<!DOCTYPE html>
<html class="no-js" lang="en-GB">
    <head>
        <title>Blog | Oliver Davies</title>

        <meta charset="UTF-8">
        <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">

        
        <meta property="og:url" content="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/blog/page/2.html">
<meta property="og:title" content="Blog"/>



    <meta property="og:image" content="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg"/>
    <meta property="og:image:height" content="327"/>
    <meta property="og:image:type" content="image/jpg">
    <meta property="og:image:width" content="327"/>



        <link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/css/main.css">
        
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=57" sizes="57x57">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=114" sizes="114x114">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=72" sizes="72x72">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=144" sizes="144x144">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=60" sizes="60x60">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=120" sizes="120x120">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=76" sizes="76x76">
                    <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=152" sizes="152x152">
        
                    <link rel="icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=160" sizes="160x160">
                    <link rel="icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=96" sizes="96x96">
                    <link rel="icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=32" sizes="32x32">
                    <link rel="icon" href="/assets/images/me-precedent.jpg?s=16" sizes="16x16">
            </head>
    <body class="page--blog page--blog__list">
        <nav class="navbar navbar-inverse navbar-fixed-top">
    <div class="container">
        <div class="navbar-header">
            <button type="button" class="navbar-toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#navbar" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="navbar">
                <span class="sr-only">Toggle navigation</span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
                <span class="icon-bar"></span>
            </button>
            <a class="navbar-brand" href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/">Oliver Davies</a>
        </div>

        <div id="navbar" class="collapse navbar-collapse" role="navigation">
            <ul class="nav navbar-nav">
                <li class="">
                    <a href="/">About</a>
                </li>

                <li class="">
                    <a href="/experience">Experience</a>
                </li>

                <li class="">
                    <a href="/testimonials">Testimonials</a>
                </li>

                <li class="">
                    <a href="/talks">Talks</a>
                </li>

                <li class="active">
                    <a href="/blog">Blog</a>
                </li>

                <li class="">
                    <a href="/contact">Contact</a>
                </li>
            </ul>
        </div>    </div>
</nav>

        <div class="container">
            <div class="row">
                <main class="col-md-9">
                                            <h1>Blog</h1>

    <ul class="posts">
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Announcing the Drupal VM Generator</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">15th February 2016</p>


                                    <p>For the past few weeks I’ve been working on a personal side project, based on Drupal VM. It’s called the <a href="https://github.com/opdavies/drupal-vm-generator">Drupal VM Generator</a>, and over the weekend I’ve added the final features and fixed the remaining issues, and tagged the 1.0.0 release.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2016/02/15/announcing-the-drupal-vm-generator/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Programmatically Load an Entityform in Drupal 7</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">22nd December 2015</p>


                                    <p>I recently had my first experience using the <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/entityform">Entityform module</a> in a project. It was quite easy to configure with different form types, but then I needed to embed the form into an overlay. I was expecting to use the <code>drupal_get_form()</code> function and render it, but this didn’t work.</p>

<p>Here are the steps that I took to be able to load, render and embed the form.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2015/12/22/programmatically-load-an-entityform-in-drupal-7/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Automating Sculpin Builds with Jenkins CI</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">21st July 2015</p>


                                    <p>As part of re-building this site with Sculpin, I wanted to automate the deployments, as in I wouldn&#039;t need to run a script like publish.sh locally and have that deploy my code onto my server. Not only did that mean that my local workflow was simpler (update, commit and push, &hellip;</p>
                
                <a href="/blog/2015/07/21/automating-sculpin-jenkins/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Sculpin and Twig Resources</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">19th July 2015</p>


                                    <p>Here’s a list of resources that I compiled whilst preparing for my <a href="http://drupalcampnorth.org/session/test-drive-twig-sculpin">Sculpin and Twig talk</a> at <a href="http://drupalcampnorth.org">DrupalCamp North</a>.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2015/07/19/sculpin-twig-resources/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Updating Forked Repositories on GitHub</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">18th June 2015</p>


                                    <p>Sculpin

People may or may not know, but this site runs on Sculpin, a PHP based static site generator (this may be the first time that I&#039;ve mentioned it on this site). The source code is hosted on GitHub, and I&#039;ve listed the site on the Community page on the Sculpin &hellip;</p>
                
                <a href="/blog/2015/06/18/updating-forked-repositories-on-github/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>How to Define a Minimum Drupal Core Version</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">3rd April 2015</p>


                                    <p>This week, my first code patch was committed to Drupal core. The patch adds the user_has_role() function to the user module, to simplify the way to check whether a user in Drupal has been assigned a specific role. This is something that I normally write a custom function for each &hellip;</p>
                
                <a href="/blog/2015/04/03/how-to-define-a-minimum-drupal-core-version/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>2014</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">20th March 2015</p>


                                    <p>A lot happened in 2014. Here are some of the main things that I'd like to highlight.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2015/03/20/2014/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Include a Local Drupal Settings file for Environment Configuration and Overrides</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">20th December 2014</p>


                                    <p>How to create and include a local settings file to define and override environment-specific variables, and keep sensitive things like your database credentials and API keys safe.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2014/12/20/include-local-drupal-settings-file-environment-configuration-and-overrides/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Include environment-specific settings files on Pantheon</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">27th November 2014</p>


