Start the day with FLDC updates, thank yous, and announcements!

The way we build websites has hugely shifted in the last few years, and as a consequence Drupal's role in the architecture of the web has shifted too - let's talk about that! Also with a lot of increasing excitement around decoupled, I'll be sharing some of my war stories from the last 6 years of building Drupal-backed decoupled sites.

Recently I became a lead for the new JavaScript Modernisation Initiative, so I'll also be sharing our ideas and plans for how we want to completely change the way we build administration interfaces in Drupal.

Savas Labs is an agency that

     propels organizations with Drupal.

However, we chose to build our website with the static site generator Jekyll. There were good reasons we chose this path when we did. Alas, like most decisions there are benefits and drawbacks that play out over time. Since we've learned much over the years in the Jekyll space, we've built some pretty great tooling around our application. We've also built some that, well, frankly does what Drupal does out of the box. 

We'll take a deep dive into the pros and cons of our decision to build outside of our 🍞 bread and 🍯 butter: Drupal. We'll discuss what we've learned, and how we leverage lessons from both the Jekyll and Drupal ecosystems to better our work in both.

 Some of the highlights we'll discuss are: 

• A ReactJS comment front-end powered by a comment back-end we wrote
• Comparisons on
  • Continuous integration
  • Image optimization
  • Hosting options
  • Development environment / Editing UI
  • Ruby & PHP 
• Opportunity costs

We'll cover a lot of ground showing the strengths of our Jekyll workflow, especially in the early days. We'll discuss how we ran into some limitations as our organization and needs scaled. Toward the end, you may just find out that the Sirens are luring us back to the "Drupal island", but instead of spoiling any surprises 🤐, come hear about it in person! You'll certainly learn a thing or five and be able to apply lessons we've learned to make better decisions whether you're a PM, Developer, Decision Maker, or a dabbler working with Drupal, React or Jekyll. Also, I'll make some really forced Jekyll & Hyde references for the 19th-century literature buffs in the crowd - so you'll want to tune in for that. 

Backdrop CMS is the Drupal fork. It is a faster and less-complex version of Drupal 7 with many of the top 50 Drupal 7 modules included in core. Backdrop also includes proper configuration management for quick and easy deployment of settings changes along with code.

Backdrop CMS has been out for more than 3 years, and has seen 9 on-time releases that have added more new core features - including a few you won't find in Drupal 8 (yet). Backdrop core includes built-in automatic URLs, page redirects, and a tool for adding new modules directly from your existing site. Backdrop also includes an updated administrative theme, a new front-end theme, dozens of User Experience improvements, and improved APIs for developers. Plus, Backdrop has a dragon!

Backdrop is an affordable alternative for upgrading existing Drupal sites. Backdrop will always provide an upgrade path (via update.php) and maintains 80% code compatibility between major versions. Decreasing the amount of time spent on development, maintenance, and upgrades will help keep costs down. Backdrop CMS is committed to making sure the small to medium sized businesses and non-profits have a full-featured and powerful CMS too.

Come and see if Backdrop CMS is a match for your next project!

The quicker your site loads. The happier visitors will be.

A shared hosting environment hardly ever leads to happy visitors (nor happy business owners for that matter).

The Drupal ecosystem is blessed to have several excellent hosting options.

This session will review 2 of the most popular Platform as a Service (PaaS).

• Pantheon
• Platform.sh

We’ll cover the approach each of these cloud hosting companies takes. As well as the pros and cons of each platform.

For the more sysadmin inclined, we’ll also review managing your own servers using Laravel Forge.

This session doesn’t go into server configuration details; so programming/sysadmin experience isn’t required to understand how each hosting option is reviewed & compared.

Host on the Cloud or DIY DevOps? Attend this session to find out which is a better fit for your organization.

The Drupal 8 configuration system can provide great advantages to managing the configuration of a site, but it can also cause massive headaches if used improperly. This presentation will provide an overview of how the Drupal 8 configuration system works, best practices on basic workflows to utilize it effectively, and a small sampling of some of the contributed modules available to enhance it.

This presentation is designed for Drupal site-builders, developers, and project managers interested in learning basic best practices of the Drupal 8 configuration system. 

Docksal is a Docker-based development tool that removes hurdles from creating a local development environment and greatly reduces the time needed to onboard a new developer to a project.

Some of the topics that we will cover will include:

• Create a local development environment in minutes*
• Maintain the environment configuration via source control
• Create custom commands to automate expedite development tasks
• Integrating Docksal with a pre-existing projects

Contributing a module to the Drupal community is a gift of your time, energy and passion.  Maintinaing and continuing to improve upon that gift can often have a negative effect on your balance.  This session provides tips, tricks and techniques for making continued maintenance of your module smooth, painless and productive.   Highly recommended for anyone who is either planning to release a module or is currently a maintainer of a module.

Slides

So you've lovingly maintained and curated your Drupal site, carefully crafting content types for different types of content, setting up taxonomy vocabularies, updating content, enrolling users, building views...all the drupally things you do when you have a content driven web application.  But now, you want to update your site to the latest version of Drupal.

But you have all this content!  And tons of images!  And twelve different content types...and 10,000 users with 6 different roles...and...and...

Stop!  Breathe...

Drupal 8 has some built in components that significantly reduce the effort it takes to migrate vocabularies, content types, roles, users, taxonomy terms, and yes...content (including files and images).

In this session we'll take a look at the different components of Drupal 8 that take care of some of the heavy lifting when it comes to moving your carefully, lovingly curated Drupal site to Drupal 8.  We'll discuss some of the "gotchas" to be aware of, and some tips on making your move to Drupal 8 a reality.

Sunday Lunch

Florida Drupalcamp Contribution Sprints

Why Contribute?

The more that people contribute, the stronger Drupal becomes. The more polished and refined the project is, the more job security we all have.

Why Sprint?

It’s an excellent opportunity to connect with other contributors, help collaborate and brainstorm, and move the Drupal project forward. Contributing is a fantastic way to receive feedback and build skills while learning from those more experienced.

Not a Coder or New to Tech?

That’s great! It’s your turn to shine.

Not everyone who works on Drupal is a developer: Project Managers, Customer Service, and those who hold non-technical roles can all give back to the community. Code is important, but so are all the other parts.

We’ve got you covered.

There will be mentors available for those who need a little help to get started.

We will make sure you stay caffeinated, fed, and hydrated.