, ever catching up to D7 at all. Theres many reasons for this but it can boil down to one major point - you're going to be chasing Drupal core forever in D8. In D7 we had stable API's, in D8 they're already chucking in even more "experimental" stuff, threatening with an entirely alternative components based theme system and so on. It's just, excuse my language, fucking ridiculous.
I don't often bag Drupal very much, but honestly, it feels like the beginning of the end, like we've gone horribly wrong and now the ship can never right itself. It's not the code, it's not the 3rd party stuff, it's not the complexity, it's the constantly shifting nature of it.
Oh, and zero upgrade path from earlier versions, no no, make do with breaking your site with a "migration".
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
Shifting rhymes with the drop is always moving...
The constantly shifting nature, unstable APIs, “experimental” migration are all easily explained by the fact that there are established commercial interests around the GPL loophole - all good, if you are a player.
Yes, Drupal might seem bigger than “that”, if we romanticize a bit, with Varnish in front of oh-so yummy cache tags, the Big (peace) pipe... while not looking objectively at the grand argument story narrative.
books and docs
There are multiple ways to study Drupal extensively ....
1) There are formal books about Drupal - buy some on amazon or something.
2) There is the Drupal.org docs:
https://www.drupal.org/docs/7
https://www.drupal.org/docs/8
3) Youtube has various sets of amazingly good videos about Drupal generally, and also about specific Drupal modules and components. For example, check out the youtube video series "a daily dose of drupal", and other similar video sets.
4) After doing the above, another great way to discover what Drupal is capable of, is to purchase a product like the more than themes bundle:
http://www.morethanthemes.com/store/bundles
which contains a couple dozen fully fleshed out Drupal site to address various use cases, from hotels to news, to real estate listings, to academic sites, and so on. The MTT products are not just "themes". They are more like Drupal distributions. They contain features like custom content types, and implementations of all sorts of advanced features, like sliders, image galleries, and more, including Drupal commerce. Studying their products is kind of like a Drupal university.
This last item is very important, because often people aren't aware of what Drupal can do in capable hands. As such the more than themes bundle is a way to see from the inside out what a fully fleshed out Drupal site can do.
spritefully yours
Technical assistance provided to the Drupal community on my own time ...
Thank yous appreciated ...