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Tech News

News ID Title News Details
44,681 Interesting tidbits of Drupal.org usage in 2020

I was poking around the Drupal.org project usage page over the holidays checking out some trends and making sure there weren't any up-and-coming contrib projects that haven't been on my radar. Since Drupal 8 was released (over 5 years ago!) I've been bothered by the fact that this page can't be filtered by the Drupal core version.

Along the way I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole and decided to dig much deeper into Drupal.org statistics. But first, let's take a look at contrib projects.

Most installed contrib projects

An incomplete workaround to finding the most installed contrib projects by Drupal core version is to use the module search page and filter it by Drupal core version and sort by "most installed." While this provides a list of modules, it doesn't provide historical trends as the project usage page does. Regardless, here's some data:

Top 5 installed Drupal 8 and 9 contrib modules 

Top 5 installed Drupal 7 contrib modules

Top 5 installed Drupal 9 contrib themes 

Top 5 installed Drupal 8 contrib themes 

Top 5 installed Drupal 7 contrib themes

While this data is somewhat interesting, there really aren't any surprises.

Drupal.org usage statistics

For that, I recently requested, and received access to the Drupal.org analytics from the Drupal Association with the goal of looking at some usage statistics from 2020 and to dig a little deeper into what Drupal developers were up over the past 12 months.

I wasn't interested in doing a complete statistical analysis of the data and comparing it with historical data, rather I was just looking for things I thought were cool. Plain and simple.

All data below is for the time period of January 1, 2020 - December 31, 2020.

First off, I'm not a data scientist - I'm just a nerd who likes to look at data sometimes, so some of the assumptions I make below may be off-the-mark. If so, feel free to correct me.

Let's start off with some basic stats - in 2020, there were about 50,000 users on Drupal.org on any given weekday. Anecdotally, the daily December average was around 5,000 users/day higher when compared with January.

Who are we and how are we accessing Drupal.org?

Where are the users coming from? Not surprisingly, the largest percentage came from the United states, but more visitors came from India and China (when combined). Clearly, we need to do a better job in recruiting from these areas to be more involved in Drupal leadership. 

Country

  • 20% US
  • 12% India
  • 11% China
  • 5% Sweden
  • 3% United Kingdom

Interestingly enough, when looking at the top 10 cities where Drupal.org traffic originates, 6 of the top 10 are from China and India. In order, they are: Beijing, unspecified, Stockholm, Chicago, Bengaluru, Chennai, London, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Pune

The majority of visitors' browsers report their language as English, with Chinese the next largest share. This seems to imply that many of the visitors from India speak English well enough to have their browsers set to use English.

Language

  • 49% English (US)
  • 12% Chinese
  • 9% English (GB)
  • 3% English (unspecified)
  • 3% Spanish

Some other interesting statistics about who is visiting Drupal.org:

  • 85% are new visitors - this seems (very) high to me, and I'm going to attribute (at least a portion of it) to folks with privacy controls that make it seem like they're a new visitor.
  • Over 60% of visitors use Chrome, with almost 50% on some version of Windows, and 80% using a desktop browser.
  • Over 60% of users arrive via an organic search - this is not surprising to me at all, as I routinely (multiple times a day) use Duck Duck Go to search for content on Drupal.org rather than use Drupal.org's search tool.
What are we looking at?

Now for the data I was really I was interested in finding - which topics, issues, and projects we were actually looking at in 2020. To do this, I focused mainly on the top 100 most visited pages on drupal.org. 

Hash-tagged numbers indicate the page's position in Drupal.org's overall most visited pages ranking.

Most visited contributed projects

No huge surprises here, except I'm still amazed by the popularity of Bootstrap (keep in mind there are multiple Bootstrap-based base themes as well!) I was also a bit surprised at the popularity of Commerce, not because it isn't an amazing tool, but because I would've guessed other projects would be above it (Redirect module, for example, is #46).

It's also interesting that Webform was the most visited contributed project page, but didn't appear in any of the "most installed" lists above.

Most visited topic-specific documentation pages

Unsurprisingly, the top 2 most visited documentation pages (that aren't landing pages) were related to Composer. 

