How to programmatically create a custom Drupal 8 block
Blocks are a great way to add pieces or chunks of content to your Drupal site. Capable of displaying simple text, images, forms or complex logic. There are plenty of sites around that show you how to add a simple custom block. However, if you are a developer like me, when you are writing your custom block programmatically it has far more requirements than a simple block. In this article, I'll show how to:
Changing the author name from username to a first and last name
A bug bear that I have had for a while with Drupal content is how come the author of an article is actually their username. I have an array of reasons to vent my dislike for this strategy... however, instead I will show you how to change it. Albeit, programmatically! Don't stress there actually isn't a huge amount of code to add. In time I'll create a module so no coding is required.
Adding time to read to a Drupal article
Time is essential to all of us... and if you are like me there is never enough of it! Anyway, the amount of time to read a piece of content can persuade someone whether to read on further... or swipe it away. When on the verge of flipping an article as the title and /or teaser text hasn't got me across the line, the time to read is a handy reference for me. This handy feature is becoming more common across any decent article publisher.
Performance testing your Drupal website
Load testing verifies the system performance under the expected peak load. The peak load needs to set by a series of parameters that you have benchmarked targets. For example, these parameters could include: