Drupal Documentation on sk33lz

301 Redirects in Nginx

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Below you can find a couple ways to create 301 redirects for your Nginx web server.

Non-WWW to WWW Rewrite

To create an Nginx 301 redirect from a non-www domain URL to the www domain URL, place the following code inside of a server {} code block in your site’s Nginx config file. Replace your_domain.com with your actual domain name.

if ($host = 'your_domain.com'; ) { rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://www.your_domain.com/$1 permanent; }

WWW to Non-WWW Rewrite

To create a Nginx 301 redirect from a www domain URL to the non-www domain URL, place the following code inside of the server {} code block in your site’s Nginx config file. Again, replace your_domain.com with your actual domain.

if ($host = 'www.your_domain.com'; ) { rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://your_domain.com/$1 permanent; }

Alternatively, you can place a new server {} code block inside of your site’s Nginx config file and create your Nginx 301 redirects like the following.

WWW to Non-WWW Rewrite

server { listen 80; server_name www.your_domain.com; rewrite ^/(.*) http://your_domain.com permanent; }

Non-WWW to WWW Rewrite

server { listen 80; server_name your_domain.com; rewrite ^/(.*) http://www.your_domain.com permanent; }

Drupal & Nginx Reference

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Drupal and Nginx work great together. I have been using Nginx with PHP-FPM and previously PHP-CGI instead of Apache since 2011. I have grown to love the little engine that could. It has a much lower memory usage footprint, and responds much faster than Apache in my experience.

Here are some cool and useful settings for Nginx and Drupal that will help you on your way to running your Drupal website on an Nginx web server.

Drupal + Ubuntu + PHP-FPM + Nginx Configuration

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Get a Drupal site running on Ubuntu with PHP-FPM, and Nginx easily with the following help documentation.

Note: Replace yourdomain.com with your domain name.

Create the following Nginx config file in your /etc/nginx/sites-available folder using the following command.

nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/yourdomain.com

Drupal Nginx Config File

The following Nginx config file works with Drupal 7, Ubuntu 14.04.1, PHP5-FPM 5.5.9, and Nginx 1.8.0.

server {
server_name yourdomain.com; ## <-- Your domain name.
root /var/www/yourdomain.com; ## <-- Your only path reference.
# Enable compression, this will help if you have for instance advagg‎ module
# by serving Gzip versions of the files.
gzip_static on;
location = /favicon.ico {
log_not_found off;
access_log off;
}
location = /robots.txt {
allow all;
log_not_found off;
access_log off;
}
# This matters if you use drush prior to 5.x
# After 5.x backups are stored outside the Drupal install.
#location = /backup {
# deny all;
#}
# Very rarely should these ever be accessed outside of your lan
location ~* \.(txt|log)$ {
allow 192.168.0.0/16;
deny all;
}
location ~ \..*/.*\.php$ {
return 403;
}
# No no for private
location ~ ^/sites/.*/private/ {
return 403;
}
# Block access to "hidden" files and directories whose names begin with a
# period. This includes directories used by version control systems such
# as Subversion or Git to store control files.
location ~ (^|/)\. {
return 403;
}
location / {
# This is cool because no php is touched for static content
try_files $uri @rewrite;
}
location @rewrite {
# You have 2 options here
# For D7 and above:
# Clean URLs are handled in drupal_environment_initialize().
rewrite ^ /index.php;
# For Drupal 6 and bwlow:
# Some modules enforce no slash (/) at the end of the URL
# Else this rewrite block wouldn't be needed (GlobalRedirect)
#rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
#NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename;
fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock;
}
# Fighting with Styles? This little gem is amazing.
# This is for D6
#location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/imagecache/ {
# This is for D7 and D8
location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/styles/ {
try_files $uri @rewrite;
}
location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
expires max;
log_not_found off;
}
}

Symlink a copy to your /etc/nginx/sites-enabled folder. Run the following command from in your /etc/nginx/sites-enabled folder.

ln -s ../sites-available/domain.com .

Nginx Config for Adaptive Image Styles Module

AIS: Adaptive Image Style Configuration

location = /modules/image/sample.png {
}
location / {
if ($request_uri ~ "^(.+)/files/styles/adaptive/(.+)"){
rewrite ^/(.+)/files/styles/adaptive/(.+)$ /$1/files/styles/%1/$2 redirect;
}
}

Disable SSL v3 for Nginx

Add the following line to your Nginx configuration to disable SSL v3 to protect against the POODLE SSL v3.0 vulnerability.

ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

What is Drupal?