Most visited contrib project issues

This was probably the most unexpected and unexplainable data I found. No way I would've ever guessed that the most visited contrib project issue would be for the Commerce Braintree module. Luckily, it is marked as "fixed", I can only imagine that the traffic was primarily to access the patch? 

Then, the second most visited issue is related to the Image module for Drupal core version 5.x? It's traffic is pretty consistent for all of 2020. The only thing I can think of to possibly explain this is that the thread has a magic combination of keywords that put it high in organic search results (well over 90% of the traffic to this page originates from search engines).

Most visited forum post

How to login to Drupal admin panel (from 2017!) #84

Yes, the Drupal.org forum is still alive and people are still accidentally getting locked out of their sites.

Most visited page without a path alias

How to fix "The following module is missing from the file system..." warning messages (from the "Reference" section) #43

Oh yeah - I've definitely been someone who has searched for, and landed on this page.

Most visited Drupal core issues 

I didn't know what to expect when I went looking for the most visited Drupal core issue, but as soon as I found #216, it made perfect sense. I feel like you are in the minority of users if your Drupal core 8.8 update went smoothly.

Most visited Drupal core release pages 

I'm at a loss to explain why these core release pages were visited more than any others. Overall, there were 6 Drupal core release pages in the top 200 most visited pages.

Most visited pages overall

After the home page, the top visited pages were the project search, the download page, Drupal core, user Dashboards, the theme search, the User Guide, and Try Drupal.

None of these are all that surprising or interesting, at least to me, but included here for completeness. 

Finally, I was curious as to how many of the top 100 most visited pages were documentation pages (12) and contributed project pages (46).

Conclusions

A few things that I took away from this exercise:

  • Traffic to Drupal.org increased during 2020.
  • Composer continues to be a pain point in the community.
  • The contributed module ecosystem continues to be one of the crown-jewels of the Drupal community.
  • Pathauto should be in core (try to convince me otherwise)
  • Should the community consider tweaking metadata for pages related to older versions of Drupal core so they don't rank as high in search engines?
  • There seems to be an opportunity for new contributors to be provided with a list of the most visited forum, reference, and issue pages and convert those that make sense into documentation pages.
  • Why aren't a commensurate percentage of people from places with high numbers of users community leaders, and what can we do collectively to remedy it?

Thanks to Tim Lenhen from the Drupal Association for providing me with temporary access to the Drupal.org analytics.
 

45,107 Easily remove the "Request new password" functionality

This may be the quickest quicktip we've ever written - if your site doesn't require the "Request new password" functionality, the No Request New Password module makes it pretty easy to remove it. 

Before:

After:

Also - the module doesn't just hide the "Request new password" link, it removes the functionality completely, so if a user navigates directly to /user/password, they'll be redirected back to the login page. 

46,385 Files directory getting out of control? Audit it!

If you manage a Drupal site that has constantly changing content, you may have concerns about the size and contents of the /sites/default/files/ directory. For most Drupal site maintainers, this can often be a source of anxiety, not ever really knowing what it contains and what, if any of the uploaded files are obsolete. 

Any method you utilize to solve potential issues is going to be tedious, but the Audit Files module can help make it a little less painful. This module provides several reports (generated using some user-configurable parameters) that can help you wrangle things:

As an example, the "Not in database" report will show you a list of files that exist in /sites/default/files/, but are not managed (have not been uploaded via a file field) in Drupal. This list might include files directly uploaded via SFTP or some other method, so be careful what you delete, but it will definitely give you a head-start on identifying files that might be safely deleted.

If you feel that your site's files directory is a bit out-of-control, this module may be a good first step in cleaning things up.
 

51,117 Introducing the Drupal Career Online Spring 2021 Class

We're halfway through the 12-week Spring 2021 Drupal Career Online semester, with a wonderful group of nine Drupal students. We are just finishing up our spring break/independent study week, and looking forward to diving into module and theme development, followed by team workflows, the configuration system, and more before we confer their certificates at graduation on May 19th. During the first half of the course, we spent lots of time with information architecture (entities, bundles, and fields) as well as Composer, Drush, and Git topics. 

