Site Building + Using Drupal

Mine was a curvy path, but in this talk I'll share with you the milestones that will lead you, a total beginner, to solid Drupal 8 Site-Building understanding. I went from a total newbie at my first BADcamp to a site launch in four short months by learning the Drupal ecosystem of content types, taxonomy, views, and blocks, and discovering the wonders of the open-source Drupal community. I'll provide the template of instructions (the Texas Two-Step) that will allow you to see what I did, mimic my success, and empower you to customize these methods to fit your own aspirations.

Drupal can be a powerful tool for organizing & displaying information. By adding info as structured content, we can enter things once and then display them multiple places in multiple ways. But how do we get from a big pile of chaotic information to a sensible Drupal architecture for structured content?

This session demonstrates one approach to analyzing content and then using that analysis to guide content architecture. It doesn't require special knowledge or fancy software. It can be done with 3x5 index cards or Post-It notes or even just a whiteboard or some pieces of paper.

Don't store your active configuration in the database.

CloudFlare (https://cloudflare.com) is a free global CDN, DNS, DDoS protection & web security provider. 

In this talk, we'll walk through how to connect CloudFlare to Drupal, and how to configure CloudFlare and Drupal to work together. 

We'll look at:

Drupal is already a powerful and robust system for producing sites and systems, but there are concerns of an increased level of complexity with the latest version. Many changes exist as enhancements and improvements to our beloved CMS. This session will outline those enhancements, how best to use them, as well as various tips, tricks and tools to help you work best with Drupal 8. These include the updated Block Interface, Authoring Experience improvements, Twig, Devel, Drush, Drupal Console and more.

At First, Let Yourself Be “Bad” At Drupal 8
Accept the Inevitable Parts of Learning

Ancora imparo — “I am still learning.” - Michelangelo

The paragraphs module is really starting to get some great traction in the Drupal comminity and there is a reason why - they are amazing at extending what you can do with Drupal as a site builder. 

Using paragraphs and a little imagination we will go over building a site that gives content creators flexibility while still allowing developers to maintain site consistency and security. 

There’s a great deal of data we’d like to structure in a logical and efficient way in our Drupal 8 sites. There are plenty of options: content types, taxonomy terms, block types… These are all part of Drupal’s wonderful entity system, but with great wonder comes great complexity.

Fortunately, we don’t need to know the Drupal codebase or database schema like the back of our hand to benefit from understanding entity terminology when managing and building a site. Let’s take a look at the basics of Drupal entities from a visual approach, you will never think of nodes the same!

This session looks at the challenge of creating online learning platforms for training staff, volunteers, or constituents.

By now we should all be well aware that mobile-first approach is ideal for a successful responsive web website. But, out there in the real world, despite all the blog posts and best intentions, there are times when a project requires converting an existing desktop site or design into a responsive website.