
I chose Drupal as a content management system because of the power, flexibility, security, and community support.
I've developed on Drupal since the 5.5 release. The old site was running on Drupal 7.
The database was full of abandoned modules and half-implemented projects that I was going to get to someday, but never did.
So, with the release of Drupal 9, I decided to start fresh and have migrated only the more popular content.
What I've learned about Drupal 9
The first thing I encountered was that many features in the old site were implemented in separate modules. In Drupal 9, most of them are in Core and covered by security policy. I like that.
Next, were the changes to make customization by Editorial folks, so easy. Layout Builder allows an Editor to assign a layout to a content type, as well as modify the layout for each piece of content. I had used contextual blocks in D7, and Panels Manager. I couldn't figure out from documentation how to replace that function. I had to "let go of the old" and get with the new way. Now I LOVE it!!!
Layout Builder is like Panel builder on steroids. I've tried radically changing layouts and just can't break it.
Personal Challenges Met
DDEV - Local Developer in Containers
Again, the problem was me. Once I followed the instructions, I got it. I was able to spin up D7, D8, D9 instances in MINUTES. OMG. The only sticking point was how to put ffmpeg in the container. I punted for now, knowing the dev site would be on real hardware.
Composer and Drush
Of course I've used composer before, but not for Drupal. I read documentation, and there are conflicting opinions. I settled on the fact that Composer manages configuration and Drush is for operations. So now and update looks like this:
- composer update drupal/admin_toolbar --with-dependencies
- ddev exec drush updatedb
- ddev exec drush cache:rebuild
Bootstrap 5
I finally broke down and learned how to use sass. Ah, the ability to use variables, and compile. I get it now. Looks like I'll never touch styles.css again
Conclusions
This is the first release on the new stack. I'm can sling news, video, and audio to the world, with the best of them.
And I have room to grow. I'll leave you with a quote