RSS Feed for planet-drupal https://www.dannyenglander.com en-us dannyenglander311@gmail.com (Danny Englander) Tue, 05 May 2026 01:26:38 GMT Tue, 05 May 2026 01:26:38 GMT Build a React app and test it inside its own environment and then wire it up to Drupal for seamless integration. Mon, 23 May 2022 05:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2022-05-23-implementing-react-app-as-custom-drupal-block-to-pull-remote-api-data/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2022-05-23-implementing-react-app-as-custom-drupal-block-to-pull-remote-api-data/ There's a neat little Drupal module called JSON Field and recently, I had a chance to play around with it. Out of the box, JSON field is a just a plain field where JSON data can be input and output on a web page. Tue, 08 Jun 2021 07:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2021-06-08-drupal-8-9-theming-how-to-render-format-json-data-with-php-twig-using-json-field/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2021-06-08-drupal-8-9-theming-how-to-render-format-json-data-with-php-twig-using-json-field/ Recently, I onboarded to a new project that required Lando, a popular local development server. When I am coding, I consider Xdebug to be of immense value for debugging and defining variables. Wed, 02 Jun 2021 07:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2021-06-02-drupal-9-devops-recipe-for-setting-up-xdebug-3-with-lando-and-phpstorm/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2021-06-02-drupal-9-devops-recipe-for-setting-up-xdebug-3-with-lando-and-phpstorm/ I've been building Drupal 8 sites with Layout Builder and one feature that I think is missing is the ability to group specific fields inside a wrapper for enhanced theming; a layout within a layout if you will. Sun, 27 Sep 2020 09:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-09-19-drupal-8-9-architecture-method-to-group-fields-in-wrapper-layout-builder-ctools-entity-view/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-09-19-drupal-8-9-architecture-method-to-group-fields-in-wrapper-layout-builder-ctools-entity-view/ Over the past month, I have been working on a large scale Drupal 8 build that is leveraging the Layout Builder module for much of the site's displays. If you have not used Layout Builder yet for a project and have been wanting to jump in, I hope this article will serve as a good overview. Mon, 25 May 2020 09:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-05-23-layout-builder-with-drupal-8-a-few-tips-tricks-gotchas/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-05-23-layout-builder-with-drupal-8-a-few-tips-tricks-gotchas/ In this post, I show you how to extend menu link attributes in a custom module Sat, 23 May 2020 09:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-05-22-drupal-8-architecture-how-to-add-custom-html-data-attributes-to-menus/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-05-22-drupal-8-architecture-how-to-add-custom-html-data-attributes-to-menus/ In this blog post, I will show you how to theme custom datetime formats using Twig in Drupal 8 Sat, 01 Feb 2020 09:00:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-02-01-drupal-8-theming-how-to-render-custom-datetime-formats-with-twig/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2020-02-01-drupal-8-theming-how-to-render-custom-datetime-formats-with-twig/ In this screencast video tutorial, I show you how to get up and running with Xdebug and PHPStorm using Docksal. Fri, 16 Aug 2019 09:18:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2019-08-12-drupal-development-how-to-get-started-with-xdebug-using-phpstorm-with-docksal/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2019-08-12-drupal-development-how-to-get-started-with-xdebug-using-phpstorm-with-docksal/ A common architectural model in Drupal is for one entity to reference another. For example, when using the Paragraphs module to build structured modular content, imagine that you have a paragraph type that references another paragraph type. Tue, 23 Jul 2019 06:12:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2019-02-23-drupal-8-architecture-how-to-get-a-value-from-a-paragraphs-parent-entity/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2019-02-23-drupal-8-architecture-how-to-get-a-value-from-a-paragraphs-parent-entity/ In this screencast, I'm going to walkthrough how I've been designing structured modular content with Entity Construction Kit and Inline Entity Form in Drupal 8. Sun, 18 Sep 2016 16:54:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-09-18-drupal-8-architecture-video-tour-designing-structured-modular-content-using-entity-construction/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-09-18-drupal-8-architecture-video-tour-designing-structured-modular-content-using-entity-construction/ For the past seven months, I've been designing, building, and theming with Drupal 8 for my own side project. Along the way, I've seen huge advancements in these realms versus what was possible with Drupal 7. Thu, 15 Sep 2016 