Administering Drupal 8 Website

title: Administering Drupal 8 Website
author: Lukasz Sokolowski (NobleProg Ltd)

Administering Drupal 8 Website Training Materials

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Intro

What is Drupal?
The Building Blocks of Drupal
Choosing and managing your themes
Choosing and managing your modules
Managing your content
Ordering your content
Managing your users
Troubleshooting Drupal

What is Drupal

Community
Software
- CMS
- Framework for other project
  - e-commerce
  - social networks
  - portals
  - media portals
  - LMS, CRM, ERP, etc...

Drupal Sandbox

Demo - (http://simplytest.me/)
DDEV - (https://ddev.com/)
- Overall docs - https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/local-server-setup
- Specific for drupal(l)s - https://ddev.readthedocs.io/en/stable/users/quickstart/#__tabbed_4_3
- Good alternatives
  - Lando - (https://docs.lando.dev/)
  - Docker4Drupal - (https://wodby.com/docker4drupal)
  - Docksal - (https://docksal.io/)
Bitnami - (http://bitnami.org/stack/drupal)
AmazonEC2, and other hosting options
- https://www.drupal.org/hosting

Building Blocks

Extensions

Modules
Themes
Distributions

Users

User Accounts settings
User Profiles
Roles and Permissions

Content

Entities
Nodes (Fields, Revisions, Comments, Workflows)
Files (Images)
Taxonomy (Vocabularies and Terms)

Structure

Blocks
Menus
Input Filters
Views
Forms

Extensions

Themes, Profiles (Distributions) and Modules are also known as Extensions.

Distributions

A Distribution contains:

Drupal core
Contributed modules
Themes
Pre-defined configuration

Examples:

Bear (an alternative to the Minimal or Standard profiles)
Varbase (good starterkit)
Open Social (social communities and intranets)
Commerce Kickstart (e-commerce, https://install.commercekickstart.com/)
ELMS (e-Learning Management System)

More: http://drupal.org/project/distributions

Finding Admin Settings

go to admin/index
use ctrl+f (search option in the browser) to find the option you need

Drupal core versions

Modules

"Extend and customize Drupal functionality"

Contributed Modules are developed by Drupal community
Custom Modules are not published to third parties
Core Modules are provided by the Drupal Core

During this course we focus on the Core Modules

Some modules are much bigger and more complex than the core!

Modules Versions

Important when you are looking for Documentation and Help
Security Upgrades

Modules Support

Issues
Statistics
Documentation

Useful core modules

Book
Actions
Forum
Aggregator
Translation-related

Exercise 1

Installing modules
- Translate the website into another language (core module 'Language')
- Create simple blog (contributed 'Blog' module)

Themes

"Allow you to change the look and feel of your Drupal site."

Contributed Themes
Custom Themes
Sub-themes
Blocks configuration can change when you change your theme
Administration Theme
You can allow users to change your theme

Theme Configuration

admin/appearance/settings
Customizing colours (color module)
Configurations depends on the theme

Exercise 2

Installing themes
- Choose and install a suitable Drupal theme
- Set your admin theme to Bartik

Content

Entities
Nodes
Files
Taxonomy

Entities

Entity types in core
- Configuration Entity
  - Used by the Configuration System
  - Supports translations and can provide custom defaults for installations
- Content Entity
  - Consist of configurable and base fields
  - Can have revisions and support translations
Bundles (sub-types)
- Configuration Entities that enhance a Content Entity
- Their configuration stores the differences between the content entity types, such as settings and fields

Entities Con't

Entity Structure Examples

Content Entity Types:

Node
- Node Bundle (Content Type):
  - Basic page
Taxonomy
- Taxonomy Bundle (Vocabulary):
  - Tags
Blocks
- Custom Block Bundle (Custom Block Type):
  - My Block Type

Configuration Entity Types:

Custom Block types
- View
- Menu
- Role

Nodes

Structure/Content types (admin/structure/types)
Content vs Content Types
Node can mean either, though Node Type is used as well
Each Content type can differ
- Fields
- Workflow
- Permission
- Autopath and Menu options, etc...

