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Drupal 8 - FAQs

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Since the preparation and initial testing phase of upgrading from Drupal 7 to 8 started the conversion team have raised many questions and suggestions amongst themselves. We suspect the main body of maintainers may well  tread much the same path so this set of FAQs has been compiled to answer some of the questions you may have - but also expand on aspects of D8 that require it.

Whilst we had no choice but to upgrade, because software support for D7 will cease quite soon, we regard it as an opportunity to improve the general efficiency of our ‘behind the scenes’ systems which will also enable us to bring in future enhancements.

This list is not exhaustive and indeed we anticipate, and hope, that it will be added to with comments generated by maintainers so we encourage you all to tell us through the maintainers' list what you like and don’t like, although not everything on our collective 'wish list' may ultimately be achievable nevertheless let's try to get it as near as possible to what works best for us all.

 

General

1. Does GENUKI have any input into the nuts and bolts of Drupal 8 (D8) ?

Yes.  One of the reasons GENUKI chose Drupal as our Content Management System (CMS) several years ago was the fact that Drupal is almost infinitely configurable.  Over the last four years we have spent much time and effort developing our Drupal software for our very specific GENUKI needs.  However, there are certain basic things in the system we cannot change, because "that is the way Drupal does it" ! 

 

2. Is D8 an improvement on D7?

Yes, we are sure of it, and throughout our main concern has been to try to limit the visible signs of any changes that flow from the upgrade to cosmetic ones -  for both maintainers and users,

One key difference is that when we adopted D7 we were learning as we went along and didn’t have the luxury of 'crash testing' anything very much before the actual conversion.

So this time round we have given ourselves time to get it as ‘right’ as  possible before opening it up to maintainers to test run.

We ourselves are aware of several issues that still need fixing but these can be dealt with after we’ve ‘gone live’ in D8.

Allowing for D8's own constraints, we are not presenting maintainers with the 'finished article', the next few days are more akin to beta testing - combined with a touch of consumer surveying!

 

3. Will the current D7 specific documentation be upgraded too?

Yes, as soon after the D8 live date as we can find the time to do it, in fact a start has been made and initial documentation can be reached via Shortcuts/Help.  In the meantime these FAQs will hopefully provide some initial assistance and explanation.

The body of current maintainer guidance documentation is still available via our main home page reached from the GENUKI logo in the light blue navigation bar.

 

4. Will the layout of my content be exactly as in D7?

Based on our own checking then, yes, but please do have a close look at a random selection of your own pages.

We have, for example, found that some text paragraph alignments weren’t  replicated e.g left aligned instead of centered, if you should find any of these on your pages then please correct them as you go along.

 

 

Editing place nodes

1. Why is the Save button right at the bottom of the Edit page, we were used to it being at the top in D7 ?

Drupal's default position is to have the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.  We realise it might be an irritation for some and we are investigating the feasibility of having another one at the top as well.

 

2. Do we have to have the list of link errors at the top?

One of the major additions that GENUKI made to the standard Drupal software is the inclusion of a link checker.  This built upon the link checker that was used by GENUKI from pre-Drupal days.  This is an automated facility that, every 28 days, checks that every external and internal link in the system still works.  In your role as a maintainer, we would hope that you try and resolve all link errors on your pages as soon as you become aware of them.

By default, when you are editing a node, the system will display at the top of the page a list of link errors relevant to that node.  Many maintainers find this list useful because the text is provided to make finding them on the node content easier.  However, if you would rather suppress this listing and rely on the standard Broken Links reports, then you may suppress this error list by editing your user settings under your "My Account" menu link.

In fact whilst on the suppression subject, it is useful for you to know that you can via your My Account also suppress two further items:

  - the topic menu section that sits at the top of the Edit page 

  - the topic sub fields -  which is the only one of these which is already suppressed by default setting.

This is the sort of flexibility that D8 brings with it.

 

3. Why change the top topic menu at all?

One big gain in D8 is the ability to remove the clutter of inactive topics that in D7 were all listed and took up space with no real gain
So we now only show the active topics, with clickable links to the topic itself, and a drop down menu appearing from clicking the ‘Add New Topic’ button  - from which you then select the new topic.

One word of caution, next to each Topic section there is a '☓' in the right hand margin, this is there so that when a Topic section or box becomes empty of content then it should be deleted. But clicking on this inadvertantly will immediately remove that Topic and it's content so if you do this then don't save the node or you will lose that particular content -  leaving Revision of the node as a last resort.

 

4. Is the CKEditor the same as in D7?

Yes! CKEditor is one of the best WYSIWYG editors available on the market today.  We have been using it for several years in GENUKI, and we were delighted to hear that Drupal had included CKEditor as part of it core offering in Drupal 8.  This means that as far as GENUKI is concerned, we have been able to ensure that it looks and works almost exactly the same in D8 as it did before.

 

Editing Plain nodes

1. In D7 a plain node Edit page was simplicity itself with only one section for content, called Body, why the change to Topics ?


We are increasingly using the concept of Topics to identify all content by type, and introducing the same Topic system as on place nodes will enable us to develop this further by linking same topic content wherever it appears on our pages - possibly via Views and the Up Arrow system.

 

Church nodes and Gazetteer nodes

1.  Have there been any significant changes with church and gazetteer nodes?

Certainly you'll see some cosmetic changes.

We have tried to make the church node Edit page a less congested affair than in D7.

 


 

Error reports

1.  Shock/horror! - what are all these errors in my reports !

No need to panic, just ignore them totally for now, both links and html, the non-genuine ones should disappear once we go live with D8.
If not then we will help to sort them out.

Error reports are still accessible from the main Stats/Error report (Spider-2) - which is the more up to date report -  reached via the Shortcuts menu - and there is another report, tailored to each maintainer's counties, accessed from your My Account.
 

The maintainers’ navigation bar 

1. Why does it look different from D7?

Within the constraints of D8 described earlier we have tried to both streamline the look of it and reduce the menu options (clutter?) to what is necessary for maintainers to do their job.

This has partly been achieved by the use of permissions which hides items that only the administrators need to see, there are a few!

The Shortcuts drop down menu is the main one for maintainers' use,  and this can be added to as the need arises.

You will note that the D8 version of VBO has been rechristened Bulk Ops, but it currently has limited functionality as far as GENUKI maintainer needs are concerned - principally because it doesn’t have a built in Search & Replace (S/R) option -  so creating a GENUKI specific replacement for it is on our 'to do' list.

 

Media library

1. What is this all about?

This is a more sophisticated facility than what we had in D7.

You will see the item ‘All Media’ In the Shortcuts menu, this will take you to a full listing of all the media  that is used on our pages. 

Media is mainly photographs of churches on our church nodes but also includes other images such as maps you may have on other nodes.

It is analysed by county/maintainer and maintainers can identify and edit their own county’s images e.g add labels, re-assign them to the correct parent parish etc.

Some thought needs to be given to how this facility can be developed further to be of most use to us all.

Incidentally. what we don't have currently is the means to change the size of an image once it's uploaded to our pages, this is also on our list to investigate further