CHROMATIC Blog

Migrations can be daunting. But with the right team, preparation, and guidance, you can reap massive benefits. Learn how Chromatic can help!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/road-map-for-sailing-through-your-next-migration/

Making content migrations relatively painless lowers the bar immeasurably in upgrading or making the switch to a platform like Drupal 10.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/why-you-should-consider-drupal-painless-migrations-drupal-10-edition/

Mark and Chris are joined by Klaus Purer to discuss his proposal to create an unofficial, community-driven Drupal 7 security team!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-16/

Mark and Dave discuss how Drupal 9’s end-of-life status relates to Drupal 7 as well as recap some of the Drupal 7 end-of-life discussions that have happened at GovCon.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-15/

Mark and Chris discuss the recent release of Acquia Migrate: Accelerate and how it can help folks with the content migration piece of their journey from Drupal 7 to Modern Drupal.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-14/

Change Drush command annotations with an alterer Service instead of overriding an entire command.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drush-command-annotation-alterer/

Matt Glaman returns, joining Mark and Chris to discuss Retrofit for Drupal’s launch and future. Previously known as Drupal Bridge, Retrofit helps ease the transition out of Drupal 7. Matt outli...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-13/

Writing a great “request for proposal” is often the first step on your journey to successfully migrate your Drupal 7 sites. Mark and Dave sit down to discuss some essential points to include ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-12/

Custom modules built for Drupal 7 need your attention when you make the move to modern Drupal. This blog post provides an approach for you to follow and highlights some purpose-built projects to ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/inventory-d7-modules-for-modern-drupal-readiness/

Chris is back from sabbatical! Mark and Chris outline a series of processes to help determine which modules are most at risk so that you can take action accordingly. Use our linked PDF to audit y...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-11/

Our team at Chromatic is excited to announce the release of an open-source Drupal module and PHP Library to facilitate integrating Orange Logic’s digital asset manager Orange DAM with Drupal.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/introducing-orange-dam-php-library-drupal-module/

Install these modules on your Drupal 7 site to determine its readiness for the move to Modern Drupal or Backdrop.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/modules-to-make-migrations-easier/

While checking over some of our older Drupal 8 migration content for accuracy, I decided to fire up a fresh Drupal 10 instance and run through its out-of-the-box migration experience, which inclu...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migrate-drupal-7-into-modern-drupal/

Fresh from DrupalCon, Mark and Dave debrief Drupal 7's recent End-of-Life date announcement outlining processes to make the transition easier. Between sourcing the right advisors to pitching your...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-10/

Live from DrupalCon, Mark and Dave discuss Drupal 7's new end-of-life date and its implications. While the official end-of-life date has been extended, changes in overall support come into effect...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-09/

Matt Glaman joins us! Mark, Dave, and Matt examine how Drupal 7’s end-of-life challenges are symptomatic of a widespread approach to development. Matt dives deep into the drawbacks behind softw...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-08/

Jen Lampton joins us! As the co-founder of Backdrop, Jen provides plenty of insight into why Drupal 7’s EOL requires a multi-pronged solution for different customer bases. Mark and Jen dive dee...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-07/

Drupal 7's end-of-life comes with more questions than answers. Chris and Mark discuss the complexities that come with retiring Drupal 7 and outline the basis of the communication gap between the ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-06/

Tim Lehnen joins us! Tim is the Drupal Association’s Chief Technology Officer and is one of the voices in the room when it comes to decisions around Drupal 7’s End-of-Life. We talk with Tim a...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-05/

Irina Zaks joins us! Irina is a web developer, open-source evangelist, and the co-founder of the Drupal 7 Soft Landing Initiative. Irina, Chris, and Mark discuss Drupal 7 end-of-life, Backdrop, a...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-04/

Chris and Mark discuss the wide spectrum of sites still running on Drupal 7 and which characteristics make staying on Drupal 7 more (or less) risky. They then unpack the pros and cons of some Dru...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-03/

There’s been quite a bit of talk about what it takes to upgrade to 'modern Drupal,' but less on what it will actually be like to still be responsible for a Drupal 7 site after that date. Chris ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-01/

Drupal 7's end-of-life has been extended multiple times but is now set for November 1, 2023. Should it be extended further? Mark and Chris break it down and maaaybe change Chris’ mind.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-eol-podcast-episode-02/

There has been quite a bit of talk about what it takes to upgrade to “modern Drupal,” but less ink has been spilled painting a picture of what it will actually be like to still be responsible...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/why-is-drupal-7-eol-a-big-deal/

It is now dead simple to add Tugboat to Drupal contributed modules.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-to-add-tugboat-drupal-contrib/

The ease with which Drupal 10 migrated an old Drupal 7 site's content types, taxonomy terms, menu items and content was impressive.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migrate-drupal-7-into-drupal-10/

Your upcoming website migration is a perfect opportunity to make sure your content is working for your organization.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migration-content-cleaning/

As we wrap up the fourth quarter of 2022 and hurtle headlong into 2023, we have compiled a round-up of our team’s open-source efforts in Q4 2022. Happy New Year!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2022-Q4-open-source-roundup/

Happy New Year! It’s 2023 and the internet has just turned 40 years old. The Chromatic team looks back at what we miss, what we appreciate, what we are excited for, and all the ways the best pa...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/celebrating-40-years-of-the-internet/

PHP 7.4 will no longer receive updates from the PHP development team. Let's take a look at what this means, how to know if your site is affected and what to do about it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/php-74-end-of-life/

Given there are so many sites still running on Drupal 7 and the upgrade process is more rebuild than upgrade, with Drupal 7's end-of-life past due, it's hard to know the path forward.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/survive-or-thrive-deciding-path-forward-with-drupal-7/

What if your site is already decoupled, and you are beginning to wonder if it was the right choice? The question becomes, does the higher effort required to maintain and iterate on a decoupled si...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recoupling-drupal/

This week we marked World Mental Health Awareness Day and we’re proud to say that our half-day Summer Friday experiment shifted to perpetual summer Fridays. This summer, we took it a step furth...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/piloting-4-day-work-week/

Running build commands in parallel with Robo is a great way to reduce build times.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/parallelize-tugboat-builds/

We’ve heard lots of great feedback on the new ChromaticHQ.com so we submitted the redesign for some awards...and we crushed it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/award-winning-redesign/

How to use Sentry's preferred CDN to include their JavaScript SDK while still tracking the package version in your manifest file to allow automated updates.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/include-javascript-library-via-cdn-without-hard-coded-version/

Configuring a Drupal library's version may seem mysterious, but it is important for caching.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-libraries-version/

All the new features and enhancements coming to Safari and Web Inspector this year that web developers should know about.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/wwdc-2022-web-developers/

Chris shares why we dropped Drupal for the newest version of our website.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/why-we-switched-to-eleventy-and-netlify/

