My Ambitious Experience with Drupal 8; the Rest is History

it should be recording if not it will

only live in our collective minds okay

so thank you all for coming I'm very

excited to kind of talk about my

ambition experience with Drupal the rest

is history

I made a career switch from the

humanities to Drupal so this has been a

kind of a crazy experience for me and I

just wanted to kind of share that with

you and talk a little bit about a

test-case about building a non-profit

website and so hopefully I think

hopefully my experiences can I don't

know illuminate but at least like the

Sheraton camaraderie this career change

that I've made and how to build a

website for a non-profit with a limited

budget I would say so okay so as I said

my name is Jack Garrett I work for debug

Academy we are based out of Washington

DC area we are locally owned and

operated we essentially kind of further

trained Drupal developers who are

perhaps transitioning for my triple7

between Bodhi or more likely people like

me who are making career changes coming

from the humanities or bankers or

mothers looking to build new skills and

so we do offer a part-time three-month

course in which you can learn these

skills and kind of enter into an entry

position if you put your heart into it

I'd like to say something you say here's

all the contact information in case

you're interested I'll try not to do any

more pitch stuff here but we do offer

remote access to these courses so you

don't have to be the ADC okay so a

little bit about me like I said my name

is Jack Garrett and for the past 12

years I have lived and breathed history

I was a history major in undergrad I did

German Studies and then I did a doctoral

program at the George Washington

University and that took about like

eight years and so if you want to know

about German socialism the German

participation in the slave trade in

Africa in the 19th century Togo you know

coming to me however once I graduated

the job prospects I think for a doctoral

someone coming out with a PhD and not

wanting to adjunct for his whole life or

for five to ten years that wasn't

necessarily for me

so I decided to teach at a private high

school for a year and about halfway

through I kind of looked in the mirror

and was like do I want to do this for

the rest of my life and I was kind of

like no I'm gonna start studying web

development and this was last last

February so a little over a year ago yes

and I started with the basics of HTML

CSS and JavaScript and then in June I

decided okay I can learn all these

skills but I need to put it into like a

whole package and so I enrolled in this

the bug Academy course and they're like

you'll learn Drupal what's Drupal and so

I was like all right that sounds great

we get to work on a real project and

I had to bring all these skills and like

one little kind of package with a bell

and contribute to projects get to work

on a real web development team and you

like in my mind that's hard to study for

and so that was kind of my training

ground and that's where I worked on this

nonprofit website and so that's kind of

where I'm detailing this right now so

it's like three months in the summer of

last summer to build the this non-profit

site so that's a little bit about me if

you're really curious at the end you can

ask more but it's been a crazy ride to

say the least so I'm gonna talk a little

bit about building the American Relief

Coalition for serious website and how we

did it with a bunch of students this is

kind of the top part of the website of

the new design a little slideshow and

whatnot and of course most importantly

the donate button in the top right here

so important questions that you might

want to think about or at least I tried

to think about for this presentation is

you know kind of is a small or small

website with limited budgets feasible in

Drupal 8 you know not put the cat out of

the bag but yes but being flexible is

important what skills and technologies

that students need to learn to be able

to build a website and there's to be

able to work on a full web development

team there was a lot to kind of bring

new learners up to speed and having done

this since then with newer students it's

it takes a lot more and then finally

from the climbing experience what was

better than Drupal 8 you know was it

worthwhile to take this Drupal 7 site

and I think most importantly at least

from the client perspective they got

that you know test drive the layout

builder and so that they liked it

what were the book quirks of using the

layout builder actually say I see some

nights yes there are definitely quirks

and you have to leap learn to live with

its limitations but the clients seem to

Lincoln okay so this slide talks a

little bit about the arcs or the

American really coalition for Syria and

its site so they are a coalition of

various organizations that support the

number of projects in Syria and outside

Syria so they all do projects helping

that Syrians access to water food and

clothing healthcare providing services

to women but also painted promoting

awareness of Syrians within our own

communities so for example they were

highlighting kind of Syrian

contributions to my hometown in Ellicott

City near Baltimore where there was

flooding and such more local communities

but nevertheless you know we were trying

to implement a new design for them and

they were actually really flexible in

this so what did the old site happen it

has slide show at the top the site

mainly was just to have articles blog

posts press releases and a essentially a

donate form it wasn't a really an

intensive web site which is great for

students you don't want to have lots of

content types

lots of custom

shonali for us to be working on like I

said the content types were largely

straightforward the two ones that we've

kind of worked on the most for the

project's content type this would have a

kind of latitude and longitude you could

place them on a map and a taxonomy of

what kind of projects they were so

whether they were for clothing or

hygiene etc and so we had to deal a

little bit with that and then this last

point is the old site was tentatively

responsive so my favorite example is

because I worked on this part was the

footer you know as you if you make it

smaller and smaller all the styling

would break all over the place and I was

like okay well I'll try to make that

better so these were some of the

concerns and the existing site of Arc

Syria org if you're curious

