You Are Here: Exploring the Most Magical CMS on Earth

we're on so yeah welcome for coming in

for my talk you are here exploring the

most magical CMS on earth

I'm Lisa McCray I'm a web developer and

instructor at debug Academy so this for

this talk I'm hoping to I'm aiming to

give a high-level overview of how Drupal

potentially surprising ways that Drupal

is like Disney World when you go

somewhere that's new and large you know

maybe you get a little disoriented at

first you're not quite sure where you

are and then you find a map that has the

you are here sticker on it and you're

like okay that helps out a lot now I

understand where I am in relation to

everything else that's sort of what I'm

hoping to do with this kind of an

orientation

get my buttons on the right eye in here

there we go alright so a little bit

about me I'm a longtime IT person I've

had lots of different roles I've worked

in different technologies a few years

ago after some company reorg zai decided

it was time to switch tech stacks I

found Drupal and debug Academy I took

there three months the part-time fully

remote accessible course and joined the

ranks of the Drupal ist's and I'll throw

in a little next semester starts June

more information but anyway for the

purposes of the talk today the the

points about communicates too much at

her table or tells more stories than

your grandmother I mean that's kind of

where I'm coming from I like to talk and

I like to tell stories and make them fun

and interesting I love a good analogy so

here's the overview of the overview

here's the general stuff that we're

gonna cover while we go through the talk

just like getting into Drupal then a

little bit about Drupal core theming

modules and web for web frameworks and a

smidgen about symphony itself this is

all pretty high level so don't get

scared if you're not you know if you're

not familiar with any of that I came

into the Drupal community from a

background in development and technical

consulting focused primarily on portal

software and knowledge management so I'm

very comfortable with the concept of

modular software you can assemble it

however you like to meet your

information needs potentially with a lot

without a lot of custom code so when I

first encountered Drupal I felt like it

would be pretty easy to get a grip on

but yeah it kind of wasn't I felt you

know Drupal's kinda extra there are a

lot of parts to it and a lot of things

going on

taking individually there are a lot of

pieces that look like components that I

knew from some other software but then

I'd sort of lose the threat of how the

pieces went together I saw lots of

references to Drupal core but then it

wasn't always clear to me what the core

was like what was included in it and

what did it do and then I tried to read

some documentation or find a blog post

and I frequently find something that did

explain things but tend to be the parts

that I already knew and it left out the

stuff that I was looking for and I

should probably mention I'm trying to

remember to identify the pictures as I

go through but I was having so much fun

with my pictures I forgot to do that so

this is my my silly little example of

some slides from the movie airplane

where they ask him about an airplane and

you get they get a very silly answer

what kind of plane is it it's a big

pretty white plane

or and here's a here's another picture I

have an example of some text talking

about math problems hand waving the

tough parts that if the blog post didn't

sometimes they would only deal with the

very basic level stuff and that was

frustrating or they would get into

something that really okay yeah this is

gonna be good but they would look like

they were talking about what I wanted to

know they skipped over the basics and

went straight into the detail and like

wait there's something in the middle

there I'm not quite sure how to connect

those two things so the more I thought

about it the more I realized that what I

really wanted was a map something that

would visually identify how the

different pieces fit together and help

me understand why they were there and

what they were for I looked around a

little

I was surprised there wasn't really

anything like that already or at least

nothing that I could find so I tried to

build my own I'm not a designer so I

knew that what I wanted to do was find

some other way to connect it maybe an

analogy or something that I could

compare it to that would sort of help me

understand and then I hit upon the idea

of using something I definitely did know

Walt Disney World and I am a big Disney

geek you can ask me all kinds of things

specifically about the parks I know a

lot about the parks and specifically the

Magic Kingdom so not this is actually

going to focus on the one in Florida not

the one in California despite the fact

that and Disney geeks will recognize

that I said most magical in the title

slide technically the one in Disney

world does anybody know the one in

Florida is anybody know what that one's

actually called that yeah the Magic

Kingdom itself it's actually the

happiest place on earth

there actually is a difference

California is magical Florida is happy

surprisingly you can make some pretty

strong parallels between the way the

magic kingdom works and the way drew

blade works this is sort of started out

as more of a thought experiment for

myself to see if I really understood how

the pieces work together but I thought

