Drupal 8

Georgia Tech’s primary supported content management system (CMS) is Drupal. The majority of websites at the Institute using Drupal are currently on Drupal 7.

Since Drupal 8’s release, there has been increased interest in transitioning to Drupal 8 across the Institute. Georgia Tech Information Technology and Institute Communications (IC) would like to share additional information and recommendations on this for campus.

Satisfies a comment on drupal.org:

Someday I would like to spend the time to make a list of the various field types and the best way to check whether they are empty so I can stop Googling this thread every few months.

Basic field

Expensive (render) check

{% if content.field|render is not empty %}
     {{ content.field }}
{% endif %}

Note that this can be an expensive (resource-wise) check to make.

Use this page to store Twig stubs and code-samples to aid your Twig development.

Kevin Pittman has written a blog post called "So, You Blew Up Your Drupal 8 Site - Now What?" that covers multiple methods for recovering a dead Drupal 8 website (on the assumption you hadn't made a backup right before it died).

Drupal 8 has a much more sophisticated and ultimately aggressive caching system.  While this is supposed to be a good change, sometimes it really gets in your way.

Kevin Pittman has written an blog post on Drupal 8 Internal Caching for Dummies that helps clarify the different types of caching that occur and how to configure them to work to your advantage.

Many Georgia Tech websites have been built using Drupal Express (DX), which is a custom version of Drupal 7 that allows you to create a website with little technical or design expertise. The ready-made site comes with built in features and tools like news and events listings, and mobile optimization.

Migration, not Upgrading

Drupal 8, released in November of 2015, is a major rewrite of the Drupal core engine and APIs. Because Drupal 8 has changed so much, there is no direct in-place upgrade path to go from any earlier version of Drupal to Drupal 8. Instead, Drupal 7 and earlier sites must be migrated to Drupal 8, which involves setting up a whole new Drupal 8 website and copying into it (manually or automatically) the content of the older website.

This page covers the creation of different types of links using the standard CKEditor link tool.  If your website is using the GT Editor or otherwise has the Linkit module installed, then you will have some additional options as described on the Creating Links in GT Editor (Linkit).

When (and When Not) to Use a Table

Tables should only be used for the display of tabular data (data that is connected to one or more headings).

Do not use tables for any of the following reasons:

Many campus Drupal websites have either the What You See is What You Get (WYSIWYG) text editor called CKEditor, or the custom built specialized version of CKEditor known as "GT Editor".

The table below describes many of the control buttons you will find on the CKEditor or GT Editor toolbar.  If your control buttons don't look like these, you should ask your site administrator or local web developer to look into upgrading your site to the latest version of CKEditor.