A quick recap of our new branding and positioning.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2022-chromatic-rebranding/

Many agencies view discovery as an event at the outset of a website project. Learn how a continuous approach to collaboration improves business outcomes.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/why-discovery-should-be-continuous-process-deliver-stronger-website-designs/

Hundreds of menu items can bring cache clears to a grinding halt if not managed correctly.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/managing-large-menus-memory-usage-during-drupal-cache-clears/

Struggling to keep your project’s environments using the same version of Node.js? Learn how to declare your Node.js version in a single file and reference it everywhere.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/one-nodejs-version-rule-them-all/

Agencies can create infrastructure for efficient design. Discover how a design system can streamline development for brands with multiple websites.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/design-system-for-multi-site-development/

Evaluating existing content is critical prior to website migration. Use this checklist to perform a content audit that sets your new site up for success.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/website-migration-content-audit-tips/

Google’s Core Web Vitals metrics are factored into search algorithms. Learn how website performance and speed impact SEO and page rank.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/website-performance-impact-seo-page-rank/

A design system can ensure consistency across an organization’s digital properties. Learn how to build a design system in a sustainable way that ensures its ongoing success.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/guide-to-design-systems/

Migration can be an opportunity to improve website SEO performance, editorial experience for your team, and user experience on the front end. Learn how.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migration-website-seo-performance-optimization/

The missing illustrated manual to the Drupal configuration system and the processes around it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/visualizing-drupals-configuration-management-process/

A decoupled website architecture gives your clients access to a high-performance machine to serve their business. But will that machine wind up being more trouble than it's worth? Learn the decid...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/decoupled-monolithic-website-structure-architecture/

Accessibility and performance are often afterthoughts for designers. Learn how to test your website in the design process to avoid challenges in development.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/test-website-accessibility-during-design/

It’s official! Thanks to our people, we’re proud to have earned Great Place to Work® Certification™.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/were-officially-great-place-work/

Learn how to develop a website migration strategy to overcome common replatforming challenges and reap the benefits of improved site performance.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/website-migration-strategy-guide/

Continuous website performance monitoring is critical to optimize speed and user experience. Use this approach to get started with free tools.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/getting-started-free-website-performance-monitoring-tools/

It’s not enough to test website performance. You need to test the right way, on an ongoing basis. Learn how.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/struggling-your-website-speed-optimization-efforts-it-may-be-way-youre-testing/

Having a clear process is the key to avoiding website downtime and buggy application launches. Read this guide to website and app deployment best practices.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/website-app-deployment-best-practices/

You can leverage repeatability to make website development efficient and profitable while allowing time for innovative custom features. Learn how.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/repeatable-website-platform-solutions/

This article examines the advantages and disadvantages of using Docker and Lando for local development on MacOS machines in comparison to a native LAMP stack set-up. It raises questions, looks in...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/docker-macos-not-so-fast/

I am excited to share that starting in May, Chromatic will begin offering a new “experimental” benefit for our team: “Summer Fridays.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/summer-friday-experiment/

Do you love the developer experience of NextJS? Or want to enjoy the benefits of a static site generator but prefer Vue over React? NuxtJS might be the framework for you!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/nuxtjs-nextjs-vue-cousin/

We decided to look back at a tough 2020 and to choose our favorite pull request comments.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2020-top-10-pr-comments/

We have been using Robo as our task runner of choice on PHP projects for some time now. Over time our set of Robo commands has grown, and often they are quite similar across different projects ca...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/sharing-robo-commands-across-repos/

In this blog post you will learn the basics of live templates in PHPStorm and keyboard shortcuts to avoid repetitive typing while coding.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/intro-phpstorm-live-templates/

A quick win for your Friday afternoon. Dave leveraged a couple of open source projects to add a mute status to his menu bar.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/quick-win-zoom-mute-status-macos-menubar/

Here are some of our top distributed team articles containing extremely useful information for working as part of a remote team or with remote clients.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/best-distributed-teams/

We’re not the first to take one of the most popular React frameworks for a spin around the block, but we are definitely glad we did. GatsbyJS comes packed with easy to use features and plugins.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/gatsbyjs-easier-react-framework/

Enough people have asked me how I went to school full-time while working full-time, that I thought I’d write up a few of my lessons learned.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/5-things-learned-while-getting-my-degree-while-working-fulltime/

Sharing content across multiple sites with a publishing platform offers tremendous opportunities, but it isn’t always easy. Understanding the editorial and technical hurdles is key to creating ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/edit-once-publish-many-smart-strategies-content-sharing/

Oftentimes we hear people’s problems and want to do something to fix it and relieve that person of their burden. However, I have had to learn that sometimes all a person needs is to talk an iss...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/listening-action-item/

With noses to the grindstone, our team and our clients speak and write in vocabularies that, when pulled into an unfamiliar context, are dynamic music groups poised to go platinum.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/accidental-band-names/

Comparing Drupal template overrides with their counterparts in the base theme doesn’t have to be hard.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/introducing-template-diff-module/

Today we are releasing version 1.0 of our (https://github.com/marketplace/actions/platform-sh-database-backup-and-s3-sync) that will allow you to take a database dump from a site hosted on (https...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/github-action-platformsh-database-dump-and-sync-s3/

Managing Drupal configuration and keeping it in sync requires attention to detail and process. Automation can add to the problem, but also solve it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/managing-drupal-configuration-automated-checks/

Learn how Ansible can be used to standardize and automated Drupal deployments.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/automating-and-standardizing-drupal-deployments-ansible/

With security breaches proliferating in recent years, it’s more important than ever to protect your users and applications by implementing Two-Factor Authentication (2FA) which was developed to...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/implement-2fa-now/

Composer 2 RC2 is now in the wild and the official release of 2.0 is (https://github.com/composer/composer/releases/tag/2.0.0-RC2). This is exciting for anyone who has complained about Composer�...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/preventing-conflicts-when-upgrading-composer-2/

Our guide to improving website performance when using third-party assets.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/limiting-influence-thirdparty-code/

Web security depends on following boring ole’ best practices, like keeping your software up-to-date. This makes it fairly dull, unlike Hollywood portrayals of IT security. However, if disaster ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/common-security-vulnerabilities-how-prevent-them/

One of Tugboat’s most compelling features is that it is _fast_, but that hasn’t stopped us from pursuing making it _even faster_. We wanted to turn our _tugboat_ into a _speedboat_.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/use-custom-docker-images-speed-tugboat-builds/

When I first started working at a digital marketing agency and wanted to refine my project management skills, I found marginally helpful articles that outlined the basics of technical project man...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-delight-clients-digital-project-manager-role/

