Tagged Drupal

Successfully Migrating Bad Data in Drupal

There’s bad data everywhere, but nowhere is it more insidious than when you encounter it for the first time while trying to migrate a website. Bad data, in this case, is defined as any data that doesn’t conform to the expectations of the migrator and their code, whether that’s because of bad data entry, surprising contextual requirements, or historical changes in value patterns. It can come at you from a variety of directions and can have surprising origins.

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How to use Hooks for building Drupal 8 themes

For this article, we enlisted front end developer, Abby Milberg, to give us a little inspiration for Drupal 8 theme building. Abby is the expert here, so I'll let her take it away.

What is a preprocess function?

A preprocess function creates or modifies variables and render arrays (arrays of data structured in specific ways that Drupal knows how to render as HTML) before they’re rendered and/or passed to a template.

Hook42 Team
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Hook 42 Earns Five Stars in First Review on Clutch

If you run a business or other organization with any online presence at all, you’ve probably hit a point where you wondered why Drupal and WordPress are so important. Building a CMS-based website isn’t as simple as download-and-play. Savvy site owners know that it’s best to rely on the expertise of experienced web developers to implement the appropriate solutions. Hook 42 offers developers versed in Drupal 7, Drupal 8, WordPress, Gatsby and more.

Hook42 Team
clutch 5 stars

Getting Started With Developer Environments

Getting started in Drupal, WordPress, or Backdrop website development can have a steep learning curve involving a lot of different parts of the system. Not only do we need to learn how to edit the code for the website, but we need a place where we can safely practice and make mistakes. We need to be able to run websites on our own computers, and we need good tools (applications) that can help us learn. That collection of tools is commonly called a “local development environment”, and this blog post is meant to provide an overview of some tools we like to use here at Hook 42.

developer setting up work environment on three screens

Speaker Notes: Attending DrupalCon as a Presenter

DrupalCon 2019 was a bit different for me. I have attended previous DrupalCons, usually sitting in the back of the room just taking in all that I could from experts around the world. This year, however, I had the opportunity to be a speaker. Not only was I afforded the opportunity to speak, but I had two separate sessions accepted.
Ryan Bateman presenting at DrupalCon

Multilingual Drupal Installations

It may seemingly be a small world, but there is more than one method of communication used around the world. If your business works internationally or within a community with non-English speakers, going multilingual is probably a strategic next step for your team. Reaching all of your potential users far outweighs narrowing the reach to a specific community. At Hook 42, we can configure your existing Drupal website for multilingual support or build one from the ground up.

Multilingual Technique

Making a Drupal website handle multiple languages might be easy in theory. You just translate the copy and you're good to go, right? Unfortunately, not so much. Making sure all the modules work in harmony can be trickier than expected. Depending on the CMS, you might need to install a large number of community modules or plugins in addition to updating existing modules and custom code.

For multilingual Drupal projects, Hook 42 focuses on:

  • Identifying what content needs translation and what does not.
  • Understanding your short-term and long-term translation needs.
  • Installing and configuring the right modules to do the job.
  • Updating custom code to allow text to be translatable.
  • Facilitating content entry and manual translation processes.

Is A Multilingual Upgrade Right For You?

If you already have an existing website, knowing when you need a multilingual site can seem overwhelming and a bit confusing. However, just having the thought of transitioning to a multilingual site likely means you are ready to upgrade. If you know your services can, or will, reach a broader audience than your primary language of communication, you'll want to make sure you can expand your digital experience to match the growth of your business.

At Hook 42, we understand that there are a variety of factors that come in to play when it comes to making an existing website compatible with other languages. Our experience with Drupal multilingual environments helps us analyze the current condition of your website and the complexity of integrating a multilingual experience for your users. 

Ready to Make Your Website Multilingual?

