Drupal (core)

Firas Ghunaim June 24, 2019 When seven out of the world’s top ... [More] 10 universities choose Drupal as their preferred partner in the vital task of creating and maintaining their websites, it’s safe to assume that the platform has much to offer even the best universities. A good website saves on costs and optimizes the user experience of its visitors. All told, it’s a vital asset that few organizations can be without. In this article, we’ll be going through the top 10 universities that built their websites using Drupal, an open source platform known for producing remarkable digital experiences. Drupal’s scalability and capacity for large amounts of content make it the number one choice for top universities all over the world.   1. Oxford University In a fast-paced environment where broad functionality is key, Oxford University’s website is a testament to Drupal’s ability to host multiple sites and tasks while letting each department have control of its own web presence. From information on admissions and university research to current news & events, the Oxford University website is a one-stop platform where faculty, students, and alumni alike can stay in the loop when it comes to life both on and off-campus.   2. Harvard University The words ‘Ivy League’ call to mind a certain sense of prestige and tradition. Harvard University’s website brings these features to life with a distinct look and feel that communicates the Harvard brand to visitors right from the homepage. Drupal’s friendly user interface enables Harvard administrators to design pages, host media, and post content in a way that allows branding consistency across the entire site.   3. MIT Best known for its programs in engineering and the hard sciences, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology maintains a competitive culture, encouraging its undergraduates to pursue their own original research. Like all sites built on Drupal, The MIT website is strikingly well-equipped for site protection and data privacy. Institutions like MIT, which work hard to preserve the safety of their student and faculty records, trust the Drupal CMS for eliminating the risk of breaches. In fact, many corporations, non-government organizations, and state agencies choose Drupal for its strong safety and security capabilities.   Case Study: Georgetown University (Qatar)   4. Stanford University Higher education websites tend to require different access privileges for a wide range of contributors, and Stanford University’s website demonstrates Drupal’s ability to provide ease of management and sharing content across various portals and sites. The Stanford website features a significant amount of content from its many offices and departments.   5. Duke University Duke University takes pride in being a global institute of learning that houses perspectives from all over the world. The university ensures that this core belief translates into their online presence by building their website with Drupal, a CMS known for catering to a multilingual demographic. Since Drupal operates in more than 110 languages, the platform provides an outstanding translation module that enables higher education institutions such as Duke University to cater to the global needs of their students and faculty.   6. UCLA UCLA is known for advancing knowledge and addressing social needs by fostering an environment full of diverse perspectives. The university extends the pursuit of these goals to their website, which houses rich content that’s accessible to all. The UCLA website demonstrates how Drupal makes reusing and circulation content quick and easy. After the creation of a particular bit of content, website users are able to circulate it effortlessly through departments, intranets, and subsites.   Case Study: Awa2el – Education Community   7. University of Arizona Drupal allows for powerful collaboration that supports both educational and research departments. As the University of Arizona prides itself on being a global and student-centered university, its website enables its faculty and students to access manuals, procedural forms, and research updates with no fuss or frills. The University of Arizona’s website remains to be one of their key tools in the pursuit of their goal of community-wide collaboration to help solve critical challenges we face today.   8. Penn State A major public university that serves Pennsylvania and the global community, Penn State aims to make its online presence widely accessible. Built with Drupal, the Penn State website allows for responsive mobile access. In an always-on, mobile-first environment, the Penn State website paves way for great and functional communication that translates across all kinds of mobile devices.   9. University of British Columbia With the university’s purpose of pursuing excellence in research to foster global citizenship, the University of British Columbia continuously works for the advancement of a sustainable and just society across the globe. One of their most crucial tools in this regard is a website that hosts rich content on their core institutional objectives and accomplishments. Drupal allows the UBC website to access a wide range of people across different communities by enabling seamless integration from their website to different social media platforms.   