Some insight on this semester's class:

  • Includes students from 3 countries.
  • There are one or more Windows, Mac OS, and Linux users.
  • Some are brand new to Drupal, while others are Drupal content managers, and Drupal 7 developers.
  • They have varying levels of previous Drupal, command line, and Git experience.

Since different students have different goals, they are all taking advantage of the wide range of resources we offer to help each student achieve their personal/professional goals. This includes office hours to help students work through course or non-course related Drupal issues, screencasts for every lesson, and one-on-one community mentors for every student.

Our next semester of Drupal Career Online begins on August 30. If you know someone who might be interested in applying, they can learn more at one of our free, 1-hour Taste-of-Drupal information webinars.

56,885 Diversifying Drupal with Talent Development: Stars are Aligning!

As we kick off our outreach for the upcoming Fall 2021 session of Drupal Career Online, (our 10th year!) we can’t help but marvel, with a bit of pride, as we reflect on how cool it is that our small company has such a big-impact program for people who want to become part of our ever-impressive open source community. We’ve served stellar students, continue to have fantastic collaborations, and through it all, our Drupal Career Online program has grown, gotten better and attracted new Drupal talent to the community every one of the 10 years we’ve been presenting it. But this year, things look even brighter thanks to the insight of some Drupal Community shining stars!

We’ve always relied on our mission to provide a clear path forward for students, ensure we teach only best practices to give anyone who enrolls in Drupal Career Online a solid foundation for their career and to serve the Drupal Community. We’ve refined our application, extended the course, continuously update our curriculum and materials and built an active DrupalEasy learning community. We even earned and continually maintain an annual license as an Institution of Higher Education from the Florida Department of Education, Commission for Independent Education

But now, we are about to get exponentially better, and hopefully help make the Drupal Community better as well! This year–as a fitting crescendo to our 10 Year Anniversary–we are super excited and honored to have more than half of our seats for the Fall 2021 Session of Drupal Career Online reserved, and tuition underwritten, by insightful organizations in our community who are stepping up to diversify Drupal. The stars of this effort, Palantir.net, Bounteous and the Drupal Association through Discover Drupal, have partnered with us to help bring in, train up, and employ individuals to help bring about a more diverse, equitable and inclusive Drupal community.  

We are so proud to be working with amazing individuals and organizations on three insightful efforts that, by promoting diversity, will make the community better and enable more innovation and growth. The last time we were this excited about how our program could serve the Drupal Community was 10 years ago when it launched, and this is even more awesome in that it is all Drupal Community members who are making it happen.  We are star-struck; major support for new talent development guided by Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Yay!

Palantir.net is making available Palantir Fellowships that include tuition and stipends for two qualifying individuals during each session of Drupal Career Online.  Palantir is also providing need-based stipends, mentors, and internship/entry level positions to successful candidates with perspectives frequently underrepresented in tech, including woman-identifying and non-binary individuals, BIPOC, and those making midlife career changes.  The Palantir Fellowship is designed to offer the support and resources to help up to four individuals per year become successful professionals who add to the culture of their organization and the Drupal community.  Palantir created their program as an ongoing, sustainable effort to provide comprehensive Drupal career preparation, meaningful support and hands-on experience.   

Bounteous is making available a Drupal Career Online Scholarship to an individual who is part of one of several historically underrepresented groups in tech so that they may become part of the Drupal talent pipeline and their team. Bounteous will provide the mentor for the awardee, as well as an internship and potential position on the Bounteous staff.  The program is part of invigorated efforts at Bounteous to focus its recruiting efforts on those that promote diversity, equity and inclusion. 

Finally, as part of the Drupal Association's Discover Drupal program, DrupalEasy is supporting their scholarship, training and work experience initiative as a training partner (along with Evolving Web, Drupalize.me and Mediacurrent) to bring nine aspiring Drupal developers with diverse backgrounds into the community.  We are excited to host three Discover Drupal participants who were recently selected in our upcoming session, and look forward to seeing more in the future. Discover Drupal is an ongoing, community supported effort that everyone can support through donation, mentoring, internships and employment of its graduates.  It’s a way anyone can be a part of helping to diversify Drupal through talent development! Be a Star

We view Drupal training and early work experience as the access people of all backgrounds need for a solid foundation and successful career in Drupal.  We are so proud to be a part of all of these initiatives that we hope mark the beginning of a sustainable, systemic approach to diversifying Drupal that will have astronomical results in supporting growth and development of much needed new talent into our community. 

