This document summarizes Meghan Sweet's presentation on beginning Drupal development. She discusses choosing modules carefully by reviewing their project pages, README files, and issue logs. Developers should store contributed and custom modules and themes in organized directories. An effective development workflow involves working locally, using version control, and testing changes before pushing to production. Theming in Drupal allows full customization but also risks breaking the system, so a theming strategy is important.

1. SANDCamp 2013
Beginning Drupal Development
Meghan Sweet (@meghsweet)
26 January 2013
Saturday, January 26, 2013

2. How do you learn
Drupal?
Saturday, January 26, 2013

3. Sometimes things are
really easy.
Saturday, January 26, 2013

4. Sometimes things are
really hard.
Saturday, January 26, 2013

5. Choosing Modules
Stand on the Shoulders of Giants
- Assess the project page
- Read the README file (believe me)
- Check the issue log
- When in doubt, ask around
Saturday, January 26, 2013

6. http://drupal.org/project/views/
Saturday, January 26, 2013

7. Where does Contributed code live?
Put all contrib modules in
../sites/all/modules/
OR
../sites/all/modules/contrib
Put all custom modules in
../sites/all/modules/custom
Put all themes in
../sites/all/themes
Saturday, January 26, 2013

8. What do you need in your toolbox?
HTML / CSS / Javascript / PHP
A good code editor
Firebug or Chrome Inspector
Drush
Drupal Community
Willingness to break things
Saturday, January 26, 2013

9. Development Environment
Work locally!! No more FTPing
Use version control to push changes.
Drush is your friend
You won’t regret learning command line tools
Be equipped to browser test
Saturday, January 26, 2013

10. Development Workflow
Development Environment- Dev > Test > Live
Where do your clients QA?
Use Version control to push to production
- great for rolling back changes
- great for multi-developer environments
Code vs Content, do smart migrations
Set up a workflow to push to production
Saturday, January 26, 2013

11. The “Drupal Way”?
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12. Site Development Plan
Typical Drupal Site
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13. A complex system that works is
invariably found to have
evolved from a simple system
that worked...
Gall's Law
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14. Build features zoomed
in, then pull back and
see how it all fits
together.
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15. Write a development plan
Forces you to think through your architecture
and implications of decisions
Makes it a lot easier to build quickly- ex: grab
all your modules at once, understand content
and layout dependencies
Build, then theme
90% of the way there is often enough
- Don’t be afraid to talk to your clients and get
to the heart of business needs
Saturday, January 26, 2013

16. Structure Content
Break up your content into the pieces you want
control over.
Important in mobile theming- content first
Consider your admins and your visitors.
Good content is user-centered
Adopt the cognitive frameworks of your users
-ERIN KISSANE
Saturday, January 26, 2013

17. Feature Development
Its essentially three steps, rinse and repeat.
1) Build a content type
2) Build a view
3) Build a layout
(Theme)
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18. Slow Site?
Saturday, January 26, 2013

19. Common Client-side
Performance Pitfalls
Look for the obvious first:
-Are you caching?
-Are you aggregating your CSS?
-Are the images huge?
These are stupidly easy wins :)
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20. Theming!
Where everything can be overridden.
Oh the power and the danger...
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21. There is no "best"
theme.
-@rupl
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22. Where to start
Develop a theming strategy and find
a theme to match
- ‘Starter’ themes
- Base Themes
- Responsive Theming
- Click-to-Config
Saturday, January 26, 2013

23. Control your layout through
configuration
Panels, Panelizer, Panopoly
Context
Omega
Display Suite
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24. Advancing Theming
Its all about Overriding
Configuration -> CSS -> PHP
Keep it clean and organized
Keep a custom module for small stuff
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25. You can give back to the
community.
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26. Coding Standards
-Don’t Hack Core! It may seems like a good idea now, but its
not.
- Comment heavily! You’ll thank yourself later.
- Before you do something, consider if you can make it
easier to understand. Writing code for yourself is a bad
idea.
- Use descriptive classes
- http://drupal.org/coding-standards
- http://drupal.org/project/coder will check for you
- http://drupal.org/project/examples
Saturday, January 26, 2013

27. GIT Standards
- Commit often, and do single-issue commits
- Write good commit messages, use real english and
reference outside information (ticket number, Drupal.org
issues)
- Remove things you don’t need with a proper commit, don’t
just comment them out
Saturday, January 26, 2013

28. Pay it forward
- Participate in the issue queue and documentation.
- If you use a patch (regardless of whether it works or fails),
comment on the issue.
- If you write a patch, post it.
- Write documentation and blog
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29. Learn More
Books
Camps and Cons
Training
IRC
Documentation
Spirit of willingness, giving
Blogs back and helping each other
Videos
Meetups
Saturday, January 26, 2013

30. Thank You!
@meghsweet
@chapter_three
Saturday, January 26, 2013