Intermediate

If you have built several Drupal websites, you have undoubtedly noticed that all websites share some common components. Most sites have hero banners, quotes, 2-ups, 3-ups, among other repeatable patterns. Building these components over and over again loses its luster and, more importantly, distracts you from building the really unique and interesting components of the site. Instead of reinventing the wheel with every Drupal site you build, wouldn’t it be great if you could build these components once and leverage them across multiple sites?

Jigsaw puzzles are a fun way to test your ability to create and execute a strategy as well as testing your eye for spotting details. Drupal sites, like jigsaw puzzles, come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and complexities. Finding the best architecture for a particular Drupal site depends on these facets and more. How do you architect for different sized projects? What are some of the techniques that are used on each and every project? How do you break down the project and create the right strategy for implementation? How do you manage the build?

As important as estimation is to setting customer/stakeholder expectations and ultimately to paying the bills, there is surprisingly little discussion about what makes for a sound estimation strategy.

Watch the session video here.

We'll review some of my findings while learning and building web applications in Drupal 8.

We'll go over architecture options for web applications built in Drupal 8. Modern PHP dependency management with Composer, Content Entities vs Nodes and when each is appropriate. We'll look at some excellent combinations of contrib modules and glue code to create flexible architectures.

Who is this for?

Deploying front-end changes can be scary – while you may have set out to make nothing more than a humble CSS change to the footer of a landing page, it's very easy for that new CSS rule to cascade (excuse the pun) out of control, impacting other regions or pages in ways you never intended.

Drupal’s Installation Profiles are a great way to speed up the initial development when starting a new project. Taking them a step further and releasing profiles as distributions can speed up the creation of entire new websites for both developers and non-technical users alike. Many large organizations have dozens of separate websites, spanning multiple technologies like Drupal, or Wordpress or static pages, and need a quick and affordable way to create new websites for franchises or departments that share common pieces of custom functionality.