Applications for the Palantir Fellowship and the Bounteous scholarship will open soon, and we will be providing detailed information and links to these programs on our Drupal Career Online information pages and application as well as at our three, no-cost Taste of Drupal information sessions in July and August.  Contact us if you have a question, and look for more information to follow!

The next session of Drupal Career Online starts August 30th. Join us for a Taste of Drupal to learn more.  Have questions or want to discuss these programs? Let us know!

 

 


 

 

 

59,139 10 Links to Help Recruit People to Drupal Careers

It’s been 10 years of not only teaching Drupal Career Online; but also working to attract people into Drupal careers as we market and do outreach for our 12-week course. We’ve made presentations to local and state workforce boards, the national workforce association, many Drupal Camp and Con sessions, and correspond with individuals, businesses, potential education partners and field inquiries every week about Drupal, working in Drupal and the DCO from all over the world.  We've become a bit of a Drupal recruiter

After a decade of explaining what Drupal is, finding answers, and collecting some pretty good information, we’ve compiled a solid list of Drupal Career Resources, now a fixture on our site. So, in the spirit of our Top 10 List anniversary series, here is a good one to use when you run into someone who you think might be a good addition to the Drupal Community, but needs some insight and background. Let us know if you have any other great resources; and go forth and attract.

#1:  Web Developers and Digital Designers Occupational Outlook Handbook: The facts on web developer careers from the US Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor statistics with a lot of great info., including a description of the job, geographic salary information, as well as future job prospects. 

#2: How do I get a Job In Drupal?: The OS Training interview with our own MIke Anello: An oldie but a goody; with links to the audio of the expert-rich Drupal Career Trailhead panel presentation at DrupalCon Austin 2015. 

#3: Indeed Build a Career You’ll Love: Drupal Developer: Indeed’s career overview, including links to average salaries, geographic statistics, job openings, common benefits and salary comparisons.

#4 Drupal Statistics & Facts: A fun piece about Drupal history, facts and how it compares to other CMSs.

#5: Everything you need to know Before Starting a Drupal Career: London-based Cocoon provides a good, honest description of the elements, issues and steps to a Drupal Career. 

#6 Case Study: AmyJune Hineline: Some inspiration and insight from a DCO alumna, and winner of the Drupal Community’s 2021 Aaron Winborn Award.

 #7 Drupal for Developers: Great descriptions and material on the markets and opportunities for developers considering Drupal as a CMS

#8 Drupical.com: Interactive map with a calendar of Drupal events all over the world.

#9 DCO Scholarship Page: We can't help but promote the three amazing scholarship programs through Palantir.net, Bounteous and the Drupal Association that are helping to attract more, and more diverse Drupal talent!

#10 Taste of Drupal registration: The sign-up sheet to attend the Taste of Drupal no-cost mini information webinars that Mike Anello leads in advance of the Spring and Fall sessions of the DCO. Next TOD is August 11!

The deadline to apply for the Fall 2021 session of Drupal Career Online is August 27th, with classes beginning August 30.  

 

115,172 The DrupalEasy Learning Community; it’s Official!

Since we started Drupal Career Online over a decade ago, our 12-week best-practice focused course has grown and evolved; not only in the area of curriculum, but also in the resources we provide around it in an effort to create a truly holistic learning experience for students. Until now, we’ve referred to these aspects of our program loosely as our "learning community." 

The thing is, it’s grown into quite an extraordinary, multi-facetted body of people and programs that continues to develop beyond our early plans and goals. With the extensive breadth and reach these elements have grown to include, it’s time for an official name, and to impart the anatomy of the DrupalEasy Learning Community.  

