Month: July 2018

How to migrate a Craft 2 project to Craft 3?

Posted on by galaxy-admin

Craft 3 update changed a lot of things. Added functionalities aside, the process of installing and maintaining the CMS also changed with this breakpoint release.

Craft 3 almost makes it necessary to migrate your website from Craft 2. It is better in every aspect, including security and the extended plugin store. The store comes with plugin trials and 30-day license return policy.

For the incremental updates, you just had to click on a button. But with the breakpoint release, Craft CMS tweaked its ways of handling things.

It is advised to get an expert’s help for the migration because there are a lot of things that can go wrong with the migration, for instance:

  • Control panel prompting to install Craft instead of the update database dialogue.
  • Database configuration settings which are no longer needed

Also, to avoid errors, you have to follow the same naming schemes that were used in your old database; like using same prefixes with the new database connection settings.

There are two steps involved in the migration process of a Craft 2 project.

  • Craft 3 Installation
  • Manual Migration

Step 1: Craft 3 Installation

To install Craft 3, follow the same steps as mentioned in ‘How to setup a new Craft CMS project’ and then proceed with the migration.

You need to take care of the following requirements before proceeding with the installation:

  • Craft 3 requires PHP 7+ and at least 256 MB of memory for PHP
  • The installation requires Craft 2.6.2788
  • Make sure that your plugins are ported to Craft 3 (check the status at the bottom of the update page)
  • Keep a backup of your old database.

After the installation, proceed with the migration process. According to the Craft 3 upgrade documentation following are the steps you need to follow to migrate your Craft 2 project to Craft 3.

Step 2: Manual Migration

Import your database connection settings from your old database file craft/config/db.php to your .env file in the Craft 3 directory.

Now copy the following settings and configuration files from the old Craft 2 directory to the new Craft 3 directory.

  • Copy settings from craft/config/general.php to config/general.php
  • Copy craft/config/license.key file to config/
  • Copy configuration files from craft/config/redactor/ to config/redactor/
  • Copy files from craft/storage/rebrand/ to storage/rebrand/
  • Copy photos from craft/storage/userphotos/ to storage/userphotos/
  • Copy templates from craft/templates/ to templates/
  • Copy the changes made, if any, from public/index.php file to web/index.php file
  • Copy other files from old public/ to web/ directory.

After copying the files to the web/directory, update the web server to point to it. Enter the Craft’s control panel URL in the browser. It should prompt you to update your database.

Known problems with the migration from Craft 2 to Craft 3

If all goes well you will be able to run the latest Craft 3 with your old database intact. If not then you might be facing the following problems.

Craft installer pops up when accessing the control panel

Your old database connection settings are not matching with the new .env file. It is most likely happening because of a wrong DB_TABLE_PREFIX.

“Setting unknown property:

craft\config\DbConfig::initSQLs” error.

The initSQLs database configuration setting was used in Craft 2 to fix MySQL 5.7 support. It is redundant in Craft 3. Remove the line beginning with ‘initSQLs’ in the config/db.php file to delete the setting.

To avoid major hassles and loss of database, it is recommended that you get a Craft partner onboard. In case you have further queries, you can connect with our Craft CMS experts here.

More Craft CMS Features: Matrix and Its Powerful Friends

Posted on by galaxy-admin
Craft CMS’s consistency can be seen in its regular updates & latest features. Matrix is one of those early features that helped Craft dominate the CMS game. Matrix is the protagonist of the Craft’s story since its inception but there are some unsung heroes that need some attention too.

Categories & Tags in Craft CMS

Categories and tags is one of the most powerful features of Craft CMS for content classification. It allows you to organize your content by defining a taxonomy beforehand. You can create category groups from which, the categories are assigned to different entries.

Define Taxonomies with Category in Craft CMS

To define a Taxonomy you have to create a parent group to accommodate different categories in it. Go into categories section in settings. Inside it you can create a parent category group to define a taxonomy.

Meta level categorization with Tags in Craft CMS

Craft supports folksonomy as well. You can categorize the content with the help of electronic tags to define a folksonomy. The process of creating tags and tag groups is same as the categories. Create a folksonomy from the settings. Assign to the entries in the tag field. Tags provide meta level categorization which also helps in SEO. Categories & tags will help you create a content structure which makes your content consumable.

Matrix in Craft CMS

In our earlier blog about ‘why to choose Craft’ we listed Matrix as one of the defining features of Craft CMS. The feature lets you create and manage content blocks. You can add, reorder, and move content blocks; be it text, code, or rich media. And the coolest thing about the content blocks is that the reordering doesn’t affect the code in the template. One of the key benefits of the matrix field is that you don’t have to rely on predefined themes and their content structures. The only problem with the thematic approach is that you have to make-do with whatever the theme designer deemed right. The sections are made of fields, which are made with content blocks and using these content types we create entries. The matrix is a multi functional field which can accommodate almost every type of entry.

Where to find the Matrix?

You can find the matrix in the sections where you define field type and the amount of blocks the field is going to have. Just select matrix from the field type drop down and configure it accordingly. If you want a minimalistic powerful website with necessary content elements then Craft’s Matrix field is the answer.