Many of the common website speed problems in Drupal 7 are now a distant memory. Features like Drupal’s built-in Dynamic Page Cache help bring great performance benefits to Drupal's most recent ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/10-website-speed-optimization-tactics-drupal-8-9/

Human connections in a distributed world prove more important than ever. Here's how Chromatic bridges the gap.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/human-connections-distributed-world/

Join us for DrupalCon Global

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-global-2020/

We journey into the somewhat nascent realm of front-end architecture to get some traction on how it might play an important role in building and maintaining the often complex modern frontend.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/ruminations-frontend-architecture/

There is more to the total cost than the initial price.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/hidden-costs-building-website/

New to remote working? Here are some tips to make your Zoom calls the best they can be.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/zoom-etiquette-tips-tricks/

A new, open source way to see your organization's rank in the Drupal.org Marketplace.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/announce-your-organization%E2%80%99s-drupalorg-statistics-slack/

GitHub has a hidden trick that allows for sharing PR & issue templates.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/sharing-github-issue-pull-request-templates/

A detailed rundown of our development, review, and QA processes.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatics-development-qa-process/

As a long-time remote employee, the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t disrupted my daily life as it has for many others. Several years ago I moved from the city to a rural community with no access to hi...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/7-tips-working-remotely-without-highspeed-internet/

Understanding Composer's preferred install settings can be essential when applying module info file patches.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/patching-info-files-composer/

Chromatic has never had an office. You read that correctly, we’ve never had an office. We have been operating as a fully distributed team for over twelve years, and if I can humbly say, we’re...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/12-tips-working-home-%E2%80%93-signed-fully-distributed-company/

Everyone knows that “make users wait” has no place in your website strategy… right?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/cost-slow/

Composer already manages our PHP dependencies, so why not let it manage our utility scripts too?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/script-management-composer/

How hackable is the "hackable text editor for the 21st Century?"

https://chromatichq.com/insights/practical-atom-hacks/

Thanks to reviews by our valued clients, Chromatic ranks best in class on Clutch.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-top-b2b-company-worldwide/

This blog post shows you how to access your lando databases using tools like PHPStorm, Sequel PRO and Command Line.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/managing-your-lando-database-phpstorm-sequel-pro-and-command-line/

Creators and innovators are ready for the new age of no code tools and No Code Conference 2019 was an illustration of this passion.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/no-code-conference-2019-recap/

Our 2019 team retreat is in the books. We gathered the whole team to celebrate the year, enjoy time together, and look ahead toward 2020 and the years to come.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2019-team-retreat-recap/

Some advice for engineers venturing into technical project management.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/technical-project-management-through-engineering-goggles/

Web Unleashed 2019 in Toronto is a conference focused towards front-end web development with many great sessions ranging from technical to inspirational.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/web-unleashed-2019-toronto/

I will be a speaker at Webflow's very first conference focusing on no-code, low-code – or what I refer to as "in-medium" – design practices: No Code Conference.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/bringing-practical-inmedium-design-philosophy-webflows-no-code-conference/

A month of little to no plans is sometimes just what you need.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/my-sabbatical/

At the time of (https://yarnpkg.com/en/) debut, it brought big advancements to (https://www.npmjs.com/)’s performance and workflow along with the introduction of lock files. A lot of time has p...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/speeding-node-dependency-installs-yarn/

The way we often use Gulp can make our projects brittle and add friction that complicates contribution and on-boarding. Thankfully, this is an avoidable problem with a rock-solid solution that re...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/gulp-power-tool-wield-it-care/

The front-end domain has arguably reached a tipping point in its evolution that beckons its patrons to reconsider whether teams are structured optimally.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/structuring-front-end-teams/

Serving dynamic content, while maintaining the cacheability of a Drupal 8 site, used to be a tedious task. Drupal 8 did introduce a Lazy Builder way back when, but using it requires a fair amount...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/dont-break-your-cache-use-bigpipe-instead/

Our crew had an amazing time at JSConfUS 2019, a fun, engaging, eye-opening, and inspiring conference about much more than just JavaScript.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/jsconfus-2019/

How I learned to stop worrying and embrace my one-track mind.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/10-4-experiment/

JSConf is less than a week away and a solid contingent of Chromaticians will be headed to sunny California to soak up some of the exciting ways JavaScript is taking shape in the browser and beyon...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/headed-jsconf-us-2019/

Internet Explorer still covers a statistically significant percentage of the current market share (as of the publication of this post) and front-end engineers would do well to recognize its cavea...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/debugging-internet-explorer/

What if impostor syndrome isn't a bad thing, and you could channel it to your advantage.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/embracing-impostor-syndrome/

How did my time away from the company go? What follows is a recap.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chris-free-sabbatical-recap/

We didn’t leave the retreat with a ten-step action plan, but together we came home with renewed energy and excitement about what’s next and how to keep our team growing in the ways that are i...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2019-partners-retreat/

In celebrating Pride season, we decided to explore LGBTQ history where we live and work.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/celebrating-pride/

(https://chromatichq.com/users/chris-free) wrote a couple of months ago about his approaching plans to (https://chromatichq.com/blog/some-time-off). Well, six weeks have elapsed and Chris has ret...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/having-leader-sabbatical/

If disaster strikes, are you confident that you can restore your site?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/malware-shmalware/

Native observers empower your JavaScript to subscribe to events like the alteration of the DOM, an elements position in relation to the viewport and even the resizing of individual elements.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/javascript-observers-and-you/

Think about the most pleasant experience you’ve had as a client or customer recently. Making clients feel that way about their relationship with you should be a core tenet of your business prac...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/delight-business-strategy/

A few simple things to try if you're having issues getting Xdebug to work with your IDE.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/quick-xdebug-troubleshooting/

Deploying the latest changes to your site can take many forms. Understanding the steps involved and why each one matters will help prevent deployment surprises.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-8-deployment-scripts/

Another DrupalCon is in the books and our team had a fantastic time gathering with so many members of the worldwide Drupal community in Seattle. Getting together in person with a large portion of...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupalcon-2019-seattle-recap/

We often forget that interactive elements have focus states. The result is a worse user experience. Let’s change that!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/focus-on-function/

There’s a whole world of pseudo-elements beyond before and after. Here we examine three of the coolest.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/three-css-pseudoelements-you-never-knew-existed/

The what and why I'm taking some time away from the company.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/some-time-off/

Waking up at 3:50 a.m. and traveling 24 hours makes one delirious for DrupalCon.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/thoughts-tallinn-drupalcon/

We pooled together some of our thoughts on what makes for a good distributed worker, advice on how to manage working from home day after day, and the upsides as well as the challenges of working ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/working-remotely-right-you/

CCPA takes effect Jan 1, 2020 and will have a major impact on the way personal information is handled on the web.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/should-you-act-latest-privacy-act/

