Drupal Performance Optimization Tips

Inherited a Drupal 7 site last month. Yes, 7. Still in production. Still paying the bills. Don't @ me. The issue: pagination was broken on category pages. Clicking "Next" would return a 404 on half the categories and an infinite redirect loop on the rest. Root cause — which took me a minute to isolate because D7 pager internals are dense — was that the site had a taxonomy setup where the pager was building query strings with empty terms (`?page=2&tid=&tid=`). When the router tried to resolve that, it interpreted the empty `tid` parameters as an invalid filter and returned 404. The fix was a custom module: `pager_clean_query`. Hooks into `template_preprocess_pager` and strips any query parameter with an empty value before the pager URL gets rendered. ```php function pager_clean_query_preprocess_pager(&$variables) { $query = drupal_get_query_parameters(); foreach ($query as $key => $value) { if ($value === '' || $value === null) { unset($query[$key]); } } $variables['__pager_clean_query'] = $query; } ``` Deployed, flushed caches, pagination restored. 1.25 hours total. Two takeaways for anyone still working on legacy Drupal: 1. Don't assume old bugs have been fixed upstream. D7 pager internals have had this issue in various forms since 2015. Upstream fix never landed. A 40-line custom module solves it cleanly. 2. Small modules age better than core patches. A patch to core gets lost in the next update. A module with one hook and a README stays in the repo forever. If you're on D7 and have the same pagination issue, send me a note and I'll share the full module. #Drupal #LegacyWeb #WebDevelopment #OpenSource

New! Drupal 11: Cascading Select Forms With HTMX This is part four of a series of articles looking at HTMX in Drupal. In the last two articles we looked at using HTMX with controllers in different ways. This time I'll be venturing into the world of HTMX and forms. In this article we will look at creating a form that contains multiple select elements and then use HTMX (and a little bit of the form states API) to tie them together so that selecting one element updates the others. https://lnkd.in/eH3rQWDs #drupal #drupal11 #htmx #drupalDevelopment #hashbangcode

Still writing about HTMX and Drupal! I have planned out two more articles and then I might take a break for a bit :D Unless, of course, you want me to cover something specifically? Let me know!

More about HTMX and Drupal! This is now 5 articles on using HTMX and Drupal, so I might take a little break on HTMX posts for a bit.

Drupal 11: Node Display Mode Preview Form This is part five of a series of articles looking at HTMX in Drupal. In this article we will look at creating a simple form that allows users to enter a node ID and a view mode and see the node rendered in that view mode. The article is a detailed look at how the HTMX is used to generate this effect in Drupal. https://lnkd.in/e6cC7y3c #drupal #drupal11 #drupalHtmx

Thinking about migrating to or launching on **Drupal 11**? While it's the fastest and most secure version yet, it requires strict engineering discipline. If you don't plan ahead, these 4 common roadblocks will cause technical friction. Here is how to overcome them: 1️⃣ Strict Server Requirements Issue: Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3+ and Symfony 7. Legacy hosting environments will break. *Solution:* Audit your infrastructure early. Enforce **DDEV** for local development to guarantee environment parity across your team. 2️⃣ Contributed Module Compatibility Gaps Issue: Because deprecated code was completely purged, some older modules lack stable Drupal 11 releases. *Solution:* Run composer why-not drupal/core ^11 to find blockers. Use the **Lenient Composer Plugin** and community patches to bridge the gap safely. 3️⃣ Custom Code & PHPUnit 10 Breaks Issue: Custom code and older automated test suites will choke on the upgraded dependencies. *Solution:* Don’t rewrite manually. Use **Drupal Rector** to automatically scan and refactor your custom code to Drupal 11 standards. 4️⃣ The Drupal 7 Migration Trap Issue:Teams migrating from Drupal 7 treat it like an upgrade. It’s not—it’s a complete architectural rebuild. *Solution:* Audit and archive dead data *before* moving a single byte. Use a phased approach via the core Migrate API. Drupal 11 isn't a platform you just "install." By auditing infrastructure, automated refactoring, and clean dependency management early, you turn roadblocks into a seamless deployment. What has been your biggest hurdle with Drupal 11 so far? Let’s discuss in the comments! 👇 #Drupal #WebDevelopment #OpenSource #CMS #PHP

