Proposed Sessions

Discover how DrupalForge.org is changing the way developers create, showcase, and share Drupal applications. This practical session introduces a new game-changing platform that eliminates the complexities of local development while opening new opportunities for Drupal developers and agencies. 

Through live demonstrations, you'll see how DrupalForge.org enables you to:

• Launch new Drupal sites instantly with zero local setup
• Access powerful cloud development environments that are ready to use in 3 seconds
• Share development environments with clients and team members for real-time collaboration
• Create and distribute your own Drupal templates and recipes
• Deploy production-ready sites to any VPS provider
• Monetize your expertise through support and hosting services

Whether you're a solo developer looking to streamline your workflow, an agency seeking efficient client collaboration tools, or a Drupal expert wanting to share your solutions with the community, this session will show you how DrupalForge.org can transform your Drupal development journey.

Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Target Audience: Developers, Agency Teams, Site Builders, Technical Decision Makers

Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with Drupal

Join us and say hello to the future of Drupal development.

Session Description

Backdrop CMS and Drupal tackle configuration management in surprisingly different ways, despite their shared roots. Backdrop uses JSON, while Drupal uses YAML. Backdrop offers file-based active configuration by default, with the flexibility to store it in the database since version 1.28. Drupal ties configuration to a UUID for site-specific workflows, but perhaps limits portability without extra effort.

As someone who works with both systems—and more than occasionally edits configuration files manually—I’ll share insights into their strengths, challenges, and quirks. We’ll explore the tools and workflows each platform provides, comparing how they handle configuration management and what these differences mean for real-world projects.

Key Takeaways

1. Key differences between Backdrop and Drupal configuration management.
2. Practical tips for working with configuration in both systems.
3. Lessons learned from frequent manual editing of configuration files.

Target Audience

This session is for developers and site builders who work with Drupal, Backdrop, or both.

Join us to hear the latest news on the Experience Builder initiative from the initiative leaders.

Experience Builder is set to revolutionize how websites are built with Drupal, making building Drupal sites faster and easier than ever before. Experience Builder will enable marketing teams without Drupal experience to easily theme and build their entire website using their browser, without the need to write code beyond basic HTML, CSS, and templating markup. It will also enable content creators to create and compose content on any part of the page without relying on developers.

In this session you'll:

• Understand the vision behind Experience Builder
• Gain practical knowledge on using Experience Builder and learn the key features and capabilities
• Identify use cases and benefits
• Explore upcoming opportunities for involvement

I recently found myself returning to traditional Drupal theming after multiple years working primarily in decoupled front ends. While I was admittedly nervous about losing access to some of my go-to tools, I was excited to put Single Directory Components (SDCs) through their paces to understand what impact they would have on my theming workflow.

Spoiler alert: SDCs are pretty great. In many ways they exceeded my expectations, providing a sturdy bridge to the techniques I learned in my time away from Twig. But at the same time, they still face some of the constraints I bumped up against in past Drupal themes.

In this session I will walk through the workflow I used to build a custom Drupal theme that relies heavily on Single Directory Components. Together we’ll look at the good and the bad, and also pick up some tips and tricks along the way, including:

• SDC friendly approaches to prototyping outside of Drupal.
• Mapping concepts from JavaScript components to Single Directory Components.
• Leveraging SDCs to simplify your build process.
• Mapping SDCs to Paragraphs and other Drupal entities.
• Indispensable SDC related tools from the contrib ecosystem.
• Where SDCs fall short and my dreams for the future of SDCs and Drupal theming.

Many great front end experiences have been built with Drupal and undoubtably many more will be created in the future. Yet it is impossible to deny the feeling that Drupal’s Twig theme engine hasn’t been able to keep up with expectations for modern front end developer experience.

Luckily, the Drupal community is hard at work trying to change this. In true Drupal style, there are simultaneous efforts tackling this from different (and even sometimes conflicting) angles.

• Home renovations - improving Twig-based theming and making components a core primitive in Drupal.
• If you (page) build it… - meeting the expectations of ambitious site builders with Experience Builder and other existing page building solutions.
• Embracing JavaScript through decoupling - making headless Drupal use cases easier and making the most of modern JavaScript frameworks.
• Forget everything you thought you knew about Drupal front end - experiments with alternative rendering engines, Node, and Web Assembly.

We’ll dig into what’s really going on during this exciting time in the Drupal community. With any luck, we’ll also reach a few conclusions about how Drupal’s front end can live beyond (or possibly in harmony with) the JavaScript framework flavor of the week.