Chromatic has used Travis CI for nearly five years for our continuous integration needs; building every pull request, checking our changes against code standards, running automated tests, etc. On...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/saying-goodbye-travis-ci/

Migrations are fraught with unexpected discoveries and issues. Fighting memory issues with particularly long or processing heavy migrations should not be another obstacle to overcome.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migration-memory-management-batching-and-limits/

An introduction into Chromatic's compelling saga of Saving the World from Bad Websites.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/saving-world-bad-websites/

Entity storage methods are an often used, yet easily overlooked tool for improving data retrieval and code architecture.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/creating-and-using-entity-storage-methods/

While it’s not possible to learn every trick out there, I’ve found that dedicating time to learning something new about DevTools has improved my workflow and helped me debug faster.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/9-devtool-tips-and-tricks-you-may-find-useful/

Members of the Chromatic team highlight women's achievements to celebrate on International Women's Day

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-celebrates-international-womens-day/

DrupalCon Seattle is about a month away, and we're putting the finishing touches on this year's plans. Drupal's biggest annual conference affords us the opportunity to support the project, share ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-seattle-2019/

Difficulty disconnecting as a remote employee. I took a vacation and realized how difficult it was for me to stop thinking about work. This post is for anyone who works remotely and knows the fee...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/cutting-cord/

Dave talks about how he uses a Google Script to keep his personal and work calendars aligned.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/syncing-your-personal-work-calendars/

Entities and their methods are no longer limited to use within PHP, they are now available in Twig as well.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/custom-entity-methods-twig-templates/

This coming weekend is the Drupal Global Contribution Weekend where small local contribution groups volunteer their Drupal development at the same time throughout the world. This year there are l...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/getting-ready-drupal-global-contribution-weekend/

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit overturned a lower court ruling by affirming that websites are covered by the ADA and stating that Dominos could be forced to comply with ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/9th-district-court-rules-ada-applies-websites-our-take/

This year's team retreat was one of my favorites to date. My recap follows.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2018-team-retreat-gatlinburg-tn/

Participating in an escape room challenge as a team building exercise.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/trapped-room-your-teammates/

Our design skills are like a set of very sharp blades: they can help craft an exquisitely useful and pleasant experience or an inefficient, frustrating mess, both with equal precision. When we wi...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/fighting-dark-pattern/

Custom code gives you exactly what you need, but it comes with a cost.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/cost-custom/

In a society where media BOTH reflects and creates the culture, how has TV and film played a role in our work and what can we learn from it?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/10-lessons-i-learned-depictions-codingtechnology-work-pop-culture/

It’s time we question the long-standing practice of sending automated emails from a no-reply address.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/case-against-noreply-emails/

Spammers are always evolving and that means spam management is, too. Here are some of the best current spam management tools and tactics for Drupal.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/spam-management-and-drupal/

A pull request is like a product looking for a buyer. Are you selling yours effectively?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/selling-code/

Chromaticians will be at this year’s Decoupled Drupal Days event in New York City. Come say _‘hi’_, and check out our joint presentation on Meredith’s Multi-Tenant Platform.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-presents-decoupled-drupal-days-nyc/

A deeper look into the steps of booking, planning and preparing yourself for international (and domestic) travel, while working and staying connected.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/workcation/

In this final post of a series about Application Performance Monitoring (APM), we dive into what APM options are available and what kind of APM solution suits your budget.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/application-performance-monitoring-options-everyone/

How to use your production deployment automation strategies to build local development infrastructure.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/deploy-everywhere/

As our technology stacks and tools evolve, one of the biggest concerns for all of us involved in building and maintaining web applications is and remains performance. Let's take a look at how per...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/application-performance-monitoring-metrics-refresher/

In this second post of a series about Application Performance Monitoring (APM), we cover what APM is and why we need it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/application-performance-monitoring-what-and-why/

Keeping your Drupal site secure requires diligence - here's what can happen if your site isn't up to date.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/keeping-your-drupal-site-secure/

The switch to HTTPS requires coordination between your server, your content and your SEO. Take these steps into account.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/switching-https/

Making content migrations relatively painless lowers the bar immeasurably in making the switch to a platform like Drupal.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/why-you-should-consider-drupal-painless-migrations/

jsonmonger is an abstraction layer between your JavaScript application and a json:api-compliant server. It’s designed to simplify your interactions with json:api so that you can focus on busine...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/meet-jsonmonger-seamless-jsonapi-data-interactions-javascript/

Last week, I attended and spoke at Spec, Slack’s first developer conference. Spec was a really compelling event that mixed sessions from Slack employees sharing feature announcements and techni...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/spec-developer-conference-manufacturing-serendipity-slack/

It’s hard to believe DrupalCon Nashville was over a month ago! We have been busy here at Chromatic ever since, but we wanted to give a recap of the conference from our point of view.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupalcon-nashville-recap/

Working as a remote Executive Assistant.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/no-office-no-problem/

The shape-outside property empowers us to break out of the box that is most of the web and create awesome editorial designs.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/breaking-box-shape-outside/

Whether you're a seasoned JavaScript developer who could use an update or just touching JavaScript for the first time, ES6 for Everyone (https://es6.io/) by Wes Bos is a course for you! This cour...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/es6-variables-arrow-functions-and-more-oh-my/

The Taming Twig series highlights common problems encountered when using Twig and how to fix them.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/taming-twig-debugging/

Learn how to update your Drupal content model to use media entities without the overhead of a traditional migration.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migrating-drupal-file-fields-media-entities-without-migrate-module/

We recently helped implement a Japanese translation for a client’s site - which was a pretty sizable challenge! The site was already broken down by country, but all the countries were in Englis...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/lessons-learned-localization-part-2/

Insights on YouTube API Functions for Playback Control along with an oft-used Bootstrap 4 component

https://chromatichq.com/insights/working-youtube-player-api-iframe-embeds/

Making the review and approval process fast and efficient is key to successful agile projects. Tugboat helps this tremendously.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/testing-environment-every-pull-request/

DrupalCon Nashville is coming up and Chromatic will be showing up in full force this year! Here's where to find us.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-nashville/

Managing Drupal sites with composer brings a number of benefits. However, when installing Drupal dependencies from source (an option offered by composer), you also lose the functionality provided...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/using-composer-outdated-manage-drupal-dependencies/

Dad explains the concept of algorithms to his son's Grade One class, with the help of paper airplanes.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/teaching-algorithms-first-graders/

We asked each woman in the company, including myself, a handful of questions about searching for jobs: what made them pick Chromatic, what Chromatic does well, and where we could improve, along w...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/women-our-workplace-%E2%80%93-why-chromatic/

“Decoupled Drupal” sounds cool and just about everyone else seems to be either doing it or talking about it, so it must be the best solution for you, right? Well, maybe. As with most things, ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/decoupled-drupal-what-you-need-consider/

