Planet Drupal

As of April 5, Drupal 7 will have nine months before it’s entirely unsupported and becomes a liability. Migrating out of Drupal 7 can be complicated, and this is one reason many organizations have put it off for so long. While it’s true that Drupal 8 and beyond represent a radical change from Drupal 7, in everything from architecture (the introduction of Symfony components) to theming (Twig versus PHP), the path from Drupal 7 to now Drupal 10 is well trodden, and we’re very familiar with it at Chapter Three. Because Drupal 7 has been around for well over a decade, many websites built on it have accumulated vast amounts of content, resulting in complex data structures with custom content types, fields, taxonomies, and entity relationships. Inconsistencies or irregularities in legacy data complicate the migration process.

Drupal's identity is very nuanced, from its rich history to its future potential. We discuss why at least one member of the community says just saying "Drupal" is important when discussing current versions of Drupal and the community that drives it.

Is specifically calling out "Drupal 10.2" or or "Drupal 11" useful, or just confusing to outsiders?

Universities and colleges are faced with unique goals, challenges, and opportunities around digital transformation. We often hear from folks who want to reorient their higher education websites around attracting and nurturing potential new students. I recently shared insights on how to accomplish this at the 2023 HighEdWeb Conference in Buffalo, New York, where I co-presented with Winna Tse and Vibeke Silverthorne from OCAD University.

We showcased our collaboration on OCAD U’s Admissions sites—two visually bold, accessible, interactive microsites that we designed to captivate a creative audience and streamline the application process. OCAD U saw a 21% increase in website visits and a 15% increase in applicants within a few weeks of the launch.

In this article, I’ve shared some of our best lessons and findings from the project. Read on to explore six proven ways to reach, engage, and win over prospective students.

 

1. Consider Building a Separate Microsite

According to usability research, students often select a program first before they choose which school to attend. That means it’s really important to show prospective students what programs are available and make program pages easily accessible. Many websites successfully use a program finder on their main website to funnel prospective students to their program of choice. 

But because OCAD U had information architecture issues on its main site, we recommended replacing the old admissions section with two stand-alone microsites targeted at prospective students (one for graduates, one for undergraduates). This solution brought several advantages for OCAD U’s admissions team and the wider university, which we’ll explore below.  

Targeted user experience

By capturing prospective undergraduates on a self-contained microsite, OCAD U can deliver a highly tailored digital experience. Everything from the menu navigation to the visuals are geared towards users who’re considering studying at the university. OCAD U was so happy with this approach that they commissioned a second microsite aimed at prospective postgraduates.

Streamlined updates process

Originally, the admissions team had to ask the marketing team to make content changes. Every department did this, meaning it could take 2-3 weeks for requests to reach the top of the queue. This wasn’t practical for the fast-paced nature of admissions and recruitment.

A stand-alone microsite gives the admissions team greater ownership over their content. They can make changes in a single day, enabling them to publish time-sensitive content such as deadlines reminders.

Because the microsites are built using Drupal, the admissions team has access to a powerful user roles feature for managing editing permissions. This is one of many reasons to use Drupal for higher education websites.

Possibilities for experimentation

OCAD U’s admissions website created an opportunity to experiment with the visual brand and user experience. It offers more freedom and breathing room than the main website due to its size and age. What’s more, the university can learn from the admissions website and apply lessons from its successes to the main website. 

Alternative: Program Finder

A separate microsite was the right choice for OCAD U, but another strategy is using a program finder on both the main and recruitment site to funnel users towards detailed program pages. This approach is particularly effective for institutions with multiple campus websites, as it offers a versatile starting point for program exploration. For OCAD U, the decision to go with a microsite stemmed from a lack of flexibility with the information architecture on their main site, making a microsite the obvious choice. For other institutions, the program finder funnel solution might make more sense.

2. Create Straightforward User Journeys

Because you’re competing for the time and attention of prospective students, it’s all the more important that your website serves up the information they’re looking for quickly and effortlessly. The best way to achieve this is by mapping user journeys and working out how to streamline your site architecture, search experience, and calls to action.

User Journey Mapping

We ran a user journey mapping exercise with OCAD U where we developed user personas and explored the types of interactions they had with the university. This included everything from Googling the institution, to attending an open day, to completing an application form. The process helped us uncover new opportunities to improve their journey, and allowed us to start developing wireframes and mockups.

User Mindsets

Using a less traditional approach, we also explored user mindsets. Our team identified three mindsets that any prospective student might have—whether they’re a high schooler, undergraduate, mature student, or coming from abroad: 

1. “I don’t know what I want to study.”
2. “I want to study art and design, but I don’t know where yet.”
3. “I already know that I want to attend OCAD University.”

Looking into these mindsets with OCAD U helped us shape their site navigation and provide relevant, consistent CTAs. Their Discover section is aimed at the first mindset, the Afford and Visit sections at the second mindset, and the Apply section at the third mindset.