On April 24, 2024, the Federal Register published the Department of Justice’s final rule updating its regulations for Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). The final rule has specific requirements about how to ensure that web content is accessible to people with disabilities and represents a significant change to the federal law. Any website that falls under the purview of Title II (e.g. sites related to state and local governments and services, municipalities, libraries, schools/colleges/universities, and other publicly-funded institutions) must meet or exceed Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) version 2.1, Level AA by 2026 or 2027 (depending on the size of the entity). 

Considering the volume and scope of content that will be subject to these updates, it will be a daunting task for developers managing these sites to evaluate, remediate, and ensure continued compliance with ADA Title II moving forward. Recognizing this reality, this session will provide an overview of key accessibility concepts and terminology relevant to ADA Title II, a breakdown of the (at times) confusing "exceptions" baked into the law, and provide attendees with practical guidance on how to approach this work using on-going accessibility-related initiatives with Florida State University Libraries' Drupal sites as an example. Attendees will receive an eye-level, non-legalese explanation of ADA Title II and gain insight into how they might approach similar issues with their own sites.

The contract is signed, the project team is defined, and goals are set. So you’re probably thinking, let’s kick the project off. Although it’s exciting to jump in and make progress on a new project, there’s a lot to think about before getting started.

Successful projects are a result of great partnerships, and it’s important to establish a strong project team and be on the same page from the start. In this session, we’ll cover the importance of:

• Business and client team building
• Encouraging Trust through transparency and delivery
• Empowering decision-makers with a discovery-first approach
• Performing phased projects to deliver success when dealing with high-risk and uncertainty\

Synopsis

In the tech agency space, agencies may perform poorly because they act as a "middle man" instead of a "facilitator". Whether you’re an agency or work with one, join us to learn the best practices for successful project management and a successful agency partnership.

Learning objectives

At the end of this session, attendees will be able to host valuable and transparent team-building activities with their partner businesses and produce successful projects

Are you a front of the front end developer who focuses on CSS, semantic HTML, and presentational Javascript, and do you wonder if your skillset matters in the world of modern web development? Do you think about the best way to mark up an SVG to be as accessible as possible, and write Twig templates with (relative) ease? You’re not alone and your front of the front end development knowledge is still important today.

This session discusses why your front of the front end development skills are still relevant in today’s web development ecosystem, how to convince your team that a front of the front end developer is a valuable asset, and how front of the front and back of the front end developers can work together to develop powerful front end solutions in Drupal and beyond.

Let’s show the web development community that front of the front end developers contribute so much to a team!

With the introduction of Single Directory Components and the ability to have CSS bound to a component, it is not as necessary to have your design system “built”. One can use native CSS (and JS) in each component and not need to compile into a single stylesheet. Additionally, the ecosystems of Webpack, Vite, and whatever 12 other systems have popped up since you started reading this paragraph, are constantly changing or deprecating. In this talk we will go over the killer features of SASS and how you can use native CSS to replace them. Also may go over moving off of an old design system into Single Directory Components. If time permits we can go over PostCSS and the how it assists.

We all have our favorite modules we use on the sites we build (I sure do).  Over the past 6 months I’ve built 20 new Drupal sites - some pretty straightforward, some downright tricky.  Whenever I’ve faced a challenge - there’s almost always been “a module for that”.

In this session we’re going to explore some of the “lesser” known modules that are incredibly helpful.  We’ll skip the ones that everyone uses - but feel free to bring your list of favorites too!  We’ll compile a master list and send it out to anyone who asks for it

For developers managing multiple Drupal projects across different hosting platforms, configuring separate GitHub Actions workflows for each host can be time-consuming and error-prone. This session presents a flexible, dynamic GitHub Actions setup that adapts automatically to various hosting environments, including Pantheon, Acquia, Platform.sh, and more.

We’ll explore how this solution auto-detects the hosting environment and dynamically configures key settings, such as Composer and Node.js build locations, etc.  The workflow manages host-specific tasks such as moving the document root for Acquia and PR-triggered MultiDev management for Pantheon.

You will leave with a ready-to-use GitHub Actions template, detailed instructions on how to customize it for your projects, and an understanding of how to use overrides to fit specific host and site needs. We’ll also explore handling Drupal settings per environment, avoiding unnecessary local rebuilds, and how this workflow simplifies deployments, saving teams time and effort.

Users and Admins and Developers, OH MY!  Have Drupal's increasing number of third party dependencies become too complicated for new users?  Are those dependencies breaking Drupal's more advanced features?

