Okay, so this is the right tool for the job content layout in Drupal 8, and I'm Katherine McClintock. I have been with Amazeelabs for six years. I'm a front-end developer, but I also site-build, and I know some PHP, but really front-end is my area of expertise. I'm also the tech team lead for the Austin Company, and I'm KCC MCCK. That's a difficult handle, but I thought it was really clever because it's my initials just really long. I don't really have that many names, but it's yeah. So I'm KCC MCCK, NoVals on Drupal at Oregon on Twitter, and that's my Doug Jackson, who's 10, and I've been doing Drupal about as long as I've had him. So yeah, this is the same thing. So as I have been working in Drupal and working with agencies, a challenge, a challenging part of the job is being able to start a project and look at a project with confidence and with some clarity as to how you'll approach different tasks that you're assigned. So this is a wireframe that is particularly along when typically our pages are not really this long, but this was a really, really big landing page. The client wanted it this long, and there are a lot of different requirements that come along with just the complexity of the link. There are things that need to change. Layouts need to be dynamic. Things need to move around, change orders, change from left and right. And the client needed a lot of control over this. Things needed to be really easy to edit, everything on the page, text, photos and layout. So when you're handed things like this, you feel very overwhelmed when you first look at it. Ha, there's my lady again. She's screaming. And you're thinking how am I going to build this? And this is a feeling that is normal. So when you experience it, you're not alone. So if you look for layout modules specific to Drupal 8, there are 120 results, 127 results, which is up about 40 modules in the last six months and still growing. Dries talked about the field layout module today. So that's a new thing to keep an eye out for. So this is something that a lot of people are trying to solve and everyone has opinions on what the best approach is. But my opinion is really the best approach is what works for you, what makes sense in your head, what works with the team that you're working with, and what makes sense for the length of your project. Try to think about things, not just from like this is a page that I'm developing to launch in the next three months, but this is something that needs to live and be maintained over a long period of time. So don't feel overwhelmed like this man who has too many choices in the grocery store. Try to keep things simple. Confucius said that life is actually really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. And hopefully you know a little bit about the modules that I talked about last time, but I'll go through, I would say, the most common layout modules that are available and talk through the pros and cons of those different modules. And that will hopefully help you make some clear decisions that you can really stand behind and have reasons for why you've chosen to do things the way that you do in your upcoming projects. So there are things that are available by default out of core, and there are things that have been contributed, and mostly we'll look at the contributed modules, but there are a couple of things that are worth mentioning in core. So I'll start with the very basics, and that's the Drupal layout system. With Drupal, you have really two main things that you can add into your site, and those are modules and themes. And themes control the layout of your site, and they also control the look and feel. That's the main thing that they're here to do. So inside a theme, there's an info YAML file, and there are regions defined within that. There are default regions that come with Bartik and other of the themes that ship with Drupal, and you can also add custom themes or sub themes where you can define your own regions. And then you essentially just place blocks into those regions. That's really like the very core of what Drupal does in terms of how it handles content layout. So here, you've probably seen these yellow regions being demonstrated when you go to the block layout page and you say, show me, demonstrate the block regions. So you've got some header regions, some content regions, and there can be more of these down the page and in different orientations. So with blocks in Drupal 8, they are much improved to the blocks in Drupal 7. So that is a good thing to take advantage of. Every Drupal 8 project that I've worked on to date, we have created custom block types and used the new things that are available in Drupal 8 in this way. So there are, like I mentioned, that you can now create custom block types, and this is just like a content type. You can say, I want this specific content or this specific block type, and I want to add these fields to it, and you can manage the display of it the same way that you would other entities in Drupal. You can also reuse blocks. I'm going to give the same example as I did last hour, but that's the menu block, which is really nice to be able to only have one menu block that you would place in both the header and the footer. Instead of making a block twice in Drupal 7, that's the same thing and printing it out twice or doing that through code. You can just reuse blocks wherever you want on a Drupal site. And I think it's also really useful that the system blocks have been moved from the page template file in Drupal 7 to the user interface in Drupal 8. System blocks are page titles, system messages, tabs, breadcrumbs, things like that. Those are the four that I'm going to memorize, but there may be more. And the reason that that's really nice is you can then control their visibility a lot easier than having to create a custom page template file that you really just would rather not have too many template files laying around your theme. So this is nice because this is a reason, a use case that comes up quite frequently. And blocks still support the conditions API, which I can talk about more. So here, this is an example of a pattern that we identified for a project that we wanted to appear in various places in various pages on our site. So we wanted to have a background image, a title, and some descriptive text to appear at the top of a lot of pages. So we said, okay, we're going to call this a directory header. We called it a directory header because this is a solar search page. So you can see there are some facets at the bottom. And there were a lot of directory pages on this particular site. So we created a custom block type. It looks a lot like creating a content type, where those three elements have been added as individual fields. So there's a background image, a page title and some supplemental text. So that looks pretty normal. From there, you populate data. And you can create as many of these as you need. So here, you can begin to define, now that you have a block created, you can define where you would like it to appear within your site. So here I am saying, please show me this block on the our work page. And that's it. If there's ever a case where you want to combine some of these visibility settings. So perhaps you want to show a block on a specific URL, the pages tab that is active, and on a specific content type, you would not be able to do that with blocks alone. So I'm recommending this module that's new for Drupal Aid that's called block visibility groups. And it allows you to create these more complex visibility settings that can have different combinations that you couldn't have with just the Drupal block layout interface. And there are additionally more modules that can extend this even further. So if the type of visibility setting that you need isn't available with the default module, there are extensions like menu conditions, term conditions, token conditions. So these are some of the supplementing modules that you could install in addition to this to get even more granular control. And here's a screenshot demoing this module. I've added a block visibility group here called work. And I first have to select if all of the conditions that I'm going to add should pass, or if only one of the conditions that I add must pass in order to show the block. You can think about this as an either it's an and statement or it's an or statement, meaning that if I if I say only one condition must pass, which is currently active, then the block is either going to show if the request path is our work, or if the vocabulary is projects. If I had selected all conditions must pass, then it would mean that the request path must be our work and the vocabulary is projects. So that's pretty cool. With blocks, the great thing about blocks and your blade is that they're fieldable. When you can field something, you can also control the markup that is output through the theme. And that gives you a lot more control and precision and confidence that the layout will render to your liking. You can reuse blocks. And this is the same as in Drupal seven, but there are contextual links, which I think is worth mentioning because clients or editors of a site can really benefit from being able to see that little gear that appears and when they see that it's a very clear sign that they can just click it and edit their content and it'll take them directly to whatever data they're trying to change on the fly and not have to look through a long list of content and filter. Blocks are also configurable. And by configurable, I mean that they are exportable and importable through configuration management. So if you're familiar with using ECMI, you can export anything, any site building, any configuration that you do on your Drupal eight side, if you're working locally, or in any environment actually, whatever site building you do, you can export it and then import it into a different environment, like a development site or a production site. So there are problems with blocks being configurable, but they're minor. And that has to do with the universally unique identifiers. Those tend to get unsinked, that's the correct word, I'm not sure, but they don't sync up typically if your databases aren't exactly the same. So there's an ID assigned to a block type, and it's a very long string of characters. And on a different environment, it's going to make it some other very long string of characters, and they won't be the same. And so when you import a block type, and then add the content to that block, it might say that the block is broken or missing. And this is something that has happened to me a lot. I can't more than 10 times. So it's easy to fix you would just go in and delete the block, and then re add the block, because the type will still exist. And the other thing that is risky about blocks, in terms of using those for your entire layout is that it will become really unwieldy to, to manage if you have even a small site, if you have a lot of blocks placed in different regions on that block layout page, it'll become really long, really fast, and you won't really know what's going on with weights, like which blocks should be above another. What are the visibility settings for these blocks? So it's just not a very good long term solution for managing complex layouts. You can definitely use blocks, but I wouldn't recommend laying out the entire layout for your site exclusively with blocks. So the, the next module that I'll discuss is context. And context is based on conditions and reactions. And people call this module the block layout on steroids. And conditions are things that are looked for when a page loads. And if those conditions are met, then a reaction is fired. So that's really how the context module works. So here you can see the default options for conditions that come with CleanDrupal 8 install. And you have quite a few things that you can select from. For this example, I've chosen the request path because this is something that I think is a pretty common need. So you want to do something if the condition is slash user. So it could be, this is a wild card, right? So any user on the site, we want to do something and you can continue to add conditions here. So you're not limited to just one. So once you're happy with the conditions that you've defined, you can then go on to add reactions. And for this example, since we're talking about blocks, mostly, I've added, I've selected to place a block. It's not shown here, it's further down the page. But I want to make you aware of something that through a colleague of mine for a loop, the first time she uses module in Drupal 8, I think this is actually a difference between the Drupal 7 version of context and the Drupal 8 version of context, but I'm not 100% sure. But because my colleague was really familiar with context in