 

We helped OCAD U refine its program selectors and calls to action for a simpler user experience.

 

Want to learn more about the discovery and UX design in higher education projects? Read about our collaboration with York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design in 5 Surprising Findings That’ll Change How You See Discovery.

3. Integrate Storytelling Throughout Your Content

Storytelling creates an emotional connection between users and your brand. The most powerful stories are authentic and value-based, showing target audiences that you care about what they care about. Storytelling isn’t just for your homepage either. Program pages are a common entry point for prospective students, so they need to promote your brand as well as the course details.

As an art, design, and media institution, OCAD U has incredible opportunities to use visual storytelling. We infused a range of student-created art throughout the university’s website. Not only does this elevate the design, it also showcases talent that reflects OCAD U’s reputation, and invites prospective students to imagine their own creative possibilities.

 

“We felt that [Evolving Web’s] aesthetic was very strong, that they could really adapt to our brand. Also, most importantly, was their thoughtful approach to storytelling.”

- Winna Tse, Communications & Projects Specialist, OCAD University 

 

Having worked with dozens of higher education institutions, our team has interviewed many prospective students about what matters to them. We’ve heard repeatedly about the importance of connecting with current students and alumni. Prospective students value hearing about real-life experiences at your university—in fact, it’s often a tipping point in their decision making process. So, don’t isolate student stories and testimonials in a corner of your website. Integrate them on every page to ensure exposure to your most persuasive content. 

 

We reimagined the application of OCAD U’s visual brand to create a striking website design. 
4. Fine-Tune Your Visual Brand

An eye-catching, memorable visual identity sets your university apart from competitors. Above all, it needs to resonate with your target audience. Building a new website is often a good opportunity to refresh your brand—but it’s possible to refine what you already have in a way that targets prospective students. 

Identify where your brand allows for flexibility, and experiment with different flavours of existing design elements. OCAD U wanted a bolder look and feel that reflects their reputation and meets the expectations of discerning young creatives. So we found ways to use their visual identity in new ways, bringing out more daring and fun aspects of the brand.

Our design team developed ‘Windows into OCAD U’, a concept that invites students to explore creative possibilities, escape the boring, and reimagine a more fantastical reality. We also used the distinctive architecture of OCAD U’s buildings as inspiration for textures and shapes, including tiled patterns, concentric squares, and boldly coloured buttons.

We communicated our vision to the client using stylescapes, a valuable tool for enhancing collaboration on art direction.

 

Stylescapes helped us communicate design ideas and get early alignment on the visual direction of the project. 
5. Help Prospective Students Apply with Confidence

If you want to increase applications from prospective students, it’s essential to make the admissions process as straightforward and welcoming as possible. A useful exercise is to identify major touchpoints in the user’s journey and find ways to provide better support and value around it. 

For OCAD U, this touchpoint was when prospective students prepared and submitted their portfolio. For other universities, it might be something like attending an open day or having an interview with faculty.

We helped OCAD U develop a dedicated page for portfolio preparation. It offers step-by-step guidance, information about requirements, creative prompts and tips, answers to common questions, and access to portfolio clinics. By providing these valuable resources, OCAD U saw an increase not only in the number of applications but also in their quality.

 

Portfolio submission is a unique aspect of OCAD U’s admissions process that required special attention.
6. Prioritize Accessibility and Inclusion 

Prospective students come from a wide range of cultures and backgrounds, and include people with disabilities and support needs. Higher education institutions need to prioritize accessibility and inclusion when building a website, ensuring that everyone has equal access to content and feels welcomed and represented.

Everything our team builds complies with WCAG 2.0 AA and relevant federal, provincial, state, or local requirements. But we encourage and guide clients to go beyond these standards with a human-centric, personalized approach to web accessibility. This can empower your organization to reach even more people and offer ever-better experiences.

It’s also important to represent your institution’s diversity into your site’s content strategy. Select website imagery that represents people of various cultures, races, ethnicities, religions, and so on that represent that diversity you would find on campus. Diversity can also mean highlighting different paths to success, such as showcasing someone who is a mature student that went to OCAD to start a second career. Prioritize plain language to help non-native speakers and users with cognitive disabilities to find the right information. Consider whether you need a multilingual website to cater to audiences such as international students.

Finally, explore ways to support prospective students from historically underserved communities. As a North American university, OCAD U has a dedicated section for indigenous applicants that provides tailored information about relevant resources, contacts, programs, scholarships and bursaries.

Meet Evolving Web, Your Digital Agency Partner

Evolving Web works with higher education organizations across North America—including Princeton University, McGill University, Georgia Tech, the University of Washington, OCAD University, Queen’s University, York University, and the University of California Berkeley.