                                    <p>I was recently doing some work on a site hosted on <a href="http://getpantheon.com">Pantheon</a> and came across an issue, for which part of the suggested fix was to ensure that the <code>$base_url</code> variable was explicitly defined within settings.php (this is also best practice on all Drupal sites).</p>

<p>The way that was recommended was by using a <code>switch()</code> function based on Pantheon's environment variable. For example:</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2014/11/27/pantheon-settings-files/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
                    <li class="post">
                <h2>Using Remote Files when Developing Locally with Stage File Proxy Module</h2>

<p class="posted text-light">20th November 2014</p>


                                    <p>How to install and configure the <a href="https://www.drupal.org/project/stage_file_proxy">Stage File Proxy</a> module to serve remote images on your local Drupal site.</p>

                
                <a href="/blog/2014/11/20/using-remote-files-when-developing-locally-with-stage-file-proxy-module/">Read more &rarr;</a>
            </li>
            </ul>

            <ul class="pager">
                            <li class="next"><a href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/blog">Newer →</a></li>
                                        <li class="previous"><a href="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/blog/page/3.html">← Older</a></li>
                    </ul>
                                        </main>

                                    <div class="col-md-3">
                                                    <div class="panel badges text-center">
    <a href="https://assoc.drupal.org/membership" title="I’m a Drupal Association member." class="is-block">
        <img
            src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/badges/da-individual-member.png"
            alt="Drupal Association Individual Member"
            width="200"
        />
    </a>

    <div class="is-flex align-items-center">
        <img
            src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/badges/acquia-d8-developer.png"
            alt="Acquia Certified Developer - Drupal 8 Exam Badge"
            class="is-2"
        />

        <img
            src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/badges/acquia-d8-back-end.png"
            alt="Acquia Certified Back End Specialist - Drupal 8 Exam Badge"
            class="is-2"
        />
    </div>

    <a href="http://conference.phpnw.org.uk/phpnw17" class="is-block">
        <img src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/badges/phpnw17.png" alt="">
    </a>
</div>
                            <div class="availability panel panel-default">
    <div class="panel-heading">Availability</div>

    <div class="panel-body">
                    <p>
    <i class="fa fa-thumbs-o-up text-warning"></i>

    
    Currently have limited part-time capacity
</p>
                    <p>
    <i class="fa fa-thumbs-o-down text-danger"></i>

    Currently no spare full-time capacity.
    
</p>
            </div>
</div>
                                <div class="latest-posts panel panel-default">
        <div class="latest-posts__heading panel-heading">Latest blog posts</div>

        <ul class="list-group">
                            <li class="post list-group-item">
                    <span class="post__title">
                        <a href="/blog/2017/07/13/publishing-sculpin-sites-with-github-pages/">
                            Publishing Sculpin Sites with GitHub Pages
                        </a>
                    </span> -
                    <span class="post__date">13th July, 2017</span>
                </li>
                            <li class="post list-group-item">
                    <span class="post__title">
                        <a href="/blog/2017/06/09/introducing-the-drupal-meetups-twitterbot/">
                            Introducing the Drupal Meetups Twitterbot
                        </a>
                    </span> -
                    <span class="post__date">9th June, 2017</span>
                </li>
                            <li class="post list-group-item">
                    <span class="post__title">
                        <a href="/blog/2017/05/20/turning-drupal-module-into-feature/">
                            Turning Your Custom Drupal Module into a Feature
                        </a>
                    </span> -
                    <span class="post__date">20th May, 2017</span>
                </li>
                    </ul>
    </div>
                                                                        </div>
                
            </div>        </div>
        <footer class="container">
            <p class="copyright">
                &copy; 2010-2017 Oliver Davies. Built with <a href="https://sculpin.io">Sculpin</a>.
            </p>

            <div class="meetups">
    <h2>Things that I organise</h2>
    <ul>
                    <li class="meetups--drupal-bristol">
                <a href="http://www.drupalbristol.org.uk" title="Drupal Bristol">
                    <img
                        src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/meetups/drupal-bristol.jpeg"
                        alt="Drupal Bristol logo"
                    >
                </a>
            </li>
                    <li class="meetups--drupalcamp-bristol">
                <a href="http://www.drupalcampbristol.co.uk" title="DrupalCamp Bristol">
                    <img
                        src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/meetups/drupalcamp-bristol.png"
                        alt="DrupalCamp Bristol logo"
                    >
                </a>
            </li>
                    <li class="meetups--phpsw">
                <a href="http://phpsw.uk" title="PHPSW">
                    <img
                        src="//www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/images/meetups/phpsw.jpeg"
                        alt="PHPSW logo"
                    >
                </a>
            </li>
            </ul>
</div>
        </footer>

        <script src="https://www.oliverdavies.uk/assets/js/site.js"></script>

                    <script>(function(i,s,o,g,r,a,m){i['GoogleAnalyticsObject']=r;i[r]=i[r]||function(){ (i[r].q=i[r].q||[]).push(arguments)},i[r].l=1*new Date();a=s.createElement(o),m=s.getElementsByTagName(o)[0];a.async=1;a.src=g;m.parentNode.insertBefore(a,m) })(window,document,'script','//www.google-analytics.com/analytics.js','ga'); ga('create', 'UA-11967257-1', 'auto'); ga('send', 'pageview');</script>
        
            </body>
</html>