all right so that was the site who were

we are we should also say so for this

three-month course we had about 13

students and most of us were new to

Drupal though there were some who were

Drupal 7 developers looking to bone up

their knowledge and to make that jump to

Drupal 8 and they want to discourse the

familiarize themselves with its

uniqueness and then our teacher for what

it's worth as the Drupal grand master

certification and essentially would just

do quality control as we made the

website and kind of made our forward

question things but what we learned and

went the first month most of the

students learned what I would say the

basics but that doesn't mean easy I

would say they're the essentials so

working in the command line get

responsive design HTML and CSS and then

the second month is really when we

finally dove into Drupal and put it all

together and learn site building custom

theming in at this point but where it

says this is when we started the project

and the bulk of these students this is

when we jumped off we're like okay let's

start implementing the theme and putting

the site together

the third month is when you know some of

the other Drupal 7 developers are like

okay now it's time for us our custom

module development and do the migration

and so this is where as I was learning

web development it was going way over my

head I was like okay this is pretty

challenging right now so I was very

comfortable in the custom theming

section but that that's changing as I

get more used to more Troopa development

so what changes were needed in the

redesign so like I said we needed to do

a migration of the database we were

going to add the layout builder because

the client this is something you know as

a fairly new kind of developer to Drupal

there's this paragraphs module and the

client did not like building pages with

the paragraphs Michael and so we said we

demoed the layout builder for them

they're like this is great and so that's

what we plan to do and that's what we

did in this site we wanted to add a

Google Maps page that displays on

project notes that had custom map

markers based on the taxonomy and then

you had an exposed filter in which you

could kind of sort the projects based on

what the project it was then like I said

clean up the website make it more

responsive and then add a contact form

so what was this process like I was

someone just like skip down to the

bottom and be like I was ripping out my

hair even though it was a fairly smooth

process but we have to some proprietary

software in which there is a bunch of

tickets right this is me learning this

process of web design in which these

tickets would be assigned to various

students and then we would just

implement and do that task so it might

be as simple as you know style the

footer or something like that or place

the menu box in the footer and then we

would sit you know exporter

configurations and submit pull requests

and then that's essentially how we

slowly built out this website at this

point so I said the students there were

about 13 at the end of the day about

five of us put together the whole site

and so something to keep in mind terms

of like the size of the team to put

together this nonprofit um but the

process I remember doing my first task

and I don't know if this really rings

any bells with people as they started on

their first project if you will but I

remembered like installing the module

and I was like sweating because I was

like this is going to actually be on the

website so it was like it was a big

intense moment for me but I could see

how that it might not seem so intense

right now all right

so the next few slides are a little bit

of the pieces that I put together for

the arts site these are views so there

was a views page that would display

little snippets of blog posts and this

is kind of where I actually learned that

you could customize like the HTML output

in a views module I was kind of

struggling with that initially and then

my teacher was like oh you can do this

and I was like why didn't you tell me

that before but this was one of the

things that to me I was very proud of

was putting together some of these views

pages the second part and this took a

little bit of time is this is the a per

mentioning Google Maps page and what the

client wanted was that we had our

content type projects and that had all

the various projects they supported and

they wanted this you know the Google

Maps page these custom our map marker

icons and you'd be able to click them

and then you actually have an entity

reference service to remember off the

top of my head in which all the

information was displayed from that

project and then you could filter it

based on the exposed filter and this

took a really long time mainly because I

was trying to learn the geolocation

field module and using Google Maps API

keys and understanding Drupal

documentation even when it's well done

it still takes me a while to do it he

put it all together but that was kind of

one of the moments that Drupal drupal

clicked with me is that oh I can

actually start doing some kind of

interesting things and put together you

know

I think you know a nice website for a

client and have all of this information

being manipulated in interesting ways

this was of you yes and location as well

I did not use leaf it I looked at it but

I just used the geolocation field module

but leaflet is something that I actually

wanted to look into because it pops up a

lot whenever but I just haven't had the

time to learn it a little bit and this

last little bit is creating custom

components or custom block types for the

layout builder we had the design given

to us and I realize these snapshots are

the greatest

but I think that you chose something so

if you're the client you know you have

all be you just have these basic blocks

here so button block editing block long

text block the media block is where you

could do Vimeo or YouTube videos and

that was just those the remote video

module or I forget

seeking me and so they could just post

many others and it's automatically

responsive and then there's this quote

blog and we were just styling these and

so the client could just input some text

into two fields and you get this little

book blog you know this the rock salt

lines and then you could place them

wherever you want the tricky thing and

something I'm still learning is adding

padding and margin and trying to guess

how the client is going to use these

blocks to create these pages which I'm

