Wednesday 9 December 2015

Drupal Camp Distribution: First Beta Release

DrupalCamp is the distribution, for spinning up camp sites.  Lately, as always :), I was part of the site building team at a local camp in India and after working with the team, found that all the sites were/are having similar content architecture e.g. content types, listing pages etc., except their themes and designs.

While sprinting at DrupalCamp Pune, we decided to build a site for DrupalCamp Delhi. While sprinting we realised we need  a common code/feature base for camp sites. And there we started building distribution in D8. The time we started making this distribution profile Drupal 8 was in beta 16 and we are hoping to make first release candidate soon.

Drupalcamp comes up with the 2 contributed modules fb_likebox, twitter_block for the facebook and twitter share blocks in sidebar.

Configurations that this installation profile provides are:

  1. Content types
    1. Basic Page :  For creating basic pages like about us,etc. on the site.
    2. Session : This is used for creating/submitting sessions.
    3. Sponsor : This is used to keep information about the sponsors.
  2. Listings (Views):
    1. Accepted Sessions
    2. Proposed Sessions
    3. Sponsors
    4. Students.
  3. Social sharing buttons:
    1. facebook
    2. twitter
  4. Blocks:
    1. facebook
    2. twitter

We need to just use the drupalcamp profile and theme the site.

Challenges that came up while building this profile :

  1. Contributed modules : The contributed modules stable release was not out so ported the fb_likebox, twitter_block module to drupal 8 and created the stable release of fb_likebox. Special thanks to the maintainer baekelandt for quick promptness.
  2. There was no tool available which will provide the boilerplate code, so we started with forking the standard profile and used the config-export to export the configurations. Now with the drupalconsole 0.9.9 we have generate profile command available to  generate the boilerplate code. Used the phing to automate the testing as sam specified in its blog.

Thanks to the entire Drupalcamp Distribution Team!

What's Next ?

Please join hands to release the stable version for twitter_block and include this stable release in the drupalcamp distribution.

Monday 7 December 2015

Verify your place/business at google maps


Google Maps is a service provided by google that shows the buildings/places in maps.


How to add your place on google maps :

  1. Go to https://www.google.co.in/mapmaker
  2. Click on the Add New as shown in the screenshot below.
  3. Points the pointer to the exact place.
  4. Select the Category of the business and choose the name as you want to display in google maps.See in the screenshot in below for more information.
  5. Its done. Wait for approval for few days. :)



Saturday 7 March 2015

Tips to become a git administer at drupal.org


Previously we read how to be a webmaster at drupal.org , Now I became the git administer at drupal.org. So I think to write a blog post so that others can benefit and also get to know how to become git administer.

In simple words: "Start Contributing". Git Administer privileges are granted to the users with proven record of contributions in the Project Applications issue queue. A solid history of consistent contributions on drupal.org is a must to get consideration for an elevated role.

How to start contributing & where you can contribute :

  1. Join the code review group
  2. Read How to review full project applications
  3. Some helpful tools for reviewing :
  4. Learning Sources : 
  5. if you found any problem while contributing,just comment on the below post/ if you need immediate answer you can try and find one of the git administer on IRC - #drupal-codereview IRC channel on Freenode.

Benifits of becoming git administer :

  1. You will see a new challenging case in every new project application.
  2. Your drupal apis knowledge will become sharp.
  3. Many more....

I would encourage you to learn more about that process and join the group of reviewers.

Next article:  A guide to review project applications

Monday 23 February 2015

Hack Proof your drupal site


Security of the Drupal website is a important stuff for the site owners, site developers.This blog post has my presentation at the Drupal Camp Mumbai that  intended for Drupalers who want to avoid security loop holes while writing code or architecting solutions. We delved into common security issues that ails custom code and has both vulnerable and secure code snippets.This is mostly about my encounters and experience after doing 50+ project application reviews and also a good guideline for new contributors.



Hack Proof Your Drupal Site from Naveen Valecha


Next article:  A guide to review Project Applications.

Wednesday 28 January 2015

Tips to become a webmaster on drupal.org


As recently I became the webmaster on the drupal.org and few people started asking me about how to become a webmaster and where to start. So I write a blog post so that others can benefit.
In simple words: "Start Contributing". Webmaster privileges aren't granted lightly for obvious reasons. A solid history of consistent contributions on drupal.org is a must to get consideration for an elevated role.

How to start contributing & where you can contribute :


  1. Help out in the content queue, especially reviewing Service Listing requests .Marketing guidelines for reviewing the service listing requests.
  2. Training Listing requests, Marketing guidelines to review training listing requests.
  3. Help out in the webmasters queue, Textual improvements requests.
  4. Depending on your skills, you can also contribute to drupal customizations as well.
  5. if you found any problem while contributing to above sections,just comment on the below post/ if you need immediate answer you can try and find one of the webmasters on IRC - #drupalorg IRC channel on Freenode.
If you need guidance, join the #drupalorg IRC channel and find dddave, lizzjoy, tvn or myselfA general overview about the various ways to contribute to Drupal.org can be found in the documentation.

If you have good coding skills, you are more than welcome to help reviewing project applications. I encourage you to learn more about that process and join the group of reviewers.

Next article:  We will look at how to be a git administrator on drupal.org

Friday 23 January 2015

Trust a major strategy in Security


Was looking out some good English Speaking training course website for my cousin to become a fluent English speaker.


On opening the homepage I found the section "Free trial".


I did the same thing as all guys do.Click on the Free trial link,created my account.I personally feeling happy to get the 5 free audio English lessons.
I clicked on one of my lessons link and come to the page, found the download link of the audio file.



Copied and pasted the url in the browser and the downloaded the file.
https://www.dailystep.com/en/download/file/fid/13531
Just change the fid in the url and tried to download some random file with file id.
I thought what the Shit!  
I then look around which drupal module has provided this route.After checking I got to know that this is the download file module which provides this route.After checking I assume that it might be permission stuff problem.

I found the similar permission problem on the drupal.org as well https://www.drupal.org/node/2394993

Trust is the Major Strategy in Security of any web application.We should be sure which user role we should assign which permissions.

Note: Published the post after suggesting the fix to the site owner Jane