DrupalSouth Sydney 2024
Sydney Masonic Centre
20th Mar to 22nd Mar
| Title | Summary | Track |
|---|---|---|
| Should I rejoin the Drupal Association? A conservative Christian struggles over "Pride". | He is a long time user and contributor to Drupal, and used to be a member of the Drupal Association. In 2019, however, a blog post on Drupal.org led to a discussion that led to him not renewing his membership. In writing this talk, he will seek to develop a balanced evaluation of what happened and arguments for and against rejoining the association, 4 years on. In presenting the talk, he'll tell you where he came to and whether he did rejoin. (Note to evaluators: I'm very definitely not wanting this to be controversial or any sort of flame war; more an opportunity to try to find and present a middle road and harmony through something that could be devisive. I'll be more than happy to submit the text of my talk for submission for review prior to the conference). | People & Culture |
| Drupal Certified Partners: How your organisation can help secure Drupal's success | The Drupal Certified Partner program was launched in 2021 by the Drupal Association and now has over 50 global companies recognised as key contributors to the Drupal open source project. This session will run through the purposes and goals of the program, its relevance to the local market and recent changes that have been made to enhance the program. You'll learn how your organisation can become a Drupal Certified Partner and maximise the benefits of doing so. If you're an organisation that uses Drupal as a customer, the talk will also cover how the Drupal Supporting Partner program provides an avenue to help secure Drupal's success. | People & Culture |
| Low-code no-code contrib module show-down | No one needs to code EVER AGAIN as we dive head first into the juicy goodness that is site building in the greatest open source product-building tool of all time, Drupal. Swipe left or right on the hottest Drupal namespaces on the market. We are going wide and not deep. Meet the new cool kids, or get misty eyed over old friends. This presentation does a deep dive into the current state of the art for Drupal contrib covering as much ground as possible. Categories will be awarded, and there will be audience participation, so bring a smart device and all of your prejudices. |
Drupal Development |
| From Zero to Hero with Docker Contexts: Your Practical Guide! | Docker is a large and evolving open-source project. In recent times, agencies have been hit hard with licensing changes preventing them from being able to use, develop, and manage all of their projects on existing contracts - this change is systemic! In this talk, we explore the state of Docker for local development, its alternatives in detail, and how each would work with your workflow. We will also explore the architecture of each of these solutions. It's aimed at technical users who have or will lose control over their working environment due to these licensing changes, such as enterprise users, government, and small businesses. We will work to help you regain control and access to your projects in your local environment. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Dissecting the open source components GovCMS PaaS | Government clients who land on the GovCMS PaaS platform will find themselves with a vanilla GovCMS installation on top of a powerful platform in Lagoon and Gitlab. It's a handy out-of-the-box baseline while some aspects should be discarded. This presentation analyses the open source components which form the starting point of this setup against the backdrop of current Drupal best practice. I will pull them apart and explain what is optional and what is useful. This presentation is not endorsed by the Department of Finance and will only examine open source materials. | Drupal Development |
| ArtSEEker - using headless Drupal to power AI Art recognition | This talk will take the audience through a cutting-edge AI project, and how headless Drupal is a key component to delivering this app. The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) has embarked on an ambitious project: leveraging sophisticated AI mechanisms to make our digital content easily accessible on personal devices. Our product, entirely built on open-source tech and built in-house, employs computer vision to recognise artworks with high accuracy (>98%) and rapidity (averaging 200ms) across thousands of pieces. The Galley visitor can simply point their mobile phone at any work on display, and the AI will recognise the art object and return all relevant content, as well as inviting engagement and extra layers of meaning with the work. This negates the need for markers such as QR codes, label keys, or other intricate technological tools. Central to our Web App's functionality is its computer vision recognition feature. By pointing a mobile device at an artwork—be it 2D or 3D—the artwork is identified within a few hundred of milliseconds to return related digital content, such as descriptions, colour and shape analyses, interactive components, and interactive questions. In this presentation, I’ll guide attendees through our holistic journey, from the technological foundation to the pilot phase, taking insights from lessons learned and discussing our vision for a museum-wide rollout. Importantly this talk will be anchored in what is providing the data – a Drupal 10 instance providing a custom data API, and many specific endpoints. During AI inference training this was delivering 100,000s of responses in a day and scaling appropriately. |
Drupal Development |
| Navigating migration journeys | Code and content migrations are challenging exercises. All too often they can feel like a huge effort with little reward. Some Drupal sites have easily migrated through many versions of Drupal, and others have migrated away to other platforms. Some site owners are looking at the coming end of support for Drupal 7 and 9 with mixed emotions. Should we stay with Drupal? Should we migrate to a new platform? Or should we shut down our site completely. It's not fun. Let's explore what makes platform migration so hard for some, but easy for others. Let's share what we've learned from all sorts of migrations so we can be kinder to our friends, and our future selves. |
People & Culture |
| Mobile accessibility: building accessible mobile sites and native apps for accessibility | Unfortunately, when developing WCAG2, the Working Group did not envision the current world where mobile is almost ubiquitous. For example, on a mobile device there is no continual access to a keyboard (unless someone is using it as an add-on to the device – or using a Blackberry Classic). WCAG2 requires that all content be accessible to the keyboard interface, but it does not require that all content be accessible to a mouse or to a touchscreen user, which is essential on a mobile device. WCAG2.1 does include some mobile accessibility requirements but doesn’t go far enough. Gian Wild chaired the Mobile Site Sub-Committee to develop a set of Mobile Site Testing Guidelines that are available under Creative Commons. These guidelines are meant to be used in conjunction with WCAG2 (and WCAG2.1) to ensure that sites are accessible to people with disabilities using mobile and tablet devices. Accessibility is important to all – not everyone using your mobile app, device or wearable will be fully functioning, either because they have a disability, or they are simply engaged elsewhere. Gian talks about the things that are essential to avoid when designing mobile apps, devices and wearables to ensure that everyone can use them. She talks about specific mobile accessibility features: pinch zoom, native screen readers, haptic keyboard, etc., and system accessibility settings: font size, screen rotation, high contrast, etc. |
Drupal Development |
| History of web accessibility | You shouldn't move forward until you have a really good look at where you've come from. In this session, Gian Wild, shows us where we've been, what some of the stumbling blocks can be and how we can learn from them to ensure a bright future for the area of accessibility. Although the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, Version 1.0 was released in 1999, it wasn’t really taken seriously until Bruce Maguire made a complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2000 about the Sydney Olympic Games website. The rest, as they say, is history. AccessibilityOz Founder and CEO Gian Wild will discuss digital accessibility’s hard-won and progressive history, how it started, where it is now and where it’s headed. |
User Experience & Content |
| Security and Accessibility can be friends! | Many a security expert has been told that security may be compromised due to accessibility needs. Many an accessibility expert has been told accessibility must be reduced to allow for security. Gian Wild is here to tell you that they are wrong. People often think these two very important disciplines are mutually-exclusive but this is only because they don’t understand both sets of requirements. From the not-so-humble CAPTCHA to the auto completion of forms, Gian talks about what the accessibility needs are and how security need never be compromised, and most importantly, how you can understand both sides of the divide. |
Drupal Development |
| Transforming Drupal data workflows: A look at Data Pipelines and Search API | Data management is a critical component of Drupal websites, ensuring that content is efficiently stored, retrieved, and utilised. The Data Pipelines module and Search API are powerful tools in Drupal’s arsenal, providing advanced capabilities for handling large volumes of data. This presentation is designed to delve into these tools, showcasing how they can transform data management within Drupal. The session also sheds light on the integration of the Search API, demonstrating its crucial role in enhancing data retrieval and user experience. Participants will learn how to leverage this tool in conjunction with the Data Pipelines module to create a robust and comprehensive data management solution. Practical examples and insights into best practices will be shared, empowering attendees with the knowledge and skills to elevate their Drupal data management practices. By the end of this presentation, participants will be well-versed in the functionalities and advantages of using the Data Pipelines module and Search API in Drupal. They will leave with a wealth of knowledge, ready to implement these tools in their projects to optimise data workflows and improve data retrieval. |
