Drupal 7 developer portal FAQ

You're viewing Apigee Edge documentation.
Go to the Apigee X documentation. info

This section provides answers to the most frequently asked questions, compiled from the questions posted to Apigee Community or Apigee Support.

Category FAQs
Set up a Drupal developer portal
Manage the portal environment
Customize the portal look-and-feel
Customize user and app registration
Backup, recovery, and high availability
Secure the portal
Control content access
Configure email and notifications
Troubleshoot issues
Access the code

Set up a Drupal developer portal

How do I set up a Drupal developer portal?

As of May 31, 2020, Apigee-sponsored hosting for Drupal-based portals has ended. For information about configuring an existing developer portal, see Creating a developer portal.

What browsers and browser versions does the portal support?

See Supported software and supported versions.

Manage the portal environment

How do I manage my portal environment in the public cloud?

Apigee uses Pantheon, a website management service, for hosting cloud-based versions of the Developer Services portal. For more, see Working with Pantheon.

Apigee uses Acquia, a web site management service, for hosting cloud-based versions of the Developer Services portal in the European Union (EU). For more, see Working with Acquia.

Both Pantheon and Acquia provides tools for developing, testing, and publishing your Drupal-based portal in a secure environment.

How do I manage my portal environment in the private cloud?

As an Apigee Edge Private Cloud customer, you will need to manage your portal environment on your own. For recommendations, see Drupal development and server environment best practices.

How do I apply Apigee updates to my developer portal in the public cloud?

To apply Apigee updates to the developer portal in the public cloud:

  • Pantheon: When Apigee publishes a new release of the portal, a message appears on the Pantheon Dashboard. You should check for updates on a regular basis and apply security updates immediately. For more information, see Applying an Apigee update to your portal.

    Note: In the Status area of an environment, accessed from the Status menu item on the left of the dashboard, you might see that there are updates available for Drupal modules. Ignore these updates. Apigee automatically incorporates updates to Drupal modules into the next release of the portal for you. By allowing Apigee to update Drupal modules for you, Apigee ensures that these updates have been tested against the latest portal code. If you update a Drupal module outside of the normal Apigee portal release cycle, you might run into unforeseen issues.

  • Acquia: Periodically, Apigee updates the modules and themes in your portal to the latest version automatically. Updates are made to the Dev environment only and are tagged to indicate that they need to be migrated to other portal environments. For more information, see Applying module and theme updates to the portal.

How do I apply Apigee updates to my developer portal in the private cloud?

For Apigee Edge for Private Cloud customers, when Apigee publishes a new release of the portal, you can upgrade your developer portal to the latest version, as described in Upgrading the Developer Services portal.

In between Apigee Edge Private Cloud releases, you may receive a notification that a new version of Drupal is available. A new version can mean a Drupal feature release, patch, security update, or other type of Drupal update. In the case of a security update, you want to upgrade your installation of Drupal as soon as possible to ensure that your site remains secure. For more, see Upgrading the Drupal version of a Private Cloud installation.

Customize the portal look-and-feel

How do I customize the look-and-feel of the portal?

Using Drupal, you can create a highly customized portal by adjusting the Drupal theme and adding custom modules.

Note: There is a learning curve to implement the more advanced Drupal customizations. You may decide to engage a third-party with Drupal expertise in order to achieve the desired look-and-feel within your desired timeframe.

Below are some resources that will help you customize your portal using Drupal:

How do I add custom modules and themes to my portal in the public cloud?

You can expand the functionality of the portal by adding your own custom modules and themes.

To add custom modules and themes to your cloud-based portal, refer to one of the following sections based on whether you use Patheon or Acquia to manage your portal:

Note: Only modify content within the /sites/all directory. If you modify content that is outside of the /sites/all directory, you may experience merge conflicts when checking in changes to Git.

For best practices and information about adding and updating custom modules, see Adding modules and themes and Update modules, respectively, in the Drupal documentation.

How do I add custom modules and themes to my portal in the private cloud?

You can expand the functionality of the portal by adding your own custom modules and themes. For best practices and information about adding and updating custom modules, see Adding modules and themes and Update modules, respectively, in the Drupal documentation.

Note: Only modify content within the /sites/all directory. If you modify content that is outside of the /sites/all directory, you may experience merge conflicts when checking in changes to Git.

Customize user and app registration

How do I customize the new user registration page?

When the user registers for an account on the portal, the portal displays the default registration page with fields for First Name, Last Name, Username, Email address, and Password. As an API provider, you might want to modify this form to prompt the user to provide additional information such as a company name, mailing address, or other information. For more, see:

How do I customize the app registration page?

When an app developer registers an app, the portal displays a default form. As an API provider, you might want to modify the app registration form to prompt the developer to provide additional information such as a customer ID, the target platform of the app, or other information. For more information, see:

How do I use LDAP for authentication on the developer portal?

The following sources describe how to use LDAP for authentication:

Apigee Community

Drupal documentation

How do I log in to the portal using my Twitter, Google, or GitHub credentials?

Federated log in is the process where you use credentials from one identity management system, called the system of record, to log in to another system. For example, you use your Google or Twitter credentials to log in to the Apigee developer portal. The portal supports federated login using credentials from several common providers, including: GitHub, Google, OpenID, and Twitter. For more, see Using federated credentials on the developer portal.