We’ll be attending and presenting at this year’s MidCamp in Chicago. If you’re also going to be in there, be sure to check out our sessions on Twig and application monitoring.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-midcamp-2018/

I read (http://jeffarchibald.ca/say-goodbye-to-scope-creep-in-proposals/) recently discussing scope creep. It starts by stating “Scope creep is awful.” Many of the points suggested are good a...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/scope-creep-real-it-awful/

Most of you reading this know that Chromatic is a distributed team with no centralized offices. This means that we have team members living all around the globe, and that we travel a decent amoun...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-eats-10/

It's important to keep databases (and other non-version-controlled content) regularly backed up to a remote location. By combining a little bash, Amazon's aws-cli library, and Jenkins (or cron!),...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/daily-drupal-backups-jenkins-five-lines/

Component-based design and development is here to stay and the most important tool to emerge from this paradigm is the component library. They provide many benefits, but they can also introduce f...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/questions-ask-building-component-library/

(https://www.npmjs.com/package/symdeps) is an `npm` utility that lets you define custom install paths for your JavaScript dependencies with just a bit of configuration in your project’s `packag...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/announcing-symdeps-install-frontend-dependencies-where-you-need-them/

Poor website architecture and performance planning has struck again, this time leaving 24,000 families in the state of Illinois disappointed and burdened by the crash of the Empower Illinois scho...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/poor-website-architecture-strikes-again-empower-illinois/

Kim recounts a difficult situation that eventually led to finding a good fit with an amazing new team, and how becoming remote has changed things for the better.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/ashes-growth-how-one-persons-layoff-launched-new-journey-distributed-team/

Maui Jim recently faced a major software upgrade and redesign while expanding their international presence. They had ambitious performance goals and needed expert front-end development to achieve...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/modernizing-maui-jims-front-end-component-library-and-improved-perceived-performance/

Looking into a career in web development? Wondering where to focus your efforts? Our team shares their advice for the next generation of web professionals.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/2018-advice-wouldbe-web-developers/

Summary: Test-driven development (TDD) keeps you focused, encourages critical thinking, and improves code confidence. Here are some basic principles that have helped me write effective tests and ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/principles-testdriven-development/

FamilyCircle.com provides expert advice about teens, family, food, style and home life, from the editors of Family Circle Magazine. When the time came to design and deploy a headless Drupal/Node....

https://chromatichq.com/insights/announcing-new-decoupled-drupal-project-familycirclecom/

Sarah offers some tips following her transition from college to full time remote development work.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/7-tips-land-your-first-remote-developer-job/

Some well-deserved recognition for the Chromatic team.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-featured-clutch-global-leader-drupal-php-development/

Slack makes it super easy to create and share your own theme's Here's the Chromatic theme some of us use internally.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/customizing-slack-match-your-team-colors/

Clare breaks down how to reassign nodes from one taxonomy term to another. Code samples included.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/taxonomy-term-shuffles-hook-updates-batch-api-drupal-7/

Katie's commentary and summary of her first team retreat, just days after officially starting at Chromatic.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/head-first-deep-end-%E2%80%93-katies-first-retreat/

In July of this year, a handful of the Chromatic team traveled to Boulder, CO to meet up with the (https://www.outsideonline.com/) team. (http://skalawag.com/) joined for the fun and to film our ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/climbing-rumney-preteam-retreat/

The story of how we recovered from a mysterious performance meltdown related to file organization.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/tipping-point-flooded-file-system/

A brief rundown of how to configure Drupal to display multiple content authors.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-multiple-authors-drupal/

The folks at Drupalize.me provide the best Drupal training materials on the web, so we were more than happy to oblige them when they asked if they could release our Coding Standards guide as a fr...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/announcing-our-drupal-coding-standards-series-drupalizeme/

Properly linking to pages with dynamic routes can be tricky. Here's how to do it right.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-link-dynamic-routes-drupal-8/

Top reseach firm Clutch recently rated us as a top Drupal shop!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-featured-clutch-top-drupal-developer/

After a few weeks of work and testing, the (https://www.drupal.org/project/json_feed) now has an official release. Version 1.0 allows Drupal users to add a JSON Feed display to any view and map D...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/contributing-drupals-jsonfeed/

With squash and merge, the master branch is updated with a single commit that includes all of the changes originally committed in a feature branch.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/squash-your-github-pull-requests/

(https://github.com/StackExchange/dnscontrol) is an open-source tool written in Go by the fine folks at Stack Exchange that allows us to configure our DNS records in a JS file that can be committ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/managing-dns-records-version-control/

How to reference a forked/patched npm package.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/upstream-crisis-averted/

(https://github.com/ChromaticHQ/fastly-cli) is a command-line interface (CLI) for the (https://www.fastly.com) written in node.js.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/announcing-fastlycli/

As always, Chromatic had a great time at DrupalCon - we brought knowledge to share, and learned a lot!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatics-drupalcon-baltimore-recap/

We are excited to announce the first official release of the Recurly module for Drupal 8 ((https://www.drupal.org/project/recurly)).

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recurly-8x10-released/

Despite all advice to the contrary, there are valid use cases for running npm via sudo. We encountered just such a case in our own work, and with it some challenges that made us scratch our heads...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/using-npm-sudo-without-losing-your-home-or-your-mind/

We're happy to announce the 7.x-3.0 release of the (https://www.drupal.org/project/recurly).

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recurly-7x30-released/

Adam uncovers methods of firing code on every page in Drupal 8, the right way.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/replacing-hookboot-and-hookinit-functionality-drupal-8/

All the ways Chromatic will be representing at DrupalCon Baltimore next week.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-baltimore/

This year, don't take home the DrupalFlu along with your swag and business cards - here are some tips for staying healthy at a huge conference.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-avoid-drupalflu/

How to install and configure Redis caching for Drupal 8.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/configuring-redis-caching-drupal-8/

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Embrace the Collective

https://chromatichq.com/insights/ch-ch-ch-changes-freelancing-joining-team/

Dependency Injection in Drupal 8 Plugins can trip you up if you focus on the Dependency Injection part and forget about the Plugin part. This blog post shows key differences to keep in mind when ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/dependency-injection-drupal-8-plugins/

How to understand and use some of Ansible's strange looping techniques.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/untangling-ansible-loops/

Drupal 7's Features module was a complicated way to export configuration - Drupal 8's Configuration Management makes everything much simpler. Let's break it down.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-7-features-vs-drupal-8-configuration-management/

See how a custom module in Drupal 8 leverages data visualization with D3.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/port-custom-module-drupal-8-d3js-integration/

Code reviews are not just a quality assurance (QA) process with a different name. They offer a wide variety of benefits to everyone involved, that go well beyond the inherent advantages of a QA p...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/code-reviews-are-worth-their-weight-gold/