Case Study: King’s Academy    10. University of Toronto In the same way that Drupal allows non-experts to easily create and manage amazing websites, the platform also enables the creation of websites with sophisticated and user-friendly journeys. The University of Toronto’s website demonstrates Drupal’s ability to allow for a platform that’s deceptively easy to navigate and browse through. For institutes of higher education, this feature matters greatly as users ought to have an easy time accessing information on a university’s website. Drupal continually demonstrates high levels of functionality, security, scalability, and flexibility in every way, and it’s no surprise, then, that Drupal is considered the foremost platform for developing higher education websites. Finally, it’s worth mentioning that universities looking to use Drupal to jump-start their digital presence or revamp an existing website should consult with experts for a comprehensive assessment of where to begin. The platform is intuitive, but expert guidance can go a long way when making a digital transformation. Read more: 3 Benefits That Higher Education Gains From Disruption   [Less]

We’re announcing a series of articles about Drupal 8 best practices and the first article is dedicated to best theming practices. Here our developer Artyom shares his experience in integrating dynamic imports, splitting code into small chunks in ... [More] Drupal 8, and writes a webpack plugin that automatically connects these chunks with Drupal.   Read the article. [Less]

The summer of 2019 gave a reason for the Delhiites to rejoice. This time as one of the most conspicuous open source technology events of India, DrupalCamp was back after a sabbatical of two years, in Delhi.

Starting a new Drupal 8 project? And the first thing you might do is to install a module, but which one first. There are a few obvious ones to install and sometimes these have no relation with the functionality of your project but they always help you in the background.

APIGEE recently announced - from May 31, 2020, Apigee-sponsored hosting for Drupal-based portals will end. The existing customers who wish to remain on Drupal 7 need to assume hosting responsibility, they can either migrate to Drupal 8 or move to Apigee's integrated portal.

How to Upgrade to Drupal 9: Just Identify and Remove Any Deprecated Code from Your Website radu.simileanu Fri, 06/21/2019 - 15:01 This is no news anymore: preparing to upgrade to Drupal 9 is just a matter of... ... [More] cleaning your website of all deprecated code.  No major disruption from Drupal 8. No more compatibility issues to expect (with dread)... “Ok, but how do I know if my website's using any deprecated APIs or functions? How do I check for deprecations, identify them and then... update my code?” 2 legitimate questions that must be “haunting” you these days, whether you're a:   [Less]

Drupal in the age of FinTech Shankar Fri, 06/21/2019 - 19:11 "There are hundreds of startups with a lot of brains and money working on various alternatives to traditional banking" - Jamie Dimon, CEO, JPMorgan Chase FinTech and the ... [More] disruption it can cause to the traditional banking systems is now a hot topic of debate in the banking conferences. Global venture capital funds are super-bullish on this front and are accentuating investments in the FinTech companies. Thanks to the burgeoning demand of FinTech in recent times, more crowdsourcing platforms are letting artists or fledgling entrepreneurs to crowd-source capital from a large constituency of online donors or investors. For instance, peer to peer (P2P) lending, the high-tech equivalent of borrowing money from friends, helps in raising a loan from an online community at a mutually negotiated interest rate. Also, digital wallet providers allow people to zip money across borders even without any bank accounts using handheld devices. Amalgamation of these technologies, which goes under the umbrella term FinTech, is expected to metamorphose the way all of us use banking and financial services. And Drupal can act as the perfect content management framework for building a great FinTech platform. A portmanteau of financial technology Financial technology, which is referred to as FinTech, illustrates the evolving intersection of financial services and technology. FinTech allows people to innovate while transacting business ranging from digital money to double-entry bookkeeping. The lines between technology and the financial services are blurring Since the advent of the internet revolution and later the mobile internet revolution, financial technology has grown multifold. Originally referred to   technology applied to the back office of banks or trading firms, FinTech now caters to a broad variety of technological interventions into personal and commercial finance. According to EY’s FinTech Adoption Index, one-third of consumers leverage at least two or more FinTech services and more and more of these consumers are also aware of FinTech being a part of their daily lives. FinTech encompasses the startups, technology companies or even legacy providers. Startups use technology to offer existing financial services at affordable costs and to provide new tech-driven solutions. Incumbent financial enterprises look to acquire or work with startups to drive digital innovation. Technology companies offer payment tools. All these can be seen as FinTech. Surely, the lines between technology and the financial services are blurring. Origins of FinTech Source: 16BestIn broad lines, the financial industry has seen a gargantuan shift over the years with the way it is leveraged in the times of rapid technological advancements. 