Ad blocking is a technology through which end users can block ads, using extensions which are installed in browsers. These extensions are generally open source and acts as acts act like a firewall between the web browser and all known ad servers. Most ads are blocked by open-source web browser extensions, installed by end users. The database of blocked ad servers is curated by a large and active open source community. The most popular ad block extensions are "Adblock Plus" and “AdBlock”. Once installed, these extensions automatically block ads on all websites and are effective against almost all ad formats.

Technology is moving fast and if publishing industry is not gearing up to strategize the moves, someone else will eat up the piece of cake.

Where do we stand ?

According to a survey conducted by Adobe and PageFair, a company that sells publisher technology to publishers to fight against adblocker, the user base for adblockers is on a continuous rise

The report further claims that the worldwide number of users  of adblocking software has increased by  41% every year and 48% last year in the US. While in Europe the usage was up by 35% In quarter 2 of 201 there were 16% of the US online population who blocked ads.
 

How is adblocking affecting the advertising sector in Media?

With the increasing number of users, there has been an  estimated loss of global revenue of $21.8B due to blocked advertising.

Increasing revenue is the need of the hour with the least amount of resource drainage.

How did adblocker come into the scene?

The Adblocker controversy has been there from a long time now, and companies like the New York Times have tried venturing into experimental projects like ad-free digital subscription . Thompson, the CEO of the Times said marketers "need to think like programmers rather than as traditional advertisers," by "offering consumers content which actually has value to them. While paid subscribers still remain upset over ads in the paid versions too, Thompson condemns adblocker and called Eyeo 'unsavory' Eyeo is the which owns leading ad-blocking technology Adblock Plus to which some publishers pay to exempt from blocking their ads and says it wasn’t founded by concerned citizens and said it was founded by an advertising exec coming from the 'cynical' side of digital advertising.

How is the world dealing with Adblocking ?

The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA,) proposed plans to that could see the creation of a global advertising watchdog that would regulate internet ads.

Instead of fighting adblocking usage, the WFA plans to use data to create better ad. This is similar to other companies in the industry like the internet advertising trade group the IAB.

Which means the companies will use more of data to find what kind of ads are a tip off for the consumers.

What is the Publishing Industry telling us?

I happened to come across a very interesting article from the horse’s mouth. It has been written by an insider from the Publishing industry and he says “I don’t have the answer to the problem but I do know one thing: more people are going to install ad blockers if sites keep abusing their readers by overloading their pages with ads.”

Asking users to turn off ad blockers, blocking content when ad blockers are present, asking users to pay for content and, finally, gating content until users watch a video or choose what kind of ads they want to see.

What ways can we counter adblocking technology?

Publishers are gearing up to counter these technologies, A Bloomberg spokeswoman said,

"Our site and our pages were built with sophisticated and dynamic advertising logic that shapes the user experience. When users block ads, it can disrupt the design and packaging of the content and video experiences that render for each individual. We have strict guidelines on the number and type of advertisements we allow across our platform, and since we deliver premium value to our advertising clients, and produce high-quality journalism for tens of millions of global executives, we are simply asking users with ad blockers to whitelist Bloomberg."

Apart from the approaches taken by adblocker there are other agencies who are giving a thought on going lightly on the path and displays ads which are less sensitive to users and there are ad-recovery which display the ads without filter. These tools are developed to surpass the the block list  Adblock Plus, the most popular of the most popular of ad blockers.

There are other tools like ad recovery which makes ads look like content to Adblock plus.

Instead of taking a tough stand against Adblockers, the media industry needs to come up with a plan to coexist in a healthy ecosystem or completely let go. Pissed off readers will happily let go of there favourite brands because there is no dearth of content. There should be a choice or other ideas with effective solutions.

For further reads visit Crunchbase

Image Courtesy : cyclingtips

With the price for storage of digital media and bandwidth hitting rock bottom and the vast number of digital devices and ease of accessing data online, there is a growth in employing big data strategies and implementations. There are a number of ways drupal can be used for custom big data strategies. Drupal is quite big technology now on CMS as well as a CMF front. Latest technologies are always worked upon and adapted to, by the Drupal community. First, let us have a look at how reduce in cost for data storage and technology has influenced media industry.

The data storage costs globally have crashed to almost 100% through the years 1992 to 2013, which is from $569 to $0.02 per GB of storage and global bandwidth costs dropped by 99% from 1999 to 2013, i.e. from $1245 to $16 per 1000 MB per second, according to Deloitte research reported in Mary Meeker’s 2014 Internet trends report.

 
The average costs of smartphones globally has dropped from $430 to $335 through the years 2008-2013 which is a 22.1% decrease. Some cell phone manufacturers are producing ~$100 smartphones to enable affordability which is in turn driving the global average of smartphones and similar devices even lower. These steep decline in prices of technology has made it more affordable and given rise to the big data explosion, connectivity like never before, cheap access to multimedia news and information. This has created a multitude of possibilities for new businesses.