it'd be fun to share with others so here

we have a fairly iconic park map I've

just got a shot of this is basically the

paper that they hand you when you walk

in the Magic Kingdom probably looks

pretty familiar to a lot of people it's

pretty interesting just looking at it as

an infographic because there's a lot of

information that they put on there but

it's still pretty useful and attractive

but the part I mostly want to focus on

today is the center section so I have a

picture zoomed into the middle area

right in front of the castle and that is

known as the hub when Disneyland opened

in 1955 it was one of the first

amusement parks to use the hub and spoke

design most parks built prior to

Disneyland tended to have just sort of

happened more organically they weren't

really planned out so much there wasn't

a lot of thought behind their

organization so the hub-and-spoke design

was an innovation and it was instantly

successful and became a planning concept

that was reused in a lot of places

including of course Disney World when

that opened in 1971 there's a ton of

really interesting stuff you can learn

just about like how the hub design works

in terms of traffic flow and patterns of

people moving through but for today I

want to highlight the idea of the hub as

the center holding everything together

and providing the foundation that the

rest of the system relies on so in

Drupal World the hub is Drupal core

so let's talk a little bit about how

Drupal and the hub are similar the core

is required without Drupal core nothing

else works you have to go through an in

Disney World you have to go through the

hub to get to the rest of the Magic

Kingdom

similarly you can't run a Drupal site

without the core there are both visible

and hidden parts to what's happening in

the core it's not always immediately

obvious in Drupal what the core is doing

for you you know it's there it's working

maybe you're not always clear what it's

specifically doing and important

functionality is happening kind of

behind the scenes so let's talk about

the visible core and Disney the castle

is the most obvious visible element in

the hub it's the biggest thing that

you're going to see when you're in there

and it itself serves multiple purposes

within the park there's basic theme park

functions like you know food service

there's a restaurant in there

merchandising of course character

meetings happen inside the castle in the

restaurant and around it and a large

portion of park entertainment happens

directly in front of it in the castle

forecourt oh yeah here's a trivia

questions is it so since we're talking

about Magic Kingdom in Florida does

anybody know whose castle this is

it is Cinderella's castle that's right

and again I many people probably didn't

even realize there was a difference but

in Disneyland Sleeping Beauty's castle

it's two different castles

so here now let's talk about Drupal core

and drupal's the visible parts of Drupal

core so I've made my lovely diagram I've

got a little icon for a castle and

that's what I'm pointing at that's like

the center of the core and how you can

see it is the active theme that's what

it currently looks like and then I've

got some little icons indicating that

custom and contributed modules are

attached or integrated with the core

come off like the spokes then there are

other themes poor themes that you could

use those in a little tiny castles down

the corner they're not currently active

but they're there you could switch to

them if you wanted and then we have

other core modules that if I didn't have

custom themes so yeah I've got I

mentioned the themes built in options

for how the site would look the core

modules are your built in functionality

that will always be present in the

Drupal site you've got contributed and

custom modules that are connected

together through the core they provide

additional needed functionality but they

rely on the core modules to end

components and they can't run them by

themselves and contributed and custom

themes yes I didn't really show that in

this picture but those would provide

additional flexibility of design so you

can switch your presentation and these

are the things that are visible tend to

be things that are more easily

understood so let's start our

exploration of Drupal core but take a

quick look at themes and modules

so theming is a concept that's probably

pretty well understood you're changing

up the look without rebuilding the guts

one thing I learned when I got into

Drupal was that theming was more than

just skinning you weren't just changing

the look of stuff that was on the page

that's kind of how I had thought of it

initially I mean when you're developing

the theme you're also making decisions

about which pieces of content should be

on the page in the first place put a

block there maybe this is part of your

theme you know without a theming system

it was always possible to create

beautiful sites using HTML and CSS so

here we have a lovely castle it's

beautifully themed it looks great but

it's a lot of work up front and when you

need to make changes that's also a lot

of work it's kind of hard so if you have

a web framework that gives you great

base functionality it doesn't typically

give you that much on the front end

Drupal uses the web framework

infrastructure and adds on extra

capabilities through the theming system

you can now change up the look and feel

