drupal

Migrating from Drupal to Astro on Cloudflare Pages

Kevin — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 12:53:18 GMT

I recently moved my personal site from Drupal to Astro on Cloudflare Pages. The decision was not driven by a technical problem or limitation with Drupal. It came down to how I want to spend my limited time and budget.

Testing htaccess rules in VS Code or JetBrains IDEs

Kevin — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 13:56:40 GMT

Testing htaccess rules in VS Code or JetBrains IDEs

In my last post I alluded to some software projects I was working on, and in the nick of time I have two ready to share before we enter 2026.

I have published and released plugins for VS Code and JetBrains (PHPStorm, WebStorm, Intellij etc) that help in testing htaccess rules so you don't have to wait until its in the cloud to see the result. The plugins were inspired by the htaccess madewithlove website that I have literally used for years and always wished existed within my editors - now it is possible.

Kevin December 31st, 2025

Three years of automated Drupal core updates

Kevin — Sat, 01 Mar 2025 16:00:19 GMT

Three years of automated Drupal core updates

We're coming up on almost three years of automated Drupal core updates for my personal site.

Kevin March 1st, 2025

2023 Year in Review

Kevin — Mon, 01 Jan 2024 22:55:19 GMT

2023 Year in Review

2023 was a white hot, fun, successful and non stop year for me. Perhaps one of the best in my life both personally and professionally. Hoping for (and working toward) that trend to continue into 2024 and beyond.

Kevin January 1st, 2024

Access Apache Solr admin over HTTPS in DDEV

Kevin — Wed, 29 Nov 2023 17:07:15 GMT

Access Apache Solr admin over HTTPS in DDEV

I have seen some chatter lately about folks asking how to access the Solr admin interface over HTTPS instead of HTTP connection in DDEV. Enabling this is a simple change to the docker-compose.solr.yaml file in the .ddev directory.

In the file, make the following changes under the environment section:

Kevin November 29th, 2023

Upcasting Custom Route Parameters in Drupal

Kevin — Tue, 21 Nov 2023 00:21:35 GMT

Upcasting Custom Route Parameters in Drupal

Thanks to Symfony, Drupal has an incredibly robust routing system. What once used to be a chore in Drupal versions prior to 8 is now a breeze. Creating routes is super simple and parameter upcasting is usually automatic for known entities, like nodes, users, and taxonomy terms.

For example, take this route definition:

Kevin November 20th, 2023

Keep Secrets secure outside of configuration in Drupal with the Key module

Kevin — Thu, 09 Nov 2023 18:29:47 GMT

Keep Secrets secure outside of configuration in Drupal with the Key module

Security is a paramount feature of any modern CMS. Drupal has a well defined authentication and RBAC (role based access control) system limiting the scope of what users can or cannot do. Soon we will even have PBAC (policy based access control) in Drupal core. But what about securing other things, like API tokens, SSL certificates or secrets that are used to authenticate with external services that enable features that require authorization?

Kevin November 9th, 2023

DDEV being considered as the "official" Drupal development environment

Kevin — Sun, 29 Oct 2023 15:27:50 GMT

DDEV being considered as the "official" Drupal development environment

It's exciting to see some recent momentum into adopting DDEV as the official local development environment for Drupal, supported by core and contrib community leaders.

https://www.drupal.org/project/ideas/issues/2965681#comment-15278862

Kevin October 29th, 2023

Why We Merged Our Drupal Development Stack with DDEV

Kevin — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:36:24 GMT

Why We Merged Our Drupal Development Stack with DDEV

We recently spent a few days at Velir overhauling our local Docker development stack for Drupal merging our tool and workflow with DDEV for better project outcomes. DDEV is an amazing fit for modern Drupal development.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.velir.com/ideas/2023/10/20/why-we-merged-our-drupal-development-stack-with-ddev

Kevin October 23rd, 2023

Using pre-commit and post-commit Git hooks in Drupal

Kevin — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 15:00:00 GMT

Using pre-commit and post-commit Git hooks in Drupal

A few months back (sorry, its been a minute!) I detailed how you could set up PHPDocumentor to automatically generate documentation for your custom code and modules for Drupal. Another step you can take is automating this process for everyone in your projects by taking advantage of git hooks.

Kevin October 15th, 2023