Our experience has allowed us to develop best practices and tried-and-tested solutions that help us deliver exceptional value to our higher education clients. We create dynamic, user-centric websites to help you connect with target audiences and cultivate valuable relationships. Our team prioritizes your digital independence, giving you the tools you need to grow and evolve your digital presence.

Learn about our work with higher education clients and see what we can do for you. 

+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

The presentation   Below is our summary of Dries' presentation. Drupal’s past Dries started Drupal when he was about 20 years old and studying at university. He built the system for himself and then open sourced it.  One key turning point early on was in 2002, when Dries reached out to Jeremy Andrews, the person behind KernelTrap, a kernel development blog. At the time, many websites fell victim to something called the Slashdot effect. Slashdot was so popular at the time that if your site was mentioned on Slashdot you’d get a massive spike of traffic and websites would often crash. Dries wrote to Jeremy and said that if he migrated his site Drupal it would never crash. He even offered Jeremy root access via email.

Efficient Token Usage in Drupal: Practical Tips and Examples Editor Thu, 03/28/2024 - 12:54

If you want hassle-free and efficient content generation and management, Drupal is the right choice. With several modules and tokens, it will help you create a dynamic and versatile data environment to cater to your audience’s needs and search engine guidelines. Lamborghini, Doctors Without Borders, and Nokia illustrate how applicable and productive this system is.
You must discover the solution’s features in more detail to get started and advance your content generation strategy. It will come in handy to lead your Drupal scenario from scratch to scratch without difficulty. Stay tuned to find out more about token implementation scenarios at your disposal. Mind the gap!

And That’s a Wrap

MidCamp has been and gone for 2024, and we couldn't have done it without our volunteers, organizers, contributors, venue hosts, sponsors, speakers, and of course, attendees for making this year's camp a success.

Replay the Fun

Find all of the sessions you missed, share your session around, and spread the word. Videos can be watched on the MidCamp YouTube channel (???? jump to the playlist) or on Drupal.tv.  Captions will follow within a couple of weeks.

Share Your Feedback

For those who joined us this year, please fill out our quick survey. We really value your feedback on any part of your camp experience, and our organizer team works hard to take as much of it as possible into account for next year.

Also, don’t forget to rate any sessions you attended (these can be found on each session node).

????…announcing... MidCamp 2025!

Mark your calendars now! We’ll be back at DePaul University for MidCamp 2025, March 20-21.

Explore other Upcoming Drupal Events

Need more Drupal Events to tide you over to next year? Head over to the Drupal Community Events page to check out what’s coming up in 2024.

One Last Thanks

MidCamp really wouldn't be possible without our amazing sponsors.

Consider adding your organization to the list next year. (2025 prospectus coming soon!)

Keep the madness going all year by joining in the MidCamp Slack We look forward to seeing you at MidCamp 2025. We’re also on Twitter and Mastodon.

Thanks!

The MidCamp Team

In celebration of International Women's Day, The DropTimes dedicates March to highlighting the influential women of the Drupal community. The second part of the "Women in Drupal" series, featuring insights from April Sides of Red Hat, Stephanie Bridges of Digital Polygon, Laura Johnson of Four Kitchens, Mary Blabaum of Acquia, Tiffany Farriss of Palantir, Jill Moraca of Princeton University, and Surabhi Gokte of Axelerant, emphasizes the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion within technology and specifically within Drupal. Their stories cover overcoming imposter syndrome, the significance of representation, mentoring junior developers, and advocating for women's visibility and leadership roles. These leaders share their commitment to fostering a welcoming, supportive, and inclusive environment, reflecting Drupal's ongoing initiatives to inspire inclusion and celebrate the diverse contributions that women make to the community and the tech industry at large.

Authored by: Nadiia Nykolaichuk 

The administrative navigation toolbar is an essential piece in the puzzle of your website’s overall capability to boost website management tasks. It serves as the guiding compass for your team, leading them across the administrative sections quickly and confidently. To achieve this, the toolbar needs to be intuitive, visually clear, straightforward, logically organized, and well-positioned.

I recently wrote a blog post about the best university websites on Drupal, which come from different corners of the world. In this article, I focus on web pages from Poland, similarly presenting their functionalities. For this compilation, I’ve selected seven examples of - in my opinion - the most interesting and inspiring websites.

Create subsites with a different look and feel to the rest of your LocalGov Drupal website.

Every e-commerce platform is different and comes with its own unique and specific needs. Some can use simple ready-made tools, while others need special software made just for them. New trends like smart personalization, easy shopping on phones, and caring for the environment are also important for online shops.

To help businesses achieve personalized website goals, Drupal comes into the scene. It's like a toolbox that lets you build your online store just the way you want. Drupal commerce is great because it's flexible and lets you try out new ideas. But there’s more to it. 

Today, we'll learn more about what makes Drupal Commerce special, like its features and how it's built.