18:06:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-09-15-drupal-8-theming-how-define-variables-twig-templates-use-custom-html-classes/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-09-15-drupal-8-theming-how-define-variables-twig-templates-use-custom-html-classes/ In this blog post, I experiment with importing an existing Drupal 8 site configuration into a new site. Disclaimer: the steps in this tutorial are not recommend for a live site and are experimental! Sat, 20 Aug 2016 17:31:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-08-20-drupal-8-development-how-import-existing-site-configuration-new-site/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-08-20-drupal-8-development-how-import-existing-site-configuration-new-site/ In Drupal 8, there's templates for just about anything and with Drupal 8's new theme hooks, you can really narrow in on crafting a custom template for your specific use case. This makes getting at and altering markup far more accessible than it was in Drupal 6 and 7. Tue, 10 May 2016 07:46:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-05-10-drupal-8-theming-tutorial-how-craft-custom-theme-hook-suggestions-and-templates/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-05-10-drupal-8-theming-tutorial-how-craft-custom-theme-hook-suggestions-and-templates/ My uncle used to say, "You have to use the right tool for the job." This is no different when it comes to Drupal 8 theming and development. Sun, 08 May 2016 08:03:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-05-08-drupal-8-development-5-things-add-your-theming-toolbox/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-05-08-drupal-8-development-5-things-add-your-theming-toolbox/ Now that I'm digging into Drupal 8 theming and its awesomeness, I'm discovering some really useful methods and functions. At the same time, I'm learning a lot and having fun. Sun, 27 Mar 2016 10:27:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-03-27-drupal-8-theming-how-set-custom-html-classes-block-region/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-03-27-drupal-8-theming-how-set-custom-html-classes-block-region/ When Drupal 8 and its innovative architectural changes were first announced several years back, there were a variety of reactions within the community ranging from euphoria and elation to *FUD* and potential abandonment of the platform altogether. Tue, 22 Mar 2016 07:53:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-03-22-drupal-8-theming-how-i-got-inspired-drupal-all-over-again/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2016-03-22-drupal-8-theming-how-i-got-inspired-drupal-all-over-again/ I've been doing a lot lately with Grunt and LibSass within my drupal.org contrib theme, Gratis. Yesterday, I updated my Node modules locally. Shortly thereafter, I started getting a nasty Drush error. Sun, 18 Jan 2015 12:02:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2015-01-18-drupal-drush-segmentation-fault-11-error-avoiding-rabbit-hole/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2015-01-18-drupal-drush-segmentation-fault-11-error-avoiding-rabbit-hole/ In my free time recently, I've been designing and developing a little Drupal 8 site that I'd like to bring online. From the start, I knew I'd need a decent web host with all the fixins' Drush, Git and most of all, PHP 5.4 as that's the minimum required for Drupal 8. Tue, 27 May 2014 06:21:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-05-27-drupal-8-devops-leveraging-openshift-online-paas/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-05-27-drupal-8-devops-leveraging-openshift-online-paas/ In this blog post, we learn how to add core and theme scripts in to Drupal 8 using a theme libraries YML or YAML file. Sun, 06 Apr 2014 16:54:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-04-06-drupal-8-attaching-core-libraries-and-other-scripts-your-theme/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-04-06-drupal-8-attaching-core-libraries-and-other-scripts-your-theme/ I'm currently working on a Drupal build where I'd like users to be able to easily add icons to menu items through the UI. Enter FontAwesome, the scalable vector icon font that leverages the power of CSS. That in combo with the infamous Menu Attributes module allows users to add custom classes to Drupal menu items via the Menu edit interface on a per menu item basis. This is ideal for what we need to accomplish. Wed, 26 Mar 2014 20:23:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-03-26-drupal-theming-adding-font-awesome-icons-menu-items/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2014-03-26-drupal-theming-adding-font-awesome-icons-menu-items/ I get great ideas from users of both my Drupal contrib themes, Bamboo and Gratis. Typically a user will write to me and ask, "how do I do x" with your theme? Wed, 20 Nov 2013 06:06:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-11-20-creating-ajax-node-field-pager-embedded-contextual-view/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-11-20-creating-ajax-node-field-pager-embedded-contextual-view/ A typical use case for Entity Reference and one that I'll use as an example is if you have news stories on your site and you want your editors to be able to pick a specific related blog post and show it on a news story