A short while ago I ported the contributed module Photoswipe to Backdrop from its Drupal 7 version. This module uses an open source jQuery library by Dmitri Semenov to implement a gallery of images which can be swiped one by one, either to the left or to the right. With a touchscreen device this is a normal swiping action; without a touchscreen small right and left arrows can be used.
Backdrop has a new basic theme called, unsurprisingly, Basis, and I have been trying it out with, in my view, some considerable success. It produces excellent results 'out of the box' but, more importantly to me, it provides a very satisfactory foundation for producing a customised theme that gives a distinctive appearance to a website.
I have just completed the transition of a well-established website from Drupal 7 to Backdrop. Although, as explained below, quite a significant amount of data has been involved, the main effort has been to rethink the design of the site from a fixed layout to one that is responsive and is much more suited to smartphones and iPads, while still looking good on more traditional screens.
I would like to be able to nominate the Backdrop development team for a gold medal! Unfortunately I have no idea how or where I could do this. In recent weeks I have watched with amazement all the development activity on Github as team members proposed, tested and made changes to Backdrop's core system, ready for its release as version 1.4.0 on May 15th. As an enthusiastic user of Backdrop may I say to those who worked so hard a huge 'well done!'.
My latest website is a very simple one for Kyson Fairways, a local voluntary organisation that manages the moorings and navigation buoys in part of our local river estuary. A friend asked me how complicated it might be to organise a single page presence on the web and this is my response. Using Backdrop may seem like overkill but it enabled me to focus on layout and images without much thought for the mechanics. Also, and probably most importantly, it allows me to hand over editorial control to my friend.
One of the great benefits of Backdrop CMS is its capability for laying out pages in your website by use of style sheets, templates, layouts and themes. But what do these names mean and how do they work together to provide your preferred result?
If end users of a website are going to be fully satisfied with their Content Management System when they add articles or pages, they need a well implemented WYSIWYG editor. I am delighted to say that we now have this for Backdrop.
Today we celebrate the arrival of Backdrop release 1.3.0, on schedule and with an impressive list of enhancements, produced by a lean, keen team in a remarkably short space of time. I would recommend anyone currently using Drupal to take a good look at Backdrop and its significant refinements.
After a few months of thought, discussion and implementation our latest Backdrop site is now open for public access at www.debenrowingclub.co.uk. The requirements for this site seemed to fit well within the market for Backdrop though there have been some challenges requiring the porting of extra contributed modules from Backdrop's forerunner Drupal 7. Overall I am delighted with the way Backdrop has met our need for versatility and provides ease-of-use for site editors.
I have been working on a Backdrop site for a local rowing club and one of the requirements is for one of the club officers to be able to send out an email from the club to some or all of its members. To do this one could choose to use a separate application but in this case we wanted to maintain membership details within the Backdrop site and use the email addresses from the membership records.