Welcome back to “Skills Upgrade” a Talking Drupal mini-series following the journey of a D7 developer learning D10. This is episode 4.

Topics

• Review Chad's goals for the previous week

  • Install Drush
  • Setup git repo
  • Examples module

• Review Chad's questions

  • .gitignore
  • Core file naming

• Tasks for the upcoming week

  • Reminder of the capstone goal: create MR for new automated test in contrib module.
  • Examples module: field_example. New RGB field type with formatter and widgets. Focus on stuff in field_example/src/Plugin/Field
    • Background info on Plugins: https://www.drupal.org/docs/drupal-apis/plugin-api
    • Focus on the following sections:
      • https://www.drupal.org/docs/drupal-apis/plugin-api/plugin-api-overview
      • https://www.drupal.org/docs/drupal-apis/plugin-api/why-plugins
      • https://www.drupal.org/docs/drupal-apis/plugin-api/annotations-based-plugins

Resources

Chad's Drupal 10 Learning Curriclum & Journal Chad's Drupal 10 Learning Notes

The Linux Foundation is offering a discount of 30% off e-learning courses, certifications and bundles with the code, all uppercase DRUPAL24 and that is good until June 5th https://training.linuxfoundation.org/certification-catalog/

Hosts

AmyJune Hineline - @volkswagenchick

Guests

Chad Hester - chadkhester.com @chadkhest Mike Anello - DrupalEasy.com @ultimike

ChatGPT Experiments: "Act as Drush, shall we play a game?"

Like everyone else, I've been experimenting with ChatGPT. In this conversation, ChatGPT does a surprisingly good job of role playing as Drush.

joe Tue, 03/26/2024 - 14:49

Making content migrations relatively painless lowers the bar immeasurably in upgrading or making the switch to a platform like Drupal 10.