Team morale is an essential part of work culture in any company. At Chromatic, we put an emphasis on giving positive feedback to our co-workers as often as possible.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/building-culture-recognition/

Explaining Drupal 8's cache metadata with the help of tacos.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/tacofriendly-guide-cache-metadata-drupal-8/

We're taking a deep dive into the Google Places Prediction and Autocomplete API to resolve our bug found in parts 1 and 2.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/implementing-google-places-autocomplete-es6-part-three/

Discover the hidden dynamic allowed values and dynamic default values functionality of list fields.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/dynamic-default-and-allowed-values-list-fields-drupal-8/

Working from home is difficult. Overcome some of the unique challenges of working at home while maintaining a great work/life balance with these helpful tips.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-effectively-work-home/

Below are the four primary ways that I used to significantly reduce the clutter I had with my email and keep what was the most important to me and Chromatic out in front.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/4-pro-tips-reducing-email-clutter/

Component libraries are living inventories of user interface elements (components). I hadn't yet built one for a client, but I'd heard of a few tools used to do so. What I didn't realize was just...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/evaluating-tools-building-component-library/

I've been a lifetime Mac user and a professional web developer for over 10 years and the new 2016 MacBook Pros are, hands down, my favorite Macs in a decade.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/my-favorite-mac-decade-13-macbook-pro-touch-bar/

Configuration management (CM) in Drupal 8 is great. However, when more complex configuration scenarios arise, we must find solutions to problems that core CM functionality doesn’t address (yet)...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/managing-complex-configuration-drupal-8/

Internally we talk about culture and values a lot at Chromatic. We’re hoping to start doing that publicly more as we move into the new year, and in that spirit, we are announcing our new donati...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-giving-patronage/

This is the seventh post in a series about coding standards. In this post we’ll talk about how to adhere to standards while implementing Twig templating in Drupal 8.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-twig-drupal-8/

Investments into team retreats are not insignificant, but when done right, they are worth every penny.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/annual-retreats-distributed-teams-worth-every-penny/

This is the sixth post in a series about coding standards. In this post we’ll talk about how to adhere to standards when writing object-oriented code in Drupal.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-object-oriented-coding-drupal-8/

We find that there's still uncertainty out there around upgrading to Drupal 8. The natural answer in the Drupal community is, "Yes, of course go with Drupal 8!", but in the world of tight deadlin...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/introducing-shouldiupgradetodrupal8com/

In part one we learned how implement a Google Places Autocomplete widget on an address form. In doing so we discovered a critical bug in the widget that degrades the user experience. Let's take a...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/implementing-google-places-autocomplete-es6-part-two/

There are a handful of tutorials out there that explain how to implement responsive images in Drupal, but none seem to address how to do so using `srcset` over the ` ` element. That is, until no...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/responsive-images-drupal-using-srcset/

Dave shares how his experiences doing military style endurance challenges have helped him be a better leader for our company.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/3-lessons-leadership-goruck-challenges/

This is the fifth post in a series about coding standards. In this post we’ll talk about how to use translation functions in both Drupal 7 and 8. This is so essential that it deserves its own p...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-t-function/

Learn all about Twig templates in Drupal 8 from our very own Larry Walangitan.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-dublin/

The very best part of attending the (https://xoxofest.com/) is the earnest humans you get the chance to meet and interact with, but a welcome byproduct is learning about the compelling projects t...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/xoxo-2016-discoveries/

This is the fourth post in a series about coding standards. In this post we’ll talk about why good, standardized documentation is crucial to your project, and review (https://www.drupal.org/cod...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-documentation/

Using Drush to sync databses (`drush sql-sync`) is a valuable tool, but it is not always an efficient choice when dealing with large databases (think over 1GB).

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drush-sql-sync-alternative-sql-sync-pipe/

Tap into the power of Views with a custom sort plugin in Drupal 8. Code samples included.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/create-custom-views-sort-plugin-drupal-8/

The body field is struggling to keep up as we move towards a more structured web. Learn how we used the Migrate module to extract images, create new image entities, and re-embed them as tokens in...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/migrating-away-body-field/

A developer strayed onto a sailboat and realized that parallels abound between great sailing and software development teams.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-seaworthy-crew/

This is the third post in a series about coding standards. In our previous post, we talked about code standards and why they are so important, as well as how to start implementing them. In this p...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-formatting/

Earlier this year I was fortunate to speak at DrupalCon New Orleans. I'd been working towards speaking at DrupalCon for a few years and it wasn’t until after I spoke that I reflected on just ho...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/the-road-to-speaking-at-drupalcon/

It's difficult for one tool to handle all of the different demands that developers have for development environments. I think I've finally found the right tool: Drupal VM.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/search-better-local-development-server/

Working remotely frees us of the daily commute, but is working from home always the perfect solution?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/argument-working-coffee-shops/

This is the second post in a series about coding standards. In our first post, we talked about code standards and why they are so important. In this post, we’ll talk about how to implement Drup...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-how-do-we-implement-them/

The transition to Drupal 8 can be tough for those new to OOP. Finding the correct "Drupal 8 way" can be difficult. Here's our list of Drupal 8 snippets with explanations along the way.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/digging-drupal-8-code-snippets-site-builders/

This post is the first in a series about Drupal coding standards - we’ll cover what they are, why they’re important, and go in-depth into a variety of topics in subsequent posts.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-code-standards-what-are-they/

We often wish our clients better understood what we do, but isn't the onus on us to know more about the client too?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/educating-our-clients-or-educating-ourselves/

The Google Places Javascript API is a great client-side toolset that allows us to use the same database as Google Maps to verify addresses. Let's examine the API and implement Places Autocomplete...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/implementing-google-places-autocomplete-es6-part-one/

Sometimes you need to output HTML in javascript. Drupal 7 provides a specialized javascript API including theming functions to help with this.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/javascript-theme-functions-drupal-7/

A master class in the git version control system.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/may-git-force-be-you-advanced-git-webinar/

At Chromatic, we wanted to produce a repeatable site launch process that we could share not only amongst ourselves, but also with the community.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-site-launch-guide/

Chromatic will be in full force at DrupalCon New Orleans! Our entire team will be on hand, we're sponsoring a BoF room and our very own Gus Childs will be presenting on render arrays in Drupal 8!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-drupalcon-new-orleans/

Going to be at DrupalCon New Orleans? We created some limited edition tees and we want to give you one for free!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/vintage-tee-giveaway-drupalcon-new-orleans/

We're happy to announce two new releases for the YouTube Field module.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/youtube-field-7x17-and-8x10beta3-released/

Civil Comments brings real-world social cues to comments sections via crowd-sourced moderation, and Chromatic has brought Civil Comments integration to Drupal with a new contrib module.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/civil-comments-drupal-module/