In this discussion, Drupal is going to be held up to a microscope, dissected, and analyzed from a historical user perspective.  Who builds, administers, and ultimately uses Drupal sites, and how has that changed over time?  Are all of these changes and added dependencies on outside technology actually for the better, or has Drupal jumped the proverbial shark and alienated its audience?  Are we now gatekeeping Drupal from new users?

Drupal is far more powerful than other CMS solutions.  That is its greatest strength.  But it is also its greatest weakness.  We will talk about the Drupal learning curves and how they're being steepened by the addition of technologies like Drush, Composer, etc. how it has been exacerbated even further by competitor website solutions such as WIX and Squarespace, that flatten their user experience learning curve.  Can we maintain the power of Drupal with a simpler, flatter learning curve?  Are those additional dependencies giving us enough benefit to justify the additional complications they bring?

Furthermore, we will discuss how some of these dependencies break some of Drupal's more advanced, but lesser known core functionalities.

Have we strayed from the yellow brick road by making the Drupal too complicated for anyone but hardcore developers to build and administer?

Managing dates and times is often complex: recurring events, timezones, daylight savings times, regional formatting conventions, and more. Add in additional presentation requirements like add-to-calendar links, registration links, and related content (like agendas, that change for each date instance) and the complexity can seem bewildering.

Fortunately Drupal offers a rich toolset for solving these challenges. In this session we'll explore the solutions, not only showing how they work, but also detailing the modules and the configuration needed.

During the session we'll take a fresh install of Drupal 11 and configure it to meet some advanced use cases, in real time. Along the way we'll use some readily available recipes and contrib modules that you can leverage in your own Drupal site.

Are your Drupal updates a source of stress? Drawing from nearly a decade of experience as a Technical Account Manager, this session transforms the often-dreaded update process into a reliable, repeatable workflow that any team can implement. Through a combination of best practices, live demonstrations, and practical tools, attendees will learn how to confidently manage their Drupal updates, including how to prepare their custom code for version changes and avoid common API pitfalls.

Learning Objectives

This session will introduce attendees to:

• A structured approach for planning and executing Drupal updates
• Best practices for maintaining composer.json files
• Effective use of configuration management during updates
• Methods for tracking custom code dependencies and API usage
• Strategies for monitoring API changes that affect custom modules
• Practical use of the Upgrade Status module
• Real-world testing and deployment workflows

In an era where digital landscapes are ever-changing, SEO has transformed from a mere keyword-centric practice into a sophisticated, holistic strategy. This talk will explore how the digital marketing realm demands adaptable and forward-thinking approaches to remain relevant and effective.

In the talk, we'd look at the LLMO Framework:

Language: Discover the critical shift from focusing solely on keywords to understanding user intent and context. This change underscores the importance of creating content that is not only relevant but also highly useful to the audience.

Learning: Uncover the power of machine learning in dissecting user data, which provides deeper customer insights and enables personalized user experiences.

Modeling: Learn how predictive models can foresee user needs, allowing marketers to enhance their content targeting strategies effectively.

Optimization: Embrace continuous improvement through strategies like A/B testing and analytics, ensuring your digital marketing efforts are always at their peak performance.

Beyond SEO
As we conclude, it's crucial to recognize that SEO is no longer just about climbing search engine rankings. It's about crafting comprehensive, user-centric experiences. Businesses must adopt future-proofing strategies to stay competitive amidst these emerging trends. Join us as we navigate this exciting journey into the future of digital marketing.

Utilizing Schema.org: Attendees would understand the role of Schema.org in optimizing for AI lead search, including a demonstration of implementing Speakable schema and other vital schemas for Voice Search Optimization (VSO).

Case Studies: Analyze real-world examples of websites that excel in AI search rankings, providing practical insights into successful strategies.

Learn the LLMO framework and apply it on the projects they'll develop.

Backdrop CMS has been around for ~10 years now and has understandably made an concerted effort to emphasize certain aspects of the project that can appeal greatly to Drupal 7 site owners: backwards compatibility with existing code, an upgrade path, the affordability of the Backdrop upgrade process compared to a migration to modern Drupal, Wordpress, or something else. Those backward-looking considerations are very important for site-owners that are coming from Drupal 7. But what about looking ahead? Are there reasons why you may do well to consider Backdrop for particular projects whether or not it's coming from Drupal 7?

TL;DR yes, there are.