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Drupal is a very powerful Content Management System, otherwise known as a CMS. It handles all of your website’s content and allows you to choose different ways of displaying that content to your viewers. One of the biggest advantages of using Drupal is that it is an Open Source CMS, so there are no licensing costs and the software itself is free of charge. The flexibility of the Drupal as a CMS framework is what has made it so popular with developers, while the community as a whole contributes back to Drupal’s overall growth.

What one might know of as a Plugin in Wordpress, is actually called a Module in Drupal. Drupal modules extend Drupal’s core functionality in every direction possible. Whether you are looking to build a professional business website, social networking community, an e-commerce store, a multimedia driven website, or just a personal blog, there is probably a module that does the job. The best part is, if there isn’t, you can code one yourself if you know PHP, or you can find someone who does custom Drupal module development and hire them to do it for you.

There are also some great Drupal themes being made these days. Originally, most contributed Drupal themes were very dull and almost too mechanical for anyone to want to use the default or most contributed themes, but that was mainly due to the fact that it was still a hard CMS to theme back in Drupal 5. Advancements in the core technology of Drupal 6 have allowed for Drupal 6 to introduce a whole new set of themers and therefore more quality Drupal 6 themes to the Drupal community. Many of these new Drupal 6 themes are more reminiscent to what you might see on a Wordpress website, so things are definitely coming around in the design world of Drupal as well as the Drupal website development world.

The Drupal 7 release has has it’s fair share of problems, but one thing is for certain, Drupal 7 themes have the potential to be amazing with the new advancements in Drupal core in the theme layer. Building upon the advancements in Drupal 6, Drupal 7 allows themers and even non-themers to harness the power of a Drupal theme to it’s fullest. Modules like the Sweaver module allow those with absolutely no Drupal theming experience to dive right into a Drupal theme from the Drupal API and start changing it to suit your needs. If that isn’t powerful, I am not sure what is. In Drupal 6, the most powerful theme related tool in the Drupal UI was probably the CSS Injector module.

It is quite evident that there are many reasons to why you should use Drupal, but you don’t have to take my word for it, visit Drupal.org and hang out for a bit. Take a look at some of the demonstration videos and demo website available, along with checking out some of the modules and how they function through their demo sites and you make the decision for yourself. You should quickly catch on to why Drupal is definitely my CMS of choice.

Drupal Hosting

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Drupal hosting is the most important aspect of a Drupal website outside of the actual development process. I have evolved in my hosting of Drupal sites from shared hosting in the beginning to VPS hosting at this point, so I have plenty of stories to tell for each type of service available. All of my reviews are unpaid and written upon my full evaluation of the service. Some hosting services have been provided free hosting accounts in order to provide ability to review their service without me having to pay for it, so apparently my opinion counts at this point. Drupal hosting reviews where hosting accounts were provided and not purchased will be attributed at the end of the review if applicable.

Drush

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Drush is the Drupal Shell utility. It allows Drupal developers to control many aspects of a Drupal installation through command line commands. Drush allows for easy installation of new projects on a Drupal site, including downloading and enabling the projects on the site. Drush also allows for easy installation of 3rd party libraries into the sites/all/libraries folder. Outside of core Drupal related functions, Drush also has become popular with contributed module developers, many of which now include Drush commands with their modules. There are also a growing list of Drush specific modules that add additional functionality to Drush at it’s core. Because of this, Drush has become one of the most powerful tools that a Drupal developer can have in their toolbox outside of Drupal itself.

I will be cataloging various aspects of Drush in this section, including Drush commands, Drush modules, and useful Drush information.

Drush Commands

Sun, 05 May 2019 00:00:00 +0100

Drush has a ton of commands and commands differ depending on what version of Drupal or Drush you are using. I am not going to list all Drush Commands here, as there are actually better resources for that. Instead, I will be focusing on Drush commands that are used most often and will be most helpful for Drupal developers just getting started with Drush.

Drush Download

The drush download command allows you to download a project up to Drupal 7 using the command line.

Note: The drush download command is deprecated in Drupal 8. Drupal 8 projects are handled using Composer instead.

drush dl project_name

Drush Enable

The drush enable command allows you to enable a project such as a module or theme on a Drupal website using the command line.

drush en project_name

Drush Disable

The drush disable command allows you to disable a project such as a module or theme on a Drupal website using the command line.

Note: Drupal 8 sites must use the drush uninstall command instead, as modules cannot be disabled in Drupal 8, they must be uninstalled.

drush disable project_name

Drush Uninstall

The drush uninstall command allows you to disable a project such as a module or theme on a Drupal website using the command line.

drush uninstall project_name