Backup Drupal Sites using Backup and Migrate Module

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Backup is an essential aspect for every site but often overlooked. Backup seems time-consuming and unnecessary, but when things happen, it can be a life saver freeing you from unexpected damage. It is a question of how backups can be made quickly, preferably automatically, without taking too much time. In addition, it is also essential to make sure when backups are restored, it works reliably as expected without surprises.

In this tutorial, we introduce a module that helps to provide such a solution.

The Backup and Migrate module can backup the database and files of a Drupal site. The module also provides a restore operation of the backups when needed. It can be easily installed in a Drupal site, and it is free. With this module, the authorized user can perform backup manually or automatically. Backups can flexibly include only the database or user files, or both.

When operated manually, backups can be downloaded immediately in compressed file format, or stored in a safe location in the server. When automatic operation is preferred, it can be scheduled, and the backed up files in compressed format will be stored in the server. The site can be taken offline with a notification message during the backup procedure, and return to normal after it’s completed.

Remember you should never rely entirely on a single backup solution. Things can still go wrong. The backup and restoration process may fail for many different reasons. It’s good to have a second backup system, such as at the server hosting level.

Create Tables using TablePress in WordPress

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Creating tables is a great way to display data on your WordPress site. With Gutenberg, there is a table block that will allow for basic tables to be inserted into the page. However, the tables are set to the page they live on and there is no option for importing CSV meaning tables can only be created manually.

The TablePress plugin eliminates these issues. This plugin is used to display tabular data on the page. It allows tables to live on the site’s backend and be embedded onto multiple pages through shortcodes. It also has an option for importing CSV files to prefill tables. These features allow for the easy creation of tables and enable the developers to hold tables in the library for future use.

How to Host and Deploy Drupal Sites using Cloudways

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Cloudways is a managed cloud hosting provider which allows you to host and deploy Drupal sites on popular cloud platforms. They don’t host your site, instead you choose a cloud provider, i.e., DigitalOcean, Linode, AWS and so on.

The benefit of using Cloudways is that you can start on a cheap server and upgrade as needed. You get the same features if you spend $20 or $100 per month. As your site gets more traffic you can scale up to a faster server.

The server provisioning and application management is all done via the Cloudways platform. For example, if you use DigitalOcean, you won’t have to create a separate account to manage the server. You can do everything via Cloudways platform.

The servers come configured with PHP, Apache, MariaDB, Varnish, Redis (uninstalled by default) and so on.

Once provisioned you’ll be able to host an unlimited number of Drupal sites on a single server. You’ll need to make sure your server has enough resources, i.e., RAM and CPU.

Other hosting platforms charge per site and traffic. Cloudways only charger per server and you can install as many websites as the server and bandwidth can handle.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to install and deploy a Drupal site on Cloudways.

We’ll cover how to install and run Drupal in two ways:

  • How to manually install Drupal via SSH
  • How to Deploy Drupal using GitHub

Cloudways doesn’t have a one-click install for Drupal. You will need to be comfortable with Composer and using SSH to get into a server. If you want to deploy your Drupal site via Git then you’ll need to be comfortable using GitHub.

Create Forms using Contact Form 7 in WordPress

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There are several reasons for incorporating contact forms into your site: reduce spam emails by having a form instead of freely adding your email to the site; collect user information; generate leads by tracking site visitors and creating ways to analyze target audiences; allow users to leave a message directly from your site which keeps the user engaged; building out an email list; and keeping track of user inquiries.

The simplest solution to the points above is to use Contact Form 7 in conjunction with Flamingo. Contact Form 7 allows developers to create contact forms with ease, manage multiple forms in one place, and easily implement them into new or existing pages. Flamingo then solves the issue of keeping all the information in one spot to be easily analyzed.

How to Bulk Delete Content in Drupal

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This tutorial will show you the various ways of batch deleting content inside Drupal. You may want to delete content if you’re doing the following:

  • You want to work on a clone of a Drupal site but delete some or all of its content.
  • You want to clean up your Drupal database and delete some old content
  • You just want to batch delete content for any other reason.

There are different ways this can be achieved. We will cover the following ways:

Select Taxonomy Terms Using Autocomplete Deluxe Module in Drupal

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Autocomplete is often used in taxonomy fields, such as the tags field. It helps users locate previous taxonomy terms by displaying a drop-down selection list according to what they are typing. If multiple entries are allowed, it is often separated by commas.

This module uses the jQuery UI autocomplete, implements a taxonomy widget and provides a result for multiple selections similar to the Chosen module, but without downloading a plugin.

Control Block Visibility using Conditional Blocks in WordPress

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Each visitor and customer who visits your site is unique. You will want to make the content dynamic and hide certain blocks for the type of screen the user is accessing your site from.

The simple solution is to use the Conditional Blocks plugin to change the visibility of certain blocks as well as determine the minimum and maximum size of the screens. While there is a premium version, it is not necessary to achieve the basic conditionals of showing blocks based on screen sizes or users logged in.

How to Display Errors in Drupal

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Have you seen an error message in a Drupal site like this?

When you are building or modifying a Drupal site, the error above can sometimes appear and catch us in unexpected situations, but there is nothing much you can do. “Try again later” is not going to help. What will you do?

There is not much you can do about it, because there is not enough information to go further. By default, Drupal is configured not to display error messages. To find out what caused the errors, the error message display options require to be turned on first.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to turn on error display to help you debug.

WARNING: It’s important not to display error messages on a production site. The error messages could display sensitive information such as paths or server level user accounts.

Conditionally Display Blocks using Block Visibility in WordPress

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Each site is unique to its visitor. There are times when an editor will want to hide certain blocks from visibility depending on the user role, the type of user, or the screen size the website is viewed from.

A solution to adding conditions to content blocks is to install the Block Visibility plugin, which gives visibility control to many types of blocks and additional features to schedule content visibility.

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