Drupal 8 site building – Week 02
More a log than a guide, but you get the idea!
Day 1
Day 1’s timebox went on user stories and sprint goals (1 week sprints btw); this sprint's goals are;
main menu,
footer menu,
social (Twitter) feed
static content for pages
font face
Favicon
The allocated time b/w days 2 and 5 are 3 hours in total, so lets see how I fare this week.
Day 2
Started with aesthetics in the hope they’d be the easy wins.
Changing font face - fail: Googled and it appears all I need to do is change the font type in a style.css file, first fail was there is no style.css in the Bartik components folder, did find font types in the elements.css file, edited it, added Arial and nada!Went on a module hunt, found font-your-face - installed, did not work, looked up the documentation and does not show up under admin/config/settings/user interface. packing in on the should’ve been an easy win and moving to the next item on my backlog.
Favicon success - downloaded Favicon, installed and it has a configure link under extends, first module I’ve come across that links its settings/config page from the module description link from the Extends page (good UX, thank you dave-reid). Initially the .ico file upload didn’t work, thought it might be a cache issue, cleared cache (mysite/admin/config/development/performance) did not work, decided to try renaming the file name and wooHoo! it works. Decided to call it a day with a small win.
Newbie tip I took a screen grab of 'Bartik’s block regions demonstration', printed it and pinned it to the wall and added it to desktop 2 as a wallpaper - am sure over time I’ll know whats where but for the time being its proving to be a good idea.
Day 3
WooHoo, its a Saturday and though still working on a project (not really a weekend) am going to take some out for this.
Twitter feeds turned out lemon squeesy, with a work around, Twitter widget in a block instead of waiting for maintainers to sort their D8 modules out, thanks Dakku. Five mins into it and job’s done, there is a now a Twitter feed widget on the site! WooHoo! got carried away added a Twitter search box on #peacebuilding and #entrepreneurship, two big wins in less than 10 mins, am on a roll!
Next up was Social sharing, searched selected Easy Social, downloaded, installed, read the documentation, fail…. another 10 minutes invested into it... fail fail! should have quit on a win but anyhow failed fast enough to have some time to spare on other backlog items.
So over to Footer menu it is. Added a bunch of menu links but not quite what I had in mind:
Got undone on finding any attributes to the menu setup that allows for external links to be opened in a new window, dug around and found its not possible without a module to manage menu attributes, It took a little bit of time, found one that is D8 ready, and guess what... does not work! fail! Went through the Readme file nothing under admin/configurations tried getting to the setting using /admin/config/user-interface/extlink and nada! blistering barnacles!
Back on the footer menu fumbled around and wooHoo that’s more like it, now to split them out:
Am wondering if I am going about searching for modules the wrong way round for it seems like an awful waste of time trawling through different contrib modules trying to see if they are D-8 ready or not, thought there is this site that lists the status of the top 100 contrib modules it doesn’t cover all of them and when using Google the ones that do turn up are those on D.O and there is just so much noise there!
All the contrib modules I have installed and all of the ones that tell me in their Readme file that I will find config links under Admin/configurations - none have turned up on that page, and when I have tried getting to the setting using /admin/config/modulename/settings have had no joy either! this pattern suggests something is going wrong with my install! maybe!?” cleared cache too and still nada! more blistering barnacles!! I had a partial win with Footer Menu blocks, am going to take that and come back to this another day.
Day 4
Its day 4, its shorter, need to stay focused on getting a win.. need it today.
Decided to go with the contact form, was easy enough apart from the fact that I could not figure out how to edit the tables for the default form, that’s a 'nice to have' so stuck to the 'must have' scope and extended the default form as required with custom fields. It was simple, took a bit of toying around but did not need to reach out or Google any how to’s. its a good win, was quick enough so decided to take on a couple of one more task.
#OpCleanup; decided am going to clean up all these modules that don’t work, err no uninstall button, its Google to the rescue, a little strange that to uninstall the modules I have to go here: /admin/modules/uninstall and there is no link to it from the extend page! may be I am missing something here. With another win and on a roll decided to look into this unexpected error I’ve been getting intermittently when installing contrib modules:
Found a page on D.O on the issue and responded to by a colleague! hello Eric! but the details'way too technical for my current knowhow or lack of! am going to wait till 19th Nov, assuming Dev Desktop will see an update the same day and reinstall Drupal 8 and see if that changes anything, failing that will be badgering some of my TA colleagues.
Day 5
Was a washout! not enough hours in the day to fit everything! quick retro;
main menu,
footer menu,
social (Twitter) feed,
static content for pages,
font face
Favicon
Did not get to put in anymore than 2 hours over the week, got to >80% of my backlog, broke through last week's blocker, got stuck on something allegedly trivial, that's a good week! Looking forward to week 3, I'll be jumping in font first!
End of week 2 this is where I am at, not bad!