Let's look into some key strategies that top media companies employ using big data management:

• Huffington post  uses big data and small data to improve their user experience. They employ the use of real-time dashboards, social trends, recommendations, moderations and personalization to improve user experience using big data. Their use of small data is to  improve UX from reporting, headline optimisation, SEO, content efficiency and consumer research. 

• Dunnhumby has collected 10+ years of Big data and use it to improve customer loyalty and sales. This applies directly to the nascent Big Data strategies in the media industry. Tesco’s clubcard scheme enables a customer view of retail and other data, which inspires greater customer understanding and in turn driving better business decisions, which grows loyalty and brand value. Media companies can learn from the systematic approach from dunnhumby, the force behind the Clubcard.
• Financial Times build customer “signatures” of each individual customer’s digital consumption of data and use that information to understand the customer’s preference. This helps them create relevance of their communications and personalize what they have to offer. They employ intelligence to customer touch points, such as customer service, website, mobile apps and third parties.
• CNN uses Big Data as an early warning system for breaking news. They map what their audience listen to using big data technologies and it helps them summarize how their users consume news in real-time and how major data sets are filtered and presented as stories.
• BBC uses data journalism to provide insightful, personally meaningful and shareable visual explanations on the BBC’s biggest and most momentous stories
• Channel 4 is currently working on innovation of the television business model using big data by connecting to their millions of already registered viewers. This helps them to segment viewers into groups, create personalised emails, suggest tailored content recommendations and serve relevant advertising. 
• Archant regional newspapers take into account the prevention of data leakage and give it a high priority as targeting advertising through a third party becomes more common. They believe that Data collected from users on media companies sites should belong to those media companies, not third parties like Google. There are techniques to stop the data leakage, and strategies to leverage the data for media companies who own it.
• Magazine is in the early stages of employing big data strategies, their ultimate goal being making their sensor data, images, databases, location based data, email, HTML, social and clickstream data more actionable in the future.
• Sacramento Bee have developed their big data strategy in such a way that it includes technology systems, business models, cultural issues and tracking issues. They are working with consultants and academics to refine their plans for the future. 

Many companies are already employing Big Data strategies to fit their revenue models and making it scalable to match the fast pace of this changing world of technology. Every company has their own strategies and ways to implement them that cater to their own specific needs. First step of employing big data management strategies is to understand your own current processes and customer behaviour on which further actions can be mapped out. 

Insights on Big Data from Beyond the Media Sector will help us understand the power of big data and possibly new innovations in your brilliant minds.
 

Zuckerberg didn’t just invest ‘cuz its fun when he bought Oculus with $ 2Billion. VR existed in some form or the other but was either making people sick or was too costly and then Facebook bought Oculus and it changed everything.

But the question remains as to with all these investments for VR technology and the startups, how will that give an ROI and what is in it for the Media industry?

This article explores and analyses the possibilities of Virtual Reality. We also ponder as to how Media industry can make the most out of such a transition. In a previous article, we find answers to the five most basic yet important questions for VR and its Timeline.

Subscription Purchases

Comcast Corp. is leading a $6.8 million investment round in Felix & Paul Studios New York Times has been very prominent with VR investments and According to an article by Politico , NYT has made around $8 million with VR up till now, a fraction of the Times’ overall annual digital revenue of $400 million. PitchBook analysts said that there have been 119 VR-related deals totaling roughly $602 million in 2015. The report mentioned  a $65 million funding led by Disney in VR camera maker Jaunt as one of the year’s top investments.

With all these set in place, what needs to be thought about is producing enough content that cover up the production costs.

Emilio Garcia-Ruiz, managing editor of digital for The Washington Post said “No newsroom has the resources to simply add all the slots and equipment needed to start a VR team. Unless we achieve mass scale quickly, which seems unlikely, monetization as a ‘revenue stream’ will be years away.” Why? says, SpaceVR founder Holmes that the main challenge to monetizing VR content is the lack of data about consumer preferences.

Advertisement and Sponsored Content

The ad industry is eyeing for an opportunity to leap into VR because selling an experience has become an integral part of advertisements. One of the best examples of what sponsors might be looking to spend in is the kind of ad Volvo has given a taste of. The company has paired up a Google Cardboard  and produced an ad "Volvo Reality". You can experience a full 360 degrees view from the driver’s seat and also lets you take a Virtual Test Drive with the help of the video. It is immersive. Although needed a lot of improvements and also this isn’t gonna be the buying decision. But the experience is different and it fixates the idea of XC90 and etches it in people’s minds.  