Drupal Development |
| CSS Magic: Making Web Design Fun Again! | Take a lively journey through the world of CSS. This presentation is all about showing how CSS has become more fun and powerful over the years. We start with a quick look at what CSS is and how it has grown. Then, we dive into the cool new stuff CSS can do. Think of Flexbox and Grid as your new superpowers for making websites look neat and work well on all devices. We also talk about CSS Custom Properties and Subgrid, which are like secret tricks to make your web design even better. I'll show you some real examples of how these new tools work. It's like a before-and-after picture: you'll see how things used to be done and how much easier they are now with these new CSS features. Then, we take a quick peek into the future. What's next for web design? How is CSS keeping up? This part is like looking into a crystal ball to see what exciting things are coming up. This presentation isn't just about learning, it's about getting excited about making pretty things with CSS. Whether you're just starting or you've been creating websites for a while, there's something here to spark your creativity and make web design a fun adventure. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| 10 things I learn from teaching Drupal in college for 12 months | I’ve been teaching Drupal privately and to the general public for over a decade running various events stretching over from a few hours to multiple days. Last year over Christmas break I officially became a teacher and joined a local college (TAFE). Over the last 12 months I taught programming languages, databases and a bit of Drupal. I want to share 10 insights I learnt about teaching Drupal, IT in academia in general, and talk about various important and concerning topics such as Microsoft dominance in Australia, open source indifference from peers to name a few. I’m hoping that this session will strengthen the link between the Drupal community and academia, questioning a few stigmas, finding solutions and improving the way we represent Drupal as a community to teachers and students. |
People & Culture |
| It feels like we're drifting apart - strengthening ties with former contributors | People's circumstances change and their level of contribution fluctuates accordingly. How we manage these changes as open source projects matters. How do we deal with the loss of expertise? Are we doing enough to recognise former contributors? Are we providing options for them to keep in touch with the project as their circumstances change? Are we making sure they can easily return to the project in the future? This session will ask some questions of your project and present ideas for managing the transition of contributors. Hopefully you will leave the session with some possible action items to help your project improve relationships with former contributors. |
People & Culture |
| A Drupal core maintainer shares peer code review best practices | Improve your teams' peer code review process, your code maintainability, and your Drupal contributions. Learn from a Drupal core release manager—with over ten years of Drupal core experience—how to give an efficient and effective peer code review. Peer code reviews are essential, improving maintainability, increasing productivity, and reducing costs. They can reduce the rate of defects (bugs) introduced into a codebase by as much as 80-90 percent. Most importantly, they build a shared understanding of the application within a team, and are an opportunity for developers to mentor each other. In this session, you will also discover research and psychological principles for when code review is effective and when it is not. You will learn how to structure your change sets for reviewers, which can improve the whole team's code and maintainability. Finally, you will learn about automation and tooling that can help reviewers focus on what's most important. |
Drupal Development |
| Drupal Career: A Humorous Journey in the Drupal World | In this session, I'll share my unique and humorous journey through Drupal. As a tech lead with over a decade of experience, I've encountered many situations, challenges, and triumphs that have shaped my career. I'll take you through the early days of grappling with Drupal's complexities, the exhilarating moments of solving challenging problems, and the satisfaction of seeing projects come to life. Expect anecdotes that amuse and provide insights into the Drupal ecosystem and its vibrant community. We'll explore how Drupal has evolved over the years from the perspective of someone who's grown alongside it. I'll discuss how the platform's changes have impacted developers, businesses, and the community. This will include a look at the technical advancements, the shift in market trends, and the evolving skill sets required to stay relevant. Moreover, I'll delve into the cultural aspects of being part of the Drupal community. From the collaborative projects to the lively meetups and conferences, I'll highlight how these experiences have enriched my professional life and offered continuous learning and networking opportunities. Towards the end, I'll offer advice to budding Drupal developers based on my own experiences – from navigating the learning curve to seizing opportunities and overcoming common hurdles in the industry. The session will be a narrative of my journey and a guide to help others carve their path in the Drupal world. Overall, my talk aims to entertain, educate, and inspire. Whether you're a seasoned professional or just starting, I hope to provide a fresh perspective on what it means to be a part of the ever-evolving and exciting Drupal community. |
People & Culture |
| Next Level Bundle Classes | Bundle classes were introduced to Drupal core in 9.3 at the end of 2021. By March 2022 we had started using them in some of our larger projects. Since then we've taken bundle classes to a whole new level, fully embracing them as part of our standard content architecture. In this talk, we'll cover some advanced uses of bundle classes such as: * Custom business logic and functionality * Complex functional testing * Replacing an entity type's view builder to use the full power of bundle classes for rendering content * ...and more! By the end of this talk, you'll understand why bundle classes are the best thing added to Drupal core in years, and how you can use them to level up your code base and make development a breeze! |
Drupal Development |
| Nice Things™️ for Front end devs with Storybook, Vite, Twig and Drupal | Front end developers outside Drupal have lots of nice things: * near instant reloading * zero config setup for compiling sass/postcss to css * zero config setup for transpiling Javascript * component driven design with Storybook * interaction testing. For a long time it felt like these weren't possible with Drupal front-end development without secret sauce and workarounds or duplication of your markup between Drupal and a design system. But with the release of Vite Plugin Twig Drupal everyone can have nice things with little effort. In this lightning talk we will do a hands on demo of setting up a project for component driven design with Vite, Storybook and Twig. You deserve nice things, and now you can have them! |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| How to save a project when it starts going badly | (Note: Title needs work, will update to something better if selected!) What do you do when you're halfway through a project and you realise you're using budget way too quickly? We recently had a project that seemed like it should have been easy. It was an existing site that we had developed a few years earlier, and we were tasked with applying an updated design. We estimated it and the client approved the budget, which we thought was more than enough. Then we started, and realised it was a lot more complicated than we thought. The design was done by a third-party agency, and there were a lot of open questions. Not only that, but the refreshed design was only being applied to some parts of the site, not all. Oh, and it was a GovCMS SaaS site, so our options were limited and we had some logistical hurdles that chewed up time, which we didn't plan for. This project went from a potential disaster that kept me up a few nights, to a huge success that we're really proud of. In this session, I'll go through: * What we did initially, and how we got it wrong * How we figured out we were off track * What we did to address it, both internally and with our client This is a case study in using transparency to deliver a successful result for both sides. |
People & Culture |
| Patches are almost dead. Long live Merge Requests! | “Previously, the main way to contribute source code changes to a Drupal project repository was via patch files. As of November 2020, we have a new workflow available, similar to what open-source contributors commonly use on sites like GitHub.” according to Drupal help. While looking over the cover core and contrib issues queue I still find many patch files being uploaded. You can even find issues with both gitlab merge requests and patch files mixed together with one or the other being outdated. This sessions is trying to solve two issues: 1.To guide you how to start and get more comfortable with gitlab and merge requests If you are still contributing using patches. 2. To share tips and tricks that I collected over the last few years using github daily over the last few years. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Building plugins for CKEditor 5 | Is it easy to upgrade the CKEditor 4 module and plugin to CKEditor 5? Let’s look under the hood and find out. Let’s take an existing module (or two if time permits) and build CKEditor 5 plugin within Drupal 10 infrastructure. In 2023 I presented the session “CKEditor 5: One Small Step for Content Editor, One Giant Leap for Drupal” in Austria, New Zealand and Australia. While doing the research for this presentation and also trying to upgrade number of modules to Drupal 10 and CKEditor 5 during various code sprints, I noticed that the learning curve is quite huge and majority of the people are disheartened by the sheer amount of the information you need to learn to upgrade the plugin. The goal of this tutorial is to narrow the learning gap and allow developers to create CKEditor 5 compatible plugin and module. You will receive access to the repository and step by step instructions. |
Drupal Development |