Image Editor in Craft CMS

Before Image Editor’s introduction in Craft 3, the only options to edit the images were through Image Transforms or with plugins like Tiny image. Craft’s inbuilt Image Transform lacked essential editing elements and was only helpful in defining universal image rules. Image editor on the other hand provides a rich editor which lets you crop, rotate, flip, and straighten images. You can even manually set focal points for responsive images. Edits don’t affect the quality of the image and can be overwritten or saved as a new asset. You can access the image editor from assets in the control panel:
  • Open control panel
  • Click on the assets
  • Select an asset
  • Click on the drop down with a gear icon on it
  • Select edit image

Image Source:craftcms.com

Edit image option will open the image editor for the selected asset. Overwrite the changes with save button or save the image as a new asset.

Plugin Store in Craft CMS

Plugins are mini applications for added functionality. There are more than 200 plugins in Craft CMS’ plugin store, each one enhances Craft in one way or another.

Image Source:craftcms.com

Plugins are infamous as vulnerability of WordPress but that’s not the case with Craft because:
  • It has One-click installation and updation.
  • It has centralized license management.
  • It allows you to try a plugin before you buy it, on a non-public domain like Craft.test.
  • It has a 30-day return policy on paid plugins licences.

One-Click Updates in Craft CMS

All the functionalities are a waste if you have to update them one by one. Craft solves this problem like a real problem solver via one-click update feature. Craft alerts you in the control panel with a notification badge and its clever designing allows the system to notify according to the update priority. For example; if it’s just an incremental update, it would just show a notification badge and if it’s a critical update the control panel will turn red. Update priority is one of the most practical & essential elements on Craft CMS.You can’t possibly miss a critical update with the control panel turning red. Critical updates are meant for security enhancements or to fix a vulnerability. Skipping them leaves your website vulnerable to attacks. Craft’s one-click update provides all the incremental and critical updates in a ready-to-install package. It is easy that way and no one skips any important updates.

Relations with entities in Craft CMS

You can link entries, assets, categories/tags, & users — the four relational field types — using Craft’s Relationship engine. For example you can relate a case study with the services page section to show which services were used during the development process.

Creating relationships in Craft CMS

  • Create a new entries field
  • Select the sources from which entries will be taken
  • Drop the new field in the layout of the desired section

Image Source:craftcms.com

You can find the new category entries field in the section, while creating a new entry. Now you can relate content elements to each other. These basic Craft features have made website development a complete new ballgame. We have partnered with agencies and companies for extensive Craft CMS projects. To know how we roll our dices, ping us here.

Debug Tool in Craft 3: Here’s all you need to know about it

Posted on by galaxy-admin
Before introducing the Debug Tool in Craft 3, Craft CMS made you install a separate web-based application, Web-Console. You could run shell commands on your server to check for errors and missing elements in the written code. Not a fancy deal though! Especially when Craft 3 was designed to be a problem-solver. The lack of a debug functionality was a major issue and ergo, Debug Tool was introduced. The coolest thing about this overlay toolbar is that you can diagnose particular pages on the spot. It shows you all sorts of essential things; number of users, logs, database enquiries, errors, time and memory.

Enabling the Debug Toolbar in Craft CMS

Make sure you have the admin login. Once you’re logged in, head to the ‘my account’ section in the drop down where it reads your username in the top left of your Control Panel.
You’ll find an option to change your preferences in the account section. Apart from the language and ‘week start day’ preference, you’ll find two check boxes with a description of what each one does. You can select either or both according to your usage and when and where you want the toolbar to appear.
  • Show the debug toolbar on the Front end
  • Show the debug toolbar on the control panel
Check the desired boxes, save and continue. Enable devmode to grant unrestricted access to all the useful statistics and elements of the tool. Otherwise, the tool will only show errors and warnings.

The Craft 3 Debug Toolbar

A collapsed overlay panel will appear in the bottom of your page. It reads Craft’s C from the logo itself. You can press on it to expand it. That overlay panel is Craft 3 debug toolbar. It shows you a handful of information and helps you keep a check on your page in real time. You can interact with the information shown in the toolbar by further expanding it half way through the page with a click. To use it in a separate tab, click on the “C”. The full version of the toolbar accommodates more information making it easier to keep track of all the errors, logs, and discrepancies.

Craft 3: Debug Toolbar Functionalities

The debugging toolbar is not for bug fixes only. It offers other perks too:
  • Timeline — It is basically a graphical presentation of your page’s performance. A graph of time and space vs the queries. It keeps track of your page’s load-time and memory used.
  • User — It provides information about users and their sessions.
  • Router — A table of rules that Craft checks before routing to a particular template.
  • Request — It shows all sorts of information from Parameters to headers to sessions and server global variables.
  • Logs — You can find all the error and warning related logs here.
  • Deprecated — Shows deprecation errors.
  • Profiling — Monitor your page’s performance with information about load time and peak memory usage.
  • Database — Shows the Database queries. It can be sorted by time and duration.
  • Asset Bundles — It contains the information of the assets being used.
  • Mail — It keeps a mail log if you’re using a mail tool on Craft.
Debug Tool provides you with crucial information about your website in real time. People who are migrating from Craft 2 will find this tool very useful because it eliminates the dependency on web console to monitor errors and logs. Craft’s minimalism has already made us a fan. These precise features with high functionality make it our favorite CMS. Our development shop is open for all kinds of Craft projects. Ping us here if you are looking for a Craft partner.