Drupal 7, she was surprised that when she created a new context and placed a block in Drupal 8, that other elements on her page or on her site went missing. She was surprised that they had disappeared. And you'll see here that the header region is empty. It says no blocks in this region. And if you can imagine the block layout page, they actually would have elements or blocks assigned to the header region. So I have a logo and I have a menu. And suddenly when I install this module and start placing blocks in other regions, those two things are gone. This is a feature, it's not a bug. There's an issue on Drupal.org explaining the problem, right, asking about why is this stuff gone. And someone goes on to explain that when you install context, it completely overrides your block configurations through the default block layout interface. So I think if you're using this module, plan ahead, and if not, just be aware that there's going to be some additional work to look at what you have been using through the block layout interface and moving it and refactoring it to work through context. And a really nice solution to not have to repeat adding elements or blocks that occur globally on your site is to create a global context where you would say, okay, I know on all of the pages I need to have the menu and the logo. So I'm going to create a global header context. And then you would not have to then repeat placing the header blocks every time you create a new context. So the good things about context is that they do improve that block organization page. And because it's very streamlined and it's very block based, it does output cleaner HTML than alternative contributed modules like panels specifically. It also supports the block visibility groups module that I just mentioned. And for the negatives, you will overwrite the default block configuration. So plan ahead, and just know that that's going to happen. When you use this, had I gotten to panels by the time the session? I hadn't. So this is all new. Now, I didn't know where it ended. Okay, so that's good. Okay, so with panels, panels is a really big module. And panels is a module that people have strong feelings about. People tend to either love panels or hate panels, pretty neutral towards panels. I'm one of those rare people, I think where I don't know, it might just be my personnel and like however you want to do it, whatever makes you happy. But there, there are benefits and disadvantages to panels. And I'll go through that. It works similarly to these other modules, but it just has a bigger container of features that that ships along with this model. Okay, so panels is in beta in Drupal 8. And it is pretty stable. We have used it. So that's that and Drup in Drupal 8 panels is an API. And that's a little bit different. It just essentially, it means that you need to have an implementing module to use make use of panels and the two modules that do that currently are panelizer and page manager. So we'll take a look at a design again, where we might consider using panels. So here, we would look at the main area, the main content area of this of this design and and think about how we might want to define the regions. So here, there's that directory header block. So we'll call that a region. And then because this is a panels or a solar search page, there are a few more regions. And we'll just identify both of those as the two rows will have two more, one's the yellow bar with the facets and then one's that bright blue bar with the search results. And then finally, there's an area to display the search, the actual content, the results of the search. I kind of I don't know if that's very clear, because I use the same naming conventions, but but yeah. So those are the regions that I might say, okay, these are the things I want to turn into regions through this YAML file. So this is really similar to the info file in a theme. You would create this layout YAML file and give it a label, give it a category, tell it where the templates is this buzzing, get tell it where the template files are coming from what directory and then define those regions. And once you rebuild the cache for that, then you can then use use those regions to add different pieces of content that are not limited to blocks in those different regions. Oh, is it on? Oh, thank you. Is it on? Yeah, it is. Okay, maybe that's the reason. I'll try to buzz. I'll try to buzz less. Okay, I don't know what to do. Okay, so the bigger features that I mentioned that come with panels, as opposed to just that kind of placing components within different areas, or these things. So this is this is actually not different. It's not unique to Drupal 8. But these are the things that are a little bit more robust with with panels. And that is that panels can react to pass it. In fact, page manager page manager can. Nice. I think that worked. So you can just create a new path on the fly. You can go to pages and say, I want to create a new page slash events. And that will be there. You can also enable or disable permissions based on different criteria. So we just had or we actually haven't we have a use case for this where we have a campaign launching this week. And it's the primary landing page for this campaign was used using page manager. So we created a permission that says currently while the campaign has not launched, we're going to restrict access to this page to everyone except for administrators. And then when we're ready to go, we'll just this will turn that permission off, we'll remove it. And that'll be live and accessible. You can also create different versions of the same page. I'm using different layouts showing different content. So this is a powerful thing to do if you have maybe specific things that you would like to display or not display based on some of these more complex settings. And then panels is also supports context, which is not the same thing as the context module. This just means that different things that you place within the panel can be aware of other things that you place within the panel, if that makes sense. So you can have some smart, intuitive things happening that you can configure directly through this module. So to summarize, panels is good because it's quite powerful and it's complex. And it makes use of contexts. And it integrates really well with other systems like views, you can add those and many others that aren't coming directly to the top of my head. But it does integrate pretty well with a lot of other common Drupal things. And on the flip side, there is a learning curve for Drupal or for panels. It's a little bit better in Drupal 8. It's a developer's tool, meaning that I don't particularly tend to want to, some weird sentence, but I don't want to give clients access to these panels. And that's not necessarily a very good solution for clients that need more control over the layout of their page and for what's being displayed. It's a heavy module. There's a lot of code that comes with it and a lot of complexity and it can have some performance implications. And it is an all or nothing approach in the sense that if you decide to panelize a page, that page will not respond to other layout modules like a simple thing like placing a block. So you're going to have to do all of your content layout through that panel page should you choose to use it. Okay, so the things I just discussed have a lot of relevance to creating large landing pages. And now I want to take a little bit of a closer look at smaller elements like nodes. And I don't want to talk, I don't want to spend a lot of time on the WYSIWYG, because you're all familiar with it, I'm sure. But it's in core now. It's CK editor is in core. So that's nice that you don't have to install it anytime you want to have a WYSIWYG. And this is an example of a page created through a WYSIWYG. There's a little bit of layout going on. It's nothing to write home about. But you can see that there's some left and right alignment. And it's really it's this is a very typical use where you have some headings and some links and some text. And you just maybe want to get it in really fast. The client needs a way to have, you know, control to just get something in quickly without having you build out a new content type or something. So yeah, that's the way that it displays to the end user and then through the the WYSIWYG it's not as nice. And really the point that I want to make about the WYSIWYG is that it's problematic because markup is very likely to become messy. Even even from having people on your own team, you know, do these things, there's empty P tags or there's an image inside a heading tag because someone dragged it around and it didn't it wasn't smart enough to know. And my favorite is this is real. This actually happened. We had a client who insisted to have every type of tag allowed in the WYSIWYG. She was she was Drupal Savvy. She knew enough to be dangerous. And she found a view on another page and copied the markup for it and pasted it in the WYSIWYG. So this is I refactored the words in it to make it discrete. But that happened. And we were thinking like how did we let this happen?  And this is something else that you can do just just so that you know you can add templates to CK editor. And if you do that, you then can add a button to the WYSIWYG where you can add custom templates and your client can choose from those. And that's not something that we use often, but we do have maybe one or two sites that have this from a while ago. So that's something that you can do. The WYSIWYG is mostly a danger zone, I think unless it's used with extreme caution. But there are benefits. And I'll go through those. The client likes a WYSIWYG, I find you know they feel like, oh, you know, they're comfortable with WordPress or something, which is probably a much better WYSIWYG, I don't know. But they're familiar with it and enjoy working within it. They feel free. You can conserve some design and development budget using it. And it's efficient. And you can create custom HTML elements where you can, you know, have different styles on a button or a quote, you know, there are there are things that you can do to make this custom and more robust. And you can add those templates like I mentioned. And negatively, your design quality will most likely suffer. If the markup is is, you know, weird, or something is inserted into it that you hadn't planned for you really can't anticipate what's going to happen. There are additionally performance risks. You might imagine someone taking a really huge image and putting that in there without it having an image cache preset or something on it. So that could be dangerous. I think I've said these are there are inevitably markup issues almost always. And the things that you do customize, even those things that you've put good hard work into adding custom elements, those things are not bulletproof. So this has been a problem for Drupal for a long time. And the answer to the WYSIWYG problems is paragraphs. This is a great module to use. Instead of a WYSIWYG but also any time that you want to give your editor control over the content and the layout. So you can create sections of structured content where you where you know for sure, no matter what order of paragraphs they they add and no matter what data they put into them, you can plan for all of the different variables and feel confident knowing that you're going to still have a beautiful website that you're proud of at the end of the day. So yes, it's very flexible. As a site builder, it's a pretty simple process. You install the module and then you would identify all the different paragraph types that you might like to have on your site. And I can I'll show you a few examples of some different paragraph types that we've had on sites in the past. Once you've made a list of the paragraph types that you want, then it's time to start adding those paragraph types and adding fields to those and building them out. And you do that exactly like you would like a content type or like a custom block type is the exact same experience. So it's familiar and easy. And then you enable the paragraph types that you have created on other Drupal entities. So a basic page, for example, you might say, anytime a client creates a basic page, I don't want them to use the WYSIWYG. I want them to build basic pages using paragraphs. So you would add you might delete the body field altogether, and then add a paragraph field where you tell that content type which paragraph types you would like to allow the editor to use on that that content type. So here are a few examples of content or paragraph types that we've created in the past. This is an accordion. You know, there was a reason that there might need to be accordions in a lot of places on this site, and it doesn't make sense to work