| Accessibility in WYSIWYG editors | WYSIWYG (short for What You See IS What You Get) editors are the backbone of the open source content management systems. While Drupal is powered by CKEditor 5, WordPress is using a community edition of Tiny editor. Both editors are survivors of what used to be a flourishing frontend industry of content editor tools. I would like to share the accessibility insights I discovered while teaching content editors to use both editors. The session will include a practical demonstration on how two of the world's most popular WYSIWYG editors can be even better and how we can help. Resources: - https://gitlab.com/testudio/a11y-by-designhttps://youtu.be/nrQjaPZ09oo - https://docs.google.com/presentation/u/1/d/1NUCLepwa8txKw7LPcnPhBkPkWowSVcN8uVHvcAW4rkM/edit |
User Experience & Content |
| ECA business rules engine of choice and replacement for rules module | The Drupal community has been trying to reimplement mega popular Drupal 7 RULES modules for a very long time and it seems like we have a winner: Events, Conditions, Actions (ECA for short) is a relatively new but very impressive module. It features a full set of tools for no code / low code business rules creation. It even resembles the Rules logo! The session will be useful for both beginners and those already familiar with ECA. Part 1 will cover the structure of the module (and sub modules) and what would you need to get started covering resources and documentation available. Part 2 will include tips and tricks from real life simple scenarios like modifying forms, restricting access and creating content to complex ones. Cherry on the cake will be a simple custom event example. |
Drupal Development |
| Single Directory Components - to TWIG or not to TWIG | Single directory components (SDC) were introduced to Drupal 10.1 as an experimental module. It helps to define the reusable component for websites combining twig, CSS and javascript. As there are a number of presentations and tutorials covering basics (the structure and the implementation of the simple component), this session will focus on two topics: 1. Walkthrough existing components with use cases and how to extend and reuse the components 2. Listing of the useful modules to leverage the power of SDC. The goal of this presentation is to expand the understanding of SDCs beyond simple examples concentrating on the practical side of single directory components. |
Drupal Development |
| Defend FOSS: From innovation to positive change, we need to remind the world what we're about. | Open Source technology, practices, and thinking have revolutionized how we innovate, collaborate, and do business. The impact goes beyond our daily work — it's is everywhere — we won! But there's a downside: We have forgotten to tell people what makes us and Open Source different. We must remember how radical and important Open Source is. It is extraordinary that we build international communities of experts sharing our best ideas, building businesses, and creating value. Open Source — and we — have the potential to create more positive change in the world. And we need to tell the world, again. At the same time, proprietary systems and vendors are winning pitches in government and elsewhere that should be no-brainers for Open Source solutions. What comes next, and what do we have to do to make sure we can continue to make a positive difference with Open Source in the future? This session will explore open source at different scales, from small but meaningful, to vast and vital to our future. What has open source made possible? What have we done with it in the last 24 years? A look back at our origins, the changes and opportunities open source has enabled from small and personal to large. What could applying open source philosophy and practices — "thinking open source" — bring to society, the world, and the future beyond our daily work and business, from promoting peaceful and democratic societies to providing international development aid? Openness and sharing, good governance and democracy. Can open source practice teach us how to live in a peaceful, free, and democratic society? SAID ABOUT THIS TALK: “This session came with the best value I've experienced myself for ages. I'm so glad I went there, the impact of FOSS principles to our societies is totally underrated. It was overwhelming!” |
People & Culture |
| Embracing Excellence: The Uniqueness of amazee.io’s Company, Culture and People | In this talk Ashleigh and Toby will cover what makes amazee.io a unique place to work, and go behind the scenes to unveil some of our (not-so) secrets. Working hybrid or fully-remote is hard, and does require effort all-round to maintain. Coupling this with a 24hr global workforce can make it even harder to prioritize connection and collaboration. Sharing our experiences working with both technical and non-technical teams (at varying levels of seniority) will give an insight into some of the techniques we employ. You’ll be able to take away some great ideas on how to become more employee-centric, develop higher-performing teams, and learn to love each other a bit (or a lot)! |
People & Culture |
| Drupal at scale in the Australian National University | This session is a must-attend for professionals seeking insights into web management operations within small web teams in large organisations and learning how to achieve scalable growth while delivering high-impact and meaningful outcomes for clients. Founded in 1946 and situated in Canberra, The Australian National University is a prestigious public research university and a member of the Group of Eight. ANU currently enrols 17,380 undergraduate and postgraduate students and employs 4,500 staff members. In web management, ANU stands as a vast, decentralised organisation comprised by seven colleges and research institutes. Despite the size, our small web team of 4 people is responsible for providing web services to 38 websites and serving the diverse needs of hundreds of staff and students from the Colleges of Science, Health, and Medicine. With a wealth of over 15 years of experience in the higher education sector, we have successfully developed a flexible Drupal multisite solution that comprehensively addresses the content management requirements of research schools, institutes, and centres. We have also incorporated good practices from the agile methodology to manage client relationships, backlog, team processes and leadership. This has allowed to ensure a sustainable future for the team and technology. This session will include: - Content architecture of education and research institutions. - Site standardisation and synchronisation of multisites. - User training and permission setting for optimal operation and disaster recovery. - Negotiation of requirements and management of client expectations. - Agile methodology for small team management. - Migration of Drupal 7 sites. |
Drupal Development |
| Striking a Balance: The 100% myth & A Pragmatic Approach to Code Coverage in Drupal Projects | In this session, we'll cover the value of code coverage in Drupal client projects, steering away from the often unrealistic goal of achieving 100% coverage. We'll explore a strategic approach to testing and how targeted coverage can improve project quality and catch bugs early. We'll gain insights into prioritizing testing efforts, managing client expectations, and ensuring that your projects are robust and maintainable, all without the undue stress of targeting an unattainable code coverage ideal. It's a pragmatic appraoch to code coverage that focuses on real-world impact and project success. | Drupal Development |
| Make upgrading easier for your module users | The Drupal major version release cycle is every 2 years. There is a lot of frustration out there for users who find the process cumbersome and confusing. As module maintainers, how do we make it easier for our users to upgrade? In this session we discuss the various ways you can make life easier for users of your module upgrade through major version updates. I will discuss: * How to manage deprecations * Composer dependency management * Strategies for targeting Drupal core major version compatibility * Config upgrades * Automated tools to help the upgrade process This session is intended for Drupal module developers who want to support multiple versions of Drupal core, and make the upgrade process easier for their module users. |
Drupal Development |
| Turning Tragedy into Triumph: Lessons in Resilience | In 2004, Dallas was declared clinically dead after a traumatic train accident in Thailand. Through a lengthy recovery process, he exemplified the incredible strength of the human spirit. Since rebuilding his life, Dallas has navigated many changes - relearning how to walk, launching global ventures powered by Drupal, living in diverse cultures, and managing teams worldwide. In this uplifting session, Dallas shares the mindsets and connections that enabled him to overcome difficulties and use challenges as catalysts for growth. Attendees will come away with insights they can apply to nurture team connections, invigorate organisations, and unite communities as we move into the Drupal 10 and 11 era. Through personal stories and actionable tips, this talk explores how to tap into the human spirit's incredible capacity for growth and resilience. |
People & Culture |
| Build Forms in Drupal using Webform | Webform is a native form builder for Drupal. It offers a powerful user interface for building forms and managing their fields. Webform can create a contact us form, all the way to a complex multi-page form with conditional field logic. In this session, you'll learn the following: - Introduction to Webform - Contact a form - Manage fields on the form - Add conditional logic to fields - Add confirmation step - Manage submissions - Embed forms into pages By the end, you'll have the necessary skills to build custom forms directly within Drupal. |
Drupal Development |
| Getting Started with Views in Drupal | The Views module in Drupal is truly powerful. Since being moved into core in Drupal 8, it’s the best way to build pages, tables, admin pages, lists and search pages. In this session, you’ll learn about the Views module. Then we'll give a live demo and show you how to use it. You’ll learn the following: - How to create pages and blocks using views - How to create tables - Add exposed filters to views - Create custom search pages and more By the end of the session, you’ll not only understand how powerful Views is and how to use it, but also learn some tips and tricks to get the most out of it. |