Fields

Field Type vs Field Widget
Common types are Text, Number, Date, Email, Location, etc...
Visibility in Teaser (Summary) and Full Node

Exercise 3

Creating content
- Create two or three content pages (use the default content type Basic Page)
- Create one Article, related to your company

Revisions

Create new revision by default
Log message
Reverting
Diff Module*

Exercise 4

Time vehicle
- Edit existing basic page and add new line of text in the Body field
- Change it again and add another line, same field
- Revert it to the very first version
- Compare version 2 and 3 (diff)

Comments

Moderation
Status

Exercise 5

Creating comments
- Allow all users to comment basic pages
- Comment one of them
- Answer to that comment

Workflows

Unpublished means visible to the author and administrators/moderators
Content can be unpublished by default
Content Moderation (Now finally stable part of the core)

Files

Uploading

Images

Images can be handled via WYSIWYG or Image Field
Configuration/Media/Image Styles (admin/config/media/image-styles)
Assign a style to Display settings in a content type

Exercise 6

Content types
- Create your own content type, related to your company
-- add at least 2 new fields, with different type of field
-- add some pictures to your pages (use proper field type)
-- make it appear-able in menus: Tools, Footer 
-- should be unpublished by default, added to the front page and sticky

Taxonomy

Vocabularies and Terms
HS, Taxonomy Menu*

Exercise 7

Playing with categories
- Create new vocabulary related to your own content type
-- Add some terms (at least 3)
- Create new post and apply some taxonomy

Users

User Accounts settings (admin/config/people)
- Email Templates
- Fields
- Profile2*
Roles and Permissions
- Creating Roles
- Granting Permission

Exercise 8

Handling users
- Create a role for only 'Basic Page' editor and assign all necessary permissions
- Set permissions so only authenticated users can comment and create your content type

Structure

Blocks

Structure/Blocks (admin/structure/block)
Blocks are part of the structure NOT content
- No search
- No revisions
- No workflow (publish/unpublish)
- No authorship information
- No fine-grained permission for editing blocks
- No index support (search)

Exercise 9

Blocks
- Position some blocks in your theme
- Set which pages certain blocks should appear upon

Menus

Structure/Menus
Menu vs Menu Item
Create when editing the content
Primary/Secondary Menu
Two menu items to the same content

Exercise 10

Menus
- Build a menu for your website
- Add your own type nodes to the menu (you can do this by editing the nodes too)

Text Formats (Input Filters)

Configuration/Content Authoring/Text Formats (admin/config/content/formats)
Text Formats allow to filter and transform text when saving and viewing a field
Keep it Simple
Rules can overlap with WYSIWYG

Display modes

Content, Custom block, Comment, Taxonomy term, User - they can have:

Form modes
View modes

Contact forms

Simple default forms to serve the feedback for the site, etc

Views

Provides a back end to fetch information from the database
- content, user accounts, taxonomy terms, and other entities
Can present it to the user as filtered
- a grid, HTML list, table, unformatted list, etc.
Use cases
- Adding functionality to administrative pages
- Expanding functionality via contributed projects
- Improving table accessibility
- Working with multilingual views

Exercise 11

Views
- Create new view with nodes only from your own content type
-- allow users to filter it via one of the fields

Admin Tasks

Configuring Search
Cron
Customizing Error Messages
Maintenance(site offline)
URL Aliases
Reporting
Configuration management

Exercise 12

URL Aliases
- Make your url aliases to work auto-magically (contributed module 'pathauto')

Additional Exercises

MODULES

1. Install 'book' module and create simple wiki about your company
- create one book with at least 3 pages 

2. Make your website a little bit smarter/automatic
- it should send email to you, each time when the basic page will be created (actions, rules)


THEMES

1. Add Mayo theme and play with it's many configuration options
- chose color set 'Tricolor'
- change font family to 'Verdana, geneva..'
- make default fonts bigger (18px)
- provide rounded corners to frames (blocks and content)
- add font resizing controls to the header


CONTENT

1. New content type
- Install the Field group module
- Create a content type called Booking
- Add two fields, From and To, of type Date
- Create group of newly added fields called Dates
(https://www.drupal.org/project/field_group)

2. Create relationship between 2 content types 
- make them both link-able


STRUCTURE

1. Block
- Create your own Custom Block Type (My Block Type)
- Create block using this type and place it in Footer

2. Menu
- make your Main menu nicer (https://www.drupal.org/project/tb_megamenu)

3. Taxonomy
- Create 2 taxonomies with relation between them
- Apply it to the basic pages

4. Views
- Create view with Basic Pages and some data from related Articles (make a content reference)

Administering Drupal 8 Website