You can't escape marketing automation if you're looking to scale your marketing efforts. Each organization sets different marketing automation targets. According to research, productivity optimization is the primary goal, followed by acquiring more leads, analyzing performance, and aligning marketing and sales. So what's yours? Various marketing teams/individuals have their preferred marketing automation tools that align with their goals. Some appreciate the user-friendly interface of Constant Contact, while others favor the feature-rich capabilities of MailChimp. As an extremely flexible CMS, Drupal offers seamless integration with a wide variety of marketing automation platforms. Its open architecture ensures smooth data synchronization among email marketing software, CRM systems, and analytics tools. In this article, we'll explore some of the most popular marketing automation Drupal modules designed to simplify every marketer's workflow. Why You Can't Afford to Ignore Marketing Automation Tools “Good marketing makes the company look smart; Great marketing makes the customers feel smart” - Joe Chernov (VP Marketing @ Pendo). Great marketing requires more than just a physical team capable of manually managing your marketing workflows. It demands marketing automation tools to streamline lead nurturing and expedite your entire marketing process. Did you know that companies proficient in lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at a 33% lower cost (ref)? Marketing Automation tools help convert raw leads into nourished and qualified marketing leads that are turned over to the sales team for further customer relation management. This applies to both B2B and B2C organizations. It helps track your prospective customer’s activities right from when they visit your website to reading your blogs or filling out a form. You can also schedule and track your marketing campaigns via email, social media, or any other communication. Prospective customers can be easily segmented into suitable mailing lists based on their interests or preferences and will receive/view only relevant content, thus giving you happier (also read ‘less annoyed’) leads. A ‘drip campaign’ (email campaign) can be scheduled depending on the right time and right interest shown by your leads that will help you stay on top of their minds thereby nurturing your leads. You will also be able to see the reports/analytics and analyze the success of your marketing campaigns. Drupal Modules for Marketing Automation Drupal is renowned not only for its robustness and scalability but also for its vast active community of contributors. Within the Drupal CMS, you'll discover numerous contributed marketing automation modules or plugins that are both free and user-friendly. However, they may not always offer as many features as third-party tools. Fortunately, there's an abundance of third-party marketing automation software available that seamlessly integrates with your Drupal website, providing a wider range of functionalities. Webform While the Webform module itself isn't a marketing automation tool, it serves as a crucial foundation for integrating Drupal with third-party marketing automation software. The Drupal Webform module is used to collect user data via forms. You can build forms like surveys, simple newsletter signup forms, or contact forms. This submitted data is then pushed to third-party marketing automation systems. In the latest Drupal versions (8+), Webforms have undergone significant enhancements, including an object-oriented API, source editing capabilities, new and improved form elements, extendable plugins, improved documentation, and more. Learn how to get started with Webforms in this brief tutorial. HubSpot HubSpot marketing automation is well-known for providing users with a wide range of inbound automation tools – Marketing hub, Sales hub, and Service hub. Each of them can function alone or all together. The HubSpot Drupal module integrates with Webform and the HubSpot API. Once a user enters their information via Drupal Webform, the records are sent to HubSpot’s lead management tool, where the leads can be tracked and nurtured. MailChimp MailChimp is a very popular email automation platform that does more than just send bulk emails. You can create custom campaigns, send and schedule automated emails based on certain predefined triggers, track and monitor customer behavior, personalize, generate reports, etc. The Drupal MailChimp module integrates your Drupal website with Mailchimp which will help in tracking and creating a list of website visitors. This list is sent to the MailChimp list from where email automation and other features can be accessed. You can also create signup forms, and campaigns and track activity from your Drupal website. Your visitors can also have control over which of your email lists they want to be on or off. Learn how to create targeted email campaigns using MailChimp and Drupal in this article. Marketo MA Marketo, now an Adobe company, is a very popular and widely used marketing automation tool that automates activities such as lead tracking and nurturing, personalization, analytics, advertisements, social marketing, automated campaigns, and more across multiple devices. The Market MA Drupal module helps you capture lead data during form submission and adds tracking capabilities to your Drupal website with the Marketo Munchkin tracking codes and API. It also integrates seamlessly with the Drupal Webform module. Learn how to synchronize your lead data from Marketo to Drupal in real time using Webhooks in this article. Mautic Mautic is the first open-source marketing automation platform and was recently acquired by Acquia. It allows for multi-channel communications and campaign management, visitor tracking, email marketing, content customization and personalization, etc. The best way to integrate Mautic with your Drupal website is with the Webform Mautic module. This module enables the addition of Mautic handlers to Webforms, facilitating data submission to Mautic lists. To effectively track website contacts, ensure the installation of the Mautic tracking code on your Drupal website. Google Analytics Did you know that Google Analytics was originally based on a web analytics service called Urchin, which Google acquired in 2005? Google Analytics is now the most widely used website analytics tool in the world today. No marketing automation is complete without analytics and GA does a great job at it. The extremely popular Google Analytics Drupal module (having over 200k downloads!) lets you add a web statistics tracking system to your website. It can track, monitor, and support domains, users, files, search systems, Adsense, custom code snippets, and a lot more. To generate reports for all your tracked data, you should install the Drupal module for Google Analytics Reports. Learn how to implement GA4 for a successful marketing strategy here. Yoast This Drupal module brings the power of your favorite Yoast tool directly into your Drupal environment. With the Real-time SEO for Drupal module, you don’t have to worry about missing keywords or exceeding text limits. It's an excellent tool for Drupal SEO, offering real-time page analysis of meta tags and alerts to rectify any missteps along the way. It provides a preview of how your page title and meta description will appear in Google search results. This module helps fasten and improve the SEO optimization process and thus acts as an effective marketing automation tool. Other Popular Marketing Automation Drupal Modules Salesforce Suite - Integrates with Salesforce by synchronizing Drupal entities with Salesforce objects. ActiveCampaign - An integration between Drupal and the popular CRM tool - ActiveCampaign. Pardot - Adds Pardot web analytics integration to your Drupal website. OmniSend - Integrates with the OmniSend marketing automation tool that automates email marketing and more. AddToAny Share Buttons - An easy-to-use social media sharing button set to add to your website. Final Thoughts By integrating marketing automation tools with your Drupal website, you can efficiently convert leads into satisfied customers, boosting operational efficiency and accelerating revenue growth. At Specbee, our team of Drupal experts is proficient in seamlessly integrating your Drupal website with various third-party marketing automation tools. We provide a comprehensive range of Drupal services designed to enhance your business outcomes and drive success.

Ensure your Drupal websites run smoothly. Gander documentation walks you through setting up and using the performance testing framework.

Read more janez Mon, 03/25/2024 - 13:27

Today we are talking about Violinist.io, Managing Composer Dependencies, and automation with guest Eirik Morland. We’ll also cover Composer Patches as our module of the week.

For show notes visit: www.talkingDrupal.com/443 Topics

• What is Violinist.io
• How does it work
• How much technical knowledge do you need
• Is this a security risk
• How much does it cost
• Patron question: Peter: Difference between violinist and dependabot
• What are the major differences in plans
• Who is the ideal user
• Can you self host
• Can this help with Drupal 11 readiness
• Complementary tools
• Notable users
• Why did you start this
• What is it like using Drupal for a SAAS
• Is it open source
• Pros and cons of open source for a SAAS
• How can the community support
• What is on the roadmap

Resources

• Violinist.io
• Violinist on D.o

Guests

    Eirik Morland - violinist.io eiriksm

Hosts

Nic Laflin - nLighteneddevelopment.com nicxvan Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu.com mandclu Anna Mykhailova - kalamuna.com amykhailova

 

