After some time with projects that hold me from use Drupal 8, it comes the time to say "Hello Drupal 8", so what about migrate my personal blog to the new version?
Basically, my goal was to be able to post everything that comes to my mind, so my need was:
- an "Article" content type
- an easy to use content creating interface.
- migrate content from Drupal 7
- integrate with Disqus for comments
- Bootstrap framework on my theme
Should be an easy task, right?
It's show time!
Drupal 8 is an awesome "alpha" software. Period. For all the changes on this new version, an alpha being so stable is great.
The installation ran smoothly, with portuguese as my default language(i didn't need to download translation files, etc) and the site was ready for me in around 2 minutes, with a nice backend, a responsive layout out-of-box and, well, a quite good default layout to start with, Bartik.
Let's go to the tasks!
An "Article" content type & an easy to use content creating interface
Create a content type was easy and with a lot of UX improvements on D7. WYSIWYG coming by default is great too, and something really amazing, for content publishers/editors is the quick edit. It's amazing how such a complex thing could be integrated in a generic way to provide every type of field with this functionality. With so many Field types around Drupal ecosystem, it's a really useful addition.
I can even imagine how much time it'll save for a lot of people in their daily routine.
Migrate content from Drupal 7
Well, an alpha version should mean something... From what i look around the sites, Migrate module will be the responsible for migrating data from D7 to D8, but it's not ready yet. I think about exporting nodes to CSV or something like this, to create an import script, but i had so few blog posts here, that i copied. Sometimes, the most dumb way to do something is the most efficient one.
Integrate with Disqus for comments
Disqus module doesn't even has a 8.x branch, so i think that i'll try to help them on this. Until then, nobody will be able to say that this post here contains a lot of wrong information.. LOL [edit: they do have a 8.x-dev branch]
And the Grand Finale: Bootstrap framework
Why "Grand finale"? Well, it's my first attempt to use the so much talked Twig!! I was a little anxious about how much of all that i learned with PHPTemplate before would simply be throw away! I read a lot of people talking badly about Drupal 8 changes, and as i'm a huge fan of OOP(i think it's really COOL), code organization and not reinvent the wheel, i knew that it could take me some time to learn, but it would be worth it.
In fact, i'm not yet so confortable with the YAML files and the way somethings are declared now, because simple things didn't work the way i expected. BUT, after an afternoon reading, testing and knocking my head against the table sometimes, i did create a new Drupal 8 theme, based on Bootstrap framework and the Cerulean bootswatch "skin".
Really thanks to http://www.mariquecalcus.com/blogs/our-first-drupal-8-theme and http://www.appnovation.com/blog/creating-drupal-8-theme-sasssingularity-breakpoint, that helped me a lot.
Final considerations
Drupal 8 is really a platform to change the web. It's really great to see that an amazing software will be at our hands in a moment where the community is bigger, with mature companies and professionals to take everything to a higher level each day.
For a test, this experience was great, seeing D8 in action and really getting my tasks done, with some minor adjustments needed, but the website is working, with content migrated and a new theme started.
See above the image with Bartik and now, the Bootstrap(you're actually seeing, but it's good to place them side-by-side):