node. Tue, 12 Nov 2013 06:30:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-11-12-drupal-architecture-leveraging-entity-reference-and-views-related-content/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-11-12-drupal-architecture-leveraging-entity-reference-and-views-related-content/ It's hard to believe I've been using both Features and Drush for a few years but didn't know you can create, update and manage your features all with Drush. Mon, 02 Sep 2013 06:41:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-09-02-features-drush-drupal-goodness/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-09-02-features-drush-drupal-goodness/ I've been pretty busy these days with a few different projects and a number of them required a user friendly way (editors not needing to know how to code) of implementing captions for images within content areas. Tue, 09 Jul 2013 09:17:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-09-implementing-html5-image-captions-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-09-implementing-html5-image-captions-drupal-7/ An overview of an eclectic mix of modules I've found really useful lately for some projects I've been working on with a few examples and use cases. Fri, 05 Jul 2013 09:02:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-05-eclectic-useful-drupal-modules/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-05-eclectic-useful-drupal-modules/ Lately, I've been designing and developing photo galleries for both clients and myself. I thought it would be nice to share some methods and practices that I've learned. This tutorial will focus on creating node photo grid galleries that can either be stand alone or attached to other content types. Thu, 04 Jul 2013 09:03:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-04-designing-responsive-lightbox-photo-grid-gallery-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-07-04-designing-responsive-lightbox-photo-grid-gallery-drupal-7/ Drupal 7 has an option to turn on a default View for Taxonomy term pages via the contrib module, Views. This is generally pretty good but if you want highly designed pages with additional custom fields than what the default view renders, you could simply update and customize this view but there's a few drawbacks. Sat, 15 Jun 2013 08:47:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-15-custom-taxonomy-pages-drupal-views-using-selective-overrides/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-15-custom-taxonomy-pages-drupal-views-using-selective-overrides/ In the course of a day as a Drupal Themer, I need to code a wide variety of functionality into a given site I'm working on. I try to follow Drupal best practices as well and this usually means implementing theme preprocess functions; these become key to a Themer's toolbox. Sat, 08 Jun 2013 08:21:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-08-drupal-7-preprocess-tricks-tips-themer/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-08-drupal-7-preprocess-tricks-tips-themer/ In my last post, I discussed my new photography site I'm building and theming with Drupal. The site is responsive and I've been searching for an ideal responsive touch friendly multi-level menu. I looked at and tried several jQuery plugins, CSS3 styles and a few Drupal Modules but nothing was quite right. Mon, 03 Jun 2013 21:57:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-03-theming-multi-level-responsive-menu-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-06-03-theming-multi-level-responsive-menu-drupal-7/ Lately, I've been devoting much of my free time to developing better methods of Drupal theming to achieve streamlined processes, simplicity and minimalistic code. Fri, 24 May 2013 20:21:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-05-24-drupal-theming-and-design-minimalistic-approach/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-05-24-drupal-theming-and-design-minimalistic-approach/ A few months ago, I became a full Drupal contributor on drupal.org with my theme Bamboo. I have to say that contributing to Drupal has been an eye opening experience and extremely rewarding. Sat, 09 Mar 2013 11:26:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-03-09-random-acts-drupal/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-03-09-random-acts-drupal/ In my last article I demonstrated how to extract basic data from field array elements which is ideal for custom node theming. The key to this is using *field_get_items*. I'll expand upon that by adding in additional Drupal API functions to enhance and format these Field array elements. Thu, 24 Jan 2013 10:56:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-01-24-leveraging-drupal-7-api-functions-theming-field-array-element-data/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-01-24-leveraging-drupal-7-api-functions-theming-field-array-element-data/ In this article, I'll show how to really dig into data associated with a field and for that I'll use a preprocess function in your theme's template.php for the logic and then a variable for presentation in a custom node template. Wed, 23 Jan 2013 