MOTW Correspondent

Martin Anderson-Clutz - mandclu

• Brief description:
• Have you ever wanted a simple way to manage patches to Drupal core and your contrib projects? There’s a composer plugin for that
• Module name/project name:
• https://github.com/cweagans/composer-patches
• Composer Patches
• Brief history
• How old:created in Apr 2015 by Cameron Weagans
• Versions available: 1.7.3 and 2.0.0-beta2
• Maintainership
• Actively maintained, beta2 release was a little over a month ago
• Test coverage
• Has a documentation site, as well as a COMMANDS markdown file in the repo to help you get started
• Number of open issues: 10, 2 of which are bugs
• Usage stats:
• It’s been installed over 42 million times and it’s approaching 43 thousand installs per day, according to a recent blog post
• Module features and usage
• Using the plugin is simple, you require cweagans/composer-patches the same way you would a Drupal contrib project. The important difference is that composer will ask you if you trust composer-patches to make changes to your codebase. Once you grant that, the plugin is ready to start applying patches
• You can specify what patches you want applied by adding a patches section to the extra section of your project’s composer.json file, or by adding a patches.json file
• Each patch can be specified using a URL or a path relative to the JSON file
• In theory it’s possible to have composer patches pulled directly from the diff in a merge request, but this is a significant security risk and should always be avoided
• The first beta release for the 2.0 branch actually dropped support for dependency patch resolution, noting that it had become the source of most support requests. In the end the community made it clear that they would resist upgrading without this capability, so the most recent beta2 release adds it back in.
•     Finally, on his website cweagans.net Cameron mentions that he’s currently looking for full-time employment. So if your organization relies heavily on composer in general or composer-patches specifically, consider reaching out to him

The story of how I came to present at Drupal Camp Florida 2024 began in the previous year, with what someone called my “Dharizza World Tour”! I attended Drupal events in six cities throughout 2023, and ended up being invited to several more as a result. 

 

At DrupalCon Lille in October 2023, I presented a session on how to improve the Layout Builder user experience. In the audience was Michael Herchel, a member of the Drupal Association Board of Directors and lead developer of Olivero. He and Amy June Hineline (a Drupal core mentor and A11yTalks organizer) invited me to bring my Layout Builder session to the next Florida DrupalCamp. 

 

That camp was last week, and the official start to Dharizza World Tour 2024! In this blog post, I’ll catch you up on the talks I attended as well as some fun experiences from the camp (featuring rockets and fake animals, oddly!). 

Friday, February 23 Presenting to a big crowd (and one unlikely guest)

The DrupalCamp kicked off at Florida Technical College with several training sessions, including one from Lisa Ridley on how to make designer-developer collaboration easier. She had some excellent advice on leveraging FIGMA features and plugins for effective design implementations. 

 

I spent the morning preparing for my upcoming session while my teammates Nikolay, Jesse, Josh and Robert set up our booth. That afternoon I presented to a packed room at Florida Technical College—including a skeleton at the back of the class! Luckily, the skeleton was the only attendee who wasn’t lively.

 

Everyone shared notes about how we’re using Layout Builder. We discussed its pros, cons, and alternatives. We also talked about how to configure modules to improve the user experience, including Layout Builder Browser and Layout Builder Restrictions. And we tried out Layout Builder operation links, save and edit, instant preview, and Gin. By the end of the session we focused on developing Layout Plugins, either with only updates to *.layouts.yml file or by creating classes for them. It was a great time!

 

With DrupalCamp wrapped up for the day, I joined my teammates at the unofficial after-party, which went from Bounce House to Lazy Moon and back to Bounce House again. We had a blast meeting new friends and seeing familiar faces. The night was made particularly special thanks to a huge, yellow, almost-full moon. We even found out there was going to be a rocket launch on Saturday.  

 

The night ended and we arrived at the house we were staying at—only to be greeted by an enormous taxidermy deer on the wall! I’m not sure if it was real, but it was definitely creepy. After the initial surprise wore off, we named him Luke and began to treat him as one of us. He even featured in our plans and goodbyes!

 

"Luke the Deer" was an unexpected but interesting addition to our crew!
Saturday, February 23 Lessons about talent and opportunity

On Saturday we arrived early for a jam-packed day that kicked off with the Opening Session led by the camp’s organizers, Mike Herchel, Amy June Hineline and Adam Varn.

 

Next, I listened to Matt Glaman present on the opportunities of open source. He told the story of how he went from transporting beer to becoming a top Drupal contributor! Did you know he created Retrofit? It’s a project that you can use to run your Drupal 7 code in Drupal 10 while you fill the gaps and actually get them ported. (Matt ran a session on Retrofit the next day, where he explained how to contribute to the project). 

 

One of my favourite moments was when Matt said: “Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not.” I think that’s a powerful message. There are lots of talented people out there that haven’t yet had the opportunity to shine. But open source can help with that: it empowers people to develop and show off their skills, helping them advance both their career and the open web. Matt highlighted the importance of lifting people up through mentorship and friendship.