First and foremost we need to recognize the heart of the DrupalEasy Learning community, which beats strong thanks to the students, alumni, mentors, instructors, contributors, scholarship sponsors and supporters who have helped our learning-minded cooperative thrive over the past 11 years. We are fortunate to have the trust, loyalty and friendship of the active alumni; from our first class held in-person at our riverfront classroom on Florida’s Space Coast in 2011, to the multiple scholarship sponsors from across North America who are now leveraging our programs to diversify their teams and the wider Drupal Community.
 
Of course, Drupal Career Online was always meant to be more than just an instructor-taught course. Drupal is more than just code, so the DCO, and in fact all of our courses, have been developed to integrate the community aspect into not just what we teach, but how we teach it. The DCO is 84 hours of curriculum combined with resources and amazing people who make it a truly complete, educational experience centered in a diverse community of people who continually seek getting better at all things Drupal.  

DrupalEasy is committed to:

  • Teach comprehensive Drupal knowledge & best-practice skills
  • Teach and integrate community engagement in everything that we do
  • Provide comprehensive resources for lifelong learning

We accomplish this through ongoing supplemental elements that serve to enrich our courses, support our participants and help to build a sense of community. 

The DrupalEasy Learning Community has developed to include eight supporting features that augment course curriculum and that are designed to create a holistic learning experience and engage students to excel in the Drupal ecosystem:

DrupalEasy Office Hours

Office hours, sometimes referred to as lab hours, have been a staple of our learning community since we started our long-form Drupal program, and key to making and maintaining connections and friendships around learning Drupal. Current students and all alumni are welcome to join our weekly office hours to work through issues, ask and answer questions and learn from others. It’s a great way for students to stay connected in an informal, but very useful way.

DrupalEasy Community Mentors

Another original feature of Drupal Career Online that makes a huge difference to many students are the amazing members of the Drupal community who generously donate their time to provide mentorship to current Drupal Career Online students. Many of these mentor/mentee relationships remain ongoing after the student completes the course. 

DrupalEasy Scholarship Partners

A more recent development of the DrupalEasy Learning Community is the scholarship program supported by web development agencies, the Drupal Association, and other organizations that underwrite tuition for qualified students who also have the opportunity to join the providing organization as an intern or junior developer after graduation. 

DrupalEasy Curriculum Updates

Just like Drupal, our curriculum is always evolving. As such, students and alumni have access to curriculum updates for the course they graduated from, which includes our class slides, lesson guides, and videos. We frequently hear from alumni who revisit lessons long after they graduate in an effort to keep their skills fresh and up to date.

DrupalEasy Event Gurus

Attending a Drupal event for the first time can be a bit scary and overwhelming, so we’ve set up a way to make things a bit less daunting for those who would like some guidance. Alumni who would like some support simply fill out a form, and we introduce them to someone (a well seasoned Drupal event guru) who is attending the same event and is willing to show them the ropes. The goal is to have the guru provide suggestions, introductions, and a friendly face for the alumni. We've been doing this informally for a few years now, and just recently set it up as a formal program. 

DrupalEasy Alumni Network

Starting with the very first class of Drupal Career Online we strive to welcome our students as new members of the Drupal community. As class progresses, we are almost continuously introducing them to more and more members of the Drupal community, including their community mentor and our alumni (via shared office hours and our dedicated Slack workspace.) By helping students grow their Drupal networks, we also help them get more comfortable, and make it easier to grow their Drupal skills. For some of our students and alumni, the Drupal community Slack workspace can be intimidating and overwhelming - our goal is to help folks join the wider Drupal community at their own pace, starting with the DrupalEasy Alumni Network.

DrupalEasy Community Grants

Drupal Career Online’s alumni community is special to us, and so, we have created the DrupalEasy Community Grants program with them in mind. Any alumni family, friends and co-workers are eligible for DrupalEasy Legacy Grants to help them experience our career technical education program (the DCO) and our continuing education programs including long-form courses and workshops (those where we control enrollment.) Alunni Grants for other DrupalEasy training (again, where we control enrollment) are also available.  We've had more than a few individuals who have taken Drupal Career Online in both its previous Drupal 7 version and again in the Drupal 8/9 version - the latter with significant grants to help their ability to take the course. In addition, we always try to show the love to our alumni themselves who steer friends and co-workers to our long-form program, with what we hope are thoughtful recognition. We also provide Group and Team Grants for those who seek to take our courses and join our DrupalEasy Learning Community in numbers. 