I have been using the same command snippet to import a database using drush for a long time, but it recently broke when switching to an alternative shell. Below is an update to an old classic.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/import-database-using-drush/

Watching people get excited about learning is really fun. Watching them get excited about learning something you’re passionate about? Amazing.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/coding-leads-empowerment/

Spin up a fully-functional, disposable instance of Drupal in about a minute. Try out an unfamiliar contrib module without sullying your main dev environment or give back to the community by testi...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/be-promiscuous-drushs-corequickdrupal/

Setting shorter deadlines can be stressful but can also be effective.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/leveraging-parkinsons-law-win/

See how Chris leveraged Jenkins, Drush and `s3cmd` to create nightly database backups.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/backup-your-drupal-8-database-s3-drush-jenkins/

There's an abundance of style guide and UI toolkits out there, but Fabricator shines above them all. Here's our guide on why its the best.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/get-fabulous-fabricator/

Girl Develop It is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide affordable and judgment-free opportunities for women interested in learning web and software development. Through in-person clas...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-girl-develop-it-leadership-summit-2015/

Kanban boards can be used to accomplish personal goals, not just work tasks!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/using-kanban-boards-achieve-personal-goals/

Learn how to automatically deploy your Drupal 8 code and configuration with Jenkins, GitHub and Slack.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-8-deployments-jenkins-github-slack/

Our first annual Chromatic team retreat was December 10-14, 2015, at the Alisal Ranch in Solvang, California. For some of us, it was our first time meeting face-to-face. Here's the recap of all t...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-2015-retreat-recap/

Not having a commute means more than just working from home.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/beauty-noncommute/

A great user story or ticket can mean all the difference in the world. Here's our guide on what makes a great ticket.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/anatomy-good-ticket/

In the process of redesigning our site, we decided to axe jQuery early on. Analytics informed us that cross-browser compatibility wouldn’t be an issue, so we took the easy performance gain and ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/unloading-jquery-drupal-8/

Video and slides from Ryan's latest presentation at DrupalCamp Atlanta on using SVG.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupalcamp-atlanta-make-your-site-hot-svg/

We are excited to announce that after a great deal of team effort, we have pushed a dev branch of the (http://drupal.org/project/recurly) to Drupal.org.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recurly-drupal-8-dev-branch-posted/

Building exercise into my daily work routine with git.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/git-commit-workout/

Some real world examples of generating URLs from within your Twig templates in Drupal 8.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/creating-links-within-twig-templates-using-path-and-url/

Whether you are a Drupal newcomer or a seasoned Drupal developer, you're bound to run into one, some, or all of the issues outlined below. Some are obvious, some not so obvious, but we'll show yo...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/15-common-drupal-problems-that-make-you-scream-solutions-included/

We recently launched a new site for an existing client, (http://www.theatermania.com/). The new site is the same as the existing - same language, same codebase, new database, different servers. S...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/theatermania-lessons-learned-localization/

A few weekends ago I was fortunate enough to attend my first Drupal Camp ever. What was even more fortunate for me was that it was located near where I grew up in Chattanooga, TN.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-camp-chattanooga-2015/

We're happy to announce the (https://www.drupal.org/project/recurly).

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recurly-7x-2x-dev-released/

Add PHP_CodeSniffer to your workflow to help you and your colleagues master the Drupal coding standard, and produce better code.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/learn-and-enforce-coding-standards-php-codesniffer/

Working from home means having literally no commute. Pretty awesome, right? Maybe not.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/artificial-commute/

I was fortunate to attend and speak at BADCamp for the first time this year. This post highlights the video and key takeaways from my BADCamp session.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/badcamp-2015-transitioning-theme-and-theme-functions-render-arrays-and-templates/

A step-by-step introduction to Drupal 8's configuration system.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-8-configuration-management-solving-configuration-conundrum/

It isn’t easy being a woman in tech. I'm really happy to work with a great company, but it would be great to see and work with more women in my field. So I'm paying it forward & working to give...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/paying-it-forward/

When they get long and complicated, regular expressions are difficult to write, hard to read, and still harder to document. Even a regular expression used to test for a very well understood and w...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/selfdocumenting-regular-expressions/

Migrations are never glamorous, but doing them right and verifying their integrity is essential to their success. The WordPress Migrate module gives you an easy turnkey solution to migrating con...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/programatically-creating-and-storing-wordpress-migrate-migrations-drupal/

Chromatic has been attending DrupalCon in North America for many years and we have found it to be a valuable time to interact with the community. We're thrilled to finally be attending our first ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-presenting-drupalcon-barcelona/

Parents.com provides expert advice about pregnancy and parenthood from the editors of Parents Magazine. A lot of expert advice. While already familiar with Drupal, Meredith Corporation called on ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-helped-meredith-corporation-rebuild-and-launch-parents-magazine/

Last weekend I enjoyed the awesomeness of (https://drupalasheville.com/). It was a great camp filled with positive people and smart sessions. This time around I was lucky enough to deliver my own...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/presenting-drupalcamp-asheville-2015/

Being new to the Chromatic team, I have written down my first impressions of what it's like to work for a distributed company.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/distributed-work-my-first-impressions/

Out of the box, Drupal does a good job of providing securely written code. However, Drupal doesn't enforce strong passwords by default which can lead to a scenario that is not too hard to imagine...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/does-your-site-show-user-names-and-allow-weak-passwords-simple-attack-scenario/

A great commit message should tell the reader all they need to know about the WHAT of the commit. They should only have to look at the actual diff of the commit to see HOW it was accomplished.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-write-great-commit-message/

You find an issue on Drupal.org and if you are lucky, there is a viable patch. Hopefully this patch will one day make it into a release, but this won't slow you down. You apply the patch, it fixe...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-manage-your-drupal-patches-drush-patch-file/

Color! Without it, life can be pretty monotone, so I’m going to introduce to you the most awesome of ways you can represent it in your CSS: (http://www.w3.org/wiki/CSS/Properties/color/HSL).

https://chromatichq.com/insights/understanding-and-using-hsl-your-css/

It is always an exciting day when we finally get to see our hard work shared with the world and today is one of those days. We have the pleasure of partnering with (http://www.outsideonline.com) ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/outside-magazine-gear-channel/

Google recently decided to deprecate the YouTube Data API v2, which caused a nasty bug to appear in the YouTube Field module. I was too busy enjoying the Los Angeles sun at DrupalCon to spot the ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/youtube-field-7x-16-released/

In our last post about Recurly, we gave you a primer on setting up the Recurly module in Drupal. However, if you need to thoroughly test your Recurly integration on a local environment, you’ll ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/testing-recurly-webhooks-ngrok/

We're happy to announce the 7.x-1.2 release of the Recurly module.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/recurly-7x-12-released/