Updating an existing site might be straightforward or extremely hard depending on your Drupal site architecture. The first step is doing a site audit to assess the level of difficulty involved in your transition. Throughout the process Hook 42 can help you answer questions about what it takes to make your website multilingual, and provide a strategy to implement and roll-out a multilingual experience.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Making your site easily visible to search engines is an incredibly important step of your website's design and development. Search engines are the masters, so to make sure your site serves you well you'll want to play by their rules.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is tricky because it involves many factors that may evolve over time, but continuously optimizing your website to comply to these standards will increase your visibility online. Creating a way for users to find you through a search platform is integral to your website traffic. Enhancing your SEO will help you provide them a path to your website.

Hook 42 can help you achieve your goals by auditing your existing site for SEO and providing feedback. Our team can also configure your Drupal or WordPress site to follow SEO best practices.

Full Search Engine Optimization Coverage

The Hook 42 team focuses on both on-page and on-site SEO. We cover common concerns like:

  • Do you have the right modules installed?
  • Are your modules configured correctly?
  • Do you have good URLs and meta tags?
  • Are the search engines finding and indexing your content?
  • Do you have duplicate content?
  • Is your internal linking strategy sound?
  • Do you have broken links?
  • Do you have missing content or broken redirects?

Do You Want to Improve Your SEO?

Our team is all hands on deck waiting for the call. Our SEO tuning can happen on existing sites or part of a larger migration or development effort. Don't worry, we only implement "White Hat" SEO techniques.

Full-service Drupal Development

Hook 42 is a talented team of architects and developers who work with you to create exceptional Drupal sites with best practices and optimized performance, while remaining focused on your business needs.

We have significant amounts of experience with:

Hook 42 Loves Drupal

We pride ourselves on being active members of the Drupal community, and we bring that expertise to each project. Hook 42 is one of the top contributing companies on Drupal.org, and because of this we know both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 inside out. Hook 42 and many of our developers maintain public Drupal projects related to security, performance, and user interface improvements. Additionally, our team members participate in many of the Drupal 8 and Drupal 9 core discussions that help drive the future of the Drupal project.

Beyond helping build the software, our team is actively involved in the growth of Drupal in many ways. We attend and help organize many community events. We provide events with training sessions on the latest technologies and presentations that share our experiences working with Drupal and other technologies. We enjoy every aspect of the Drupal community.

Custom Drupal Solutions for Business

Hook 42 has decades of experience developing websites and applications with Drupal. From simple websites to intranets and “ambitious digital experiences”, we are experts in tackling a wide range of complex and simple problems -- and we enjoy the uniqueness that comes with each. Hook 42 Drupal developers are experts in writing secure Drupal modules, performant Drupal themes, and creating scalable content solutions that can grow alongside your business.

Understanding the benefits and pitfalls of working with an open-source product is very important. Weighing those options against your goals and business needs is perhaps the most important part of any successful project. At Hook 42, we make responsible decisions about the technologies that shape your business today to help ensure your future growth.

We take the responsibility of being a true and valuable partner to your business very seriously. You can rely on our experience and dedication to quality for any aspect of your Drupal project.

I’ve hired Hook 42 for three different projects in the last six years, and in each case the quality, thoroughness, helpfulness, dedication, knowledge, and perspective that they brought to the project has been a game changer. Next time I look for a Drupal project partner, I will look to Hook 42 first.

KEN WOLF

Want to Know More About Hook 42 and Drupal?

Whether you’re looking for a reliable development team, need help determining if Drupal is a good fit for your project, or just want to learn more about Drupal and our community in general, reach out and say hi! We're always excited to work with people and businesses to help ensure they have the best Drupal experience possible. Together we can go far.

Using Lando for Drupal 8 Core Issue Patch Testing

Drupal thrives with love and care from the community. We help move the Drupal project forward by mentoring, sharing knowledge, helping with drupal.org (d.o) issues, and more. If you want to help in the d.o issue queues, you are very welcome! While there are many ways to help, one important piece is reviewing and testing code patches.

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