16Best has compiled a brief history of FinTech which shows how the gap between financial services and the technology has got bridged over the years. The gap between financial services and the technology has got bridged over the years. In 1918, the Fedwire Funds service began offering electronic funds transfer. And while the Great Depression was ravaging the world’s economies, IBM provided some solace with its 801 Bank Proof Cach Machine that offered the means for faster cheque processing. Subsequently, credit cards and ATMs came into existence in the ‘50s and ‘60s. In 1971, first all-electronic trading emerged in the form of NASDAQ. And in 1973, the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) built a unified messaging framework between banks for handling money movement. 1997 was the year which saw the emergence of mobile payment through Coca-Cola Vending Machine. Fast forward to 2000s and the present decade, a slew of innovations crashed into the finance sector with the introduction of digital wallets, contactless payments and cryptocurrencies. FinTech is definitely re-inventing a quicker and more durable wheel as the world continues to witness a superabundance of new ventures refining financial services with technology. Merits of FinTech Financial technology has taken the financial services to a whole new level with a cluster of merits that it offers. Here are some of the major benefits of FinTech: Robo Advisors: They are one of the biggest areas of FinTech. These online investment services put users through a slew of questions and then relies on algorithms to come up with an investment plan for them. Online Lending: It encompasses all aspects of borrowing from personal loans to refinancing student loans which improves money lending. Mobile payments: There is a growing demand for mobile payment options with the stupendous rise of mobile devices over the years. Total revenue of global mobile payment market from 2015 to 2019 (in billion U.S. dollars) | StatistaPersonal Finance and Savings: A plethora of FinTech organisations in the micro saving department have been helping people to save their change for rainy days and a whole lot of them rewarding customers for doing so. For instance, Digit allows you to automate the process of saving extra cash. Source: StatistaOnline Banking and Budgeting: Online banks like Simple reward users for using their ‘automatic savings’ service and also offer a cost-effective option over a traditional bank. Leveraging online tools, they assist users to plan budgets and handle their money smartly from their mobile devices with minimal effort to meet their savings goals. Insurance: New insurance models have been strengthening the FinTech space. Metromile, an insurance model, sells pay per mile car insurance. Source: StatistaRegtech: Regulation Technology, which utilises IT to enhance regulatory processes, is one of the significant sectors where numerous FinTech app ideas have come into light around this domain. Regtech is useful for trading in financial markets, monitoring payment transactions and identification of clients among others. For instance, PassFort helps in standardising the online compliance processes. How is Drupal powering FinTech? Organisations offering FinTech solutions need to maintain a robust online presence. Drupal has been powering the landscape of FinTech with its enormous capabilities. The launch of TPG Capital TPG Capital is one of the major enterprise-level FinTech companies which has leveraged the power of Drupal 8. One of the primary objectives for TPG’s marketing circuit was to harness the Drupal’s flexibility as a digital empowerment platform. They wanted the ability to make alterations to content on the fly and try out new messaging approaches. Simultaneously, the financial industry’s stringent legal and regulatory requirements called for a flexible TPG platform that would meet the specific needs of the sector thereby offering top-notch security. Drupal came out as the right choice when it came to the CMS that would facilitate the TPG’s goal for mirroring their cutting-edge business practices and incorporate modern website design and branding. A digital agency built a responsive, mobile-first site. It featured newer CSS features like Flexbox and CSS animations and minimised the site’s dependence on Compass by introducing auto prefixer. Moreover, Drupal 8 version of Swifttype was built for the search component and contributed back to the Drupal Community. The launch of Tech Coast Angels Tech Coast Angels are one of the biggest angel investment organisation in the US.  