As developers, oftentimes we want or need our working environment to be an exact match of the production environment. This is especially true when your project is running a complex or specific in...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/vagrant-overview-tips-and-resources/

Recently, Ryan blogged about a few CLI utilities that can really help improve your productivity. If I had to add one additional utility to his list, it’d be Vim.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/working-vim-never-leave-your-terminal/

Hosts Katie Kovalcin and Tim Kadlec invited Chromatic's Mark Dorison on the latest episode of The Path to Performance.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/mark-dorison-path-performance/

I remember when I viewed the command line as some esoteric art only used by the Wizards of the Back-End. Now, I can’t get enough of it.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/five-command-line-tools-help-you-work-faster/

If you’re working on a site that needs subscriptions, take a look at (https://recurly.com/). Recurly’s biggest strength is its simple handling of subscriptions, billing, invoices, and all tha...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/integrating-recurly-and-drupal/

This last weekend I was fortunate to attend MADCamp (formerly known as MidCamp) in Chicago. For those who weren't able to, I'll recap the keynotes and common themes from the sessions I attended.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/through-lookingglass-midcamp-2015/

We have two team members slated to speak at two different Drupal Camps in March!

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-midcamp-and-drupalcamp-nola/

If you use the Workbench Moderation module, you have undoubtedly created drafts for new or updated content. These drafts can often get stuck in the editorial workflow as they await approval from...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/hotfix-workbench-moderated-node-preexisting-draft/

Many designers are praising the benefits of Atomic Design. Rather than designing pages, Atomic Design focuses on designing systems of individual, reusable components.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/atomic-drupal-development-building-pieces-pages/

In a previous post , Dave talked about marginal gains and how, in aggregate, they can really add up. We recently made some infrastructure improvements that I first thought would be marginal, but ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/automated-servers-and-deployments-ansible-jenkins/

A very common issue for owners and teams, is shared todo lists. This topic in particular has been a struggle for the partners of CHROMATIC for some time. We’ve tried different options, with lit...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/1-github-management/

It’s hard to believe that we’re almost a month into 2015. We were supposed to have flying cars and self-tightening shoes by now ((http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/02/17/powe...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/january-month-introspection-and-growth/

This module allows users to enable automatic placeholders to textfields, textareas, select lists, and email fields within a webform created by the Webform module.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/very-belated-introduction-webform-hints-module/

In college I once had an art history class immediately after a class devoted entirely to databases. Soon enough I'd realized the combination taught me an important lesson in the web design proces...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-implement-content-first-workflow/

What if you could create hi-res versions of images without a ton of added filesize overhead? What if you could do this all within Drupal? No special coding, no uploading of multiple versions, no ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/easily-upgrade-your-image-fields-retina/

Our annual trip to (https://austin2014.drupal.org/) always yields exciting project opportunities and new connections for Chromatic.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/chromatic-adds-mark-dorison-partner/

Switching the default text format of a field is easy. Manually converting existing content to a different input format is not. What about migrating thousands of nodes to use a different input for...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/converting-drupal-text-formats-pandoc/

Drupal is awesome, but it is also infamous for having a steep learning curve. From beginners to seasoned professionals, everybody has areas they could improve upon.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/free-year-drupalizeme-giveaway/

Features play a significant role in any major Drupal 6 or 7 project. The organization of features is often overlooked, but becomes important as a project grows. Agreeing on an effective organizat...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-organize-drupal-features-reduce-merge-conflicts-and-stay-sane/

Here's a list of some common gotchas to look out for when inheriting a Drupal site from another developer or Drupal shop.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/gotchas-look-out-when-inheriting-drupal-site/

In the web design/development/consulting world, we consistently talk about vendors and the client/vendor relationship. Is this really how we want to be known? Is this really how we work? And as a...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/dont-just-be-vendor-be-partner/

Every Drupal site contains the spinning circle of progress - the "throbber". Seeing the default throbber on an otherwise beautiful site takes away from the magic a bit, doesn't it? Go the extra s...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/creating-custom-progress-throbber-drupal/

Sublime Text is the best text editor on the market right now. If you do work on the web, you should consider using it. The interface is clean, intuitive and out of the way. The back end is fast. ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/sublime-text-configuration-frontenders/

There comes a time where you sit back and look at your Drupal site and realize that you've created a monster.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/entity-caching-strategies-drupal/

I've been using (http://smilesoftware.com/TextExpander/index.html) for a while and I absolutely love it. If you aren't familiar, TextExpander allows you to create shortcuts to frequently used pie...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/how-i-use-textexpander/

A discussion on responsive Sass strategy and how to solve the common problem of numerous grids needing varying numbers of columns across many breakpoints. Can we accomplish this with one mixin?

https://chromatichq.com/insights/responsive-grid-building-sass-and-zen-grids-tale-breakpoint-grid-breakdown-mixin/

Another DrupalCon down. More memories, more connections, and a little more Drupal knowledge. Here's Dave’s take on DrupalCon Portland 2013.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/coming-down-drupalcon-portland-mountain/

Drupal development can feel a bit like "black magic" when you're getting started. Here's a high level guide aimed at beginners to help point them in the right direction.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/black-magic-effect/

Over the past year or so, CHROMATIC has worked closely with Applied Motion Products . Applied Motion manufactures and sells precision motion control products, and have been doing so since 1978.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/project-follow-up-applied-motion-products-website-redesign/

Each Drupal developer out there has their own list of their "must-have” modules. The following list is partially mine and partially that of my Twitter followers.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/10-must-have-drupal-modules-for-drupal-web-developers/

If you work with Drupal long enough, cron will hang and fail on you. It has failed us all. We whipped up a clever solution to alert us when there's an issue with cron.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/cron-hasnt-run-in-how-long/

When someone asks, "Can Drupal do that?" the answer is almost always yes. However, when a recent project required that Drupal merge CMS capabilities with Photoshop-like functionality, I began to ...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/using-imagick-drupal/

Finding a responsive theme for your next Drupal project isn't difficult, but selecting the right one for the job takes a bit more thought. Surprisingly, we found very little advice when doing s...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/which-responsive-drupal-7-theme-should-i-use/

A couple of weeks ago, a client of ours needed a simple way to select some or all options in a multiple select form element that contained hundreds of options. They asked if there was a an easier...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/jquery-tutorial-selecting-multiple-select-form-elements-on-the-fly/

Last week, I was working on some Drupal form customizations and validations for a client’s site (launching soon) and thought I’d share how you can easily alter Drupal forms. That is, if you k...

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-tutorial-form-overrides-and-elementspecific-validations/

In this post, I’m going to show you how you can easily leverage the power of Views 2 to create a simple block that displays “Related Posts by this Author” information.

https://chromatichq.com/insights/drupal-tutorial-adding-a-related-posts-by-this-author-block-with-views/