It is almost like using the product before actually shelling out the cash

Events & Live Streaming

Streaming live events lets the viewers have a first row kind of experience which can also be charged for although a lot lesser than original tickets but gives a similar experience. NextVR has already received $ 80 Billion in series B from. Next VR has already gone with on-site streaming of events from the NHL, NASCAR, a European league exhibition soccer game, and more. These events were then viewed remotely in New York, Los Angeles and Vancouver.

CNN’s 2015 edition of the Democratic Debate was not a very comfortable experience but sure did let viewers get hooked onto being more immersed in this debate than before. You could feel as if you are on the stage with the candidates.

Movies and Stories

“You’ll have premium experiences like a movie theater with high-definition headsets. And then there’ll be at-home experiences where you can buy content on iTunes and Netflix or subscribe to services like Hulu,” Holmes said. He runs SpaceVR, and plans to bring space travel in one’s living room.

This, much hyped Mr. Robot VR trailer has been doing its rounds in the internet for its immersive experience. This 13min storytelling isn’t just another VR demo. It captures the atmosphere and its sensitivities and passes on that feeling to the viewers. And this, would have never been possible on a Television.

“I think every studio that knows the power of storytelling has a huge, vested interest in using virtual reality,” said Haidamus, nokia technologies president.

The market size is still unpredictable which makes it difficult for investors to analyse since Vr is in its infancy and there are yet to be concrete data to reveal comparable results.

Image Courtesy : TechCrunch

2016 will be the first Billion Dollar year for Virtual reality which is set to change the course of history in Technology. Data driven decisions are going to make way for immersive experiences. Last year we saw Google distributed over a Million card boards and ”People are consuming video voraciously on mobile,” and it's time for content creators to take a step into the future with VR supported contents because without content technology will just be in theories and over 300 Million is expected to be invested in content, predicts Deloitte.

What?

Just an year ago Ken Perlin, NYU computer science professor wrote in his Blog I’ve been struggling with the terms “Augmented Reality” and “Virtual Reality”. Science fiction has treated us with visions of Virtual Reality since the days of Matrix and even before in comics. Headsets from Sony, Jaunt and Oculus have taken a huge leap from there but technology in its current form is evolving.   

We might find it hard to believe but there has been creations in history before in the mid 20th century where Ivan Sutherland and Bob Sproull had reportedly created what is supposed to be the first virtual reality and augmented reality (AR) head-mounted display system .

There are broadly two categories of VR in for now, high screen resolution ones which have built in display like the forthcoming Oculus, HTC Vive and Sony Playstation VR which cost around $ 350 to $ 500 while the other one is a head mounted setting with a high end smartphone which costs an average of $ 100 or lesser and is yet to evolve.

Why?

Virtual reality is going to have more of an impact than TV or 3D is what is supposed to be believed. It can be hooked onto your smart phones and you get to experience something else all together sitting right where you are. It is more natural and the reality is more relatable. But the question remains "Why in media?".

“At the basic level, virtual reality is a new thing and you always want to give something new to your consumers,” said Sanjay Macwan, Chief Technology Officer of the NBCUniversal Media Labs. “This is more of an intimate experience of the consumer to your content.”.

It is like on of the “I felt I was there” kind of experiences. Media companies are on of those who believe in creating media ecosystem across multiple channels from websites to social media and beyond. And now the media industry can also include VR as a platform for advertisements. Imagine sitting on a hill top with blue mountain coffee on a work break and as you turn your head you can almost feel the freshness and see yourself among the trees.

Where?

The groundwork has been laid for immersive experiences. The New York Times and ABC News plunges into Virtual Reality news gathering, Verizon’s AOL purchase startup RYOT to bring VR news to its Huffington Post property, the VR “movie” . Netflix releases Gear VR app; Hulu and Twitch to follow, and ABC takes viewers to the streets of Damascus with 360 Degree videos in VR. With a lot of things in place, it’s the content that is yet in contemplation now.

How?

The technology is not rocket science but needs to evolve to be able to produce a larger audience. “By far the most important quality is rock-solid tracking, low latency, zero drift,” said Ken Perlin, director of the NYU Media Research Lab. “You have a nine degree of freedom [inertial measurement unit] that’s doing orientation and acceleration that’s telling you where to render the next frame and you use cameras to do anti-drift so that it doesn’t drift over time. And that kind of two-part solution is now, in 2015, coming out in consumer devices. By 2020 that will be something that everyone takes for granted.”

Content & VR 

Content can be downloaded and streamed in an app library

Content can be browser based

Content can be viewed over a web page

Content can be downloaded

Content can be stored in clouds

Who?