Tech Coast Angels selected Drupal as their CMS of choice for its excellent features vis-à-vis user authentication, account management, roles and access control, custom dashboards, intricate web forms for membership and funding application, workflow management and email notifications. Performance improvements were made by a digital agency to both the Drupal application and the server environments which brought down the costs to a huge extent by minimising the hardware requirements necessary to run the Drupal codebase in both staging and production environments. With Drupal being one of the most security focussed CMSs, it helped a great deal in making amendments related to security of the site. Views caching were enabled and unnecessary modules were turned off on the production server. Market trends The Pulse of FinTech 2018 by KPMG shows that global investments activity in FinTech companies has been steadily rising with 2018 turning out as the most profitable year. It is only going to grow more in the coming years. In the coming years, the main trends in the asset and wealth management, banking, insurance and transactions and payments services industries can be seen in the illustration above. Conclusion FinTech is a great alternative to traditional banks. FinTech excels where traditional banks lag behind. In addition to offering robust financial services leveraging technological advancements, organisations offering FinTech solutions need to have a superb digital presence to offer a great digital experience. Drupal can be an awesome content store for an enterprise-level FinTech platform. Drupal experts at Opensense Labs have been powering digital transformation pursuits of organisations offering a suite of services. Contact us at [email protected] to build a FinTech web application for your business using Drupal. blog banner blog image FinTech Drupal FinTech Drupal and FinTech Financial Technology FinTech platform FinTech web application FinTech website Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On [Less]

Drupal 8 has been built with mobile devices in mind. It has responsive default themes, responsive admin interfaces, and powerful opportunities for mobile-friendly design. Great Drupal 8 modules are very helpful in implementing any ideas in this area.

Burnout is becoming an increasingly prevalent problem, especially in a field as fast-paced as development. In this post, we'll take a look at how you can spot the symptoms of burnout in your developers and what measures you can take to tackle it. READ MORE

Disseminating Knowledge: Drupal for Education and E-learning Shankar Fri, 06/21/2019 - 12:26 "Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision ... [More] making, it is a burden, not a benefit." - C. William Pollard, Chairman, Fairwyn Investment Company Have you always secretly wanted to spend your evenings writing symphonies, learning about filmography or assessing climate change? Studying niche subjects have traditionally been for niche students. But e-learning platforms have changed all that with the provision for learning almost any subject online. Corporate e-learning has witnessed a stupendous 900% growth in the last decade or so. With more and more e-learning platforms flourishing, organisations are striving to be the best to stand apart from the rest. Drupal has been a great asset in powering education and e-learning with its powerful capabilities that can help enterprises offer a wonderful digital experience. Let’s trace the roots of e-learning before diving deep into the ocean of possibilities with Drupal for building an amazing e-learning platform. Before the internet era Source: eFrontA brief history of e-learning can be traced through the compilation made by eFront. Even before the internet existed, distance education was being offered. In 1840, Isaac Pitman taught shorthand via correspondence where completed assignments were sent to him via mail and he would, then, send his students more work. Fast forward to the 20th century, the first testing machine was invented in 1924 that enabled students to test themselves. The teaching machine was invented in 1954 by a Harvard professor for allowing schools to administer programmed instruction to students. In 1960, the first computer-based training program (CBT program) called Programmed Logic for Automated Teaching Operation (PLATO). At a CBT systems seminar in 1999, the term ‘e-learning’ was first utilised. Eventually, with internet and computers becoming the core of businesses, the 2000s saw the adoption of e-learning by organisations to train employees. Today, a plenitude of e-learning solutions are available in the form of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), Social platforms and Learning Management System among others. E-learning: Learn anywhere, anytime In essence, e-learning refers to the computer-based educational tool or system that allows you to learn anywhere and at any time. It is the online method of building skills and knowledge across the complete workforce and with customers and partners. It comes with numerous formats like the self-paced courses, virtual live classrooms or informal learning. E-learning refers to the computer-based educational tool or system that allows you to learn anywhere and at any time Technological advancements have diminished the geographical gap with the use of