on this just once just build this whole thing as a paragraph. It was the ninth type. So you can see the site had a ton of paragraphs. This is the 10th paragraph type. It's a photo banner. It's really similar to that heading block that we looked at. So there are four elements here, the background image, the title, the text, the button. You can also add entity references as a paragraph field. So this is a paragraph type that allows you to add an unlimited number of entity references to another content type on the site, which we called site. So it's a little confusing because it's an entity reference, but the naming convention for the client was site reference. That was the name of her content type. And then, yeah, so like I was saying, it's really similar to adding content types. Those are the three that have been added as paragraph types. And here is what I was also mentioning that there's a body field on the basic page. Yeah, this is a basic page content type. And then I've added a paragraph field. So it's really that simple. And then for the editor, it really couldn't be any easier. They add paragraphs to you can also add paragraphs to blocks. I'm always mentioning content types, but you can use it on other entities. So you can add paragraphs and then add data to it. So here I've added a new node called paragraphs demo. And I've added, I've already added two site references. And then that button at the bottom, it says add accordion. So I could then add an accordion or if I click that tiny arrow to the right of add accordion, it would show me all the paragraph types that are allowed on that entity. So there would also be the option to add the site reference there. And then I would just fill out the fields and I can drag and drop them, reorder them. It's really easy. This is a this is an interesting, I think an interesting use case for paragraphs, because I don't think that the normal or the initial idea of how to build this would be paragraphs. And I want to talk about want to talk through a little bit about why we decided to use paragraphs for this. So just as some some background information, this is a wholesale table. We have a client who has a boutique sawmill. And he needed a way to displace wholesale items in a table or something really simple for his his users to use. So looking at this, I think the obvious thing that everyone sees is a table. And it is a table. But the reason that we chose to use paragraphs and not the WYSIWYG where you can put a table in is because we also were thinking about how is this going to work on a small screen? How is this going to work responsibly? And there are ways that you can turn tables into responsive elements, but it requires some JavaScript to do that. And if the markup in the table doesn't match exactly what that JavaScript needs to, to, you know, restructure the markup and toggle things, then that whole piece will break down. It won't, it won't work. So we knew we needed to really have total control over the markup being output. And we didn't want to risk it being broken in a WYSIWYG. The other idea that we had was to use views, because we're displaying the same type of content over and over. And we ultimately went against that decision, because we didn't want each of these wholesale items to need to have their own node. We just wanted them to live on this one page. There wasn't really a reason that he would need to go in and edit, I don't know, 10, I mean, it was a long page, but he wouldn't need to edit 10 separate nodes to get this on a page. We wanted it to just live on the entity. So paragraphs fixed both of those problems for us. So here we use nested paragraphs. And I'll tell you a little bit about nesting paragraphs. So there are two types that we defined here. One is a wholesale table. And that has two fields. It has the name of the table. So it was like Red Elm and another species of wood. And then there was a second field, which is a reference to a second paragraph type. So that's really cool that you can nest them and reference other paragraphs. And the second paragraph, well, the second field referenced the second paragraph type, which is the wholesale table row. And the fields within that were the columns. So things like grade, images, notes, tally, those woodworking terms. And then for the editor, this is how this content is managed for him. So he added a new table called Red Elm. And then he can add as many wholesale table rows, which are also paragraphs and manage the content within that. I think it's worth mentioning here that the only downside here is the edit form. You can configure whether you would like the paragraphs to be expanded by default, collapsed by default. And there's some weird preview thing that's kind of a hybrid. I haven't played with that very much. But I feel like it's kind of picked the, you know, the least bad. Because if you have everything expanded by default, again, this page is really long. And if you have everything collapsed, it's difficult to know if he wants to change the fourth table row and this that he needs to remember that and then come in here and expand it to edit. So just just know about that. But if you don't mind long forms, then you can expand everything and you should be able to have things be pretty clear. So on the positives, you can nest paragraphs, reference other paragraphs, reference other entities. You can change the order of these really easily either with weights or dragging and dropping. It's very intuitive and familiar. And the client controls the layout and the content. And I didn't tell you, I mean, you can get really creative with paragraphs, you can use it in even more complex ways, where you could give the editor options as to whether they should align something a specific way, like to the left or to the right. Or maybe you have something where you know there's an image behind some text and you can give the editor the option to display the text that's over it in a dark font, dark color text or in a light color text. And people are doing really innovative things with paragraphs that exceed my expertise in this area. There are paragraph talks at this conference happening. So I think it's really exciting. And I think that the options and the boundaries for this is pretty limitless. I mean, you can be very creative. And I like that. The bad thing about paragraphs that has thrown people for a loop is that they expect when they add content to a paragraph that then they can put that same content on another page. But the content that you enter into a paragraph lives on the entity. And that's it. So you can certainly reuse the paragraph type on different entities, but you can't reuse the content. So just be aware of that. If that's something that you need, this would not be the correct solution in that case. Paragraphs, I know this is a Drupal 8 talk, but also consider multi-lingual in your project. I know that in Drupal 7 it's quite problematic. In Drupal 8, I'm not as up to date as to how multi-lingual and what the support is it is like. But it's better. It's better in Drupal 8, for sure, because I work with a team of really smart multi-lingual people in the Zurich office. And we don't do hardly any of it in the States, but they are using paragraphs in Drupal 8 sites. So I know if they're using it and the multi-lingual thing shouldn't be too much of a hurdle. And also, like I showed you those edit forms, just kind of that, that not knowing if things should be expanded or collapsed, just be aware that that could just be something to keep in mind. Next, let's take a look at Panelizer. So Panels is great for layout for large pages. And Panelizer I think is better for content pages. So it's in beta in Drupal 8, and currently it requires that you configure it through the in-place editor. I'll show you how that looks in just a few slides ahead. It's very different in Drupal 8, and it was in Drupal 7. A lot of the modules, when they're ported, they are very similar, but this one is different. And it also supports panelizing all of Drupal's core entities the same way that many of these other modules have. Also, there are two beta versions for this module, and one's for the 8.2 release of core and one's for the 8.3, and I've only played with the 8.2, so this is what that is. As soon as you install and enable this module, there's a check mark at the bottom of the display that you're managing that gives you the option to say Panelize this View Mode. So as soon as you click that, the fields disappear. And you're like, where am I going to, you know, how am I going to do this? So another option becomes Visible, which says, allow custom overrides of each entity. So that's a nice feature that Panelizer has. I think that's one of the nicer things about it. But now, in terms of using it, you currently have to go to an actual piece of content of that entity that you've chosen to Panelize. So here I've gone to a node, and right now it's not Panelized. It's just got all of the content that I've added to it, printing out and rows. So there is a widget that will appear on the bottom of any of these content that you've Panelized, and there are some options here. So you can change the layout. There are default layouts that come. You can also add your own. You can add other types of content to this node that you would not normally be able to. So that would be worth looking through and seeing if any of those things might meet a specific use case that you might have. You literally just drag and drop things after you've selected a layout. So if I want to move the Drupal Texas camp image from the left to the right, I can do that. And that's a shameless plug to fly to Texas in June. If you are so inclined for having a Texas camp, which is going to be awesome, it's in June because it's hot. We love the heat. And then when you are happy with it, you can save it as the default, or you can save it as a custom override. So if you have content that you know you want to have some variations between different nodes, you can use this to create custom layouts. And I think that's a great thing. The custom overrides. The in-place editor is also nice for clients. I hear a lot that people, that clients, want to have that level of control. I think it's a little frightening for site builders and for front-end developers to hand it over. But if you can limit the amount of templates that are available to them and really try to plan so that there aren't too many options, you know, you could feel comfortable handing this to someone. There's the ability to add the other types of data that aren't normal to other modules and other ways to control content. And it's really actively developed. Every time I check on it there are new commits and things that are happening. So there's a lot of momentum there. And I think it's good. At first, you know, I have new intuitive interface. It's a good thing, but also is a bad thing. It's unfamiliar. At first I thought it was just strictly bad because I thought it was, you know, unlike anything I had seen in Drupal and I thought this is really clunky. But after having given it, you know, some thought is good. I think it's good that we're seeing some new UX designs in Drupal and, you know, I applaud them for taking whoever's maintaining this to take that risk and think outside the box, the Drupal box. The last thing I'll say negatively is that there are some layout risks that are assumed with this. I don't know how it works responsibly exactly and I worry that if a client put in something that really was better suited for a wide column into a small column, you know, I just, I like the control and this makes me a little fearful. But if you trust your client and they have good judgment then this should be negated. The final module that I want to talk about is display suite. Display suite is a drag and drop interface for how content is displayed and you can enhance the displays of all of Drupal's core entities. You can use this module in many instances and you can forego template files essentially if that's what you're looking to do as a site builder. If you just want to control things with this module, this is a good solution and the layouts are exposed through the layout plugin module. Remember when I was talking about panels and page manager or panelizer and page manager implementing panels. So it's similar in that regard. Here is an example of a task that we or an exercise that we went through in order to use display suite in a very global way for a project. We had the requirement of building a very data heavy site that had a lot of different fields, many of which were shared between content types. So there was a lot of information and text being output to the page. It's not like the most glamorous website but it was very scientific and research heavy. And because of the budget that we had we didn't want to make custom templates for each of these content types. We wanted to reuse things and streamline the front-end process. So here are I guess seven images. I don't know. There are some images here of a layout on a white board and you can see the sticky notes represent different fields. So we were trying to come up with a layout that would make sense for all of these different types of data. And once we were happy with how those things kind of shook out on the board, again this layout sample file you define the regions. We got a little creative with the naming conventions and you register that to your theme. You rebuild the caches and as soon as you do that when you're managing the display for a content type you can select which layout you would like to use for display suite. So here I've selected full node and that matches the label for that YAML file that was on the previous screen. Once you do that then you can manage the display of your content the same way that you always would. There are just additional regions and it's essentially the exact same experience. I think there's only, I don't know what it's called, but just one main region by default.  