2012:

Oculus raised more than $2M on kickstarter

2013 :

April - Google launched Google Glass with a little head mounting for AR display costing $1500

May - Oculus started shipping the first development kit, opens Oculus Dev Center

2014 :

March - Facebook buys Oculus for $ 2B

April -  “Use of force” VR documentary based on real events, featured at Tribeca Film Festival

June - Google Cardboard announced at Google I/O

October - Magic Leap a VR and AR company gets $542M in series B by Google

December - Samsung Gear Innovator Edition, smart phone powered head mounted VR display using Oculus Technology priced at $199

Rothenberg Ventures announces Virtual Startup Reality Incubator

2015 :

January - Google announced will stop producing Google Glass

Sundance film festival featured VR immersive content by Vrse, Empathetic Media

Microsoft announces AR headset - Holo Lens

April - Htec and Valve announced Vive Partnership

May - “ Clouds over Sidra” a VR film premiered at World Economic Forum and

September - Sony announces VR Headset for PS4

Oculus Connect 2 Dev Conference, announces over 200,000 sign ups for Oculus Dev Center

Jaunt receives $65M in series C by Walt Disney

October - CNN aires 360 degree VR Presidential Debate

November - Gear VR Edition released by Samsung and Oculus

The New York Times launched NYT VR, in collaboration with Google cardboard distributes 1 Million Cardboards to Sunday Subscribers.

2016 : Oculus consumer edition

Once in while some form of technology come in our way which revolutionizes the way we deal with Media, how we communicate, how we advertise, how we present ourselves and how we explore. A major chunk of developments in Media has been technology driven, in fact it is the technology that has crafted our experience and given shape to what has evolved today from handwritten to print media to digital.

Virtual and Augmented Reality are but something that hold extraordinary promise of experience and the time to experiment with it is now. Although it has a lot to be developed from whatever raw form it is in today, it sure will open doors an unforgettable experience. Technology and Media will merge to create this and the challenge lies in front of us to us to make a leap beyond our boundaries.

For further reads visit. 

Big data analysis involves a variety of strategies and tactics that make sense out of large amounts of data. The Big data analysis trend has impacted industries like never before as new applications and technologies are being developed to automate the process of data analysis and to cater to specific requirements based on types of industries and information.

For media industries/companies, Big data analysis strategies mostly covers end-user/audience analysis to understand the behaviour of the target group of potential customers.

• Tools to examine public and private databases
• Tools to manage search
• Tools to manage visual/graphic content
• Tools for advertising and ad campaigns
• Tools to automate texts, video stories etc.

Big data for media industry can be summarized in four words: Volume, velocity variety and value

Volume: the volume of data you will be working with

Velocity: the speed with which the information needs to analyzed

Variety: the diversity of structured and unstructured information and data formats

Value: the potential value of the information and data in terms of quality writing and business revenue and insights

The report published in Big Data: The Organizational Challenge by Bain and Company in their 2013 survey, businesses that lead the way in using data strategically are:

• 5x as likely to make decisions faster than market peers
• 3x as likely to execute decisions as intended
• 2x as likely to be in the top quarter of financial performances within their industries
• 2x as likely to use data very frequently when making decisions

The benefits for media industry using big data strategies are many, including more targeted news and advertisements with a more engaged audience, relevant and socially engaging content, easily discoverable visual media like videos and photos, and last but not least, the capability to compete with the many refined online media companies who are usually ahead of the traditional media industries, with advance technology and applications at their disposal.

One of the main things any media establishment does is collect heaps of data every minute, both from within or outside the organization. This can include data on advertising and sales, memberships, content, accounting and so much more. Apart from collection, they also produce huge bundles of data which can be videos, photos, graphics and text. This media and entertainment related data itself constitutes about 70% of the internet’s data storing and sharing, which is also growing at an exponential rate according to Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report, published in May 2014.

The digital universe has grown by 50% from the year 2012 to 2013 and is expected to grow about 40% year-after-year (IDC Digital Universe). So how much data is really being stored? The digital universe was measured in petabytes till the year 2005. One million gigabytes is equal to one petabyte and one million petabytes is equal to one zetabyte. But with the age of rapid consumption of information we have moved from petabytes to zetabytes.

To illustrate with better examples let us consider a 7min HD video which requires 1GB of storage but one petabyte can store about 13.3 years of continuous running HD videos. Google and Youtube process more than 24 petabytes of Big data everyday!

The above examples show the copious amount of contribution a well designed Big Data management can give to a media company in the world of internet. Online data is growing exponentially and this data includes videos, pictures graphics to simple tweets, no of facebook posts, the number of shares and likes and popularity etc.

Although producing and collecting data are the first steps in the development of Big Data management, the art of analysis and making the data structured and useful to the end user are the new melody for media companies

In the articles that will follow, we will cover how we can employ big data strategies into media and entertainment industry to save costs and increase revenue.

In one of the earlier blog post we had explored, How to create Custom Rest Resources for POST methods in Drupal 8. Let's see how can we create Rest Resource using GET method in Drupal 8. 

