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