So we had a good experience using display suite on this project in conjunction with Pattern Lab. This was the first site that we used Pattern Lab on and everything that we experienced was pretty seamless. I know people are also using paragraphs in conjunction with paragraphs and also having some some success there and it's also positive that it's efficient and familiar and you can define your custom layouts like in many of these other modules and the other really cool thing that you can do with display suite is create block fields. So once you install and enable this you can then place blocks actually within those different regions. So a block is actually being rendered in the main content of that entity which is different than what a lot of these other modules how they handle blocks. It also on the on the negative it doesn't support custom overrides per entity and that's something that panelizer does better. So if that's a if that's a need that you would like to have some nodes look differently than others then I would probably lean more towards panelizer. The structure is stored in the database as opposed to templates and this is actually true I should have listed this on more of these modules but it's site building and that's kind of what happens so it's not unexpected you know what's you know what's being done but just something to consider again. I'm not going to talk about twig because this is site building and I really want to focus on the tools that we have but twig is excellent you can override and restructure markup with total control and you can be very generic with your templates are very specific so really it's hard to imagine a solution where you don't utilize both layout module and twig templates at the same time all of our drip late sites we're using twig templates so it's really just finding a balance and figuring out like you know there's so many ways to do this it's amazing you know because there's not really a right or wrong but yeah so so think about it and I hope that having heard all of this that you might have a little more clarity starting your next project in confidence and and understanding of what tools are at your disposal so with that I'll take questions if you do want to ask questions they're in that backpack the microphone for the recording and that's it you can add entity reference fields to paragraphs and you can also reference paragraphs does that make sense so and I'm not positive if you if you can reference paragraphs from anything other than other paragraphs that's something you should check on but you certainly can within paragraphs you can reference other paragraphs from another paragraph and I think it would probably be the case that's interesting I don't know I've never actually tried that and I have heard that you can't reuse the content so I that would be a good experiment definitely the second question is I haven't used it I've never I don't have knowledge on bricks but you're the second person who has said that so I'll yeah and thank you for doing the first thanks features right yeah features for me I haven't used in jubilee because we're using configuration management yeah I don't I'm sorry I really haven't used it no it's okay it's okay sorry very simple you show us a sign at the very beginning what are you at that using to build that site which one the mockup that you showed at the beginning of the presentation of the mockup one month or well I don't I'm not sure exactly which screenshot I think most of them come from the same site but typically what we do is we will use I think about you know that it's nice to have functionality from all of these modules but you want to try to limit it to not having every layout module under the sun installed on your site so I think in the case of that screenshot we use blocks we use page manager with the layout plugin it's a little different than panels and trying to maybe I'm trying to think what else I would recommend really trying to keep it limited so pick two or three and then commit to that right you can do almost anything but we probably just use those two those two things and tweak templates the landing pages exactly yeah yes I don't think so because I gave it a trial run and recently and I did not notice that happening so I think the answer is that no it does not did that happen to you oh wow and it took away all those blocks okay so maybe it does then but but hey I hope that was the problem because then you know what happened the other thing I wanted to mention was that you mentioned how to insert into the WYSIWYT well just taking the WYSIWYT techniques and I wanted to share I don't know if you guys are aware but there's a WYSIWYT module so you don't have to actually create the JavaScript on the big file or it's just actually configuration very nice that's great to know do you have a client that wants to add blocks on a page by page basis by a what page by page basis they created a new node and they wanted to add a block onto the page to reach them what do you think is the best solution well maybe with paragraphs if you can have something that references a block because they're an entity so you should be able to do that I think I would personally probably have that region through a template file a twig file but you might be able I mean you would also probably be able to do maybe something well I wouldn't want to say panels actually I would I would think about paragraphs and then I'm not sure how you would want to register that region but that could be that could be something you know so yeah good luck yeah yeah that's fine


You can almost summarize our lives as a series of experiences where we can choose how deep we want to go and how deeply we want to experience realities. For example, you can be in a relationship and experience some sort of an argument. Now most people when they get into a really bad situation in their relationship would get up and leave or the same in any endeavor or situation. Imagine you're thinking about starting a career as a painter or a singer, photographer or coach or a writer and you get these zaps of negative emotion that tell you, you know, don't do it. Don't go there. It's not a good place. Keep away from this situation. You don't want to look any deeper into where this leads. Go back where you came from. Now the remedy to this, what really allows us to go deeper is is a lack of options to the contrary.  You would never go to that room. Now let's say there was some really cool incentive like, you know, $100 set at the end of the room. Would you cross then? Well, again, it depends on your temperament. It depends on your life situation.  Would you still choose not to go on these mousetraps or would you run right across them happily and not think of complaining for a single moment? Because the alternative is unbearably worse than a few mousetraps. This is the situation most people will find themselves in and based on how far you want to go or you're willing to go, that room full of mousetraps might as well be a room full of fire and demons. I found myself in pretty much the same situation when I decided to go back to recording videos and when I say decided I meant committed, you know, created that fire, that bear, that fear that makes you go forward. I've been delaying making videos for about three form good months because I am scared that the videos will not be good enough that my content is not good enough and once you're out of that loop of, you know, that upward spiral of motivation, once you stop doing it for a while, it's really hard to go back, especially because now you have some sort of a reputation and people expect certain things of you. So every time I would have an intuition or a voice telling me Robbie, this is a really, really good idea for a video. You really should record this. I would immediately think I don't know, like, is really that good? I mean, is the presentation going to be good enough? Is it articulated like I want to? Am I a good of an authority as I need to be? And I found myself not doing it. I would not. Record a video.  So even if it bombs, you know, some my fault, I didn't put any effort. Or when I did want to make a video, I would work so hard on creating a high, high-quality content video where I didn't have to express myself really. I would just research and research and write and then come up with this idea, but would it be me? It would be just a representation of a thought that I think would be good for my audience. So even that wasn't it. And because I've committed to making two videos every day, I had no choice now, but to continue to go back to making videos and to be in that situation where I'm scared. I don't want to get into it. I don't want to do it because the critical voice, you know, and the anxiety in the stomach, it doesn't want you to go there. But because you have to, you know, it's like when you need to get into cold waters, I'm not the kind of guy that jumps. Okay, and many people aren't. I'm the kind of guy that dips a toe and even that is after a bit of convincing. And then after I, you know, put in the toe, I put in, you know, the ankle, then the knee, then the, you know, the groin area, so on and so forth. So it's more painful that way, that's for sure, than just jumping in. But I just haven't found myself having the initiative or however you want to call it to just jump in.  And that commitment to making two videos every day forced me to keep trying. So I tried a couple of different formats and I was like, okay, it doesn't matter how the video turns out. You have to record a video and so this is the result. So I hope this message inspires you to allow yourself to go to whatever depth, whatever level of depth that your conscious, your gut is telling you to go.  Ask yourself what commitment do you need to create? What repercussions where it would be a big enough of a danger, that bear or that fire, to make you step into that room, to force you into that room. Once you find that, there's no level where you can't go.  There are really, really, really dark rooms where you might not come back. So your subconscious is not hiding you from danger in vain. Once I first discovered this ability to set a goal, create a proportional level of risk that would force me to accomplish that goal and basically accepted being so anxious that I would wake up with a panic attack every day while progressing, you know, faster than I've ever progressed though, I began to really take advantage of it and abuse it to the level where I started aiming into places where I was not prepared yet and sometimes when you go into fight with the lion or the dragon, you get eaten or bit really hard and that happened to me about two years ago, almost I guess a year and a half.  You're gonna get very creative on how to get water.  So you wouldn't necessarily go straight to thieving, you know, and stealing stuff, especially if you have a very high IQ, but eventually, of course, when the ends justify the means and the goal is too high, but, you know, you have no choice, then yeah, you might start to compromise on your moral and ethical integrity. So that was just a quick word of warning and I would love to help you. So feel free to contact me or schedule a free strategy session with me on Skype. You can also download my free e-book that is 60 pages of gold on how to make thousands of dollars while traveling by offering your services, online, and also you can purchase my autobiography, my 300-page book about me and how I got to where I am through my website, for $37. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you haven't subscribed yet, feel free to do so and let me know what you think.