RESTful services were introduced in Drupal 8 into the core, this was inspired by Drupal 7. With Drupal 8 REST, you can enable other websites or applications to view, edit or update information. REST, among other Drupal 8 web services like XML and JSON is a method to provide customizable data in the form of API. 

Normally we can use view but here we will be learning how to create drupal 8 REST using custom code.

So let’s create an example module ‘example_rest’

Module Setup :

Example_rest.info.yml

Now we will be defining the rest resource. In this we will be fetching all the existing node title in the existing drupal.

Let’s create rest resource with GET method.

src\Plugin\rest\resource\ExampleGetRestResource.php

Here in get method we will be defining the logic what we want as output. 

As example we are loading all node present in the drupal installation and return node title as key value pair. Node id will be key and title will be respective value.

Let’s  enable the module and Drupal rest api.

This module will be dependent on Rest and Drupal Rest UI module so we need to enable these two module as well. Rest is included in drupal core but drupal 8 Rest UI is a contributed module so we need to download and enable it.

Once we enable all required module we need to enable our rest api.
 1.Goto admin/config/services/rest
 2.Search for rest api (in our case its “Example get rest resource”) and enable it.
 3.Once you click on enable  it will open the setting page of the respective api we need to select Get and Supported formats as xml, Authentication providers as cookie.
 4.Click on “save config”
 5.Now goto /example-rest?_format=xml

Result :

Test Article
test article
rest test
Rest Test
Test Drupal 8

The Drupal Community boasts of having more than a hundred thousand active contributors to this Open Source platform. People around the globe contribute to the codebase and more teaming up together. Businesses nowadays are staying ahead of the competition by encouraging contributions. Everything is about making together and building a better place, if you are not adding value you are already out of the league.

Why should I contribute?

You may be in one of those organizations who agree to disagree with the point above and might ask “Why should I spend my time and resources for something I don’t see value in?” Well, then my friend you should be the first ones to start volunteer contributions with whatever little you can because open source is what it is going to be in future and it will open doors for you, the ones you didn’t even know exists.

It’s difficult to come by a CV of a seasoned developer without the mentions of an open source contribution because they know it matters, it makes a good portfolio of your work which you can showcase to your dream company. What is more, you can also ask your mentor in the community to vouch for you. Imagine going to work for some XYZ company and one of the project manager sends in a recommendation with a big Yes Please! If you are starting your way into the tech world, ask people who matter and have been there, they will tell you networking matters. Get to know the industry inside out and show people that you’ve got what it takes.

And what if you ARE one of those organizations who do not believe in giving back to the community? Well, you might be making money from the software, but in turn you are inflicting scars on yourself. Putting it in simple words “It impacts sales”, you are missing out on valuable and authentic advocacy and will end up beating your own drum. Who does direct marketing when the Drupal community itself shows what you are capable of? Get your bragging rights certified.

Image Courtesy : Dries himself!

What are we doing to build a better place?

Contribution is a good way to learn while doing for newbies and experienced professionals alike and is one of the most valuable things one can do. Recently in a write-up Dries explains about how this actually works, who funds these contributions. Also focuses on credits system and the importance of volunteer contributions. He discussed about the top 30 contributors and recognized them for putting a lot of their time and effort in developing Drupal and its contributed modules.

Among the top 25 is one of our developers from Valuebound, Rakesh. He is one of the most experienced and humble souls working and contributing in the community. Along with contributions he makes sure to document his learning and I must mention, he does that thing real nice. This doesn’t end with him here, among the top 10 we also have another awesome dev guy who has been a thorough and serious active contributors who recently left Valuebound. And I saved the best for the last, Valuebound is one among the top four organizations sponsoring these kinds of contributions and we are proud as a team.

There are two sides to this coin as well, givers and takers and we make sure to be a part of both the sides of the coin and in turn be a part of the larger initiative run by this awesome community.

What to contribute? Tech & Non-Tech

A contribution in a tech community isn’t necessarily tech oriented. Look at Mozilla’s contribute guideline. It is one of the best places to explore what contributions can mean for a non-tech contributor. Drupal’s contribution page on their website paints a complete picture on how to go about making a contribution and getting involved.

There are tons of things you can do. All those non-geeky folks around, there is a lot of stuff you can do too! Ranging from Documentation, Translations, Testing to Marketing and even Donations. Yes, everything helps and we kid you not.

To quote Drupal.org “We depend on our diverse community of passionate volunteers to move the project forward by working on not just web development and user support but also many other contributions and interests (such as marketing, organising user groups and camps, speaking at events, maintaining documentation and helping to review issues)”.

Yes we know you could if you would have had the time. Oh wait, there is something you can do too! Yep, in 30 minutes that too, isn’t that great?

How to Contribute?  

