Back to the Blog

Splunking Drupal

Posted by Hani Atalla on Wednesday, August 23, 2017 - 10:12 Best Practices, Cool Tools, Drupal, Operational Intelligence Splunk, Drupal, Syslog, e-commerce

Drupal developers rely on various logging systems to troubleshoot and investigate Drupal exceptions and errors. We can use frontend Apache/Nginx access and error logs along with native PHP logs. But, unquestionably, the Drupal database logging module is at the core of these logging frameworks because it captures all triggers to internal Drupal hooks, events, and activities occurring on the Drupal site. Drupal's database logging framework is the bucket that captures not only the operations of the different modules (core...

read more

It's HTTPS Time

Posted by Jon Reid on Wednesday, June 7, 2017 - 10:00 Best Practices, Drupal secure, Web Experience Management, Security, data security, cybersecurity, HTTPS
I've been seeing an increase in requests for recommendations on adding the protection of HTTPS to client sites. Questions of cost and overall need are the most common.

Do you need HTTPS?

The standard response to this for years has been yes, if your users are sending sensitive data to your website. Data like credit card numbers, personally identifiable information such as Social Security, or confidential content like financial statements or payroll all qualify as sensitive. 
 
But, I would argue that...
read more

Choosing the Right E-Commerce Platform: Magento vs. Drupal Commerce

Posted by Hani Atalla on Tuesday, March 14, 2017 - 08:31 Development, Drupal magento, e-commerce, marketplace, Drupal

There is an array of e-commerce platforms to choose from and it can be a daunting task selecting the most feasible solution.  So in this blog I’ll explore Magento versus Drupal Commerce. But worth noting early on that the decision is not mutually exclusive as few e-commerce sites are hybrid solutions integrating the best of the two platforms:  Drupal serving as a content management system while leveraging Magento’s robust e-commerce features.

Magento

Magento comes in two flavors: a free open-source community edition and a paid subscription based enterprise edition costing...

read more

Video Tutorial: Creating a Block of Related Content with Views in Drupal 7

Posted by Casey Fox on Tuesday, February 7, 2017 - 10:25 Drupal Drupal 7, Views

From news to commerce sites, developers often find themselves in the position of needing to display related content - and for good reason! In UX, leveraging related posts is regarded as a best practice. It isn't hard to see why when you consider the associated benefits:

  • increased user browsing time
  • reduced bounce rates
  • bolstered interlinking, which drives SEO 
  • conversion of organic search traffic into direct traffic

In Drupal, we can create a block of related content easily using the views module. This tutorial was executed in Drupal 7...

read more

Why Content is Like Water: The Importance of Responsive Design

Posted by Rishi Das on Thursday, December 8, 2016 - 08:53 Drupal responsive, content, design, web design, website, Drupal

Over the last few years it has become common practice for websites to be responsive. Responsive design allows for the content of a website to respond to its environment or device. The picture above shows a series of common devices on which you might view a website. It is now the general standard for websites to be as easy to use on one of those devices as it is on any other device. In the past, when responsive design was not prevalent, it was common to find websites that did not adapt or respond to multiple devices. 

As the Internet and access to the Internet evolves, the style and...

read more

Drupal Commerce

Posted by Hani Atalla on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 - 10:02 Best Practices, Drupal Drupal Commerce, eCommerce, UberCart, Bilingual
Recently I had the opportunity to setup a bilingual Drupal eCommerce site for a client.  My immediate reaction was to use Drupal Commerce for this project. After all, it's architectural design and codebase are more inline with Drupal's best practices, especially with the use of entities for each product variation (size, color, etc. where each variation would have its unique SKU) whereas UberCart treats each product as a separate node all together. I find the former approach more...
read more

Success Story: AVIO Consulting, An Interactive Experience

Posted by Caroline Givnish on Thursday, September 1, 2016 - 09:56 Drupal Drupal, Drupal 8, Migration, redesign, responsive, interactive, usability

"Function1's expertise and collaborative approach made the redesign process seamless. Thanks for bringing our vision for AVIO's refreshed digital presence to life, we are very proud of the end product."
- Brandon Dean, AVIO Consulting
 

About AVIO Consulting
AVIO is a consulting leader in the Oracle Fusion Middleware and Mulesoft spaces. Though best known for its Oracle portfolio, AVIO also provides world-class solutions in the cloud, digital transformation, mobile, process, and strategy fields. AVIO came...

read more

Success Story: The SAPAN Institute

Posted by Jon Reid on Tuesday, June 21, 2016 - 10:25 Drupal case study, success story, Drupal, Drupal 8, drupal theme, theming, web design, user experience, non-profit

SapanArts.org

The Opportunity:

The SAPAN Institute is a non-profit organization dedicated to the education, collaboration, advancement and celebration of South Asian performing arts. SAPAN came to Function1 with a need to modernize and streamline their existing WordPress site.
 
Creating the new sapanarts.org provided an excellent opportunity to dig into the details of configuring, theming and coding on this latest and greatest Drupal platform. This build yielded rewarding results on top of...
read more

Dude, Where's My Block?

Posted by Jon Reid on Friday, June 10, 2016 - 10:21 Drupal Drupal 8, Views, Blocks, Site Building

Blocks have gotten a whole lot of core functionality in Drupal 8.  The new interface can trip you up as you get used to the changes, especially when you start adding Views blocks into the mix.

Drupal 8 Block Overview 

Drupal 8 blocks are managed from the same location as in Drupal 7, Admin > Structure > Block, but the new menu, with tabs for Block Layout and Custom Block Library, is your first hint that something has changed under the hood.

...

read more
Stay In Touch