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UT Drupal Kit

UT Drupal Kit 3.9.0/3.9.1 Release

NOTE: Due to a CSS regression introduced in the 3.9.0 release, the 3.9.1 bugfix release was created prior to the 3.9.0 release announcement.

This serves as the release announcement for both 3.9.0 and 3.9.1. For details about the 3.9.1 bugfix, please see the release notes.

UT Drupal Kit 3.9.0 is a bi-monthly maintenance release for the University of Texas at Austin’s custom distribution of the Drupal web content management system.

In addition to the usual mix of bugfixes and visual improvements, the major changes in this release are the update to version 9.4 of Drupal core and an update to the “Layout Builder Styles” module which introduces a change to the user interface for content editors. There is also a major version change to the “Facets” module which may require attention by developers of customized sites.

Callouts for the most impactful changes follow below. For full details of all issues included in this release, please refer to the changelog on the release notes, which links to the corresponding GitHub issues.

User Interface Change – Layout Builder Styles Grouping

The 3.9.0 release incorporates the new 2.0 version of the “Layout Builder Styles” contrib module. This module enables the optional style checkboxes at the bottom of the UT Drupal Kit’s custom content components, which can be used to modify the display of either individual components or entire Layout Builder sections.

The 2.0 version of Layout Builder Styles introduces a new feature which allows us to organize these optional styles into logical groups according to their function or purpose, rather than all style options being displayed together in an undifferentiated list.

In order to update to the new version, the existing Layout Builder style options provided by the UT Drupal Kit were organized into the following groupings:

  • Borders
  • Limit Items Per Row
  • Margins and Padding
  • Section Margins and Padding
  • General Styles

For custom sites, developers will have the option to create their own groups and to add customized styles to those groups. Any Layout Builder style options which had already been created on custom sites will appear in the “General Styles” group by default.

Major version update – Facets module

Note: Site owners who have not created custom Search API displays which use Facets can safely disregard this section.

Sites using the UT News add-on which also have additional custom Search API displays that use Facets require extra work when updating. The 3.9.0 release of the UT News add-on upgrades its requirement from Facets 1.x to 2.x, a major version increment that includes changes to the configuration schema.

  • If you added the requirement drupal/facets:^1 in your site’s root composer.json file, you will need to update it drupal/facets:^2 to be able to update to the latest version of UT News.
  • Test the result of the update in a non-live environment. In most cases, there will be no change and no additional action will be needed for deployment. However, our team has observed facet displays with nested items display incorrectly after the update. Simply re-saving the Facet configuration in the UI may be sufficient to capture the new schema changes and restore the display.
  • See the Facets 2.0.0 release notes for more information, and contact the UT Drupal Kit team for further assistance if needed

Drupal core update

The 3.9.0 release incorporates the most recent patch-level release of Drupal core for the 9.4 minor release branch, bringing it from version 9.3.22 to 9.4.8.

This minor-version update should not introduce any visual changes to existing sites, but is the first step of the roadmap for the Drupal Kit’s planned update to Drupal 10 in May 2023.

For more information about Drupal 10 and the schedule for that change, please see UT Drupal Kit’s Roadmap to Drupal 10.

Here are the release notes for all Drupal core releases inclusive in this release:

Contributed module updates

The following contributed modules are updated in this release:

Modules included with the UT Drupal Kit installation profile

Modules included with the News add-on

Modules included with the Profile add-on

Updating an existing codebase

Please visit the UT Drupal Kit 3 documentation for complete release notes and instructions for updating an existing codebase using Composer. Always be sure to check for available database updates after updating the codebase.

How do I get started with UTDK 3?

The first thing anyone interested in starting with UTDK 3 should do is to head over to the documentation site:

https://drupalkit.its.utexas.edu/docs/

The “What is the UT Drupal Kit?” chapter contains detailed explanations of what the Kit contains, as well as a list of differences between versions 2 and 3.

The “Getting Started” chapter includes technical requirements for running version 3, as well as detailed instructions for setting up an environment on your own local workstation, a LAMP server, or Pantheon.

If you run into problems or have questions, please check the “Support” page for available support options.

Next releases

The 3.x (Drupal 9) branch of the UT Drupal Kit is updated on a bi-monthly maintenance release schedule, with releases targeted for the second Tuesday of odd-numbered months. The next planned release is UT Drupal Kit 3.10.0, due in January 2023. Please see Release Schedule for UT Drupal Kit for more details.

By Paul Grotevant

Paul Grotevant is the Senior IT Manager of Web Content Management Solutions for Information Technology Services at the University of Texas at Austin.