drupal

Five Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade tips

Janis Janovskis — Sat, 29 Jan 2022 20:41:12 +0000

Five Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade tips

Janis Janovskis Sat, 01/29/2022 - 20:41

Drupal 7 has reached its end of life, and if you're still in doubt, I bet this EOL is the main reason to proceed to upgrade to a more modern version.

I will share five Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade tips in this post. Ones you can't afford to miss or neglect; otherwise, you may run into significant issues and challenges.

The Audience.

I believe it is crucial to set the expectations right and on time. So, this article will significantly serve project managers, planners, heads of technology, CTOs, Architects, and developers up to a certain level. In other words, I will be sharing more high-level tips without getting too much into coding details.

The tips

All will come from my personal experience; I am confident you won't find these suggestions on any official channels or any certification questioners.

Tip One - Plan your budget.

I am sure you want to do this properly and diligently, yet everything has limits. Management can get easily anxious and perhaps even upset with money. The budget should be the first item in your discovery meeting agenda; upgrades can be complex, and running out of financial resources can cause several communication issues.

Tip two - Code and infrastructure due diligence.

This will be the only technical bit, cause I can't miss this one. The system requirements for Drupal 7 and Drupal 9 are different from many perspectives:

- The PHP version will indeed require an upgrade

- MySQL or MariaDB also

- You may need to upgrade the webserver version as well, or perhaps even switch vendors

Take a deeper look at the programming paradigm changes and the magic use of various hooks.

Five things to consider before you migrate your content

Janis Janovskis — Thu, 07 May 2020 20:00:47 +0000

Five things to consider before you migrate your content

Janis Janovskis Thu, 05/07/2020 - 21:00

There is a time in our online entrepreneurial or freelance journey when we are bored with our current site or cms and would like to move on.

Life moves on and so should we

Spencer Johnson

Indeed, migration and upgrade of the current content management system is not a bad thing considering ever-changing technology space; however, is it necessary and beneficial?
Let me share with you five crucial things to consider before migrating your content, website, e-commerce platform or any other online technology tool.

Why. Yes, correctly, why you are doing that. Suggested by a friend or a new professional connection, advised over the free webinar or perhaps you heard it online, it may sound inspirational. Still, it does not provide a real answer to why? Take some time and consider all options; costs, pros and cons. Don't rush with swift decisions; your old system could still add value to your business with a small facelift.
How. What I am talking about is a set plan. How are you going to proceed with your migration, and what are your expectations? Managing expectations is as important as knowing "Your why", otherwise how are you will measure the outcome of the migration project. Think like an entrepreneur in the form of ROI (Return on investment). If needed, obtain a professional help - hire a freelance business analyst to help you with proper planning.
Tools. Have you done your homework and research in finding out the best migration destination? These days you have plenty of modern content management systems, like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla. Hosting platforms and providers do offer one-click installations and setups for some of these, expecting the minimal technical experience. Then you have tools like Kajabi and Click Funnels predominantly designed to sell yourself; courses, membership programs and masterminds created or designed by you. Let's not forget about a Shopify - e-commerce platform, Wix - website creation platform and other similar tools. The offer in the market is huge, have you spent some time and surveyed for the best suitable options? Don't be shy or timid, ask around for recommendations and listen to what people are saying, sign up for trial versions and try out, obtain professional help, basically whatever you need to make yourself confident in your selection.
Budget. How much can you invest? To manage your expectations and eventually calculate the ROI (we talked over the "How" question), you need to know how much can you spend. Well, can it be "Null" or "Zero"? Sure it can; it just means that you are consciously ready to invest only your own time. It will be a challenge, but you are ready. If you don't know how much you can afford, then how can you ever achieve a successful outcome. When working on your budget numbers contemplate on two figures; one you are keen to invest, second - the absolute maximum you can spend. As the work progresses, there may be hurdles along the way; it is worth putting a little reserve on the side at least.
Retention. How you will maintain the relevance to your current and future customers. Typically any updates and upgrades add a layer of uncertainty and frustration on top of the relationships. Do you have a plan in place to test and verify the connection of all changes and upgrades to clients? Can you check and measure the success of certain aspects of user journeys on the new system? I have deliberately put "Budget" before the "Retention", as former will define the latter. If resources are plenty, create a test environment and invite some users to try out a new experience. If limited; a video tutorial may help out to keep users updated with latest changes, a pre-launch email campaign may lessen the release tension and prepare users accordingly. The bottom line is; users, have to have the same level of belief as you have that new system will serve them better.

Hope this list of five things have helped you to prepare better for content and platform migration.

5 Incredibly Useful Leadership Lessons Learned Working On Open Source Projects

Janis Janovskis — Sun, 29 Sep 2019 20:02:41 +0000

5 Incredibly Useful Leadership Lessons Learned Working On Open Source Projects

Janis Janovskis Sun, 09/29/2019 - 21:02

Open-source software projects are fun, and they provide you with freedom of choices and creativity. However, it may come at a price.

The year 2019 marks my tenth anniversary for open-source software projects. I must admit it has been a great journey. Not only I have immersed my head into the arrays of software tools, but I have also learned a lot about the people. I had to work very hard on setting my mindset correctly from being just into the business of bits and bytes to being into the people business. Almost as Linus Tovalds - founder of Linux assesses:

In open-source, we feel strongly that to really do something well, you have to get a lot of people involved.

He's wright saying to get dome something well for the open-source we'll need a lot of people. That respectively means excellent leadership.

What are these leadership lessons?

Open-source is not a science. We are not establishing or creating a brand new theory, and we're trying to accomplish something; a piece of software that should do something great. There are no right or wrong answers; it just works or not. Your colleague gets it done in a nonconventional way, great, be thankful for that and move on. You can address coding and consistent quality further down the line.
Be teachable. You're not 100% correct even if you are correct. Indeed it has been the hardest lesson and the most challenging. Imagine getting dome something amazingly great investing long hours and a ton of work, returning to work the next day, and it does not get through. For various reasons; does not comply with coding standards, does not pass automated testing, or even worse - lead developer wants to change it. You have to keep being teachable, remember, your attitude is that what matters.
Coding is not enough. You must also explain it. I think Albert Einstein said this:
You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.
That's the point; you should also convey your work to your peers. Take a simple situation - passing it to a tester or someone else further down the workflow line; like another developer, front-end person perhaps. A clear set of instructions are vital; in several cases, a supplementary collection visual aids (principal schemas, user workflows, etc.) becomes a must.
Your jokes are not always appropriate. Sometimes it feels the whole world admires British humour, yet it is not suitable for every working context. Don't get me wrong here, the majority of devs do love fun, sometimes a light teasing is highly welcomed. However, a script that makes someone laugh on one side of the world could abuse someone else on the other side. Just make sure that they make sense.
Maintain a curiosity mindset. As we have already defined: Open-source is not some scientific theory. It is a collaborative effort; there is no right or wrong. It is not easy to admit someone else is correct. Curiosity helps you to keep a healthy level of mental attitude. Implementation is rather simple, sometimes by just asking: "Let me understand your perspective on ..." or "I just trying to comprehend your thoughts ..." would push the air out of your frustrating nostrils.

Always remember; In the open-source, it's not about the linguistics of programming it about the linguist. Leadership is vital; knowing why it becomes more important than how.

drupal

Five Drupal 7 to Drupal 9 upgrade tips

The Audience.

The tips

Tip One - Plan your budget.

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Five things to consider before you migrate your content

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5 Incredibly Useful Leadership Lessons Learned Working On Open Source Projects

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