DrupalEasy Industry Introductions

For any graduates who are looking for employment, we try to provide introductions and pass along opportunities for positions as we become aware of them. We continually receive requests from a variety of organizations who are looking to hire Drupal Career Online graduates. This usually comes in the form of introductions to DrupalEasy partners who have job openings, one-on-one guidance, and resume reviews.

Summing up

It is extremely gratifying that we can provide all of these programs to our long-form Drupal training students and alumni, and that the DrupalEasy Learning Community has grown into the hundreds. Over the past 11 years, we've seen the results of efforts in the form of successful Drupal professionals working all over the world. While we're formalizing the eight programs that support our learning environment, we'll continue to experiment with additional elements (like early access to upcoming courses) in our never-ending effort to help build the Drupal Community by nurturing the DrupalEasy Learning Community.

If you are interested in learning more about Drupal Career Online and experiencing the DrupalEasy Learning Community, join us next Wednesday for a Taste of Drupal (add TOD link) information webinar. 

115,176 Mike Anello (ultimike) featured on RedHat's Compiler podcast

The RedHat Compiler podcast presents perspectives, topics, and insights from the industry free from jargon and judgment and I was lucky enough to be one of the guests in episode 31 talking about how to find a common language when teaching Drupal to those new to the platform with a diverse set of backgrounds - both cultural and technical.

Turns out the origin story of our 12-week, best-practice based, beginner-focused Drupal Career Online course is pretty interesting to more folks than just us! We had the opportunity to share some of the challenges we discovered (and overcame) when starting the DCO, with a focus on finding a way to communicate technically with students of all backgrounds and incoming skill levels.

The focus of the episode is communication. Specifically, the importance of how everyone involved in a software product's development needs to be able to communicate across a wide range of disciplines and experience levels, as well as cultural hurdles; in order to strive to build a successful product.

One of the other podcast guests, Ryan Singer, shared some solid insight about how to teach the various layers of any software stack in a way that is rewarding and meaningful to the audience. He also talked about the importance of understanding that building a software product involves much more than just the coding, and that it is critical to develop a solid understanding of product strategy, usability, and quality assurance and that those involved in the process share a common vocabulary to discuss each element.

David Van Duzer, a consulting architect at RedHat, was another contributor to the podcast who talked about how people’s experience levels can potentially be a hurdle in finding a common vocabulary - with  less- and more-experienced developers both needing to put work into learning new terms to talk to developers of all experience levels.

The Compiler podcast hosts, Brent Simoneaux and Angela Andrews, along with producers Johan Philippine and Kim Huang, do a masterful job of telling the story in this highly-polished, professional podcast. The team is impressive to say the least, and the podcast is worth putting on your subscription list. 
 

115,169 DDEV + Pantheon Integration

Reposted with permission from Pantheon.io.

Automating the Process of Keeping Your Local Environment Up-to-date

DDEV is a Docker-based local development environment solution that allows developers to run local copies of all their Drupal and WordPress projects in a personal development environment. Much like similar Docker-based solutions, DDEV hides most of the complexity of Docker — allowing Drupal and WordPress developers to focus on what they like best.

What Problem Are We Solving?

One of the typical challenges that a developer faces when working on their local development environment is keeping their local database and content files up-to-date with a remote environment (development, test, or live). For the database, the manual process normally involves downloading a database dump and importing it into the local development environment.

DDEV's "provider" functionality automates the steps into a single "ddev pull" command that can authenticate with a remote server, download the most recent database backup, and then import it into the local environment -— all with just a single command!

How Exactly Does It Work?

DDEV includes sample provider integrations for Drupal (but not WordPress yet); they are located in your DDEV project's .ddev/providers/ directory. Each provider integration includes documentation, as well as the complete code for the integration — making it easy for you to customize.

A DDEV community member, Matthias Andrasch, has been working on DDEV provider integration for WordPress; find them here. These are not officially supported, so please use them with caution.

