Just as a primer to those that are new to web design Drupal is a popular framework platform that is used by many web developers and designers. Drupal is used behind the scenes to develop many large scale sites including Major League Soccer (MLS), Pinterest For Business and is the platform of choice at Princeton University.

“Drupal is content management software. It’s used to make many of the websites and applications you use every day. Drupal has great standard features, like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security. But what sets it apart is its flexibility; modularity is one of its core principles. Its tools help you build the versatile, structured content that dynamic web experiences need.” Drupal.org

We recently attended Drupal Camp NJ 2023. It seemed like there was a smaller attendance this year than years past but the sessions were still informative and interesting. We went to some great session and learned a lot about the platform and where it’s going in the future.

Meet Drupal 10 by Matthew Lechleider

Took us through the basics of installing and configuring Drupal. It was great to get to know Drupal I wish it focused more on the actual features, modules and changes that were coming in Drupal 10. They were featured in the last 10 minutes or so but were really not dived into in any depth.

Create A Scalable Multi-site Platform Roadmap by Mandee Englert

This session taught us about how it is to run a scaleable multisite platform. An example of this is a large company that has several departments that you want to have a overreaching theme but you want the marketers of each department to be able to individualize each departments materials and yet stay on brand. This was an informative session that helped us think bigger and how to scale projects on that level. The presenter talked about keeping standards but being able to have flexibility.

Using Google Data (now Looker) Studio for Dashboard Analytics Reporting by Jeffrey S. Danielewicz

Great session. We have been using looker studio (formerly google data studio) for years to do our reports. The great thing about looker studio is that it takes all the info from Google Analytics and puts it in a format that is easily accessible for clients. Ut was interesting to see how they were using the data and how they were setting up Looker Studio at Penn. The Live Demo went well and was good to see how everything worked in a real world setting.

Creating a Culture of Documentation by Alanna Burke

This was our favorite session. We have all had issues where we were trying to install something and we had a hard time or had to abandon the plugin/module/theme etc., because of poor documentation. Either steps were skipped or you had an issue when searched other users had but was never answered or fixed. We learned that bad documentation is worse than no documentation.

She gave great ideas on how to implement documentation. Requiring documentation before code is merged. Having tools within or working with the development editor. Using Git and making sure that everyone has access to it. Documentation for developers, and users is important, we could do better this session was a reminder about how important proper documentation is.

We always love Drupal Camp NJ it gives us great learning sessions to sharpen our skills but also gives us the opportunity