Talking Drupal #496 - Getting Back to Drupal Basics

April 07, 2025

Today we are talking about Drupal Basics, Why we got away from them, and what we do to bring them back with guest Mike Anello. We’ll also cover Entity Reference Override as our module of the week.

Listen:

direct Link

Topics

  • Where did this idea come from
  • Why do you feel more basic content is necessary
  • How did Drupal get away from the basics
  • How can we get more basic talks into Drupal events
  • How do we balance basic content with new topics like recipes or Drupal CMS
  • How do we entice speakers to take these talks
  • Could this adversely affect attendance
  • Question from Stephen: How do we address virtual events and that they are preferred by a younger crowd
  • Will Florida Drupal Camp have a track

Module of the Week

Entity Reference Override
  • Brief description:
    • Have you ever wanted to replace a text field on entities you reference in your Drupal site? There’s a module for that.
  • Module name/project name:
  • Brief history
    • How old: created in Sep 2016 by Jeff Eaton, though recent releases are by Benjamin Melançon (mlncn) of Agaric
    • Versions available: 2.0.0-beta3 which works with Drupal 10.1 or 11
  • Maintainership
    • Actively maintained
    • Security coverage, yes but needs a stable release
    • Test coverage
    • Documentation - user guide
    • Number of open issues: 13 open issues, 2 of which are bugs against the 2.0.x branch
  • Usage stats:
    • 2,004 sites
  • Module features and usage
    • The module defines a new field type, with associated widgets and formatters.
    • Your site editors will see a normal entity reference field (autocomplete or select) with an additional text field. Text provided in that additional field can be used to override a specific field in the referenced entity’s display, or add a class to its rendered markup.
    • This could be handy in use cases like showing people with project-specific roles, or showing related articles with the summary tweaked to be more relevant to the main content being viewed.
    • It’s not a super-common need, but if you need this capability, it can save having to set up a more complicated content architecture with some kind of intermediary entity
    • I thought this module would be interesting because today’s guest, Mike Anello, is listed as one of the maintainers. Mike, what can you tell us about your history with the module and how you’ve used it?