without requiring a change to the

underlying site's structure so you still

might end up with presentation code

stuck in with business logic which makes

it tough to maintain and it's still a

little bit slow to modify if you go with

that route and for my illustration here

I have this was a thing that actually

happened in the 90s I forget which

birthday it was it was one of the

birthdays of the Magic Kingdom they

actually physically went out and dressed

up the castle to look like a birthday

cake so somebody actually had to go out

there and like hang all these

decorations on it to make it look like a

birthday cake

with Drupal 8 we brought in the use of

twig templates which allow you to load

in data from the business logic and

supply markup when and where you want

this is an instance of separation of

concerns keeping presentation and

implementation logic separated this

allows you to be extremely flexible in

terms of customizations you can have

some visually complicated changes that

can be accomplished with relatively

simple template changes and this picture

now I have an example of the projection

shows and they do this nightly now at

the Magic Kingdom they actually aren't

changing the physical castle at all they

just apply a new theme essentially

they're applying this template and poof

they instantly have this display and if

they decide no we're done with this one

we want to go on to the next one pretty

quick just change that template and now

it looks like this so now I have an

example of the castle showing a

wreckit-ralph overlay from a projected

projection show

and you might wonder why I have pictures

of trash cans in my presentation and

what that has to do with Drupal um so if

design is important to you you make sure

that everything works in the place where

it is nothing takes you out of the scene

or the mood that you're building you're

trying to make sure that all your design

components go together powerful and

usable theming capabilities let you take

care of even the smallest details so you

can make sure that everything fits now

at Disney this concept is embraced the

sense of place always serves the story

from the large-scale where they they put

a lot of effort into making sure that

when you're standing in a certain land

you actually can't see into the next one

you have to go around some trees or

there's something that visually blocks

you so if I'm in if I'm in futureworld

I should say Tomorrowland since we're

talking about Magic Kingdom if I'm in

Tomorrowland I actually can't really see

Fantasyland it's a different area

there's you have to go down paths

there's trees they put a lot of thought

into separating those and even the trash

cans the smallest details they think

about even the trash cans are aligned

with the story environment they're in so

here I have pictures of trash cans from

three different technically I'm cheating

a little bit because these are I'll give

you a hint these are not all actually in

the same park they're not all in Magic

Kingdom but I don't know does anybody

want to take any guesses about where

these trash cans are from oh so this one

is actually in Toy Story land so this is

in the studio's park the one on the

bottom right and I've got a vaguely

spaced feel that's in the animal kingdom

that's in the area that they seemed

after the Avatar movies Pandora and then

the one up at the top it's actually a

little hard to see I think in this

picture it's a little dark that is

actually us goes with Star Wars in the

Star Wars launch Bay I think is what

that area is called which is also in the

Studios

so getting to the highly themed

exquisitely designed sights remains a

task unique to each application Drupal

expects that and provides a small number

of themes included with core some of

them like Bartok seven and stark shown

here are visible and selectable from the

admin interface others like classy and

stable are intended to be used only as a

base on which to build up sub-themes

they provide a common starting point

that will remain up to date with any

core changes

now let's switch focus and talk a little

bit about modules modules are pieces of

new functionality packaged up into

discrete components that can be attached

to a drupal instance the ability to add

on new capabilities to drupal without

rewriting everything that's gone before

is a huge benefit Disney doesn't have

quite the flexibility that Drupal does

but they do occasionally create

conceptually similar additions to the

park that don't change the existing

functionality a recent example is the

sorcerer zuv the Magic Kingdom game if a

couple pictures here one of them is just

an advertising poster says sorcerer is

needed I have two example cards in the

middle and I have a picture of a kid who

actually is playing the game in the

Magic Kingdom park guests travel to

different magic portals and they look

like the one that the boy is standing in

front of throughout the park and they

use the spell cards that they've

collected to defeat an assortment of

Disney villains so it's like it's a

storyline with a collectible interactive

game it's an entirely new park activity

didn't exist a couple years ago but it

doesn't change any of the pre-existing

attractions it's just an add-on

as with themes it's quite common to

develop custom modules for use in your

application it's not quite as Universal

however there's a large and growing

collection of contributed modules so

