Set up faceted Apache Solr search on Drupal 8 (2016 - deprecated)
Note : A lot has changed in Drupal 8 and the Search API module ecosystem since this post was written in May 2016... I wrote a new blog post for Faceted Solr Search in Drupal 8 , so please read that if you're just getting started. I'm leaving this up as a historical reference, as the general process and architecture are the same, but many details are different.
In Drupal 8, Search API Solr is the consolidated successor to both the Apache Solr Search and
Latest DIY project: Fireplace/Chimney removal for a nicer living room
Every year, my wife and I try to tackle one or two large projects to improve our house and make it a more functional space for our growing family. This year, we decided to remove a giant brick chimney/fireplace that took up 30 square ft. of floor space both in the basement and on the main floor. With the regained space, we installed a TV/media center on the wall that had the fireplace, and arranged the room to have more seating so we could do more family activities
Migrate a custom JSON feed in Drupal 8 with Migrate Source JSON
June 2016 Update: Times change fast! Already, the
migrate_source_jsonmodule mentioned in the post has been (mostly) merged directly into themigrate_plusmodule, so if you're building a new migration now, you should use themigrate_plusJSON plugin if at all possible. See Mike Ryan's blog post Drupal 8 plugins for XML and JSON migrations for more info.
Recently I needed to migrate a small set of content into a Drupal 8 site from a JSON
Drupal VM - DrupalEasy Podcast and DrupalCon NOLA BoF
As Drupal VM has passed 500 stars on GitHub, and is becoming a fairly mature environment for local development environmentâespecially for teams of Drupal developers who want to maintain consistency and flexibility when developing many sites, I've been working to get more stable releases, better documentation, and a more focused feature set.
Also, in the past few months, as interest has surged, I've even had the opportunity to talk about all things Drupal VM on the DrupalEasy podcast! Check out DrupalEasy
Streaming PHP - disabling output buffering in PHP, Apache, Nginx, and Varnish
For the past few days, I've been diving deep into testing Drupal 8's experimental new BigPipe feature, which allows Drupal page requests for authenticated users to be streamed and loaded in stagesâcached elements (usually the majority of a page) are loaded almost immediately, meaning the end user can interact with the main elements on the page very quickly, then other uncacheable elements are loaded in as Drupal is able to render them.
Here's a very quick demo of an extreme case, where
New stores around Kenrick Plaza development in Shrewsbury
It looks like the Kenrick Plaza redevelopment is wrapping up, and the 'Lower Kenrick' shopping center is in early stages of signing leases, with an Aldi as the main anchor (nearest Watson Rd.).
Screenshot from this real estate listing on Loopnet.
At this point, it seems the confirmed tenets of the two shopping plazas are:
- First Bank (opened mid 2015)
- Walmart (opened late 2015)
- Here Today (nearing completion)
- Planet Fitness (nearing completion)
- Message Luxe (
Yes, Drupal 8 is slower than Drupal 7 - here's why
tl;dr : Drupal 8's defaults make most Drupal sites perform faster than equivalent Drupal 7 sites, so be wary of benchmarks which tell you Drupal 7 is faster based solely on installation defaults or raw PHP execution speed. Architectural changes have made Drupal's codebase slightly slower in some ways, but the same changes make the overall experience of using Drupal and browsing a Drupal 8 site much faster.
When some people see reports of Drupal 8 being 'dramatically' slower than Drupal 7, they wonder why, and
Review: ODROID-C2, compared to Raspberry Pi 3 and Orange Pi Plus
tl;dr : The ODROID-C2 is a very solid competitor to the Raspberry Pi model 3 B, and is anywhere from 2-10x faster than the Pi 3, depending on the operation. The software and community support is nowhere near what you get with the Raspberry Pi, but it's the best I've seen of all the Raspberry Pi clones I've tried.
The original Raspberry Pi was the first mass-market 'single board' computer that kicked off a small computing
Use Drupal 8 Cache Tags with Varnish and Purge
Over the past few months, I've been reading about BigPipe, Cache Tags, Dynamic Page Cache, and all the other amazing-sounding new features for performance in Drupal 8. I'm working on a blog post that more comprehensively compares and contrasts Drupal 8's performance with Drupal 7, but that's a topic for another day. In this post, I'll focus on cache tags in Drupal 8 , and particularly their use with Varnish to make cached content expiration much easier than it ever