So moving forward from parametric testing to another type of testing, that's non-parametric testing. There are many situations and conditions where researchers cannot use parametric tests. You remember there were a lot of assumptions before we use or select any parametric test. For example, distribution, underlying distribution should be normally distributed, then homogeneity of the variance in the groups, etc. So being student of psychology or social sciences, you are confronted with many situations when you are restricted or you cannot use parametric testing. So the alternative choice for us is to non-parametric testing. The main reason to apply the non-parametric test include that the underlying data do not meet the assumptions about the population sample. The population sample size is too small and the analysis data is ordinal or nominal. So if we have our level of measurement ordinal or nominal, or our sample size is very small, or we are unable to meet assumptions of any kind of parametric testing, then our choice would be to test the hypothesis non-parametric testing. Non-parametric statistics does not assume the data is drawn from a normal distribution. Therefore, it is called a distribution-free test. Because we do not first assume that the population that we took data from will be normally distributed. Because the sample size is also small and the sample of some kind that you physically or mentally take your illnesses or data like this where you assume that the underlying data will not be normally distributed. We call this non-parametric assumption-free test or distribution-free test. Non-parametric statistics include that we do everything. Like we do parametric testing, we calculate descriptive statistics, we calculate statistical models, we calculate inference, we draw and we calculate test value as well. Just like we do parametric tests in TEF or KAIS or regression. But the difference is that our model structure is not a priori defined, rather our data tells us how our underlying distribution will be. Non-parametric tests usually involve qualitative data. Remember that the biggest reason when we switch from parametric to non-parametric test is that our data is qualitative or nominal or ordinal categorical data. Our continuous running score does not have data. So most of the time even quantitative data is converted to nominal or ordinal data. There are many situations when we do not have parametric assumptions or our sample size is small. So what we do is that even if our data is quantitative, even if it is on an interval ratio scale, even then we do non-parametric tests and we convert that quantitative data into nominal or ordinal scale data. First, like we do self esteem for students. Self esteem is a running score or quantitative data. If you want to use non-parametric instead of parametric, then you can categorically convert that self esteem. So you can convert that quantitative data into nominal or ordinal data. First, like I make its three categories, low self esteem, medium or high self esteem. So these are some of the introduction and prerequisites when and why we will be using non-parametric statistics.


Teddy bears oh I don't know why I did that Oh, he's weakened Did I get him? I just phased right to the bottom of the signal tower Guys, what this is it? This is my vision. This is where he was locked up in the signal tower All along I was trying to get to him lure him out and kill him Hold on a minute There's other doors. Oh well, obviously there's other doors, but if this is my door What did all these other doors mean? I'm guessing it I'll go up and go through that one So some of them have eyes on them Is that a puzzle? Guys man, this is why I love this game so much like what other game gives you this This experience this is a puzzle. All right. That's an eye looking down more eyes Like I'm fading. I'm like Don't want to just go between existences. Oh I've got to go through them in a certain order. I gotta go through the doors where I can hear the music. So this Right, don't hear it anymore in that door Yeah, here it in this one Here in this one And then back through this one. I'm assuming that's the yeah, I think I got it I think I got I think that was a game loading like you did it I'm so gonna listen to the music So not there She's playing her music box. Yeah, this is it Nope, not that one It's like purgatory in a way Right, it's not through that door Wait, is it that? Did I just oh god, it's one of these again. Oh Is this one this one you can push I think oh Can I push it or can I just oh it's the other door there? They're linked Right, so I've got to push this one then to get through that door I gotta push this door open Right There we go. There we go. There we go. There we go And then I got to get through it before it closes if it if it does close. There we go Is it this one? It's gonna be this one. Yeah, this one Just getting higher and higher into the signal tower So this is what lies inside the signal tower But I don't understand what it means though Maybe I'm not supposed to okay good to hear Okay, whoa, what is that?  Oh Okay, do I do I take a running jump like how do I go over? Okay, I think I've got to go back. I got to find a way Definitely is that one? I Gotta push this I think I gotta push this over Yeah, I thought so gotta push this over Because I need to get back over here because the singing door is on the other side. I Like this though This is intense There it is Okay, I assume it's gonna be over here. Yeah, I thought so Take a wild guess. There we go. How many floors left we got? Oh No more floors higher Just a floating bit of concrete.  Is this where the monsters are made? In their own little nightmare, what's her little nightmare to grow up her suitcase is behind her Did you see that? That's a suitcase that she uh She ends up in That's the toy. I think at the start of the game with little nightmares So we're gonna end up putting her into the suitcase. I think Yeah, I think that's a suitcase I need to break it This that is a suitcase and it's the two pictures. That's what am I doing? I assume I'm gonna break the box What's that thing? Oh now she's mad. Oh god six. I'm so sorry Six, why did I don't know why I did that? I really don't know why I did that. Oh my god We were afraid! Oh god! That's a problem with having like a Not an analog stick. Is an analog stick? No left and right complete No, not an analog stick. It was a little bit too much to the left and I missed the door Oh god. Oops. Yep Hi, bud. I meant to go through the door. Oh, yeah, tell them otherwise she would have got me there So I had to use the door. Oh god. Oh god. Gotta hide Gotta hide. So is this shadow six? Oh God Open the door. I went through the door. Yes. I'm gonna go guys Okay, I'm seeing axe Okay, should we? So she went through that so I'm gonna have to grab the axe Smash down the door and then get through. Okay, gotcha She's gonna hear me when I stop doing this and then she's gonna come through Unless she actually Oh, she found a music box again Did she calm down? Do I just run? I think I just run. Oh, do I? You really like the music box. I get it. I get it. I get it. Oh I see what I gotta do. I see what I gotta do. Okay. I feel like I've got to destroy that music box And I don't know why there we go This is Weird. Oh, I think I've got to open the doors that are behind Oh We did it again Why are we destroying this music box though? She's attached to it. It's freaky though. Here we go again Here we go again Can I go? Okay, I can hold the axe while calling Gotcha. I just got to find out which door goes where Okay, oh Feel like I got to get Okay What's inside the music box a nightmare? We're so close to like Understanding something with the little nightmares universe. It's so tantalizing close yet I Need time to think it's weird because when you're watching this it's completely different to playing it Because when I was watching like when I was editing it I was like coming up with ideas and thoughts that obviously, you know when you're playing Oh, we're back again. Hey, yeah, oh do I not have my axe this time? Oh, it's there Okay Die with the axe I Feel like we're doing this for our own good though. So close. Oh I should have went the other way should I went the other way? Oh That seems to be it that seems to be the one that seems to be the one that she Ages that there we go. There we go. Okay. There it is Yes, oh what like how many times do we need to do this? We are the final hit What is inside the box? No It's like You know, you had the lady and her reflection. This is sixes nightmare Sorted like a fly Okay, maybe we don't approach with the axe. Oh, okay. That's how we do it. That's how we do it Oh picky. Yes. Go on. Come on. All right Okay, so I need to do that and I need to walk it Okay, let's go She's returning I think was she in caged in it and the monster was like Trapping her in there. I think so. Did I are you okay? Okay, we need we need to get going we need to get going come on Wait, why are we going that way? Oh God.  Why the heck did he pick up?  I don't know how my life. I feel like I had a terrible start This being this creature That makes the monsters Okay, okay, okay, I can glitch that's fine Good six, so have we destroyed the monsters like layer The nightmares like six six Am I gonna make it? This is it the final jump Is she gonna save me? So what happens now that I'm just trapped in here in the bubbling mass of So with six never I Killed the monster version of six, but was she still a monster? like evil I Had a feeling that was gonna happen guys. I had a feeling she was gonna let go I had a feeling Is this just me now? Is this the rest of the game like do the credits play like as I walk around in the group?  