Get up and Running Quickly with Drupal

Distributions!

by Melissa Piper

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Who am I?• My name is Melissa Piper

• I’ve been a front-end developer for 7+ years

• Front End/Drupal Developer at Beyond Spots & Dots (now hiring Drupal developers!)

You can follow me at:!

@mfpiper

linkedin.com/in/melissapiper

github.com/empee3

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What is a Distribution?• A pre-packaged Drupal installation that typically

addresses a specific use case (blog, portfolio, publishing website, mobile-first website, etc.)

• Allows the developer to begin development with pre-set configurations, modules, and themes already in place at installation

• Useful to create if you find yourself always using the same modules and themes when starting a new Drupal project.

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Example Distributions

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OpenPublish - Distribution packaged for the online news industry (journals, onlinenewsp apers, trade publications)

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Example Distributions (cont…)

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Openfolio - A web portfolio distribution for photographers and artists

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Distribution Components

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What’s Inside a Distribution?• Drupal Core

• Projects (contributed modules, themes, patches)

• Third party libraries (CKEditor, TinyMCE)

• Installation profile

• Configurations (settings originally stored in the database)

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Main Components in Creating a Distribution

• Drush Make File - Pulls in core, projects, and third-party libraries - Description of the code base - A list of all contributed files that will be used in the distribution

• Profile - Configuration, installation profile, features - Profiles are used when you first install Drupal - default profiles are Minimal and Standard

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4 Files Generated in a Distribution

• .info

• .install

• .make

• .profile

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Let’s Create a Distribution!

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• You are a Drupal developer, and find yourself installing the same modules and themes, and setting the same configurations at the beginning of each new project

• You decide to create a distribution, so that all of these modules, themes, libraries, and configurations will be ready to go for your next Drupal project. But where do you begin?

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Step 1: Set the Foundation• Create and configure a Drupal site the way you want it to

be in your distribution.

• With a fresh Drupal install, install the themes, libraries, modules, patches, etc. that you want to include in your distribution.

• Create Content Types, Menus, Taxonomy, Views, etc.

• Also consider installing the Features and Profiler Builder modules (this will help us with creating our distribution later)

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Typical contributed modules might include:

• Views and dependencies such as CTools!

• Google Analytics!

• Admin Toolbar!

• Date!

• Entity Reference!

• IMCE!

• WYSIWYG!

• Webform

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Typical views and content types might include:

• Featured News view and News content type!

• Event registration view and event content type!

• Taxonomies to categorize news and events by type!

• Slideshow view

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Step 1.5: Features• The Features module can be used to save some of the

configurations that you want to include in your distribution (such as WYSIWYG profiles, created content types and views)

• These configurations are stored in the database and are NOT automatically included in your make file or installation profile

• Without Features, you’ll need to create these configurations using the Drupal API (coding each with PHP)

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Features allows you to export most of your configurations as a module that can be included in your Make file

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Step 2: Generate the Make File

• Once your Drupal site is configured the way you want it to be in your distribution, it’s time to generate a Make file

• The Make file is generated with Drush to allow for the creation of a ready-to-use Drupal site

• A flat text file that pulls in core, contributed modules, themes, and libraries

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• Before generating the Make file, make sure all modules, themes, and libraries that are not hosted on drupal.org are hosted SOMEWHERE (such as Github).

• This includes the initial configuration module you may have generated using Features from the previous step.

• You will need to provide the download URL for these types of projects in order for the Make file to run!

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• To generate the Make file, run the following Drush command:drush generate-makefile drupal-org.make!

• You can also include the —exclude-versions flag to prevent the Make file from including version numbers for all modules and themes

• Note* - Name your Make file drupal-org.make if you plan to share your distribution with the Drupal community, as this is a requirement on drupal.org

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Generated Make file example

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• In some cases, Drush will not be able to find all of the libraries, modules, or themes you want to use (often when the projected is not hosted on drupal.org).

• When this happens, Drush will generate placeholder information in the Make file and prompt you to fill in the missing information (such as download URL and download type)

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Example of generated Make file with missing information

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Step 3: Generate Profile

• You can use the Profiler Builder module to generate the .info, .install, and .profile files

• Note* - Profile Builder also generates the Make file, but I find it more efficient to generate my own Make file if I’m including projects not hosted on drupal.org

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Profiler .info file generation

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• The Profiler Builder module will generate and automatically download the .info, .install, .profile, and .make files into a tarbell (tar.gz) download

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Step 4: Making the Make File• Once you have generated your make and profile

files, you’re ready to test your new distribution!

• Create a new directory and database for your test site

• Copy and paste your drupal-org.make Make file into the new directory

• In your new directory, run the Drush command: drush make drupal-org.make

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• Running the Make file will ask if you want to create a new site in this present directory

• After entering “y” (yes), you will Drupal core, contributed modules, themes, and libraries being downloaded into the current directory

• If all downloads complete successfully, you will have a ready-to-install download of Drupal core in your new directory. If any errors are encountered along the way, the download will stop

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Step 5: Adding the Profile• In your new directory, navigate to the Profiles directory

• In the Profiles directory, create a new directory named the same as the .profile, .install, and .info files that were generated from the Profiler Builder module (for instance, if your .info file is named blue_drop_dist.info, name your directory blue_drop_dist)

• Copy and paste your .profile, .install, and .info files into this directory

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Step 6: Install Your Distribution!

• Navigate to your distribution directory in your browser. You will be redirected to the Drupal installation screen

• When selecting your profile, in addition to the default Standard and Minimal profiles, you should see the name and description of your distribution!

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Example of a distribution profile ready for install

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• With your distribution selected, continue with installation as normal

• As your distribution installs, you will see the modules and themes that you included in your Make file being installed as well

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Example of contributed modules being installed during distribution installation

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• Once installation is complete, you should be able to use the new site with the modules, themes, and libraries that you included in your distribution.

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A Note on Contribution

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Sharing Your Distribution• You can share your finished distribution on sites

such as Github, or contribute your distribution on drupal.org

• If sharing your contribution on drupal.org, there are a few guidelines that you must follow, such as:

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• Name your make file “drupal-org.make”

• Install drupal.org drush extension (https://www.drupal.org/project/drupalorg_drush)

• Verify the make file drush verify-makefile

• Create a sandbox project page on drupal.org

• Push your distribution to the sandbox project page with Git

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• If this is your first time contributing on drupal.org, you will need to submit your project for approval before it can be released to the community as a full project.

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Example Distribution

• The distribution used as an example in this presentation, The Blue Drop MFD (mobile-first distribution), can be downloaded from my Github account:

• https://github.com/empee3/the_blue_drop_mobile_first_distribution

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Thank You!

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