Friday, October 4

3... 2... 1... Launching Your Site

You have created a beautiful, shiny new web site or a stellar partner has created one for you. It is ready to launch and usually someone just hands it over to a server administrator or the DevOps team. Instead, this time you are the launch team. Don’t panic. This session will give you the knowledge to understand what you need to make it a smooth launch. To launch, you need various pieces of information about domains, DNS, SSL and more. You then have to set these up correctly. If you do so, you should have a smooth launch of your new site.

You are not a candle; don't burn out

This session will cover a topic near and dear to our hearts: How to juggle multiple complex IT projects without losing our balance. We’ll get real about distractions that we cause ourselves through unexamined habits or suboptimal work practices, and we’ll talk about how some basic Agile principles can support better work-life balance. We’ll also tackle how to recognize some systemic issues in a technical work environment, such as technical debt, and make a connection between small choices in our daily work-lives and big problems that snowball over time.

Embracing the modern web using Drupal as a Headless CMS with Gatsby

Drupal 8 supports a "Headless" mode out-of-the-box. A headless CMS allows content creators to manage their content through a familiar admin interface and providing the content via API endpoints, allowing developers to implement a fully customized front-end experience using reusable components and a modern framework as React. A core feature of Gatsby is its ability to load data from anywhere (Drupal JSON:API endpoint in our example). This is what makes Gatsby more powerful than any other static site generators that are limited to only loading content from Markdown files.

Component-based Design with Pattern Lab

Each iteration of Drupal introduces new and exciting ways to manage content. However, the display of content is even more important along with the knowledge of how to convert a design to a theme. While we have all read about, watched and even worked with Twig to create new themes in Drupal 8, the way we work with Twig has changed.

Backdrop is Drupal 7. You know where it came from. Come see where it's headed.

Backdrop CMS is now nearly 5 years old. Since its first release on Jan 15th, 2015, what has changed? Is Backdrop substantially easier to use than the Drupal it was forked from? Is it more affordable to support? Are the APIs you know and love, still stable and functioning as they were? Is the community growing and healthy?

Google Analytics 201

I was a self-taught Google Analytics user. I thought I was getting by OK. But, since working with professional analysts, I’ve seen how my data wasn’t as complete or accurate as I thought I was. And with bad data, it’s easy to tell the wrong story.  I’m here to level you up, and share best practices for setting up your Google Analytics accounts.  In this talk, we will: provide recommendations on best practices for setting up your views, filters, and goals

Composer in Core Initiative: What it will mean for you

Drupal has leveraged Composer to manage its internal dependencies since version 8.0; however, the way that Drupal has been using Composer is unconventional. Our unconventional hybrid approach has allowed a loose continuity between managing codebases using Drupal 7 methods while simultaneously enabling more modern Composer based workflows. However, the modern Composer based approach was incomplete and unofficial, requiring third-party tools and examples such as drupal-composer/drupal-project.

Adding a Documentation Content type will change the way you use Drupal

Just as the design process should seek to create something perfect and useful for the users and the client, so should the documentation. Documentation can be the first set of deliverables within an agency process to become outdated, stale, or redundant—mainly because they are dismissed as unimportant or left to a lackluster team to plod through begrudgingly. This doesn't need to be the case if we throw out what we think documentation means and seek to find more meaningful ways to integrate the process of documentation.

Local Development Environments Panel Discussion

Local Drupal development can be tricky, especially with so many tooling choices. Having an environment that works for you is important whether you're a developer, tester, designer, or any sort of stakeholder. In this session, we'll review a few of the tools available (there are 37+ for Drupal at last count), their features, and meet some of the folks who build and use them.  This will be a panel discussion. Possible topics:

Building an Intuitive Admin: Usability for the Forgotten End-User

Nearly every new project focuses heavily on the flashy design and fancy tools it'll make for its visitors. So much focus is driven into the site user's experience to make it intuitive and pleasant, but in many cases this ignores the users that will visit the site more than anybody else: the content editors.