still working on as a developer but they

seem very happy with it so I was happy

with it

okay sorry so I realized I'm not

particularly demoing this website right

now but I wanted to reflect a little bit

on some of those questions I posed very

early on where is I have a thicker skin

than that how to turn off that doubt man

so how determine whether a small website

was really feasible the first point for

me is the sense that I got is like

there's an ongoing discussion of whether

Drupal is like kind of leaving these

smaller sites behind the sense that I

get someone can disabuse me of that

notion that would be actually a really

interesting conversation but I wasn't

really aware of that so I was like yes

let's build this website for them and

see what happens our project manager

just simply broke down about you know

the project into suitable tasks and

since this was done through a class it

was essentially like okay now you have

to just use a custom twig template and

you just go from there

so you just have to meet some of those

logical leaps

and as I've worked on a few more

projects since this

I feel like this Third Point has become

really important to me so having an

understanding you know that a site is

going to be built by students but also

the client is kind of responsive to some

of the limitations and how much time

things take thankfully but parks people

work great about this you know that I'm

still learning and kind of making my way

to learning all of this but doing it for

a non-profit

having them meaning receptive to what is

involved in making this project I think

is really important so that

communication aspect to meet really

helped

so what skills did we need to learn and

I kind of just and put them into three

groups I think this is somewhat

arbitrary but I think it's useful is of

course you had to learn your basics like

building skills your views custom blog

types

incorporating the layout builder when it

was released towards the end of this

project but this is where most of our

students and what I kind of had to

really struggle with to really kind of

put in my mind to really get that into

the muscle memory was understanding it

workflow so we could actually

collaborate so all the students could

collaborate as a team and understanding

the differences between git and github

and making pull requests these things

come up all the time with our students

learning custom beaming and twig

templates and then of course setting up

local environments and troubleshooting

them when they inevitably break so that

was certainly more the advanced skills

but I think from my mind that's how you

learning those you know I was able to

contribute to a meaningful project and

then I didn't really touch this but that

was the Drupal 7 at triple-a tonight we

learned about it and I saw it being done

but I thought that was a little that was

a little tougher for me so that's

something I want to work towards all

right the last little part here is what

was better from the planning perspective

and for them it was just using the

layout builder like I said the paragraph

structure was a little tough for them

and so when we showed them the various

black tights and we can give them that

flexibility within a sandbox or with

with it the sandbox and some limitations

then they were generally good to go so I

spend maybe an hour or two with some of

their interns kind of training them not

only how to place blocks but how the

kind of hack the layout builder like you

just provide some extra space in here

the bootstrap 3 theme didn't really like

the layout builder so you have to open

up this and the new tab and so it wasn't

the best experience but they like this

and then of course they have their their

Drupal 8 site which is going to last I

think from what I understand it has kind

of a longer term kind of security kind

of updates so but yeah so that is a very

quick wrap up a little bit about me how

to make a non-profit site and what goes

into it from a bunch of new students

putting it together so hopefully that

was interesting there was a lot to take

in a lot of thank you very much for

listening and this was a great

experience for me doing my first reason

so I think there's just like one or two

minutes left for questions but did you

use a methodology test lists so yeah so

from what I understand is like agile is

you well water fall is like you have the

whole project and then you launch and

get all the various features that's what

sort of but essentially we wanted here

are you know the must-haves and we were

going to implement those and then if we

get the others great feature to them

yeah

FTD so that was kind of the approach

that our martini oh the bug team sucks

was that you know these are the must

pass for the clients and then if we can

develop these and great however you know

certain limitations budget and length of

project so because once that semester

ends you know it's like one or two

people without working on it rather than

five

[Music]

environment that you guys used to set up

your projects so what we did is we had

we set up a virtual box and we use the

Academy not Academy it's a bug or drupal

vm yeah still trying to learn all of

these things and set them up across all

of our students machines and that worked

well so we just had to kind of just set

that up so it was like running Bay Brent

up and then doing all that with the

virtual machines and then

troubleshooting them if it's a Windows

machine and sometimes that works well

and then if that's fairly resource

intensive so if that didn't work this

was actually for me because I had a

whole laptop we had it removed about a

remote

or to fix setup so that's what

I City had was a 1:1 teacher for the

whole group

okay and were they the project manager

as well no so there was actually he was

I think he and the project manager kind

of set up all the various tasks or

stories if you will okay but then the

project manager kind of then started

divvying up all of that but I think they

collaboratively work together work

together

it was very similar to what

capstone class

our seniors did two quarters over 12 20

weeks we have nonprofits come

yeah it was a great experience and it

was something that I knew getting into

web development I can make all the

greatest you know little personal

projects but if it was for someone else

a real project that felt like I could

you know okay actually watch my career

so alright I'm getting the knots thank

you again very much

[Applause]