that means if you need new capabilities

in your web application it may have

already been written

my I took a screenshot of the search for

modules just for Drupal 8 this was the

screenshots actually a couple months old

so I think as of Thursday we're up to a

six thousand eight hundred and thirty

modules that pop up so yeah there's a

lot out there and some modules get added

back into core one of the benefits of

working with open source software is the

recognition that good ideas can come

from anywhere

Drupal core is guided but not dictated

by the core contributors so if an idea

and an implementation fit with the

overall goals of Drupal contributed

modules can then be added into Drupal

core the focus is to identify good ideas

and powerful features incorporate them

into core to better serve the users so

if they're a Disney example for this -

you've been and I'm going to talk about

the redesign and expansion of the Magic

Kingdom hub area in 2015 so here I have

a picture like a drone overhead view of

the central part of the hub from around

from when it opened up until about 2015

so you have this is actually the castle

is over the top and you have this

in from the bottom of view new main

entrance as you walk in the park and

then you've got the spokes leading off

to the different different lands and you

have the one single rain in the center

um after 2015 this is a similar overhead

shot of what the redesign looked like so

the there's more space in the central

area they spread it out a little bit

especially on the walkways around the

pavement so there's more room for people

to stand there because they added these

great new projection shows on the castle

so in addition to watching the fireworks

which I already had now they have these

projection shows so there's even more

people that want to stay in there right

in front of the castle and just not go

anywhere so they gave them more space

and then they added the second ring of

walkways around it so you've got all

these people who want to stay in there

and watch it and all the other people

who what maybe they have kids like mine

who really were terrified of fireworks

when they were younger so when you're in

the park and it's close to nine o'clock

you're like get me now before the booms

start because it will be bad so now we

have the second ring so there's a lot

more mobility people who don't want to

be standing there can actually get out

and you can move your your crowds around

more easily more safely

unlike with core themes the number of

core modules is pretty large and keeps

growing this list probably out of date

already there's a lot of them it's

pretty easy to find out about them

obviously there's a page that I put the

page alone yeah so you just go look up

the different core modules on that on

the website and find out what they are

and what they do so if you looked at

themes modules and the visible layer of

Drupal core so we'll look a little bit

into the parts we don't usually notice

which is what I'll call the hidden core

and I've highlighted that in my diagram

I'm talking about the core components

the part that's underneath there Disney

has a hidden core as well lots of the

work to create the guests Park

experience happens in back-of-house

areas that guests never see one of the

more famous examples of this is the

utili door system so I have here a

picture and you can see Mickey Mouse hat

police dragged me down some very

utilitarian looking corridor utila doors

are literally utility corridors they're

a set of underground tunnels connecting

different parts of the park to each

other they have supplies break rooms

employee cafeterias workshops people and

materials can be moved from place to

place without interfering with Park

guests or requiring work to be done like

after Park hours

and here's a diagram that it's a

theme-park

diagram I showed before but I've drawn

in yellow a rough map of where the

utility ORS are against the surface

structures above them so you can see

there's a whole separate layer of

functionality that's essential to making

the park work that's hidden under the

surface so drupal's hidden layer of core

components works in a similar fashion in

the bottom layer of my diagram I'm

talking about these hidden parts the

core components contain libraries and

utility functions as well as the basic

infrastructure required to make a web

application work this is one of the

pieces I struggled with while trying to

comprehend the Drupal 8 architecture

I saw articles telling me that Drupal 8

was now based on symphony yay but I

didn't they didn't really explain then

why that was a good thing or what that

actually meant and maybe you've wondered

the same thing so we'll take a quick

look at what we mean when we say web

framework what symphony is and what it's

doing for us so framework as a term gets

thrown around a lot we'll just go ahead

and do a quick overview if you were

building a car there are certain

features you need no matter what you

know a way to make it go place to ride a

way to steer it way to stop it beyond

that there's many custom features you

could add building web applications

works the same way there are basic

functions every web application has to

perform since everybody has to do those

same things why not build a set of

building blocks that can handle those

common tasks and make them generic

enough that anybody can put them in

their custom application so that's the