11:59:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-01-23-drupal-7-fields-digging-deep-data-themers/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2013-01-23-drupal-7-fields-digging-deep-data-themers/ I've been using MAMP Pro for some years now for my local Drupal development environment in Mac OS X. The prospect of MAMP is alluring, it promises point and click creation of website environments locally on your Mac with database, Apache and all. Fri, 09 Nov 2012 10:35:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-11-09-goodbye-old-proprietary-friend/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-11-09-goodbye-old-proprietary-friend/ I've been playing around with Drupal 7 Multi-sites lately on my local development environment and was trying to figure out how to add a multisite to git. Sat, 20 Oct 2012 10:20:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-10-20-drupal-7-multisites-and-git-workflow/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-10-20-drupal-7-multisites-and-git-workflow/ The more Drupal web projects I do, the more I keep having to solve similar issues that arise during development or reusing similar code snippets. Typically you can use Features or write a small module for a lot of things but sometimes, you just need that one code snippet or quick fix. Tue, 16 Oct 2012 14:29:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-10-16-drupal-tips-tricks-and-gotchas/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-10-16-drupal-tips-tricks-and-gotchas/ I was recently tasked with theming a customized user login page in Drupal 7. I could not find a whole lot of documentation for this so the first place I looked was in the core modules folder hoping to find something like user--login.tpl.php that I would be able to copy and put in my theme folder for an override. Fri, 17 Aug 2012 19:59:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-08-17-customizing-user-login-page-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-08-17-customizing-user-login-page-drupal-7/ The Drupal 7 Account pages (user, user/register, user/password), all have the same Title, i.e. "User Account". I just ran up against this issue and my client wanted different / custom titles on these pages. Wed, 25 Jul 2012 08:54:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-25-customizing-title-account-pages-drupal-7-using-theme-preprocess-function/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-25-customizing-title-account-pages-drupal-7-using-theme-preprocess-function/ I recently built my new photo portfolio site High Rock Photo and on single image gallery pages (a Content Type I created), I wanted to show "related" images that were in the same category, images that were tagged with the same taxonomy term. Fri, 20 Jul 2012 09:45:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-20-using-views-contextual-filters-create-related-content-block-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-20-using-views-contextual-filters-create-related-content-block-drupal-7/ I often see posts on the drupal.org forums and elsewhere in regard to implementing jQuery scripts and code into Drupal. It seems common that users try to attach JQuery right within page.tpl.php or html.tpl.php. In other words, it's hard-coding a script into a page and it's not ideal. Some try to render it using the PHP filter within a block or node. Wed, 18 Jul 2012 09:52:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-18-jquery-theming-tips-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-18-jquery-theming-tips-drupal-7/ In my last blog post I showed how to theme a node post date. I'll take it one step further this time and show how to do the same thing with a View. This assumes you are using the Views Module, and a use case would be if you want to display a feed of items with titles and teasers such as blog posts or news. Mon, 02 Jul 2012 16:20:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-02-theming-views-post-date-drupal-7-date-parts/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-07-02-theming-views-post-date-drupal-7-date-parts/ In this article I will show you how to theme a post date in Drupal 7. The goal is to take a boring date printed inline and theme it so it stands out as a design element. Wed, 14 Mar 2012 17:55:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-03-14-theming-node-post-date-drupal-7/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-03-14-theming-node-post-date-drupal-7/ I'm a Front End Drupal Developer / Themer / Site Builder and admittedly have been slow in adopting tools like Drush and Git for my workflow. Not because I didn't want to but only that I am very right-brained, so the command line / Terminal to say the least has not been my friend. Mon, 09 Jan 2012 07:53:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-01-09-drush-matter-and-other-drupal-musings/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2012-01-09-drush-matter-and-other-drupal-musings/ I wanted the ability to easily create node galleries and this screencast shows you how to create and theme a node photo gallery using Drupal 7. I will also point out what modules are needed and make reference to those that would have