Drupal Development |
| How to stay sane while building a large-scale university website. An overview of the bond.edu.au project. | From kick-off in late 2021 to launch in November 2022, Bond University and PreviousNext teamed up to rebuild bond.edu.au. It was an adventure filled with victories, challenges and sprint planning sessions. Join Nathan Greenway, Head of Enterprise Application Services at Bond University and Griffyn Heels, Agile Delivery Manager at PreviousNext, as they discuss the ‘year that was’ from their own perspectives - technical and non-technical. In sharing this experience, you’ll learn how you, too, can bridge any technical divide to build a strong and collaborative working relationship for your next large-scale Drupal project. |
People & Culture |
| The Importance and Path to Growing the Drupal Community through Marketeers | Drawing on my experience as a Solutions Engineer at Acquia and competing for sales against some of the most well-known and flashiest CMS vendors on the market, I want to discuss the importance of growing the community of Drupalists to include passionate marketeers and the steps that need to be taken in order to do so. I can offer perspectives on why organisations choose other CMS platforms even when Drupal is backed by organisations that offer the additional security and 'peace of mind' that comes from doing business with an established vendor. The presentation will also address how current feature sets, marketing efforts and tools can improve to attract the types of marketing 'influencers' or champions within organisations that can help to ensure Drupal is their CMS of choice, not just now but at subsequent/future organisations they work with as well. | People & Culture |
| Delving into Website Performance: A Journey from Browser to Web Server | In the realm of modern website development, website performance stands as a crucial metric. This session delves into the intricacies of website performance, exploring the factors that influence it and the scenarios in which it plays a pivotal role. The session embarks on a journey, tracing the path of website requests from the browser's initiation to the web server's response and back. Along this journey, we'll unravel the architectural underpinnings of website performance and uncover best practices to optimize performance. By the end of this session, you'll gain a deeper understanding of why website performance matters and how to elevate it to new heights. In the session, the audience will find the answers to the below commonly asked questions: - What are the entities that may be involved in the journey - How are the requests and responses cached in different entities - Where is my cached data from? Browser, CDN, Redis, Varnish, Drupal cache, Drupal db? Wait, what are these things? - The conceptions that are used to invalidate the cache in different entities - How can I debug? - Why it is NOT OK to clear the cache and why my content is still not showing after clearing the cache? - Is decoupled Drupal better in performance? - In the end, what is the best practice in website performance with Drupal? |
Drupal Development |
| Why I dropped graphQL from my project and other tales - a.k.a. how to pick the right API type for your needs | REST; JSON:API; graphQL; AJAX; SOAP; webhooks... it can be a confusing world out there. APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) are everywhere and you can be left with information overload. If you're making a decoupled Drupal project you need to choose an API to allow communication between the frontend and backend, but how? Simply using the most familiar style might work, or it might land you in hot water a lot later on. Having been on this journey several times, Max will share his appraisal of three major API systems available with Drupal: REST, JSON:API and graphQL in the hopes of helping you understand where each one is a good fit. There will also be a cautionary tale about seeing everything as nails when you're holding an API hammer. |
Drupal Development |
| Yeet your old builder and Vite your theme | Ever picked up an old project to make a one-line CSS change, tried `npm install` and found it just won't work? - node-sass is deprecated - gulp hasn't had a release in years, neither has grunt - webpack is incredibly complicated You just want something simple to compile your CSS and JS, make it small, give you a sourcemap and update your browser whenever you make a change, is that too much to ask?! Enter Vite and the Vite contrib module for Drupal. Well supported due its popularity with many JS frameworks, Vite is an opinionated, lightning-fast bundler and you CAN use it to compile your Drupal frontend libraries. There are a few tricks to it because it's not a standard usage of Vite, but it's not difficult to understand. Let's upgrade one of your themes together and release you from npm purgatory. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Hot Module Reloading with Vite for embedded components in Drupal with or without containers | You've had an exciting idea to build an complex interactive page component like a map or a game, either with pure JS or a framework. You've created a library, you've got a builder running, you've figured out how to embed your component in a twig template and now you're in business! Then you discover you need to refresh the page every time you make a change to your code. Or... you've built your component as a standalone piece with all the JS tools at your fingertips and when you're ready you embed it in your site only to find out it breaks in that context! Frustrating scenarios if you've ever been in them. Sure, you can muddle through and make it work, especially with that deadline breathing down your neck, but how much nicer would it be if you could have the best of both worlds? It only takes a few tweaks to a vite.config.js file and the Vite contrib module to unlock the dream development scenario but it took Max a HEAP of tries to find the magic combination. Now he'd like to share it with you. Learn how to - Set up your library with Vite - Embed your component using a Controller, Block or Paragraph - Connect to your JS development server for HMR whether you're running it straight on localhost or inside a container (using DDEV for the example) - Ensure that your production builds work correctly |
Drupal Development |
| Look Ma no Javascript! Server side rendering React from Drupal | The NSW Customer service website has a number of rich applications that are powered by React. Most of these are partially decoupled, with the application nested inside the Drupal page layout. By default Drupal renders an empty container and JavaScript boots a React application into this container. When search engines crawl this page, the page is largely empty. Or in the case of crawlers that support JavaScript, crawling these pages uses up a large amount of the crawl budget. Pure React apps have Server Side Rendering (SSR) to solve this problem. The server generates the initial HTML and sends that to the browser, then the client side JavaScripts rehydrates the application to add rich interactivity. Because React SSR requires JavaScript, this functionality isn't available to Drupal. Or is it? In this session we will present a case study of how we were able to add React SSR from Drupal for the NSW Dept of Customer Service website. We will do a deep dive into the technical aspects and share issues and lessons learnt along the way. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Components of a component | It’s just a list of links right… <ul><li><a …/></li></ul>... how hard can it be. In this session we’ll talk about what goes into making a UI component available on nsw.gov.au, covering the business processes behind them and the technical implementation at a high level. We’ll go into UI design and decision making, Editor experience, how we test various stages of the process, how we implement the components and the separation of content modelling from display and why it matters. This talk is about ensuring the best outcome for the visitors to the website, improving the experience of our content editors, and doing it consistently. We'll specifically look at our 'link list' component which is one of 30+ components on the website. |
User Experience & Content |
| Accelerate project delivery from Local to Production with DrevOps | Starting a new Drupal project can be a daunting task. The abundance of options in the Drupal ecosystem often leaves developers searching for reliable tools and workflows. Copying and renaming existing projects might seem like a shortcut, but it comes with its own set of challenges. Maintaining synchronization, inheriting configuration bugs, and manually adding new tools can be time-consuming and error-prone. Enter DrevOps - your time-saving, reliable, and meticulously-tested project template. We have carefully curated a pre-configured project template that eliminates guesswork. All the essential tools and workflows are in place, fine-tuned, and rigorously tested. But DrevOps is more than just a project template; it's a proactive approach. It provides a safe environment for testing workflows and tools independently, away from production projects. With DrevOps, consistency is paramount. You'll experience a seamless developer journey across multiple projects, ensuring familiarity with structure and documentation. In my presentation, we'll explore how DrevOps accelerates your project delivery, from local development to production, without compromising on quality. We're not reinventing the wheel; instead, we're gathering the best practices and tools from the Drupal community and making them work harmoniously. Join me to discover how DrevOps can revolutionize your Drupal project journey. Say goodbye to the guesswork and hello to efficiency, reliability, and project consistency. Let's accelerate your Drupal projects delivery with DrevOps! |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Relegate Repetitive Refactors to Rector | Many developers may have come across rector in their Drupal 10 upgrades, but how many people actually know how to use it? In this session we will explore how we can use rector to automatically refactor our code. We will look at some of the rules that come out of the box for generic PHP projects that can make bumping PHP versions a breeze. Next we will dive in to Drupal rector and learn about what Drupal-specific rules are available. Finally we will have a look at what it takes to write our own rector rules. By the end of the session you will be fully equipped to start refactoring your code with rector. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Azure DevOps for Drupal | Like many other local governments in Australia, the public website of City of Boroondara is a Drupal 10 based website hosted on Acquia. Microsoft based infrastructure and tools are not very uncommon for a government organisation and City of Boroondara also was looking for opportunities to leverage the current infrastructure and tools inherited from Microsoft and Atlassian to improve the development and deployment cycle of the website. In this presentation, we are planning to introduce DevOps practices, processes and benefits of it to the beginner level participants and present how to integrate Azure DevOps processes and practices with Drupal developments and deployments while connecting the dots among different tools and platforms such as Azure, Acquia and Jira. We are planning to demo how the Azure DevOps web hooks, Jira automations and Acquia hooks can help to make the end to end integration and DevOps process smoother. Also, we'll be discussing any areas to be improved and any other alternative methods to be used in a similar integration and implementation. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Is generative AI the one UI to rule them all? | Content silos in organisations occur for many reasons from governance and technology to acquisition. Though rarely are they an outcome of a tailored customer experience. Federated search has been the gold standard for the past decade in helping bridge across these silos but with retrieval augmented generation (RAG) emerging, generative AI and headless technology maybe the shiny new veneer of customer experience UIs. At Acquia we've been exploring generative AI technology and how it could revolutionise how our customer experience works. In this presentation I'll show how these new AI components fit into an ecosystem of content silos with a headless veneer. |
Drupal Development |
| Key artefacts for a new web design & development project | In an ideal world we would start a new project with all of the documentation we need to complete the job. The reality is that we often find that we are filling in the gaps, or making assumptions as we build; and this often leads to unhappy outcomes with developers feeling under appreciated and clients not satisfied with the results. In this session I will give a rundown of the key artefacts required for a web development project, I will cover how they relate to each other, and tools you can use to help complete missing documentation. |
User Experience & Content |
| Making Sure GovCMS Works Great: Easy Ways to Test | Come join us at DrupalSouth Sydney 2024 to learn about testing on the GovCMS platform. We'll show you simple and smart ways to make sure government websites are strong, safe, and easy to use. This session will cover practical testing methods and tools, helping government agencies deliver top-notch digital services. Key Points: 1. Easy Testing Strategies: Find out how to test GovCMS websites in a simple way. We'll talk about different tests to make sure everything works well and how to do it without too much hassle. 2. Keeping Things Safe: Learn why security is super important for government websites. We'll share easy ways to check for problems and keep everything safe and following the rules. 3. Making Websites Faster: Discover tricks to make GovCMS websites faster and smoother. We'll help you understand and fix any issues so citizens can easily use the websites. 4. Testing Made Easier with Automation: See how to make testing quicker by using special tools. 5. Working Together: Learn why it's important for everyone in the team to work together. We'll share tips on how developers, testers, and others can talk and work together to make testing and building websites better. Join us at DrupalSouth Sydney 2024 to explore these simple testing ideas and help make GovCMS websites awesome. Whether you're a developer or just interested in making websites better, this session is for you! |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| (Support) people are people too. Learn how to increase the odds of getting your required outcome | Having been involved in support for years, from Level 1 through to being a Support manager through to the guy getting that call at 3:15am on a Sunday morning because everything has turned to poop. I often see the same mistakes happening again and again. All this does is: - waste everyone's time with unnecessary back-and-forward - increase frustration and stress - devalue the larger experience In this session I will be covering the main points that increase the odds of a happy outcome with a minimum of fuss. |
People & Culture |
| Patterns for Local Development Environment Nirvana | Local environments are a pivotal piece of infrastructure that allow us, as developers, to build and debug efficiently with confidence. PreviousNext have been on a journey toward local development nirvana for a decade and built up a list of patterns along the way. This talk will provide attendees with a set of actionable patterns to improve their local development environment workflow. Presentation Outline: - Introduction Who am I? I edit my code on production. Why do I need a local development environment? - The local development landscape - Patterns Keep it Simple Time to 200 Metric Image Composition Networking Setting.php Database Images CI/CD Integration - Questions |
Drupal Development |
| Drupal and the Open Web in the Australian Government - 2024 edition | Following on from the session back in Drupalsouth Brisbane 2022 (blog post at https://www.pixelite.co.nz/article/drupal-and-the-open-web-in-the-australian-government-2022/ ) , this session will review the CMS landscape in the Australian government in 2024. The presentation will focus on the movers and shakers in the CMS landscape, find out which high profile government departments are moving to Drupal, or away from it. As in 2022, a state by state breakdown will be done, and we can even compare the total amount of Drupal running in each state, through a lens of PageRank. We will be able to see which states (and at the federal level) are making a broader adoption of Drupal. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Drupal Caching Gamification | In order to more easily explain caching and gather the information you need to know in one place, I wrote a tool which analyses any URL and is able to score the site in terms of how well it is configured for caching. The intent is to promote better caching practices, and help educate people on the HTTP headers that matter. This session will include: * HTTP headers that influence caching * What are CDNs, and how do you best use them * How to test your caching is working * How the tool can help explain the current caching setup, and how to optimise it * Integration with Drupal, and how Drupal best practices can be instilled * The gamification layer will allow you to test your site against other sites, to see how well you stack up. * Highlight some of the best configured sites, and some that need some love |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Bringing NZ history into the future | Catalyst is engaged by NZ Ministry for Culture & Heritage to help update nzhistory.govt.nz and teara.govt.nz from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. The sites incorporate an encyclopedia of NZ, Dictionary of NZ Biography, datasets of Treaty signatories and Suffragist signatures, soldiers, memorials, and more. This presentation describes the extensive migration effort, covering aspects such as: * refactoring the data model to be more semantic and aligned with external standards * migration logic to map to new data models, synthesize media references, etc. * incorporation of numerous unmanaged files to be Drupal media * introduction of custom media types for remote audio, panoramas, and other interactives * adoption of IIIF for tiled image zooming * parsing of HTML to build media instances and replace inline iframes * reducing the extent of custom code. |
Drupal Development |
| Building Drupal with Twig | I am sure we all heard about Twig and some of us could be very familiar with it. For a while, I have been using it as another language to handle HTML and PHP. However, the more I delve into it, the more I discover its power and capabilities. Twig as a modern template engine, enhancing the quality of frontend development. It helps to define templates cleanly and have them in structure. In my session, I would like to share some useful tools for building sites with Twig. How templates can be structured to maintain consistency across content types while allowing room for customisation on individual needs. |
Drupal Development |
| Needs review to Fixed | Discover how to get a Drupal core issue from RTBC to Fixed with minimal fuss. Avoid those tedious push backs! This will expose all the tasks that should be completed so that a Drupal core issue can be set to RTBC. We will start with the issue title and continue through the issue summary, core gates, special tags, change records and release note snippet! And shares ideas on how to find an appropriate reviewer. The presentation is intended to be brief so we can practice on an open Drupal core issue. |
Drupal Development |
| Drupal Site Aliases are there to make your life easy, until they don’t | Drupal site aliases are near magical in the way they enable transparent site administration, file and database synchronization, etc. Most site alias configurations are relatively straightforward, but in today’s world of multi-region, multi-cluster, multi-platform deployments, we quickly run up against edge cases. As we’ve grown amazee.io and Lagoon, our usage of aliases has become increasingly more complicated and our knowledge and understanding of their inner workings more specialised. In this presentation, hear us talk about our voyage of discovery, and learn how we’re implementing (and accommodating) various Drush-isms though a walk-through of several examples of increasing complexity. |
Drupal Development |
| A Q&A with Drupal Association leadership | This year at DrupalSouth Sydney, we're joined by several members of the Drupal Association leadership team, who have kindly agreed to take some time to answer our questions big and small. So join us for an exclusive panel session where you can ask your own questions directly. We'll be exploring Drupal's direction in the coming years, how they're executing that vision, and what we can do to help. The panelists include: - Dries Buytaert - Drupal Founder, Association Founding Director, and Project Lead - Owen Lansbury - Drupal Association Chair - Tim Doyle - Drupal Association CEO |