What what is that? Oh? Why you got so many eyes is that gravestone? It's a chair I'm not the hanging man. Am I I sit on a throne. You know this scut now. I'm turning into the monster I'm the monster. I'm the one sat in the chair Just like the thin man the thin man was sat in the chair Trapped I was locked in now as time goes by I get long and thin So does it always? Does that always have to be a monster? Where did the clothes come from? Well, I couldn't Are you saying that it just repeats itself? Which ever this time the doors open so what the cycle repeats itself and I'm trying like the reason why he goes after six Is because of what six did to him, but why would we have like a continuous cycle of thin men? Unless that's just how it ends and like a good thin man has left at the end to take the spot Because that what it needed this this place needed a monster, man. Oh I'm so confused. Oh So Right off the bat game is phenomenal art style direction cinematography the scenes everything's been crafted and it's just It's what you want. It's it's it's like a it's a movie experience that you play And that's why it works so well Because when movies get you know get adapted into games. It doesn't work. It's not the same But this you can easy see this being a movie or or or a TV show or whatever Whether or not that Netflix thing's ever gonna come. Oh, I don't know Because they were supposed to be making a little nightmares Netflix show Which will be freaking amazing if they did if they do pull it off I don't know. I feel like that ending is not satisfying though What that he just takes the place of the thin man at the start mono just appears in in the wilderness by himself as if he came from a TV I Feel like this is a prequel I Feel like we see the origins of six At the start when we first see six, she's alone all she has is that toy and That's when she becomes a monster and she gives in to like her her own ability She gives into her monster and that's where she is is inside this I don't know whether when she gets grabbed that's and she gets turned into the monster That's why she let him go because she's still a monster although.  That's where she is her suitcase is In that monster room with the same two pictures in the back of it and The toy is also there. I vividly remember just by picking up a toy and throwing it So now I'm wondering whether or not There's a TV above six I feel like there is In that lone place where you start with the six in the suitcase where she wakes up if there's a TV above I Feel like there might be and so this is a prequel if that is the case But it just explains it explains where the suitcase came from unless it is a sequel and The toy and the suitcase are there because That's where she felt safe and she was in the suitcase playing the toy or whatever And that was our home because I'm refer see her. She's there But we we needed to release her we wanted to save her Because she we could have just left her there, right? I'm so confused because at one point we almost saved her from the TV before the thin man came out and chased us And she was normal there So once we killed the thin man She took the place of the monster inside the tower and then when we Killed the monster She then the tower still required a heart Like the more with the lady these places need a heart so mono becomes the heart Because six knows that he can't escape or if he does then she'll just be back there These are just theories off the top of my head So there's no real thought that's went into them But if I was to hazard a guess it's just like from a gameplay perspective and like a single game Because this is got nine out of ten ten out of tens and it truly is a masterpiece of cinematic proportion From every character design, you know set design Everything sound design. It's it's all there But I feel like the ending is like oh, he's the hanging man. Oh, okay It's like now what? But why why does he become the hanging man? Why what is his fear? What is his nightmare? To be alone to grow old and alone now we could look at The man who hung himself the hanging man in little nightmares as Him because I feel like there's got to be a TV nearby. Maybe he got out somehow and just ended it So the original hangman might not be him it might just be another child that had the powers But that's the case. Are we talking about like a cyclical like a cycle? It's definitely not straightforward this plot. It really isn't I Can't I just want to hope like I want to wait until the end to see if there is anything But really the question is Where did he get his clothes from and where did the hat come from? They're the real questions we're asking here. Oh After all that Here we go. Oh, that's a nice touch chapter select. So hats collected glitching remains discovered. Oh So these are the kids I'm assuming so we got the huntsman. We got the school We've got the doctor and then signal tower, which is just the city I guess and then the signal tower Which there is nothing to collect or anything I was thinking that maybe the the glitch remains of the children were previous thin men And I guess it would make sense why the thin man was after mono and six six to get revenge if this is a cyclical thing Which would be really weird Because then it means that six just repeats over and over again as well But why the thin man's after mono is to stop the cycle like he gets out And he knows that mono is just gonna kill him and replace him And you know in saving himself in a way, but you can't you can't do it It shed more light on the universe as well or this city or the outside world of the more with a teacher the doctor Like and it kind of ties into little like the original little nightmares a little bit more But I think if we're if we're asking for a coherent story, I don't think we're going to get one I don't think we're gonna have oh this ABC. I think this is a world that Works in a very strange way Things don't make sense. It's a world of nightmares Can you like for instance, can you imagine the the doctor having a conversation with the lady? You know what I mean like these these creatures or characters don't seem like There there's thought there the only thing I can think of is The one thing in control the one thing that could possibly tie all of this together is The eyes the seeing being a creature manifestation of something Controls everything. It sees the whole world And just like when the most was it There was something in the website that the more and on Bandai or little nightmares the more needs a heart and Six when she killed the lady it can be argued she became The next lady just like mono became the next hanging man And they're doomed to repeat over and over and over So, you know mono goes on becomes the hanging man six goes on becomes the lady until another mono and another six Come along and the poor the process repeats over and over It's possible something like that could very well happen. It's not really that satisfying if that is the conclusion But it's kind of interesting.  It's like, oh, okay So he dies all that for nothing in a way And this one as well feels like we did so much and we've experienced so much and in the end it didn't matter And I don't know whether that's something I'm missing something Like maybe it's possible that this this thin man is a good one and he just stays there. That's it like the signal stops and He just stays there forever and That's one monster killed and six takes out the lady and maybe goes off into something else And that's another monster kill. I'm really not too sure It's a lot. There's a lot to think about and unpack and definitely plenty for theorists out there to go over. I Think it might take a while before I come up with a theory. I like to let things settle And a theory videos take a while to make and I lost all the footage from my original little nightmares playthrough So if I need to use any of that I'm gonna have to go and play that again but There my thoughts Tell me in the comments what you guys think. I think it's a wonderful game I think the ending is a little bit hollow. I think It's a little bit more. Oh, it's a little bit. I don't know. I don't know It's hard to think like how can an ending to something like this be satisfying And I don't think we've really ever had a satisfying ending It's more like it just leaves you like wow that's what happened and maybe that's what they're trying to go Oh, they don't go like a black mirror and just try and topple, you know get the same sort of feeling as others But they did an amazing job the team who worked on it you guys who maybe any of you are watching you did an amazing job on it I I'm glad that we waited and we had to wait this long for a sequel and it wasn't rushed. I hope It was perfect even gives you that hollow feeling at the end of it Which is what I think now I come to expect from little nightmares But anyway guys, I've been talking for far too long. It's probably been 10 minutes of me talking Rejoice this video leave a like and I'll see you later. Oh, bye. Sweet dreams


I've used and reviewed a lot of new plugins this year but some stand out from the crowd. So here is my top 5 plugins for 2022. Hi folks, I'm Mike and I hope you're well. One of the plugins in my top 5 is so new I haven't even reviewed it on the channel yet but it's super impressed me in the time that I've been using it. Another one is actually completely free. Now before we get into all of that I want to remind you to follow my VIP link in the description down below for the sponsor of this video DistroKid. If you sign up for them using that link you'll get an extra 7% off an already great price. We'll talk about them later.  