Drupal had started out as 100% volunteer contributed and now it turns out that 69% of the contributions are sponsored.With more than twenty five thousand websites using Drupal as  falling into the top 1 Mil, it is time to rethink what we are giving back to the community for this open source platform which helps us earn our bit from it.  

So what if your organization doesn’t have a working plan in place yet? We had chalked out a process flow sometime ago which helped us to get things going with our team, works well with your remote team too.  

There is of course a possibility of you working in an organization which doesn’t believe in contributions. In such a case drupal.org has explained in depth what to do and there is a whole section dedicated just for someone like you. That’s the power of this community!

Build relationships

Get to know your teammates well, grab a cup of coffee or handout with a mug of beer. Talk work and non-work banter. Get to know what works and what doesn't. I’m sure that shouldn’t take a long time since you have already been colleagues. For a new employee or colleague it will just be like a regular work norm that is a part of the work and shouldn’t be difficult because it is a part of what’s expected. Find out how can he or she be of help.

Branch out

Find out what your community needs, which are the most critical projects and the most important issues. Work on them, help out another dev team in need. Most of the issues are detailed, pick out one and start working on it. If you happen to get stuck, read blogs, reach out to your mentor ping other contributors and go over to IRC channels. Ask. Do not stop yourself if you find it difficult at first, people are helpful that is what a community is for. Find it difficult? Start with something easier.

Encourage volunteering

It boosts the morale of an employee to build and work with a collaborative and constructive team. When your employees or colleagues love what they do, you won’t need to see anymore grumpy faces on Monday mornings. Each day will be a celebration and fill the workplace with lots of positivity. And nope this ain’t philosophical, it matters. Those dirty looks you get at times when you tell a no to a raise will stop. They will know what matters and they will work to get shit done, cuz they love what they do, with whom they do, for what they do.

Put it into schedule

It is not always possible that someone volunteers and things fall into place. More than often that will happen, sprints will get rescheduled and it will do more harm than help. Why I know? Cause, been there, done that!

And then we restructured our plan, we evaluated our employee strength and put things into a well documented rock solid plan. But does that mean it won’t ever fail? It might, at least now we know we have put some effort and we know who’s accountable for what. Figure out how much time your employees can devote through the business on a quarterly basis, taking into account your operational needs.

Recognize : Let the world know

Once things have fallen into place and you have successfully made your first plan a success,make it a part of conversation.Let your customers know, especially let the community know. Yes, you have earned the bragging rights! And did I tell you you would get free marketing and that too vouched? Wow! Isn’t it?

Make it a part of respect giving. Set examples. Showcase talents. Mark an email to all other employees. Do it often and do it regularly. What’s worse than not contributing is giving a sudden and permanent halt to whatever you have done. Shows you are irresponsible, period.

What do you get?        

You’re well respected, your customers are loyal and your employees are happier because you might not be aware of corporate social responsibility but your consumers sure are.

Are you doing your bit? Help us help you!

Image Courtesy : http://garfieldtech.com/

Before I begin with hooks, I am sure that you must be aware of the Drupal hook system. What is hook? How modules interact with the core code of Drupal? How hooks make it possible for a module to define pages, content, bundle, entity, menu, region, table, url etc? In this article I will be re-introducing you to the hooks and if you are looking for more information on the hook system then my suggestion is to go through Understanding hook system for Drupal module. 

First, I would like to give a small summary on hooks. A hook is a way to place a piece of your own custom code to be run by Drupal. Using hooks, you can ask Drupal to run a piece of code when a node is viewed/edited/deleted. hooks are conceptually related to method. They represent standard ways of interacting with data structures. Also many hooks are state aware, and do different things depending on what exactly is happening at the time the hook is called. 

What Drupal's Hooks API does: 

A Hook is a PHP function in a custom module that executes code. 
The Hooks API allow you to create your own hooks that other modules can access. It provides a common naming standard for hooks and allows modules to interact with other modules. 

As a Drupal Developer, you come across plenty of hooks used in core , contributed & custom module very often. 

There are hooks that are used more often,These common hooks include:

hook_help - Create help text associated with your custom module. 

Description: This hook provides the necessary help and information about module. To implement this hook, you need to replace “hook” with your module’s name and create a function in the module file with that name. The page-specific help information appears on help page. The module overview help information is displayed by the Help module. It can be accessed from the page at admin/help or from the Modules page.

hook_help($path, $arg)

Parameters 

$path: The router menu path, defined in hook_menu(), for the help that is being requested; e.g., 'admin/people' or 'user/register'. 

$arg: An array corresponds to return value of the arg() function, for modules that want to provide help that is specific to certain values of wildcards in $path. 

hook_permission - Create permissions associated with your module. 

Description: This hook gives permissions to the module, so they can be selected on the user permissions page and used to Allow or Restrict access to the module so that certain roles can access pages, i.e. the 'Administrator' to change settings or certain role to view the page. It returns nested array.

hook_menu - Define menu items and page callbacks. 