People & Culture |
| Simple refactors for smoother PHP code reviews | I haven't written this yet but will be a short talk (Lightning talk?) giving practical examples on writing better PHP code to make PRs easier to review. Will focus on my own experience and things I've learnt over the past 2-3 years in code reviews. Will consist of 4 or 5 simple refactor examples e.g: - Using programming patterns i.e. return early, using match instead of switch etc. - Better use of array functions - Removing unnecessary variable use - Reducing duplication. - Using test assertions optimally. Will finish with an example checklist. |
Drupal Development |
| Drupal vs Headless - a user view of contemporary web platform technology | Why Drupal? or Why not? Platform choice is not a simple equation. Looking at a range of factors and understanding where the future or web platforms might be heading. Ian will compare and constrast the open source world and commercial products based upon recent experience across the leading products in contemporary web technologies. Ian will also look at the shift to AI driven tools and how these can be integrated into your web experience. Using real world case studies from large organisations around the country Ian will unpick the commercial, technical and functional decisions that drive users to pick a platform. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Drupal Defence in Depth | In today's digital landscape with continually evolving cyber threats, ensuring your Drupal website's security is crucial. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (NIST CSF) is recognised globally as one of the leading standards for organisational cybersecurity management. The NIST CSF covers the following five domains: Identify Protect Detect Respond and Recover This presentation will include an overview of the NIST domains. Then we’ll look at what Drupal developers and DevOps specialists need to do to comply with NIST CSF, with a focus on Drupal and hosting. We’ll also briefly cover seven key layers for Drupal security: Layer 1 — infrastructure Layer 2 — container hosting Layer 3 — Drupal application Layer 4 — edge protection Layer 5 — content delivery Layer 6 — people Layer 7 — process Attendees will leave with a better understanding of security practices and how they can make their Drupal websites and platforms more secure and resilient. |
Drupal Development |
| You need this when?! Using design systems to achieve success | As site owners and builders, we have all experienced projects with a tight deadline and challenges to deliver the project on time. In this presentation, we will review a number of strategies and techniques to rapidly deliver on time sensitive projects. The challenge was to design and implement a new design and IA within three weeks before a national campaign launch. The campaign was still being created and the content embargoed, so how did we achieve this uplift in such a short timeframe? Using the existing Australian Government design system and branding assets, we extended the design system with the use of colour palettes, components and modifiers to create a new look for the National Office of Child Safety site. After conducting user testing, we made improvements to enrich the user experience to easily locate important information and resources. This presentation is suitable for digital designers, site builders and communications teams. |
User Experience & Content |
| First Time Contributors Workshop | This is a session that is run in every DrupalCon, to prepare first-time contributors for the Code sprint. Dynamics of Mentored Contribution: - Find a table / join a team - Find something to work on (an issue, etc) - If an issue, update issue - Decide what everyone will do - Keep issue updated - After event is over, keep contributing! Agenda: - Why contribute - Benefits of contributing - Types of Contributions - Initiatives - Issue queue 101 / etiquette - Merge Requests - Tooling and documentation |
Drupal Development |
| Bendigo Law Courts: creating a user-centred, integrated cross platform digital experience | The new Bendigo Law Courts (https://bendigo.courts.vic.gov.au/blc) was designed to better serve the community’s needs for safe, modern, and accessible justice facilities. The project contemplated all aspects of building design and service delivery to improve the user experience and reduce the stress often associated with attending court. To complement the new building, Court Services Victoria wanted a website and content management solution to support its suite of digital wayfinding products, including self-service kiosks. During this presentation we’ll focus on the problem space and the need to deliver a digital solution that complemented the building’s architecture. We’ll give attendees our top tips for success when building an integrated digital experience. We’ll also look at the use of QuantCDN and QuantWAF, summarising the benefits of a content delivery network and web application firewall. More about the website build Salsa Digital and Court Services Victoria worked closely together to build a new Drupal website that was integrated with the new court building’s kiosks via an API so content authors can log into the one Drupal backend to work on content for both the website and kiosks. The site was built using CivicTheme (https://www.civictheme.io/node/1), a design system and Drupal theme with a ready-to-use library of interactive components. In addition to CivicTheme out-of-the-box components, the project team built three new custom components. The end result is a new, visually appealing website that was built quickly and cost-effectively. The Bendigo Law Courts website (https://bendigo.courts.vic.gov.au/blc) complements the broader project and makes it easier for people to engage with the court. |
User Experience & Content |
| New Perspectives For Design Thinking—10 ways to fail as the person designing for other people | This talk is a conversation with myself reflecting on designing for other people as an architect, digital designer, web designer, digital producer and content creator for over 30 years both in Europe and New Zealand. Why is this relevant? I am not sure about the relevance, but I thought you might need a few laughs. Because this is what this industry needs—we need to look at ourselves and have a good long laugh. Ah and yes, I am also the product owner of the New Zealand-based Sector Drupal Distribution. | User Experience & Content |
| Reflections on why two developers can’t press the same button—10 reasons why you need a distribution and how long it will take your team to ‘get it’. | I love my team. Really. So if you read this guys don’t take it to heart. And please come to my talk because nobody else will. I am a digital producer based in Wellington New Zealand and I have been working with Drupal since 2006. I grew up surrounded by developers, and I even was one myself. Don’t hold either of these things against me. Over the last decade, I dragged a bunch of kicking and screaming developers along a winding road to do things that make sense. We got there eventually. Or we are close. | People & Culture |
| Top 10 success factors for running a helpdesk and getting great client feedback | What makes a successful Drupal/digital helpdesk? In this presentation, Shona and Kevin will draw on their experiences running the GovCMS Service Desk and deliver their top 10 tips for designing, building and scaling a services desk for a whole-of-government Drupal-based platform. Get an insight into the types of Drupal tickets we serve, and what happens behind the scenes across key areas such as people, technical skills, service delivery, processes and general customer service. |
People & Culture |
| Simplify Drupal Testing with Cypress and Cucumber Automation | In the world of Drupal, testing complexities often hinder development efficiency. This session aims to demystify and streamline Drupal testing using Cypress and Cucumber automation. Cypress, renowned for front-end testing, joins forces with Cucumber, allowing tests to be written in plain language. This synergy empowers teams to express test scenarios in human-readable Gherkin syntax, fostering collaboration among technical and non-technical stakeholders. Attendees will discover the seamless integration of Cypress and Cucumber into Drupal projects, leveraging the power of Gherkin's simplicity to articulate comprehensive test scenarios. Step definitions bridge the gap between Gherkin's plain language and executable code, enabling actions described in feature files to be automated effectively. The session will showcase practical examples, illustrating how Cypress commands interact with Drupal sites within step definitions. Attendees will learn strategies for executing tests, analyzing results, and maintaining synchronisation between evolving Drupal applications and the test suite. Emphasis will be placed on best practices, including the use of page objects, fixtures for efficient data handling, and tags for organised test execution. Participants will leave empowered to adopt a more efficient and effective testing approach in their Drupal projects. Join this session to unlock the potential of Cypress and Cucumber, simplifying Drupal testing and fostering a more collaborative, efficient, and robust development cycle. This summary provides a snapshot of what attendees can expect from the session, highlighting the integration of Cypress and Cucumber, the benefits of Gherkin syntax, and the emphasis on practical implementation and best practices in Drupal testing. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Simplifying Structures: Exploring the Benefits of Drupal's Single Directory Component Approach | In this session, we unravel the power and advantages of embracing Drupal's Single Directory Component Approach. The focus is on simplifying the complex web of structures in Drupal , and we'll explore how consolidating components into a single directory can be a game-changer for your projects. Key Points: 1. Organizational Elegance: - Discover how a unified directory structure brings order to the chaos, making it easier to locate and manage components. - Illustrate the elegance of simplicity in code organization and its positive impact on project clarity. 2. Enhanced Maintainability: - Explore how a streamlined structure facilitates efficient code maintenance, reducing the risk of errors and making updates more straightforward. - Showcase real-world examples of projects that have benefited from improved maintainability. 3. Collaborative Development: - Discuss the collaborative advantages of a single directory approach, fostering better teamwork among developers. - Share insights on how a clear structure can enhance communication and streamline collaborative efforts. 4. Efficiency Gains: - Highlight the efficiency gains achieved by adopting this approach, leading to faster development cycles and quicker project delivery. - Provide practical tips on optimizing workflows for maximum efficiency. 5. Scalability Considerations: - Delve into how a simplified structure sets the foundation for scalable Drupal projects. - Discuss strategies for scaling projects seamlessly while maintaining code integrity. Takeaways: - Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of the benefits of Drupal's Single Directory Component Approach. - Armed with practical insights, developers can immediately apply these concepts to enhance their Drupal projects. Whether you're a seasoned Drupal developer or new to the framework, this session promises to shed light on a structural approach that can revolutionize the way you build and maintain Drupal applications. |
