Blossoming as a Drupal Developer -- My favorite tips and tricks

Author: 
jessehs
Parent Feed: 
OpenSourcery

I've been a developer at OpenSourcery for over a year and a half now. Working with a team of developers in the office has definitely expanded my skills, and exposed me to tons of tips and shortcuts that I probably wouldn't have heard about otherwise. I wanted to compile these in a public way to get the word out! Pick out some useful ones and get it set up... a few minutes now will save you tons of time down the road, especially for those who spend hours at the command line every day. I've compiled these from many sources around the web. These are just the commands I find myself using a lot.

The post here assumes you've at least heard of Drush. If not, read up.

Drush

  • Site aliases - these are invaluable. When you set up a new project, add an alias that points to the drupal document root. These aliases live in your home directory in the .drush folder in a file called aliases.drushrc.php. Read up on it here.
  • Display the currently active site alias in the command prompt - This is very handy. I've pulled stuff from msonnabaum's and adamdicarlo's dotfiles to get some great status info in my command line prompt, including the currently active drush alias, as well as the currently active git branch. The sicle and hammer is pretty great in Mark's, too. I put a sun in mine (۞).
  • Drush conf - this is a great little utility, especially combined with the aforementioned Drush aliases. Let's say I want to bring up the settings.php file for any given site running on my laptop. I type "drush use @mysite" to set the drush alias. Then I type "drush conf" which prompts me to select from a list of configuration files for that site, including settings.php, .htaccess. It also can be used to edit your php.ini file or aliases.drushrc.php file.
  • One-time login links - use the command "drush uli [username]" to get a one-time login link for that user account. You can then paste it into your browser and surf the site as that user. This is great for Q/A, or reproducing an issue that's only reported by certain people, without having to reset their password.

    Well... I was going to cover a lot more here, but it's time to go home! I promise, I'll continue with some more blog posts in future weeks. Topics yet to cover: Git, Chrome, Terminal, Shell aliases, SSH aliases, DrupalCS, Vim and Sublime2

    • Original Post: 
    http://www.opensourcery.com/blog/jessehs/blossoming-drupal-developer-my-favorite-tips-and-tricks
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    Drupal Planet
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    Tips and Tricks
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