tools that can make you feel as if you are inside the classroom. E-learning provides the ability to share material in all sorts of formats such as videos, slideshows, and PDFs. It is possible to conduct webinars (live online classes) and communicate with professors via chat and message forums. There is a superabundance of different e-learning systems (otherwise known as Learning Management Systems or LMS) and methods which enable the courses to be delivered. With the right kind of tools, several processes can be automated like the marking of tests or the creation of engrossing content. E-learning offers the learners with the ability to fit learning around their lifestyles thereby enabling even the busiest of persons to further a career and gain new qualifications. Merits and Demerits Some of the major benefits are outlined below: No restrictions: E-learning facilitates learning without having to organise when and where everyone, who is interested in learning a course, can be present. Interactive and fun: Designing a course to make it interactive and fun with the use of multimedia or gamification enhances engagement and the relative lifetime of the course. Affordable: E-learning is cost-effective. For instance, while textbooks can become obsolete, the need to perpetually acquire new editions by paying exorbitant amounts of money is not present in e-learning. Some of the concerns that are needed to be taken care of: Practical skills: It is considered tougher to pick up skills like building a wooden table, pottery, and car engineering from online resources as these require hands-on experience. Secludedness: Although e-learning enables a person to remotely access a classroom in his or her own time, learners may feel a sense of isolation. Tools such as video conferencing, social media and discussion forums can allow them to actively engage with professors or other students. Health concerns: With the mandatory need of a computer or mobile devices, health-related issues like eyestrain, bad posture, and other physical problems may be troublesome. However, sending out proper guidelines beforehand to the learner like correct sitting posture, desk height, and recommendations for regular breaks can be done. Building Yardstick LMS with Drupal OpenSense Labs built Yardstick LMS, a learning management system, for Yardstick Educational Initiatives which caters to the students of various schools of Dubai. Yardstick LMS HomepageThe architecture of the project involved a lot of custom development: 1. Yardstick Core This is the core module of the Yardstick LMS where the process of creating, updating and deleting the nodes take place. 2. Yardstick Quiz We built this custom module for the whole functionality of the quiz component. It generates a quiz, quiz palette and quiz report after quiz completion based upon the validation of the visibility of the report. We could generate three kinds of reports:  An individual-level quiz where one’s performance is evaluated A sectional-level report where performance for each section is evaluated Grade-level report where performance for all the sections is compared and evaluated. For the quiz, we had different sub-components like questions, options, marks, the average time to answer, learning objective, skill level score, and concept. The same question could be used for different quiz thereby minimising the redundancy of the data. Also, image, video or text could be added for questions. 3. Yardstick Bulk User Import This module was built to assist the administrators in creating users all at once by importing a CSV file. Also, there is an option to send invitation mail to all the users with login credentials. 4. Yardstick Custom Login We provided a custom login feature where same login credentials could be used to log into the Yardstick system. That is, we provided an endpoint for verifying the login credentials and upon success, users were logged in. 5. Yardstick Validation This module offers all the validation across the site whether it is related to access permission or some time validation. 6. Yardstick Challenge It offers the user an option to submit a task which is assigned to them where they are provided with text area and file upload widget. Yardstick LMS has an intricate structure On the end user side, there is a seamless flow but as we go deeper, it becomes challenging. Yardstick LMS has an intricate structure. We had two kinds of login: Normal login using Yardstick credentials And the other for school-specific login like the Delhi Public School (DPS) users. Yardstick LMS custom login for DPS usersFor DPS users, we used the same login form but a different functionality for validating credentials. DPS school gave us an endpoint where we sent a POST request with username and password. If the username and password were correct, then that endpoint returned the user information. If the username was received, we checked on our Yardstick system if the username exists. If it does not exist, then we programmatically created a new user with the information that we received from the endpoint and created a user session. And if does exist, then we updated the password on our system. Yardstick LMS is designed to govern multiple schools at the same time We designed Yardstick LMS in such a way that multiple schools can be governed at the same time. All the students of various schools will be learning the same content thereby building uniformity. The core part of our system dwells in the modules. The module is a content type that can store numerous information like components, concept, description, objective, syllabus among others.  