Drupal & Backdrop Blog

How to add back the Git history, when you forgot to clone

Submitted by jenlampton on September 25, 2020 - 9:33am

When porting modules from Drupal 7 to Backdrop CMS, it's natural for people to download the Drupal project as usual, and then start to make changes to the code so it will work for Backdrop. When they have got a working Backdrop version of the module, they are often inclined to contribute it back to the Backdrop community -- which is great!

One of the three minor requirements for a ported Drupal project to be included in the Backdrop contrib-group is that the Git history be included from the Drupal project.

The most important reason we want to keep the history is because we want all the Drupal contributors to get credit for all the hard work they have done on the project. Keeping the history can also make it easier to cross-port fixes from the Drupal project, or even maintain both projects at the same time.

Git Backdrop

How to move your Backdrop site to Pantheon

Submitted by jenlampton on July 20, 2020 - 9:50pm

When moving from traditional web hosting to managed platform-specific hosting providers like Pantheon, there are often a few tricks you'll need to work around. In this post I'll be documenting the steps necessary to move an existing website onto Pantheon.

Step 1: Create a new website on Pantheon

As someone who manages dozens of websites, I love Pantheon's upstreams. Whenever there is a security update for Drupal core or for Backdrop core, the provided one-click core update saves me a lot of time. Whenever I start a new Pantheon project or moving an existing site onto Pantheon, I want to start from an upstream.

I'll start by creating my site from Backdrop's Pantheon upstream.

I also like to run the installer to get a working Backdrop site (you'll see why later). I will replace various parts in the steps that follow.

Backdrop CMS Hosting Pantheon Configuration Management

How to choose a Pantheon Plan

Submitted by jenlampton on July 13, 2020 - 5:44pm

Part of my job as a developer is making website hosting recommendations to my clients. To create a list of recommendations, I determine the appropriate plan for the website (or websites) we're working with, and present the options to my client. In order for them to make a decision based on these recommendations, each option needs to include an associated cost.

Since most of my clients are small businesses (with less than 5 employees, in many cases only 1), educational institutions, non-profits, or otherwise operating on a tight budget, they need to know what the cost will be head of time, and they need the ability to reject the recommendation if it is too expensive.

Backdrop CMS Hosting Pantheon CDN

HTML themes to Backdrop themes

Submitted by jenlampton on November 20, 2018 - 3:15pm

I've been meaning to write up a blog post about how to go from a HTML template (purchased from a place like https://themeforest.net) to a Backdrop theme. As a developer with only a smidge of design skill, I have found this to be a workable alternative to hiring a designer for custom work.

Below you'll find a very a rough outline of the steps I follow:

Theme Development Backdrop CMS

Using Cloudflare and Backdrop CMS together

Submitted by jenlampton on May 23, 2018 - 2:57pm

This guide is intended to help people using Cloudflare to speed up and protect their Backdrop CMS sites.

Step #1

Create three Cloudflare PageRules to exclude the Backdrop cron page and the link to run cron as an admin from Cloudflare’s caching and performance features:

Step #2

If you have a valid SSL certificate on your server, you'll need to navigate to the Cloudflare Crypto section and update the SSL setting to `Full (strict)`. Without this setting SSL will be terminated at the Cloudflare edge server, and all traffic on your server will come in through port 80 instead of 443.

CDN Backdrop CMS

Changing the smartmenus breakpoint for Backdrop CMS

Submitted by jenlampton on February 28, 2017 - 3:32pm

The breakpoint for a Smartmens menu to go from displaying only the hamburger to displaying the whole menu is 768px by default. I had a site where I needed the breakpoint to fall at 1120px instead, here's how I changed it:

I started by copying two CSS files from backdrop core into my theme. The two files were named menu-dropdown.theme.css and menu-toggle.theme.css and are located in the core/modules/system/css/ directory.

I then opened both copies of these files in my editor, and changed every breakpoint that was 768px, to 1120px. The breakpoints are specified in ems, so that meant replacing 

@media (min-width: 48em) {

with 

@media (min-width: 70em) {

I then added both these stylesheets into my theme's .info file, like so:

CSS Backdrop CMS

Git remotes - Connecting your local site to a remote repository

Submitted by jenlampton on January 21, 2017 - 2:24pm

Working with Git is great, but before you see the real benefits of using Git you'll need to have your project hooked up to a remote repository.

Most people enter the world of Git when they are brought on to a project with multiple developers. In this case, there is likely already an existing repo, and all you need to learn to do is pull the latest changes, and push your own.

Navigating to your code in the terminal

First, you'll need to get a local site up and running. You can do so using MAMP, Kalabox, or any other tool that makes that easier, but make sure you can find out where the files are saved on disk. You'll need to get there from the command line to follow along with the rest of this post.

Open your terminal, and navigate to this location. I do this using the cd command. cd stands for "change directory".

Git

Git Basics - getting started on the command line

Submitted by jenlampton on January 21, 2017 - 1:42pm

Tools like Git desktop and Acquia dev desktop allow people to use Git without understanding how it actually works. These tools are a fantastic on-ramp to the world of Git, but at some point I hope that everyone gets a chance to work with Git directly from the command line. This will complete your understanding of what happens when you push those buttons in the desktop applications, and make you better at using both! Here are some basics to get started.

Navigating to your code in the terminal

First, you'll need to get a local site up and running. You can do so using MAMP, Kalabox, or any other tool that makes that easier, but make sure you can find out where the files are saved on disk. You'll need to get there from the command line to follow along with the rest of this post.

Open your terminal, and navigate to this location. I do this using the cd command. cd stands for "change directory".

Git

Backdrop CMS configuration files and Git: The figure-8 approach

Submitted by jenlampton on August 29, 2015 - 10:28pm

I've written about how to manage your configuration directory in version control (Git) several times, but now that I've done it in the wild on a few different sites, I thought I'd write it up here as well.

Note: this figure-8 approach works best when there is only a single developer on the project. If there is more than one, this approach can get confusing, and I prefer the versioned staging directory approach.

Below I have outlined how I set up most of my sites, with the Git root a directory above the webroot. This allows me to keep things that should not be web-accessible (like config!) in version control.

Git Backdrop CMS Configuration Management

My first theme for Backdrop CMS

Submitted by jenlampton on January 19, 2015 - 1:17am

I tasked myself with rebuilding my dad's old Durpal 6 site, www.stellarsoftware.com, to Backdrop CMS in one weekend.

I decided to rebuild from scratch rather than upgrade so that I could test more of Backdrop, and catch and fix bugs in the process (I found a handful - all now have PRs in the queue). After the site was built, I then needed to recreate the theme.

Respect for all the hard work done by the Drupal community

I started by opening an issue on drupal.org in the queue for the old Drupal 6 theme, Aeon5. I asked politely if the current maintainer would be interested in working on or maintaining a Backdrop CMS version of the theme. It is, after all, their work, and they should be aware of what's going on, even if they aren't interested in being involved.

Backdrop CMS Theme Development

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