Drupal Development |
| Upgrading 295 GovCMS Drupal sites to D10 in 6 months | GovCMS is a hosting platform available for government agencies and entities across different levels of government. GovCMS offers two hosting options, a Software as a Service (SaaS) and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering. Together, GovCMS currently runs more than 350+ live websites. This presentation focuses on the Drupal 9 to Drupal 10 upgrade for the GovCMS SaaS websites –the Managed Service offering. We will take you behind the scenes, looking at what it took to manage all the sites on the GovCMS platform to Drupal 10: - Initial planning and intent and challenges from a timeframe and technical perspective - Assessing the sites impacted by the deprecations in the theme layer - Identifying the highest value fixes - Focusing on the 3,500+ deprecations across the 300+ sites through several rounds of fixes - Final platform-wide round of fixes - Delivering the project on time and ahead of schedule |
Drupal Development |
| Navigating the Future: Drupal's Auto Updates and Project Browser Initiative Explored | In this session, we'll delve into two groundbreaking developments reshaping the landscape of Drupal: the Auto Updates feature and the Project Browser Initiative. Auto Updates: Drupal's Auto Updates represent a significant leap forward in website maintenance. This feature automates critical updates, bolstering security and keeping sites up-to-date without manual intervention. We'll explore the technical intricacies behind this innovation, understanding how it streamlines the update process while maintaining site stability. Project Browser Initiative: The Project Browser Initiative aims to simplify the integration of third-party modules, themes, and plugins. This initiative creates a user-friendly interface where users can easily discover, evaluate, and implement extensions that suit their project needs. We'll examine how this initiative empowers developers and site builders, enhancing the customization and scalability of Drupal-powered sites. Throughout the session, attendees will: Gain insights into the technical aspects of Auto Updates and the Project Browser Initiative. Understand the significance of these innovations in reducing maintenance efforts and enhancing security within Drupal. Explore the potential impact on workflows, security practices, and overall user experience. Discuss the future trajectory of Drupal, considering how these initiatives will continue to shape the platform and its ecosystem. Join us to uncover how these advancements are paving the way for a more secure, efficient, and user-friendly Drupal experience, empowering developers and administrators to navigate the future of website management and customisation. |
User Experience & Content |
| Site360: Under the hood of a website health metrics tool | Site360 uses a collection of the world’s best APIs for analysing security, performance, accessibility, SEO and patching metrics. The application brings all the metrics together, giving you a single report that’s simple, clear and easy to understand. As the primary architect and developer on Site360, Roman will take attendees through the problem space that informed the inception of the concept before doing a technical deep dive underneath the engine’s hood. He’ll cover: - The technical process of bringing together all the third-party metrics into one dashboard - Architecture and integration considerations - Security measures - Performance and scalability aspects - Challenges - past and present |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Integrating course information to a Drupal-based student portal for the University of Queensland | The University of Queensland has been building a new curriculum management system. The aim: to provide an updated system to manage the university's courses and programs of study. Our project was to integrate with this new system and display this course data within their Drupal web platform. One of the challenges was that we were building the integration while development of the curriculum management system was still happening. We also worked with UQ to help integrate the new Drupal entity with the many systems that it pulls data from. With a lot of the work having to be done internally by UQ, we needed to work very closely together to navigate the challenges and complexities of the integration task. We ended up developing the following technical system to carry out the above: - 5 content entities for displaying the course entities - Over 130 fields for providing display data and business logic for course profiles - 11 new components leveraging UQ's component style guide and design system - 7 migrations running hourly importing course profiles, parent courses and a variety of data from a the university's datahub - Data normalizers for transforming curriculum system JSON documents into Drupal entities - API for previewing and validating proposed course profiles from the course curriculum system - Using unit, kernel and functional tests to make changes as their integration system was developed and updated Our presentation will dive into the above technical elements and how we managed discovery and implementation on a moving target! |
Drupal Development |
| From Bricks to Click: Fast Site Assembly with Drupal 10 Theme | Tailored for developers and site builders, we will explore the transformative capabilities of Drupal 10's CivicTheme. We'll discuss how CivicTheme overcomes traditional web development challenges with its pre-built components, enhancing efficiency and consistency. The focus will be on the technical workings of these components, their integration with Drupal modules, and adherence to coding best practices. This session aims to demonstrate how CivicTheme streamlines site building, aligns with web standards, and prepares you for the future of efficient and scalable web development with Drupal 10. |
Drupal Development |
| To be or not to be a Technical Lead | As a developer, it's easier to stay in your lane and keep working on the code, and with the natural progression, you go from a junior developer to a senior developer. But what's next after this journey? This talk takes a deep dive into the next steps of a developer's career. A role that doesn't involve being a full-time coder. A role in which you have to talk to some non-technical people. A role where you have to think about the bigger picture. A role where you get to help new developers. A role where you get to form the direction of a new software. How do you stay relevant with current technology? How do you not keep reinventing the wheel and how do you reinvent the wheel? |
People & Culture |
| Conflict is Information: Listen more, learn more, do better | We are in the problem solving business. Often there are differences between people in how to best solve each problem, and competing interests around the amount of time and money required to do this. Disagreements may persist around the relative importance of various factors, the priority of outcomes, and who gets what. It is fairly common that different people want different things. This can lead to conflict. This may be within teams, between client and vendor, across open source communities or online. It may be a small matter or of great material consequence. It is sometimes upsetting, and different people have widely varying responses to conflict situations. I am not a conflict resolution specialist, a trained mental health professional or interpersonal mediator. This talk does not address violence, bullying or mental duress - none of which should be present in the workplace. This talk will share my professional approach to unpacking conflict, developing a better understanding of people who want different things to you, and offer tools for the equitable and rational advocacy of what you want. The purpose of this is not to “win” in conflict with others, but to maintain professional equilibrium and integrity, clear space to focus on better solutions, and deliver better outcomes for all involved. The talk welcomes questions from the audience. It will present an easy-to-understand framework with simplicity and clarity, using practical examples where relevant, delivered with humour and empathy. It has a positive message that focuses on what the individual can control in order to do better and feel better when encountering conflict in the workplace. This talk is grounded in experiences delivering Drupal in a commercial context for the public and private sector. |
People & Culture |
| Let's get cooking: Recipes for Drupal | Composability is a long-term trend that Drupal has had at its core for a long time. The Recipes initiative, one of Drupal's core strategic initiatives, is a vision for creating bundles of functionality to build with. We'll look at some practical examples for Recipes, compare with how you might be tackling these challenges today, consider common challenges of re-use between projects and where Recipes fits best in the developer's toolkit, and see what Recipes has in store for building Drupal sites in the future. |
Drupal Development |