 

Meanwhile, Rod Martin presented a session on Advanced Layout Builder for the Ambitious Site Builder. He created a starter site that anyone can spin up and test out to help them develop their Layout Builder skills. 

 

At 11am it was time for our own Jesse Dyck to present ‘What Non-Developers Should Know About Content Migration’. Jesse spoke to a full room on how to develop a migration plan, common migration challenges, how to ask your team the right questions, and how to anticipate and fix issues. 

 

At the same time, Matthew Ramir gave insight into his personal story in ‘Code, Cerebral Palsy, and Compassion: My Journey into Tech’. He spoke about his history, struggles, and triumphs, and even shared some of his poetry! We learned about the importance of opportunities, diversity, acceptance and self-acceptance. It was a truly inspiring talk. 

 

After lunch at Gringos Locos (our DrupalCamp Florida tradition), it was time for our own Nikolay Volodin to share the case study of a custom CKEditor 5 plugin that he developed at Evolving Web. He dissected the plugin for the audience to identify its parts and explain how they behave and interact. 

 

Meanwhile, Aubrey Sambor, Florida Drupal Camp Featured Speaker, took to the auditorium stage to talk about Color in CSS—including using new spaces, functions and techniques to make your site shine. Ana Laura Coto and Carlos Ospina led a session about Building the IXP Fellowship, a new initiative for onboarding inexperienced developers.

 

Next, it was our Robert Ngo’s turn to present. He delivered a session to a packed room about building a component library with single directory components (SDCs). But it wasn't the usual “how to” format. Instead, he explored the strategy behind the way we structure SDCs, how to define conventions with development and design teams, how to evolve a component library, and how to test it.

 

We wrapped up the day with a few lightning talks, as well as a session from Ofer Shaal on how to quickly create web components for reuse across React, Angular, Vue, Drupal and other CMSs.

 

Evening brought the camp’s official after party. It was fantastic to spend more time with our Drupal friends, both new and old. Sadly the rocket launch was delayed. We were also hoping to see some ‘gators, but all we found was a huge fake one with a sign that said “Swampies”! We decided that was good enough—and certainly a less dangerous photo opportunity.

 

Me enjoying the start of "Dharizza World Tour 2024"!
Sunday, February 24 Wrapping up the weekend with a different kind of launch

Time passes fast when you’re having fun and that’s how Sunday found us. We packed our luggage and waved goodbye to Luke the taxidermy deer, before heading back to Florida Technical College for a last day of sessions and contributions events. 

 

First up were Matt Glaman and Darren Oh from the Retrofit project, who troubleshooted and live coded to show how to run D7 code in D10. At the same time, Kyle Einecker cleared up the meaning of coupled and decoupled Drupal. 

 

A contrib learning extravaganza happened at 11am in the auditorium, where Amy June and Mike Anello showed people how to contribute through code, documentation, project managing, and everything Drupal related. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to stay for the afternoon due to allergies. But my team members enjoyed the contrib afternoon—and even got to witness the rocket launch!

 

Thanks to everyone who made DrupalCamp 2024 possible. If you didn’t make it to the camp, I hope this article gives you some insight and inspires you to attend the next one. The “Swampies” and I will see you there!

 

Looking for more events that focus on open source innovation? Check out the EvolveDrupal summit! 

 

+ more awesome articles by Evolving Web

Explore the journey of growth with Drupal: Uncover the essence of progress and its transformative benefits.

Dear Subscribers, 

Sometimes, growth hinges on the effort we invest—the sweat equity makes all the difference. It's an ongoing journey that reminds us of our potential for continual advancement. Growth isn't just a milestone; it's a guiding force steering us toward realizing there's always more to achieve.

Let's take a moment to appreciate Drupal's remarkable evolution in this spirit of perpetual progress. With an ever-expanding community and a track record of powering some of the world's most influential websites, Drupal continues to ascend in popularity and capability. Its open-source ethos fosters collaboration, driving collective growth and empowerment for all involved.

As Drupal flourishes, so do its users. Its robust features and scalability ensure that businesses and organizations can adapt and thrive in today's dynamic environment. Drupal's unwavering commitment to security and its ever-growing community sets it apart from other CMS platforms. The truth that cannot be denied is the level of security it provides, which remains unmatched in the industry. Moreover, Drupal excels in providing customer-centric and personalized user experiences, empowering organizations to tailor their digital presence to the unique needs of their audience.

However, what truly propels Drupal's growth to unprecedented levels is its community-driven ethos. With a vast network of developers, designers, and enthusiasts collaborating and contributing tirelessly, Drupal evolves rapidly, staying ahead of the curve in innovation and adaptability. This collective effort fosters a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring that Drupal remains at the forefront of technological advancements.