Let's take a look at number 5. Back in April I reviewed augmented strings. The first in the augmented series from Arturia they subsequently also released augmented grand piano and augmented voices but I continue to love this plugin. Before we get into what it's all about let's just have a quick listen to it and keep an eye on this morph knob in the middle. See how the sound changes as I change the setting here. And you can hear there how initially we were hearing this much more sort of traditional type of a string sound and then later we got much more of that synthesised sound. And you may be mistakenly thinking that this is just like a mixed knob but it's so much more than that and it's what makes this series more powerful. If we go into the advanced section we'll see that this sound is made up of two main layers layer A, layer B. They can be samples they can also be a synthesised sounds as well. But the key to this is over in the macro section where we can see with this particular preset how that morph control is actually changing those sounds. It's not just going to be always about volume although it is in this case but it can be about all kinds of other things as well. This is true for the color of the time the motion controls here as well. So it's a really sort of interesting way of approaching creating these sort of hybrid sounds and I'm rewarding Arturia a little bit here because I like to see companies who are bravely going in new directions. Arturia are mostly well known for modelling existing or hardware instruments okay. Synthesizers old sort of piano electric pianos and things like that. They do actually have a great synthesizer pigments which is amazing in its own right. But this is really a new direction and I really love it. I hope they keep going in this direction and add more instruments like this to the collection. Modo base 2 represents for me a nice trend away from sampled instruments to modelled instruments. If you don't know what the difference is sampled instruments are made of lots of little recordings audio recordings of real instruments normally. And then if you want to change the sound you can do a little bit of a change through sort of amp sims and things like that. If you really want to dramatically change something about the sound you need more samples. That means they're not that versatile and they can be quite large okay. They can take up quite a lot of disk space. With modelled instruments the plugin itself creates the sound okay. And if they're programmed well which I think is happening here then you can create a great deal of versatility in sound and still keep the plugin rather small in size. Before we'll get into all that in a moment and what the advantages of that are. But let's just have a quick listen to this P bass sound from Modo base 2. A nice basic sound if you'll excuse the pun. Now we could go to another instrument here. We'll go for a fretless jazz bass here have a listen to the difference in sound. And even we could go to an acoustic upright bass here have a listen to this. And there's a great deal of you know different models of bass available for this plugin. But where it gets really cool is if we've say got this P bass first of all we can do things like change the position of where we're playing where we're hitting the strings. Now this is fairly subtle see if you can hear the difference. Here it gets a little bit more full up this end but as I say reasonably subtle at the moment. But what about if we do something dramatic like change the playing style from you know using our fingers here perhaps to pick perhaps the slapping. Have a listen to this. Obviously a dramatic change in sound there. And we can do some really interesting things that an actual player may do. For example you may want to swap your strings from round wound to flat wound. How does that sound? You could even change the action that's the height of the strings here. From the body of the guitar from the pickups more specifically. So go to a high action here. Let's go to a low action. Slight differences there. We could change the gauge of the strings. We can change things about the electronics. We can even move the pickups around just by dragging them. That has a big change in the sound. And of course as you may expect we can go to the studio here. We can do different amps. We can use different pedals. And then they also include a great deal of patterns different things that you can actually just drag these patterns out into your door. Yeah for different kind of starting points perhaps for your song. You also have a great deal of control in terms of being able to assign controls on your keyboard to different parts of you know the bass and changing it on the fly as you play. An amazing plugin actually. I haven't really done it justice here with this quick overview. So definitely check out the link in the description down below. You can download a trial for this. I think there's a free version and there's a trial version. I'm not quite sure at the moment but follow the link and find that out. It's really worth trying out. Before we find out about my number three pick which is completely free. Let's find out how easy it is to release your music to all of the best platforms using DistroKid. By using DistroKid you get to release your music directly to some of the best platforms on the planet. We're talking Spotify, iTunes, TikTok, Amazon you know all of the household names and you don't need to open any accounts there because DistroKid does all of that for you. Now once you've created your master and your album artwork it's as easy as filling in a friendly form, uploading them and DistroKid takes care of the rest. All for one flat annual fee and DistroKid takes none of your royalties. Sign up with my VIP link in the description and you'll get an extra 7% off. Never has a plugin library been so aptly named as this one. This is the free orchestra. It's from Project Sam and it is a free orchestra or parts of an orchestra at least. Now I made a demo of this back in August when I reviewed it. Let's just have a quick listen to that demo now. Now I feel that that kind of speaks itself in terms of quality there but let's just take a look and see what it's actually all about. Now I want to point out here this is a library, it's a free library and it works with the free version. Listen carefully the free version of contact player. Okay so there's nothing you have to pay for here to make this work. You were hearing a few of the different sounds included with it there obviously I'm showing the short strings here but let's just pull up the library here which thankfully has got a little sort of speaker icon on each sound so you can get a preview of it. We've got heroic horns, we've got the short strings we were listening to there, Saldino violins, nice bombastic basses I like these, yeah we've got Pandora birth, ominous lows, luminous choir, power strike, you get the idea, a lot of different orchestral sounds some of them sort of you know sort of real sort of instrument sounds and some of them more like sound effects and things. The organ is really really nice too, it's an amazing library if you haven't got it already then follow the link in the description down below and just get hold of it. Back in February I made a video about this plugin piano tech seven and I made the argument that this was one of the best piano plugins of all time it feels wonderful when you play it it sounds absolutely exquisite in my opinion and the great thing is it's another modelled instrument so it's incredibly flexible there's all kinds of things you can do to change the sound of the pianos and other instruments that you can get with this plugin however since then they've actually updated it to version eight and it's that plugin which I'm including in my number two spot for my top five plugins for this year they've just continued to improve an already amazing plugin in my opinion now enough talking let's just have a quick listen to see how it sounds with this Steinway D prelude piano I just wanted you to hear there how it sounds sort of across the range of the piano keyboard a lot of the time I'm actually using these instruments in a much more simple way just as a simple accompaniment to a vocal perhaps like this so of course because it is a modelled piano then they're able to give you a whole bunch of presets included lots of different types of pianos for example we have this Mistral piano here another Grand piano but this one sounds a little bit more sort of hard sounding and then we've also got things like this one this is an upright piano and it's able to achieve all of these sort of variations in sound with all of the under the hood controls that we can see here all to do with the design of the piano just lots and lots of things you can change here you can see all the options on the screen here to get different sounds and sort of model the piano yourself if you like but it's not just pianos they also have some sort of different instruments in there as well including things like let me just pull it up here this electric piano I mean there's a few electric pianos but this is just one of them you see how this sounds and in this new version they've sort of branched out in an interesting way I mean they've always had some different interesting instruments in there but they've actually got a guitar in there this time let's have a listen to that and that's probably not the key reason why you would go ahead and buy this plugin to be honest with you but you know it's nice that it's there I've just felt for a very long time that piano tech was just an incredible plugin this latest version definitely doesn't disappoint back in August I reviewed this plugin Smart Comp 2 from Sonable and it is my number one pick for this top five and the only effects plugin in the mix go figure let's hear what me from August had to say about this I think the new Smart Comp 2 compressor from Sonable is amazing not just because it's so smart but also because if you've ever struggled to use compressors at all I reckon this is a great learning tool as well I've got it inserted onto this acoustic guitar track which sounds like this and in order to start actually compressing the first thing we need to do is set a threshold a level at which a volume at which we start to compress the signal so we do that by adjusting this bar here so I'll just pop that down there and the other thing we need to set in order to actually compress at all is the ratio ratio determines how much compression so how much we're going to turn down the signal after it's gone over the threshold the great thing about this plugin is we can visually see what's happening to the signal in real time as we adjust these parameters by looking at the top area here when I play the guitar look at the red sort of a graph which scrolls across as I play this so we can see the compression happening here and if I adjust the ratio and the threshold we can see how that's affecting the signal and we can also see at the bottom here are some two gray areas dark gray and light gray that's kind of a before and after as well now a lot of people are going to struggle when they're using compression with the settings like attack and release okay so thankfully again we can really easily see when we adjust these how it's affecting the signal now we do adjust them just by hovering over their values here and then dragging up and down with the mouse to change those values okay so let's put this attack all the way down to zero milliseconds so it's clamping down with the compressor right away and then I'll adjust it up and down and you'll see what's happening to the red area at the top here so a slower attack and a quick attack slow quick okay so you can really easily see there with a quick attack it really clamps down hard and fast on that signal okay likewise with the release we can adjust that you can see with a really long release there that it's virtually compressing all of the time in fact it's just destroying the dynamics because it's