The Pantheon integration requires that a Pantheon machine token be created and added to your machine's ~/.ddev/global_config.yaml file in the following format:

web_environment: - TERMINUS_MACHINE_TOKEN=abcdeyourtoken`

This allows DDEV to access your Pantheon projects via Terminus (built-in to DDEV), in order to access database and content file backups.

The Pantheon integration also requires that you have Drush installed as part of the Drupal project. If you don't, then it's easy to add via:

$ ddev composer require drush/drush

For basic integration, you'll just need to copy the example.pantheon.yaml provider file to pantheon.yaml and then update the site name and environment variable. This allows you to target exactly which site and Pantheon environment you'd like to access the database backup and content files from when running the "ddev pull" command.

environment_variables: project: de8.live

In this example, the machine name of Pantheon project is "de8" and we're going to be updating the local DDEV environment with database and content files backups from the Pantheon Live environment.

Once configured, to update your local database and content files, run "ddev pull pantheon" and you’re set. If you don't want to sync the content files to your local, then you can add the "--skip-files" parameter.

This is a summary of the integration steps — for all the details, be sure to check out the .ddev/providers/example.pantheon.yaml file in your DDEV project.

Dive Deeper

As mentioned earlier, the example.pantheon.yaml file doesn't just include the parameters for the provider integration, it also contains the actual commands for each step of the integration.

For example, in the "ddev_pull_command" section, you can see the various bash commands used to obtain a database backup from Pantheon:

db_pull_command: command: | # set -x # You can enable bash debugging output by uncommenting ls /var/www/html/.ddev >/dev/null # This just refreshes stale NFS if possible pushd /var/www/html/.ddev/.downloads >/dev/null terminus backup:get ${project} --element=db --to=db.sql.gz

If you speak Terminus, then you'll notice that the command doesn't actually create a new database backup, but rather downloads the most recent. But, since all of the commands are specified here, you can add a "terminus backup:create" command if desired.

It is important to note that DDEV provider integration also includes a "ddev push" command that does exactly what you think it does — it allows you to easily push a local database or content files directory to a remote Pantheon environment. As this violates the recommended "code flows up, data flows down" principle, I don't recommend using it — or at least use it with extreme caution.

Next Steps

If this level of local development environment automation isn't enough for you, then your next step would probably be to think about using the "ddev pull" command as part of a DDEV post-start command hook (or custom DDEV command) that automatically calls "ddev drush cr" "ddev drush cim" immediately after the "ddev pull" command. This makes it possible to easily have a fresh local development environment every time you start working on your project!

115,170 Another Drupal Career Online Semester in the Books - Congrats to our 12 Graduates!

Congratulations to the twelve newest graduates of DrupalEasy's Drupal Career Online training course! Over the past three months, Mike Anello (ultimike), Mauricio Dinarte (dinarcon), and Sara Cartee-Kennedy (capysara) provided more than thirteen hours of live instruction and office hours each week to these outstanding new Drupalers: 

While many of this semester's graduates are already employed in Drupal-related jobs (and were looking to improve their skills), there were also four folks brand-new to Drupal who were generously on full scholarships from Palantir.net, Bounteous, and Four Kitchens. Each of these four students will be moving directly into junior developer positions with their scholarship provider. 

Excellent course, cannot recommend highly enough. Quality instruction, great
mentoring. Micheal and his team deliver the content with a fun and
energized manner. They provide a really good introduction to the wider Drupal
community. I am confident that this course will help me achieve my career goals.

- DCO Spring 2022 graduate

We also had a few folks who are looking to move into full-time Drupal positions; some of whom already have interviews scheduled for the coming weeks!

Over the twelve week semester, DCO students and instructors once again came together to initially create a mini-learning community consisting mainly of classmates, but in time were introduced to the full DrupalEasy Learning Community of alumni and mentors via our dedicated Slack workspace and shared office hours. We are looking forward to creating the next cohort of Drupal students for the next semester of Drupal Career Online, which begins August 29.

Mike is a great instructor and goes beyond what is expected to make sure his
students are confident moving forward through the course material.

- DCO Spring 2022 graduate
 

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