Presentation on how to develop your own distribution for Drupal 7.

1. Get up and Running
Quickly with Drupal
Distributions!
by Melissa Piper
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2. 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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3. 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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4. Example Distributions
!
OpenPublish - Distribution packaged for the online news industry
(journals, onlinenewsp apers, trade publications)
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5. Example Distributions
(cont…)
!
!
!
!
Openfolio - A web portfolio distribution for photographers and artists
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6. Distribution Components
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7. 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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8. 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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9. 4 Files Generated in a
Distribution
• .info
• .install
• .make
• .profile
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10. Let’s Create a Distribution!
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11. • 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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12. 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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13. 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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14. 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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15. 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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16. Features allows you to export most of your
configurations as a module that can be included in your
Make file
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17. 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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18. • 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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19. • 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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20. Generated Make file example
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21. • 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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22. Example of generated Make file with missing information
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23. 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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24. Profiler .info file generation
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25. • 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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26. 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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27. • 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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28. 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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29. 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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30. Example of a distribution profile ready for install
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31. • 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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32. Example of contributed modules being installed during
distribution installation
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33. • 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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34. A Note on Contribution
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35. 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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36. • 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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37. • 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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38. 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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39. Thank You!
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