| Gitlab CI for core, contrib and clients too! | Gitlab CI is a powerful and flexible development tool, now adopted for core and contrib CI. It's also useful for customer projects, and as a general purpose tool. Let's get to know it better! This talk will introduce fundamental concepts of Gitlab CI, outline methods for reviewing, building and deploying code, and look at how the Drupal community is using it. I'll share ways to think about your use of CI which helps it make sense, and some tricks for using Gitlab CI in ways you might not have considered. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Committing: Intentional open source | Catalyst IT's commitment to open source tracks 25 years of its values and history, and is spread across a diverse range of projects. We've been taking stock of what contribution means, our engagement and our relationship to open source, with a view to strengthen contribution to projects, the community, and ourselves. This talk introduces what we're learning and some plans for the path ahead. Where do we find friction or resistance in making contribution happen as part of our development process? What opportunities are there to create conditions for success? What are the missing pieces that help make things happen? |
People & Culture |
| Beyond the code: building mutually beneficial client relationships | Our session focuses on the crucial role of client relationships in technology projects. We open with the fundamental question: "Why are we here?" and assert that our role extends beyond technical support to being strategic partners in our clients' success. We then explore strategies for building and enriching client relationships. We discuss how to tailor solutions to client needs, manage expectations, and translate technical capabilities into business value. The session highlights the importance of understanding the 'why' behind our services, showcasing case studies where a client-centric approach in projects led to notable successes. When we pivot our thinking from a service delivery perspective to a hospitality oriented approach we all benefit. In reality our client’s success is our success. We conclude with a roadmap for ongoing client engagement, advocating for proactive strategies and solutions that align with clients' business goals. This session is a guide to leveraging technology not merely as a tool, but as a foundation for driving enduring and successful relationships. If we’re not here to help our clients succeed then why are we here? |
People & Culture |
| 12 factor application, how close to that Drupal can be? | Review of the 12 factor themselves, current conformance in Drupal, problems and possible solutions. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. |
Drupal Development |
| Keeping an eye on project dependencies | In this session we will explore how to avoid supply chain attacks by using Dependency-Track to analyse Software Bill of Materials and have a full picture of your projects portfolio not only from the point of view of vulnerable Composer dependencies, but also JavaScript libraries, container images, operating systems and licences involved. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| CI is dead! Long live CI | GitLab CI is awesome, but these is still plenty of space for improvement. Let's see what we can do here. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Development best practices | Panel discussion with myself and other senior software engineers from the community that will allow audience to ask questions about any aspect of the software development lifecycle like setting up development environment, testing your changes and rollout into production. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. This is silly to require minimum of 500 characters so I will fill in required space with nonsense. |
Drupal Development |
| Secure, Performant, Scalable and Green: The big wins of a static Drupal website | Drupal is the swiss-army-knife of content management systems. It provides the flexibility to build pretty much any site you want. This is why so many of us choose Drupal for our backend technology. **Jamstack vs Static** You can find tons of resources on Drupal with React, Gatsby, Next, Vue and Nuxt, yet not so much static-focused non-Jamstack content beyond using the Drupal Tome module (which is a great tool!). Why are JavaScript frameworks such a hot Drupal topic yet simple static frontends not so much? I think static Drupal has a marketing problem! **Benefits of Static** Drupal provides the tools and workflows that content editors want. With Paragraphs and Layout Builder and Views, there is much to love. But for many sites, they would also reap the benefits of having a fully or mostly static frontend such as: * Enhanced security * Increased performance * Better scalability * Less CO2 emissions * Higher Lighthouse scores * Improved user engagement It’s often more cost-effective too! Although you can’t use static for everything, it’s not unusual to be able to leverage a static frontend for a good part of your website while routing dynamic pages back to the Drupal backend. This provides the best of both worlds: 1) Drupal with its flexibility and features, and 2) static with its speed, security, scalability, and better environmental footprint. Let’s discuss how to leverage a fully or partially static frontend for your Drupal website for all the wins! |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Website failover and disaster recovery strategies to help you sleep better | Failure happens. We’ve all experienced failure, and it's not fun. But, it does give us the opportunity to learn and, ideally, to plan better for the next time disaster strikes. The web technology stack is ripe for failure because there are often so many pieces at play. Web servers, database servers, content management systems, third-party plugins, caching layers, networks, DNS… not to mention all the people who can bring a website down with the touch of a finger. Those of us in charge of keeping websites running need to mitigate against potential disasters as best we can so we don’t get a panicked call in the middle of the night. So let’s talk about… * Scenarios that bring websites down * Disaster planning so you are as prepared as possible * Best practices to lower risks and increase resilience * Monitoring and testing your website for vulnerabilities * Failover and disaster recovery options and strategies With the right preparation, tools, and oversight, you can sleep better at night! |
Drupal Development |
| The good, the bad and the ugly: Project retrospectives | Each project brings its own challenges and learnings. Success comes from repeating the good, fixing the bad and avoiding the ugly. That's the theory anyway. This presentation takes a lighthearted look back over hundreds of Drupal projects and will analyse them through the lense of the burn up chart. The jagged line tells a story of wins and losses, successes and failures, profit and loss. Along the way a lot of lessons have been learnt and no doubt missed as well. The presenter will provide some insights into some of the lowlights and highlights of delivering Drupal projects. The session is suitable for business owners, project managers, developers and clients alike. There should be something relatable in it for everyone. |
People & Culture |
| Vite. Get fast. Build the theme you’ve been waiting for. | A YOLO presentation submitted at the nth hour. Create a live reloading, lando friendly, load on demand, less drupally, kickass vite based theme that works. Walk through setting up a Vite configuration that’s flexible enough to work within lando, with govcms, and with you. Drag yourself into the present. Kicking and screaming with pleasure as Vite compiles yours code in 0.2seconds. Yes. Live updates. Live reloads. Faster CI builds. A nicer hairstyle. The window office. Vite baby. Cmon step it up. Gotta go fast! |
Web Tools & Complementary Technologies |
| Panel: Why would anyone want to be a sub-system maintainer? | In this panel session, we will discuss the joys and challenges of being a subsystem maintainer. Everything from how we became a subsystem maintainer to what it is like to make mistakes in public. Most importantly we will answer your questions! Learning objectives - Know how to become a subsystem maintainer - Know the job description Prerequisites Being open to possibilities. Synopsis A discussion of everything about what subsystem maintainers do and how to become one. The talk will range from the skills and experience expected when starting, the support available and the professional development you gain. Drupal core developers are always on the lookout for new subsystem maintainers, this is a chance for you to find out if this is right for you! |
People & Culture |
| The Drupal Project Update | In this very special keynote kicking off DrupalSouth Sydney 2024, Dries will present an update on the project and the development of Drupal. In case you didn't know, here's a little more about Dries and Drupal from his website: "I'm the Founder of Drupal. Drupal is Open Source software for building websites and digital experiences. Currently, around 2% of all websites worldwide are built with Drupal. In the enterprise, that number is 1 out of 10 websites. Drupal is one of the largest and most active Open Source projects in the world. I've been working on Drupal for more than two decades, and continue to lead the project today as Drupal's Project Lead." |
Keynote |
| Beyond Buzzwords: Demystifying Diversity and Inclusion | Join the Girls in Tech Australia team as they share practical strategies and insights to foster what genuine inclusivity looks like at the workplace. Discover how we can move beyond surface-level discussions to create meaningful change and build truly inclusive workplaces where everyone has the opportunity to thrive and unpack the critical distinction between diversity and inclusion. Moderated by Renece Brewster, Co-MD of Girls in Tech Australia, join panellists Karen Katz, Jess Ransley and Michelle Lie for a very special DrupalSouth Keynote. https://australia.girlsintech.org/ |
Keynote |
| DrupalSouth Steering Committee - Panel & Open Discussion | The DrupalSouth steering committee oversees the conference organisation and assists with a range of Drupal community initiatives in Australia and New Zealand. This session will comprise an update from the panel members on recent activities, announce new panel members and discuss options for future events. Discussion will be opened to attendees to ask questions and contribute ideas. The DrupalSouth Committee members are: Dave Sparks, Mike Richardson, Julia Topliss, Margery Tongway, Chris Burgess. |
People & Culture |