Description: Adding a module configuration page to Drupal menu is an important task.This hook enables modules to register paths for URL handling. They can be used to register a link to be placed in a menu. A path and its attributes called as "menu router item". This hook is rarely called (for example, when modules are enabled), and its results are cached in the database. 

hook_menu_alter - Alter the data being saved to the {menu_router} table after hook_menu is invoked. 

Description: This allows us to alter elements in Drupal's menu system. The primary links, secondary links, tabs and page callbacks can be altered in this way. 
Alter the data available in {menu_router} table after hook_menu is invoked. 
The menu definitions are passed in by reference. Each element of the $items array is one item returned by a module from hook_menu. 

hook_cron - Used for carrying out actions when the cron runs. 

Description: hook_cron() provides a powerful, simple, and useful tool for background task processing independent of page requests. 
The Drupal will call this hook whenever a cron run happens.Tasks managed by hook_cron() are database maintenance, backups, recalculation of settings or parameters and automated mailing.

Short-running tasks can be executed directly whereas Long-running tasks could time out, so that we should use queue API instead of executing the tasks directly. To do that first we need to define one or more queues via hook_cron_queue_info(). Then, add items that need to be processed to the defined queues.

hook_form_alter - Perform alterations before a form is rendered. 

Description: Changing / Adding  element to the existing form structure is One of the popular use of this hook, the node object can be accessed at $form['#node']. One of the benefits of using the Form API to construct forms is that any module can alter any other modules form. 

hook_form_alter(&$form, &$form_state, $form_id) 

Parameters 

$form: Nested array of form elements. 
$form_state: Current state of the form. 
$form_id: String representing the name of the form itself.
 

hook_form_FORM_ID_alter - Provide a form-specific alteration instead of the global .

Description: This  hook can do similar task as compared to hook_form_alter, only difference is that instead of making global hook_form_alter(), it uses form specific hook. Applied only to specif form. Rather than checking form id or using long switch statement to alter individual form.

Parameters 

$form: Nested array of form elements. 
$form_state: A keyed array containing the current state of the form. 
$form_id: String representing the name of the form itself.

hook_theme - Register a module (or theme's) theme implementations. 

Description: Reason behind implementing hook_theme under a custom module or theme is to register theme implementations which specify how a particular array should be rendered as HTML.

We've now hooked our module into the theme system. Let's look at what these items do: 

'my_custom_template' => array(): This is the name of Template. 
'template' => 'custom-page': This key-value pair will call to a new template file that will look like this: 'custom-page.tpl.php'.

hook_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path)

Parameters 

$existing: An array of existing implementations that may be used for override purposes. This is primarily useful for themes that may wish to examine existing implementations to extract data (such as arguments) so that it may properly register its own, higher priority implementations. 
$type: Whether a theme, module, etc. is being processed. 
$theme: The actual name of theme, module, etc. that is being being processed. 
$path: The directory path of the theme or module.

For a Digital Media website, expanding business to another language is a quite challenging and tough task to deal with. It makes you re-evaluate your CMS . A lot of questions come forward while you take the decision. Firstly Why? But now that you know you want to translate, you think, What all should we translate? How will we handle pages in default language? What components do we add? What services to use and how to maintain pages?

A major chunk of content these days is written, managed and stored with the help of a CMS or Content Management System (CMS). Selecting the right CMS at the beginning of expansion into a multilingual site ensures that the website and its contents are effectively managed and displayed right from the beginning.

# 1 What  is the potential of a Multilingual Website?

It is no more a shocker that the global organizations which manage Digital Properties support multiple websites in multiple languages which is much more difficult done than said. In today’s market there exists a lot of choices for one to select a CMS,but very few which allows easy editing of content and full edit options, most importantly ease of use for the users. Drupal comes with powerful multilingual feature.

#2 When is Drupal the right fit for your need?

Drupal 8 comes with a ton of features to perfectly suit your best needs, it has evolved over time and has solved a lot of complexities from Drupal 7 and its Multilingual capabilities are come in-built in core. In my previous blog post, we discussed about the need of Multilingual website and the right time to go for it. In short When you have a media website with visitors from language background other than your default, it’s best to switch to a multilingual website to ensure you do not lose your business and have a continuous growth.

#3 Why Drupal is exactly what you need?

With a website which has the capability to shape itself to the language of choice across any platform is the need of the hour. Drupal 8 comes with this powerful feature which will enable your business to reach to a larger audience. It comes with a powerful multilingual feature which helps translation into regional content and local languages and can be easily implemented. The multilingual feature comes with more than 90 languages and is applicable to all fields, forms and messages. Not only this but it also comes with a built-in translational core. Assets, like files or images, can have be assigned to a language or shared.