Several different components can be added like Task, Quiz, Video task, Extension, Feedback, Inspiration, pdf lesson plan, Real life application, and Scientific principles. Yardstick LMS Real life application component pageSchools could opt for different modules for different grades. When a module was subscribed by a school, a clone module of the master module was created and the school copy was visible only to the school. School version could be modified by the school admin as per their needs and preferences. Master module remained the same. While creating a subscription, administrator had to provide the date so that the components were accessible to the students. School admin could set different dates to different components and only the components with past date were accessible. Flow Diagram of module subscription to schoolAlso, we provided an option to create a dynamic feedback form for the modules for analysis. Yardstick Admin had the option to design and create a feedback form as per their requirement and could assign it to a particular module. Different types of elements could be utilised for designing the form like rating, captcha, email, range slider, text field, checkboxes, radio buttons and so on. Students and teachers need to submit their feedback for each of the modules. On the basis of this, Yardstick team try to improve the content of the system. Also, various roles were defined for users such as Yardstick Administrator, School Administrator, Teacher, and Student. 1. Yardstick Admin Yardstick Admin can perform all the operations. He or she can create new users, grant permissions and revoke them as well. 2. School Admin It has the provision for handling all the operation which are only related to their school. School Admin handles the modules and their components and can import user for their school. All school reports and task submissions are visible to School Admins. 3. Teachers Teachers can view modules and components assigned to their classes and provide remarks to the students for multiple components and they can view all kinds of reports. 4. Students They can attempt quiz, submit tasks, view components and view their own reports. What’s the future of e-learning? According to a report on Research and Markets, the e-learning market is anticipated to generate revenue of $65.41 billion by 2023 with a growth rate of 7.07% during the forecast period. The report goes on to state that with the advent of cloud infrastructure, peer-to-peer problem solving and open content creation, more business opportunities would pop up for service providers in the global e-learning market. The introduction of cloud-based learning and AR/VR mobile-based learning will be a major factor in driving the growth of e-learning. The growth of the e-learning market is due to the learning process enhancements in the academic sector According to Technavio, the growth of the market is due to the learning process enhancements in the academic sector. Global self-paced e-learning market 2019-2023 | Source: TechnavioFollowing are major trends to look forward to: Microlearning, which emphasises on the design of microlearning activities through micro-steps in digital media environments, will be on the rise. Gamification, which is the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context to keep the users engrossed and help them solve more problems, will see increased adoption rates. Personalised learning, which is the tailoring of pedagogy, curriculum and learning environments to meet the demands of learners, can be a driving force. Automatic learning, like the one shown in the movie The Matrix where a person is strapped onto a high-tech chair and a series of martial arts training programs are downloaded into his brain, can be a possibility. Conclusion It’s a world which is replete with possibilities. As one of the most intelligent species to walk on this earth, we perpetually innovate with the way we want to lead a better lifestyle. We learn new things to gain more knowledge. And in the process, we find ways of improving our learning experience. E-learning is one such tech marvel that promises to be a force to reckon with. It is not a disrupting technology but something that is going to get bigger and bigger in the years to come. As a content management framework, Drupal offers a magnificent platform to build a robust e-learning system. With years of experience in Drupal Development, OpenSense Labs can help in providing an amazing digital experience.  Contact us at [email protected] to build an e-learning system using Drupal and transform the educational experience. blog banner blog image E-learning Drupal e-learning Drupal and education Yardstick LMS Drupal Learning Management System Drupal LMS LMS Learning Management System E-learning platform E-learning system E-learning application Blog Type Articles Is it a good read ? On [Less]