been used in Drupal 6 and are now integrated into core in Drupal 7. Fri, 16 Sep 2011 10:12:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-09-16-screencast-creating-and-theming-node-photo-gallery-drupal-7-and-colorbox/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-09-16-screencast-creating-and-theming-node-photo-gallery-drupal-7-and-colorbox/ Recently on Twitter, one of my followers asked me for some resources and links for learning Drupal. I thought that would make an excellent blog post. When I first started learning Drupal, I watched screencasts and read all the relevant books I could get my hands on. Mon, 11 Apr 2011 10:33:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-04-11-my-favorite-resources-learning-drupal/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-04-11-my-favorite-resources-learning-drupal/ Recently I was configuring a Drupal view for a client's website that consisted of the user inputting a zip code and distance to find a store near them. I was using an exposed proximity search filter with a postal code in combination with the Gmap and Location Modules. Fri, 18 Feb 2011 10:20:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-02-18-using-drupal-views-arguments-show-results-only-when-filter-used/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2011-02-18-using-drupal-views-arguments-show-results-only-when-filter-used/ As a Drupal themers / front end developers, we are always asked to push the envelope of what's possible with design and theming. With Drupal 6, custom block regions are usually added in page.tpl.php which is normally outside of the actual page node content / comments. It would be above, below content or in sidebars typically. Thu, 30 Dec 2010 07:29:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-12-30-how-add-block-region-node-page-drupal-6/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-12-30-how-add-block-region-node-page-drupal-6/ In this video, we explore how to track file downloads in Drupal 6 using the Filefield Download Tracking, CCK and Private Download modules. I'll also show you how to do this using a hybrid public / private file system. Wed, 10 Nov 2010 08:16:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-11-10-screencast-tracking-file-downloads-drupal-6/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-11-10-screencast-tracking-file-downloads-drupal-6/ Ask 10 Drupal Themers how they would accomplish a task in Drupal and you just might get 10 different answers. Most likely those 10 different ways of accomplishing the task would all be valid and unique. This concept would apply when theming a home page element in Drupal; there are several different ways of going about this. Wed, 20 Oct 2010 08:29:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-10-20-theming-unique-home-page-elements-drupal-6-isfront-php/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-10-20-theming-unique-home-page-elements-drupal-6-isfront-php/ We were recently asked to create custom landing pages for a Google ad campaign for a Drupal site we developed. The issue we faced was that the layout for the landing page was not really close to anything in the existing theme. Wed, 02 Jun 2010 18:21:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-06-02-creating-custom-content-type-page-templates-drupal-php/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-06-02-creating-custom-content-type-page-templates-drupal-php/ I love it when we discover one of those wonderful Drupal gems that is not well documented and is very powerful in creating some nice Drupal Views theme customization. We were recently tasked with creating an events calendar that has a custom CCK field called "City". There's a drop down menu with a list of cities to assign the event to. Thu, 20 May 2010 10:33:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-05-20-rewriting-drupal-views-output-custom-theming-css/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-05-20-rewriting-drupal-views-output-custom-theming-css/ I recently developed a Drupal site where each page in the site was based on a custom content type and needed some very specific theming. Although my custom theme was based on 960.gs, I decided to borrow from the zen theme its custom body class implementation to give more meaningful CSS classes to leverage for theming. Mon, 10 May 2010 10:12:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-05-10-custom-body-class-php-advanced-theming-and-css-drupal-6/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-05-10-custom-body-class-php-advanced-theming-and-css-drupal-6/ When I was theming my blog in Drupal, I decided I wanted a better way to customize and display post info such as wording used and the way date was displayed. The first step is to have a look around and see where the code is coming from that renders this info. I viewed the files in my custom theme folder and discovered these few lines of code in node.tpl.php Thu, 01 Apr 2010 10:33:00 GMT https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-04-01-how-customize-and-theme-post-and-date-info-drupal/ https://www.dannyenglander.com/blog/2010-04-01-how-customize-and-theme-post-and-date-info-drupal/