Excited to share that I’ve published my Drupal project Content Migration Porter on Drupal.org. This project provides the Content Porter module, which helps migrate selected Drupal content from one project to another using a JSON export and import workflow. The module should be installed on both the source and destination Drupal sites. On the source site, administrators can select content, media, custom blocks, and related items to export as a JSON file. On the destination site, the same JSON file can be imported to recreate the selected content. Recommended flow: First migrate the required site structure, such as content types, fields, paragraph types, media types, taxonomy vocabularies, and custom block types. Then use Content Porter to migrate the actual content. This can also be used along with Config Entity Exporter when the destination site needs the required configuration before importing content. Key features: Export selected Drupal content as JSON Import exported JSON into another Drupal site Supports content, media, custom blocks, depending on the site structure Provides a simple admin UI under Content > Content Porter 🔗 Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/gdz5NgxE Have you tried this module? Let me know your thoughts, suggestions, or any improvements you’d like to see. Your feedback helps us make it even better! #Drupal #Drupal10 #Drupal11 #DrupalDevelopment #DrupalCommunity #DrupalContrib #DrupalModules #OpenSource #OpenSourceContribution #PHP #WebDevelopment #CMS #ContentMigration #DataMigration #MigrationTools #DeveloperTools #BackendDevelopment #SiteBuilding #JSON #ContentManagement #DrupalOrg

Rethinking WordPress → Drupal migrations 🔄 Talish Khan’s wp_drupal_migrate module enables: • Direct database migration (no WXR files) • Native entity mapping via Migrate API • Iterative imports with rollback support A shift toward live-source migration workflows. 🔗 Link in comments #Drupal #WordPress #WebDev #OpenSource

🚀 Drupal 12 Developer – Building the Future of Web Experiences The evolution continues! With the upcoming release of Drupal 12, developers are stepping into a more powerful, flexible, and performance-driven ecosystem. As a Drupal Developer, staying ahead means: ✔️ Embracing modern PHP standards ✔️ Leveraging improved APIs and decoupled architecture ✔️ Enhancing performance, security, and scalability ✔️ Delivering seamless digital experiences across platforms Drupal 12 is not just an upgrade — it's a shift towards cleaner code, better user experience, and future-ready web solutions. 💡 Whether you're working on enterprise platforms or custom web applications, now is the time to level up your Drupal skills and adapt to the new era. #Drupal12 #DrupalDeveloper #WebDevelopment #OpenSource #PHP #CMS #TechGrowth #DigitalTransformation #Frontend #Backend #FullStack #DevelopersLife

It's live. Same day. 🎉 This morning I wrote about building a headless Drupal CMS for a food truck client — choosing the hard path on purpose to learn a platform I need to know. By this evening, it's running in production. A Drupal instance on Render, feeding content into a Vue.js frontend via JSON:API. The client logs in, edits their menu, and the site updates. Exactly what I set out to build. The honest truth? Connecting Drupal up as a headless CMS was surprisingly straightforward. JSON:API ships with Drupal core. CORS config is a few lines in a YAML file. The content modelling just makes sense once you've done it once. Were there bumps? Of course. Ephemeral container filesystems. Apache config that silently ignored .htaccess. A CORS header that took 30 seconds to fix but felt like an hour to diagnose. But here's what made the difference — I paired with Claude as my guide throughout. Not just asking questions, but working through the architecture together, debugging in real time, and having someone (something?) that could see the whole picture at once. It's a genuinely different way to learn. You're not waiting for Stack Overflow. You're not skimming docs hoping the answer is on this page. You're just building, and getting unstuck fast. One client site. One day. Whole lot of Drupal reps logged. More to come. #Drupal #Vue #HeadlessCMS #WebDevelopment #LearningInPublic #BuildInPublic #ClaudeAI