How do I apply a workflow for manual API key approval?

You can configure manual API key approval for app registration when creating an API product. In this case, you must manually approve an API key when an app developer registers an app.

For recommendations on applying a workflow for manual API key approval, refer to the following community article: What is the best way in dev portal to apply a workflow for manual API key approval?.

Backup, recovery, and high availability

How do I back up and restore my portal in the public cloud?

The steps to back up a portal in the public cloud are different depending on whether you use Pantheon or Acquia to manage your portal:

How do I back up and restore my portal in the private cloud?

You back up and restore the portal in the private cloud using the Postgres pg_dump and pg_restore commands. For more information, see Back up the portal.

How do I ensure high availability for the developer portal in my public cloud?

The Pantheon and Acquia Drupal management tools guarantee 99.5% availability for the portals that they host. For more information, see:

How do I ensure high availability for the developer portal in my private cloud?

There isn't a "one size fits all" approach to ensuring high availability for the developer portal. It is strongly recommended that you request the assistance of someone with expertise in:

  • Setting up file systems and databases in a high availability configuration
  • Drupal 7 portal development

Contact the Apigee Customer Success team if you require assistance. Also, refer to the following community articles:

Secure the portal

How do I configure portal security?

Drupal also has many security features that you should be familiar with as you build your portal. See Securing your portal for more.

How do I configure the portal to use TLS/HTTPS?

TLS (Transport Layer Security, whose predecessor is SSL) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a web client, such as a browser or app. An encrypted link ensures that all data passing between the web server and the client remains private. For information on configuring TLS with the portal, see Using TLS on the portal.

How do I apply Drupal security patches?

For Apigee Edge Public Cloud customers:

  • Pantheon: When Apigee publishes a new release of the portal, a message appears on the Pantheon Dashboard. You should check for updates on a regular basis and apply security updates immediately. For more information, see Applying an Apigee update to your portal.
  • Acquia: Periodically, Apigee updates the modules and themes in your portal to the latest version automatically. Updates are made to the Dev environment only and are tagged to indicate that they need to be migrated to other portal environments. For more information, see Applying module and theme updates to the portal.

For Apigee Edge for Private Cloud customers, you'll receive a notification that a new version of Drupal is available. A new version can mean a Drupal feature release, patch, security update, or other type of Drupal update. In the case of a security update, you want to upgrade your installation of Drupal as soon as possible to ensure that your site remains secure. For more, see Upgrading the Drupal version of a Private Cloud installation.

How do I register for security updates?

Register for updates from both Drupal and Apigee:

For public cloud customers, you might also register with your Drupal web site host:

How do I prevent username enumeration?

Username enumeration refers to a method that attackers use to identify usernames that exist by using the forgot password form, which by default indicates whether or not the specified password exists. Attackers can keep trying usernames until they find a valid user. To prevent username enumeration, install the Username Enumeration Prevention module.

How do I enable two-factor authentication?

Do not enable two-factor authentication on Apigee Edge if you publish your APIs using an Apigee developer portal. Otherwise, the developer portal will not be able to communicate with Edge.

How are Edge credentials stored and encrypted in Drupal portal?

The following sources provide details about how Edge credentials are stored and encrypted in Drupal portal:

Apigee Community:

Control content access

How do I control content access to the portal?

The following sources describe how to control content access to the portal:

Apigee Community:

Drupal documentation:

How do I control access to API products by role?

The follows sources describe how to control access to API products by role:

Configure email and notifications

How do I specify an SMTP mail server for the portal?

The developer portal requires that you configure an SMTP server to send email messages. After you configure the SMTP server, all emails sent by the developer portal use the SMTP server. These emails include emails sent to new developers, emails sent to developers who lose their password, and emails sent to developers with blocked accounts. For information, see Configuring email.

How do I send email when a developer registers an app (or other event occurs)?

Drupal rules let you define actions by the portal in response to certain events. One common use of rules is to generate emails in response to an event. The portal has built in support for generating emails for predefined events, such as when a new developer registers an account. However, you can you can add your own rules to generate emails. For example, you can generate an email when the developer adds, removes, or modifies an app. For information, see Generating an email when an event occurs.

How do I customize the email messages sent from the portal?

You can configure various email notifications that are sent in response to particular activities such as registering, deleting, blocking, and unblocking developer accounts. For information, see Configuring and formatting email notifications.

How can I prevent SPAM on the portal?

One way to prevent SPAM on the portal is to add CAPTCHA to the login page and other pages by enabling the Drupal CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA modules. For information, see:

Troubleshoot issues

How do I view the portal log files?

Select Reports in the Drupal menu to see a list of logs and other reports. For example, select Reports > Recent log messages to see a table of recent log messages.

Video: Watch a short video to learn more about log reports and debug settings.

Access the code

How do I access the Drupal 7 developer portal source code?

For sites that are hosted on Pantheon or Acquia, you can access the Drupal 7 developer portal source code via your hosting site's dashboard, as described in the following sections:

You can access the Drupal 7 source code repository directly at: https://github.com/apigee/drupal7-drops. Both Pantheon and Acquia sites use this repository for their source code upstream.