Now, Let's take a moment to revisit the highlights from last week's coverage at The Drop Times.

I had the opportunity to connect with Amber Matz, a key contributor, who shared insights into the Documentation and Help initiative. Amber provided valuable insights into the initiative's goals and the recent updates to Drupal.org's documentation page, emphasizing the community's dedication to improving user experience. 

Elma John presented an exciting feature on MidCamp happening in Chicago. She conversed with Norah Medlin and Avi Schwab, the lead organizers of MidCamp 2024. Through their insights, we learned more about the event's agenda and the collaborative opportunities it offers for the Drupal community.

Alka Elizabeth shared insider views of DrupalSouth Sydney 2024, giving us a glimpse into key technical updates and diversity initiatives. Her article offered valuable perspectives on the enriching experiences shared at Drupal South, which took place on March 20-22. She also shared the list of winners of The Drupal Splash Awards 2024 in Australia and New Zealand across all categories, revealed during the DrupalSouth Sydney 2024 event held at Sydney Masonic Centre. 

Explore the evolving dynamics of Drupal's page-building features with André Angelantoni's latest series on The Drop Times. In part 1 of the series, André explores Paragraph-Based Solutions, shedding light on the progression of Drupal's page layout options. Stay tuned for insightful discussions on enhancing page-building capabilities in Drupal. The second part of the series is scheduled to be published today. 

The Drupal Pune Group announced its first meetup of 2024, scheduled for March 30 from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM IST at Bookavibe - Book Cafe and Co-working space on Fergusson College Road, Pune. Following the success of the first in-person Drupal Camp in India last year, the group is gathering once again to discuss plans for future Drupal events and collaborations. Registration has officially opened for EvolveDrupal Atlanta, an event that brings together developers, designers, strategists, marketers, managers, and more for learning, networking, and inspiration. Don't miss this opportunity to be part of a vibrant Drupal community event.

DrupalCamp Ghent has issued a call for sponsors for its upcoming event. Sponsors' support is crucial in ensuring the camp's success, enabling organizers to provide valuable experiences to attendees. Consider becoming a sponsor to support the Drupal community and showcase your organization's commitment to Drupal. Antonio José Fuster, Community Manager - Technical Communication and Innovation at the City of Benidorm in Spain, revealed the dates for the upcoming DrupalCamp Spain 2024. The event is scheduled for October 25 and 26, with October 24 earmarked as Business Day. Stay tuned for more details about this exciting event!

Mark your calendars for June 12 as Drupaljam 2024 opens at the Fabrique in Utrecht. This gathering promises an engaging experience for Europe's Drupal community. Take advantage of limited-time early bird ticket offers available until March 31. Secure your spot now for this anticipated event! Don't miss DrupalCamp Colorado 2024, scheduled for June 25 and 26. This event allows attendees to foster new community ties and engage in thought-provoking conversations. 

Excitement buzzed at DrupalSouth Sydney 2024 when Tim Doyle, CEO of the Drupal Association, made a surprise announcement during his closing remarks. DrupalCon Asia 2024 is set to happen in Singapore, likely from December 4-6, 2024, sparking enthusiasm among the global Drupal community. DrupalSouth Sydney 2024 featured captivating keynote sessions, including one by Dries Buytaert, the pioneer of Drupal. Buytaert delivered an inaugural keynote on the topic "The Drupal Project Update," providing valuable insights into the future direction of Drupal.

After a notable tenure as Program Manager and Drupal Innovation Coordinator, Alejandro Moreno López bids farewell to the Drupal Association. In his heartfelt LinkedIn post, Alejandro reflects on his journey with the organization and praises its dedication to advancing open-source technology. 

Drupal is witnessing a new wave of discussions and proposals, particularly around marketing and features. Notable figure Andrew Kucharski, CEO of Promet Source, ignited conversation with a thought-provoking post on LinkedIn. Kucharski addressed the need for a more accessible and polished list of Drupal features and benefits for a broader audience. Click here to get a detailed insight. 

We understand that there are additional stories worth exploring. However, due to current constraints in selection, we must temporarily halt further exploration.

To get timely updates, follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. Also, join us on Drupal Slack at #thedroptimes.

Thank you,

Sincerely
Kazima Abbas
Sub-editor, TheDropTimes.

Beyond buzzwords: demystifying diversity and inclusion Suchi : Amazing talk! Panel discussion of three panelists and one moderator, all from Girls in Tech.  They shared their experiences of not feeling included at different points in their lives and what people can do to make sure that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is not just a buzzword (phrase) but is actually embraced in organisations.  Paul : Great discussion on diversity and inclusion.  While the theme was girls in tech and the examples of unconscious gender bias and real-world challenges of the panel members made it all real, the most powerful takeaways were actually more generally about inclusion and providing every person an opportunity to be heard and succeed.  Very simple message on driving inclusion, “Ask people!