Drupal 7

While the phpCAS library is pretty stable, its maintainers do still release updates periodically, and every now and then one of those updates is to fix a security issue. Below are step-by-step instructions for how to update your phpCAS library to the most current, secure version.

For this example, we will update from version 1.3.2 to version 1.3.3, but the same steps should apply to updating between any versions of the phpCAS library (which allows logins with GTaccounts to our drupal sites).

Location and gmap modules provide embedded Google Maps for Drupal websites. 

However, the documentation and readme for configuring both of these modules is sparse, if available. Most documentation on how to utilize these modules as a pairing exist in knowledgebase entries and bug reports, which makes development using these two modules a chore.

Installing and configuring these modules takes a few main steps.

Below is SQL code that prints out SQL statements that you can copy and paste back into phpMyAdmin (or any MySQL management tool that can connect to your Drupal database).  These statements will help you get a list of enabled modules, when you need to check multiple Drupal 6 or 7 databases at one time.

With thanks to Aaron Brown on DBA.stackexchange for the basic code.

A shell script that prints out a list of enabled modules in all accessible databases, designed for ssh use when you need to check multiple Drupal 6 or 7 databases at one time.

Editor's Note:  A similar concept would work just as well for Drupal 8, but the database table names and structures have changed in Drupal 8, so you would need to adjust the script accordingly.  Also, be aware that this script will not work on any Drupal instance where you have used a custom table prefix for all of your Drupal site tables.

If you'd like the look and feel of your body text field to better mimic the look and feel of your site's theme when editing pages then you'll need to configure the CSS settings for the appropriate CKEditor profiles to use your theme's CSS.

The GT theme includes some pre-set design treatments for blocks (see lists below of "Body styles" and "Title styles").

All versions of the new GT Theme include the CSS to display these design treatments for blocks, or "block styles". However, you have to manually add these styles to your site via the GT Tools settings to make them available as options when adding/editing blocks.

Running updates on OIT Web Hosting is essential to ensuring that your site remains safe and responsive to every user. The preferred method of running updates is through Installatron, a server application which manages installed web applications on a hosting account.

Update Check

By default, Installatron will check for core updates in one of two ways:

Editor's Note:  The following information is rather outdated, but believe it or not, there are still a few sites out there that are running version 1 of the GT Theme.  Our current-day recommendation for anyone running that theme is to strongly consider just rebuilding your site from scratch with a fresh copy of Drupal 9, as if your theme is that much out-of-date (version 2 was released in late 2013), your content and other site structures are also likely to be pretty out-of-date as well.

Editor's Note: Node Convert has not been ported to Drupal 8, but a replacement module called Convert Bundles is under development.  At the time of writing, Convert Bundles was still in alpha testing, so it isn't ready for prime time yet, but is worth watching for future developments.

The Node Convert module can be used to switch between different page layouts without losing existing content.  One example is changing a Basic page so that it uses a Horizontal Landing Page layout.

Editor's Note: The following was written for Drupal 7, but should work as described under Drupal 10.  The one main difference is that Drupal 10 does not have a "master" view, but you could have "block" or other types of views.  Just make sure you're editing the view to which you want to apply a contextual filter.

Contextual filters in Views are powerful, but getting them to work perfectly can be a nightmare. This will hopefully save some people from the headaches I had.