purpose of a web framework they provide

a common tested solid state of

application building blocks that you can

build on so just within the PHP

community alone there's a lot of

different web frameworks they all

provide support for common web

activities but they've been designed and

optimized to handle different problems

so this is a vast simplification but

Symphony provides a very one of the most

commonly used set of

opponents and even other frameworks use

symphonies components laravel uses

symphony to support building PHP

applications that follow the

model-view-controller architectural

pattern other frameworks such as slim

are intentionally pared down offering

fewer features but very fast execution

so there's a lot of options to pick from

Drupal is characterized by its broad set

of capabilities and extensibility so

migrating a lot of Drupal 8 space

functionality to use Symphony components

was a natural fit so we've talked about

rep web framework but symphony offers

we'll take a quick look at Drupal 8

score components I'm not going to talk

about them in detail I'm just gonna I

have a very simplified drawing so this

is essentially my bottom layer from the

slides with the castle atop and I'm just

sort of showing you that the central

area here is what we're getting the

modules that were pulling from symphony

so those ones we basically just picked

up and incorporated those into Drupal

and the theme the items in the ring

around the outside are unique to Drupal

kernel obviously that's unique whereas

symphony routing you know is providing

the routing module Forest

so what else can Drupal 8 learn from

Disney I just have a few like two more

things really now that we've completed

our look at the Drupal 8 core and how

core interacts with themes and modules

we'll wrap it up with a few quick

thought about other aspects that can

tell us something interesting about

Drupal so here I have a picture of a

steam train Walt Disney loved trains and

especially steam trains and so it was

kind of a no-brainer that he'd put one

in his theme park and it was one of the

opening day attractions at both Disney

Land and the Magic Kingdom but it's not

just there for nostalgia it's actually

serving a useful purpose it visually and

physically separates the park from the

outside world it's big ring around the

whole park it also moves people from one

part of the park to the other and it

serves as a people eater ride because

you can get like 2,000 passengers an

hour on a typical day riding one of

these trains so contributions back to

Drupal can be viewed in a similar way

people create features and functions for

Drupal that they love or that they need

and even changes that only help out a

niche audience they're valuable to

projects that can create something that

make you happy and that helped out many

other people magical and this is the

last thing remember the weenie the

weenie in this case is an architectural

concept describing visual magnets that

draw guests from one area to another and

the story is that when Walt Disney was

originally designing Disneyland he'd get

home late at night and he'd grab a hot

dog to eat and he called them weenies

that was his nickname for them and he'd

be eating it and he'd share some with

his dog

and he realized that when he had his

hotdog in his hand

he'd go anywhere in the house and the

dog would follow him because the dog was

like ooh I might get some food and he

took that idea to his Imagineers who

were helping design the park and he he

said he wanted them to create visual

weenies with inside the park to draw

visitors toward certain features and

keep them moving through the park space

so everybody didn't get all clogged up

in one area so when you're thinking

about your website you know what draws

users in to your site what catches their

attention and keeps them moving forward

toward their goal that is your site

Sweeny and I'm just that is the wrap up

of my of my view of Drupal and Magic

Kingdom so if anybody has any questions

I'd love to talk about that at any of

the parks are just Magic Kingdom Magic

Kingdom yeah no you know what I like a

lot of the different rides um the ones I

like the most tend to be the ones that I

don't have to stand in line for forever

they actually just create it's like a

really simple thing but they created a

under the sea ride a couple of years ago

and it's not even all that fancy it's

very basic like dark ride you get in the

thing and you ride through and there's

shows and things like that and it's

really cute and my kids love it and I

can get through that that cue like

nothing that's one thing that I really

enjoy I don't know if that's my favorite

but you know top of mind right now

so what's your biggest difference piece

underneath

you know I didn't really think about

that that much I when I switched into

Drupal I immediately started looking at

Drupal 8 so I probably don't have the

best perspective on on differences I'd

have to think about that question and I

guess before we go I should mention if

you want to do feedback you can go to

this this link mid camp slash 263

that'll be feedback for this specific

talk and contribution day is tomorrow

from 10:00 to 4:00 you don't have to

know code to contribute there's a new

contributor training from 10:00 to noon

with the excellent Amy June so if you

can even get sort of our boost to get

started if you want and yeah that's my

last thing

thank you very much