The challenge with translating sites with Drupal is none. It requires very less manual work. Once you add more content, all of it is scalable, it can cope and perform under a demanding workload. A system which scales well will be able to maintain or even expand its level of performance or experience when tested by larger operational demands which media sites go through more often than any other sites.             

#5 What makes Drupal special for Multilingual Websites?

It is quite different than the popular CMS translation plugins. It doesn't make you waste time on creating new pages, new menus and so on. It also doesn't only translate "content", it lets you translate all things that you "see" on the front-end of your site (including text,forms, error messages and more). Drupal 8 hands out extensive multilingual features right out of the box. The admin interface has built-in translations.             

Translate all things

It is Multilingual first: Auto-detection of language and auto-downloading latest interface translations             

# 6 What things allow translation?

Drupal 8 allows all components from configuration settings to menus, views and field values.  It allows user to select operations based on language options.            

For content entities like taxonomy, nodes and users it is also possible to change visible language selector options to default or of another language.

#7 What are the Key Features?

Improved functionality of Multilingual is the another feature of Drupal8. With Drupal8 you can:

• Multi-Translate all things in the system which has built-in user interfaces.

• Build web pages with Views language filtering and block visibility.

• Get automatic software translation updates from the Drupal community.

• Add a language selector to your site

• Auto-determine the visitors language.

• Choose what not to translate

• Install in 94 languages

• Overview screen for translators, contextual translation tabs for site builders

• Protected local, custom translations which are exportable

• English can be removed, no more to be default

Having a website work it’s inside out in Multiple languages has never been smarter and more user - friendly

The team at Valuebound has experience of working on high-traffic multilingual Drupal websites. If you're looking for getting an understanding of how your website will do in Multilingual, let us know.

This article is to share my experience with Drupal CMS. It will be helpful , particularly for novice/beginner level Drupal programmers to build their knowledge block on Drupal framework. Even though you might be aware of a few functionalities mentioned, this article will guide you on the basics of ‘what should be used’, ‘when to be used’ and ‘why to use’.

I have started blogging again after a brief break to share my knowledge of Drupal. Before getting into any of the technical aspects, I would suggest you to try and understand the ‘How & why?’. This will help you concrete you knowledge about any form of technology. So let’s begin with a functionality instance of Drupal called “validation”. 

Terminology will be used in most of the forms where the end user has  the required data with self and is ready to validate the same before submission. It gives assurance that the data posted to table does not have any miscellaneous data. Proper validation of form data is important to protect your form from hackers and spammers.

Types of validations that we can perform on form:

Validate Drupal form using validate function

hook_form_alter() : By implementing hook_form_alter to the specific bundle and calling $form['#validate’][], it will list all of the validation functions for a given form. Here we can add our custom validation to the validation handler array using $form['#validate'][].

When you hit the node/add/* , you will find node_form_validate(), which is the core validator for node forms.

The above validate_handler would be useful when it comes to an existing node type, where the developer has full access to insert validation for a form using custom module.

Validate only Drupal form field element using custom function:

We don't need to add an entire form validation every time. We can add a validation handler for an individual form element using #element_validate. We can also construct our own element validators. 

To validate a specific field, we can use #element_validate, with the element specific validation function which will pass $form_state and $element.

Use a pre-defined validation handler to validate numbers/integers.

Instead of handling the entire form, #element_validate helps to trigger a specific field  validation and displaying custom error message.

Validate Only Individual form element with pre define validation handler:

Drupal has a lot of pre define validators. The only thing is that either we are not aware of it or we haven't used it before.
When you want to validate a number with a predefined handler, you don’t have to add the validation function as it already exists.

Drupal has already defined a handler that validates if the data is a number, called element_validate_number. So we need to add the following to our form element:

Just one line of code can handle validation. Here is a list of  pre-defined validation handlers.

• date_validate - Validates the date type to prevent invalid dates (e.g., February 30, 2006).
• element_validate_integer -Form element validation handler for integer elements.
• element_validate_integer_positive - Form element validation handler
• for integer elements that must be positive
• element_validate_number - Form element validation handler for number elements.
• password_confirm_validate - Validates a password_confirm element.
  
  
   
  
   

An individual form element handler with pre define core function, does not allow you to write custom error messages. As of now there are a list of functions available to execute basic validation over form.

Validate function using _form_validate from drupal API

We can add custom handler to validate the data entered into the field.
NOTE: Name of the function. It is simply the name of the form followed by '_validate'. This is always the name of the default validation function.

Default drupal core provides hook to handle field validation. And the pattern is form_id_validate() where we can set our own message. 

Conclusion: Above methods are small pieces of validation towards entity and bundle field. Based on best practice and specific project requirement validation, handler should be used. 

GIT Source Code: https://github.com/xaiwant/D7validation/tree/master/article_rule