compressing even the sort of next note of the guitar it doesn't get a chance to breathe so often that's a mistake we can make as beginners we can have that release too long sometimes and the compressor bleeds into the next note and we sort of ruin it that way this is great that we can actually see what's happening there and adjust accordingly and we can start to see when we've got that release time to the right level at which we can actually allow some dynamics and then start to compress the next note as well allow some of the transients through so that is the basics of the controls there as you can see it's great plug-in already but what about the smart features well the smart features are really clever in my opinion because i really don't believe in presets with things like compressors at all because how can you really set up a preset for an instrument if you don't know what the source material is well sonnable get around that by actually having listened to the source material and coming up with a preset for you but first of all it's advisable i reckon to go up here to what appears to be a preset menu there's really a profile menu where we set up the profile for what the smart feature is going to listen to so this is in this case an acoustic guitar so i'll select that there and then i want to click on this learn button here and play the acoustic guitar it's now going to analyze that acoustic guitar and come up with some compression settings for me so i'll click there then play the acoustic guitar it's analyzing it's not compressing it yet and then when it gets all the way across i reckon that's a really great setting there's some compression happening there but i'm not really aware of it it's very very transparent now the eagle eye amongst you will have also noticed that there was something happening at the bottom here in green this is the spectral compression okay what is spectral compression this is compression which is applied to different frequencies in different ways a little bit like a multi band compressor in this way but on a much more micro scale dealing in many many more different frequency ranges it's how to listen to that guitar and its supply is adjusted to something it thinks is suitable for that instrument now i can blend that in and out using this control here yeah i've also got controls over here for a more clean signal to a dirty signal and also a darker sound to a brighter sound you can blend those in as you wish now whilst i haven't made a video about my top five pieces of gear for 2022 i did pick five and i've put the reviews for those in this playlist right here


In case you missed it, the annual Turning Point USA Summit took place over the course of the weekend and it featured conservative superstars such as Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and even Donald Trump himself. Yes, very exciting. Now, there were a lot of different conservatives who showed up to support this. Libertarians, Stradcons, you know, more far-right individuals, but most notably among the conservatives who showed up to support this event were Nazis, literal Nazis with swastika flags and everything. They also had pro-DeSantis flags, which is really interesting. One of them had a sign with the DeSantis's face on it. So yeah, it tells you a lot about DeSantis. They were yelling racial slurs at hecklers. And at the time that I record this video, DeSantis still hasn't condemned his Nazi supporters, which is weird because you'd think that somebody who's definitely not a fascist would speak out immediately and condemn them unequivocally, but we still haven't heard from DeSantis. Perhaps she'll hear something by the time this video goes up. But you know, it's interesting that Nazis were drawn to a mainstream GOP event. Maybe that tells you just a little bit about the modern GOP party. But we're not going to talk about those fascists because I want to focus on one particular fascist who spoke at this event, namely Matt Gaetz. Now he decided to give an argument against abortion in favor of banning abortion to be clear. And it was very, um, intelligence, we'll say that facetiously, but take a look at what he had to say. You watched these pro-abortion, pro-murder rallies.  Like, why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb. These people are odious on the inside and out. They're like five, two, 350 pounds, and they're like, give me my abortions or I'll get up and march and protest. And I'm thinking, March, you look like you've got ankles weaker than the legal reasoning behind Roe vs. Wade. A few of them need to get up and march, they need to get up and march for like an hour a day, swing those arms, get the blood pumping, maybe mix in a salad. I just want to remind you, that's a sitting member of Congress making an argument for banning abortion on the basis of whether or not abortion activists are attractive or not. Not citing data, statistics, nothing. I mean, this is why the country is in such bad shape because so many people like that hold power.    Now first of all, it's bizarre because he used to be overweight himself.  And second of all, just imagine if a leftist made this argument. I don't think any leftist would support this. Imagine if Bernie Sanders said we shouldn't have Medicare for all because fat people like Medicare for all.  We wouldn't have to talk about, you know, their body type or how they dressed because we support this policy based on data, based on studies, based on facts. But because conservatives have nothing, he decides to pretend to be a standup comedian and claims that like overweight people support abortion. So we shouldn't worry about it. I mean, it's not just overweight people. The overwhelming majority of America supports abortion. And this is such a bizarre argument because there are overweight people on the left and the right.  But this is just who Matt Gaetz is. His career is dying. Nobody takes him seriously. So that's why he resorts to things like this, desperate attempts to, you know, grab headlines. Now, following these disgusting comments, far right news outlet Newsmax reported on what he said, saying Florida representative Matt Gaetz blasted abortion activists in a rant, sure to raise the dander of his political opponents. Now, Matt Gaetz then responded to that particular tweet by taking the profile picture of a 19 year old abortion rights activist named Olivia Giuliana and tweeted dander raised to his 1.4 million Twitter followers. Now, before I show you her response, just pause for a moment. This is a sitting member of Congress again, like we have to reiterate that point because it's important doing targeted harassment of a 19 year old activist. So he can, I guess, prove his point that some people who are in favor of reproductive rights are overweight. There are skinny people, fat people, medium sized people, people of all stripes who support reproductive rights, because most Americans, contrary to what Matt Gaetz would have you believe, they're not monsters. They support abortion rights because it's the right thing to do.  It's so disgusting. Again, targeted harassment by a sitting member of Congress. This is where we're at in the United States of America.  But instead, most people rallied with her and the rebuttal that she came back with was just brutal. So she wrote in response, am I not a little too old for you, Matt? I know you have a thing for targeting teenagers, but 19 is on the cusp. Don't you think?  And to be blunt, Matt Gaetz is one of the ugliest things to crawl out of the pits of Florida. Now, she also replied to his original post with her original tweet adding, I'm sorry, you're five seven. Goddamn, absolutely brutal, but one hundred percent warranted. Now, he has 10 times the followers that she does, but yet she ratioed him into oblivion. His original tweet where he attacked her got 1200 likes, whereas hers got 34000 likes. And every one of these tweets that she made got more likes than his. So even Matt Gaetz's own followers, presumably saw that tweet and they thought this is just kind of gross. Or perhaps they thought, OK, maybe I agree with you. But at the same time, this isn't the best way to make our pro life arguments. Yeah, that's Matt Gaetz. Now, it's worth noting that she referenced the investigation of Matt Gaetz. And I think that it's worthwhile to kind of go over that to give you a recap on what Matt Gaetz is being investigated for by the FBI. For the breakdown, we go to Newsweek who explains the federal investigation into Gaetz was reportedly opened in the final months of the Donald Trump administration as a result of a previous investigation into a political ally of the Florida congressman, Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty to sex trafficking. Over a year later, investigators are still trying to determine whether Gaetz had sexual relations with an underage girl and paid for her to travel with him across states considered sex trafficking under federal law. Only a few details of the investigation have been leaked so far. Gaetz has not been charged with any crime. The Washington Post reported that Gaetz used to set up dates with women in exchange for dinner or hotel stays, something that could be illegal if there was a clear exchange of money for sex. The newspaper also reported that Greenberg wrote a letter directly accusing Gaetz of paying for sex with women. The Daily Beast reported that Gaetz transferred money to the equivalent of nine hundred dollars to Greenberg on Venmo, saying hit up blank using a nickname for the 17 year old. So that's what Olivia was referring to. So, you know, if Matt Gaetz wants to talk about odious people, I can't think of anyone more odious than an adult who allegedly prays on 17 year old children. That is as gross and morally reprehensible as you can be. But Matt Gaetz is lowering the bar even further, I guess. I don't even know what he's trying to do here, because even Republicans seemingly aren't enjoying what he's saying, because it's just it's a bad argument. It's an objectively bad argument if you are a forced brother. I mean, this isn't the case you want to make. Don't you want to kind of focus on protecting life?  I mean, it's incredibly childish.  But this is Matt Gaetz. This is what you get with the GOP. Up yours, up yours, up yours.  Whoop, moralist, moralist, moralist. I dreamed I saw my maternal grandmother. She was stroking herself absentmindedly. I let her have her way. The genital region was exposed. I let her have her way.