In this session, we'll review how for certain types of projects, Backdrop makes an enormous amount of sense. We'll use some real world examples, and draw feature parallels and contrasts with modern Drupal. Some of the topics we'll cover include:

• flexibility, structure, and power: although simpler in many ways, Backdrop still provides Drupal's traditional power and flexibility. We'll go through a quick review of some of the similarities and differences between the two, including shared post-Drupal-7 features and Backdrop-specific improvements. A short comparison of Starshot/Drupal CMS as compared to Backdrop will be covered.
• complex projects: complex sites can be built quickly with Backdrop. I'll talk about some of the conversation at my agency around when a project is a good fit for Backdrop vs. Drupal or Wordpress. I'll review parts of a project I worked on with Penn State University's Undergraduate Education to show one example of how reusability can work in certain contexts (configuration, layouts, etc).
• simplicity: smaller projects, one-offs and DIY projects can benefit from the simplicity of developing with Backdrop to quickly spin up sites. Although Backdrop works well on large projects with complex workflows, the project also has a commitment to also stay friendly for site builders and simpler projects.
• future of Backdrop: how does the community, leadership and infrastructure resemble or differ from that of Drupal or other open source projects? How can we have confidence that the community (and project) will last into the future? Some thoughts about the future roadmap for Backdrop CMS. When to expect and what to expect from Backdrop 2.0?
• lower maintenance costs: if your project doesn't rely on them, pinning your site to the relatively fast-moving libraries that modern Drupal depends on can lock you into a series of non-trivial upgrades that can eat your budget more quickly than you'd like. Backdrop's stability and commitment to backwards compatibility can be seen in this context as a sort of LTS that reduces the total cost of ownership.

Site search was already challenging, and AI has only added layers of complexity. From deciding which fields to scan and in what format, to ensuring your search tool properly tokenizes content across languages, there’s no shortage of decisions to make. Prioritizing certain types of content or favoring recent updates? The options are endless. And then there are facets—those magical filters that help users refine their searches, provided you can get them right. But what if you need search to work seamlessly with Layout Builder or other page-building tools? It’s easy to get lost in the labyrinth of configurations, and now AI has introduced even more levels to the quest.

Fear not, brave Drupal adventurer! I’m an old hand at navigating the murky waters of Drupal site search, and have cleared a trail through the new AI options that have emerged. I'm here to serve as your guide through this narrow, treacherous path to success. Together, we’ll explore Search API, Solr, AI-powered tools, and other alternatives, showing you how to configure them effectively. Plus, I'll demonstrate how to get search running on your local environment just like it does in production. Take my hand, and together we’ll tame the search beast, ensuring your users can find exactly what they need—without falling into the abyss of overwhelming configurations.

What happens when the flexibility of Drupal meets the interactivity of Godot? In this session, we’ll dive into how you can harness the power of these two platforms to create dynamic, content-driven games. Whether it's trivia games, virtual worlds, or gamified experiences, the combination of Godot and Drupal opens new doors for interactive storytelling and user engagement.

Together, we'll walk through practical ways to connect Drupal and Godot using various APIs and authentication, while showcasing how content managed in Drupal can power in-game features like levels, quests, leaderboards, or dynamic puzzles. If you’ve ever wondered how to expand your Drupal skills into game development or bring game-like features to a Drupal project, this session will offer you inspiration and practical advice.

As workflows for web-based content creation continue to evolve, Drupal adopters are increasingly looking to external tools for concurrent editing. EditTogether addresses this shift by bringing form-level real-time collaboration to Drupal, enabling users to create, review, approve, and publish content all in one place.

With multi-field collaboration, threaded commenting, integrations with existing Drupal workflows, and a plugin-based open-source architecture, EditTogether provides a variety of options for building seamless editorial workflows that start and end in Drupal. All that’s left is to set it up!

In this workshop, we’ll walk through:

• How to install EditTogether to enable real-time collaboration on your Drupal site
• How to procure the services required to facilitate real-time collaboration
• How to configure EditTogether to suit your site’s particular concurrent editing needs
• (For developers) How to extend EditTogether with new features using the plugin API

Afterwards, we'll have a Q&A for general, site-specific, and development-related questions and comments. By the end, you'll know how to set up and manage real-time collaborative editing on your Drupal site!

Often when embarking on a new technology project, your first attempt feels good when you deliver it, but you look at it later and think, that could have been done better. Sometimes, that means it ends up being rebuilt from scratch.

It helps to know what resources you can pull together to get started--to get off on the right foot. This session is perfect for those who have been through a Drupal In-One-Day training or other beginner trainings and are looking to begin their journey to a production deployed Drupal website.

Whether spinning up your first or wanting to do it better next, this session should help you lay the ground work for a more successful Drupal project launch in your near future. 

We'll go over 

• project initiation concerns, 
• local and remote development environment options,
• available production hosting resources, 
• content structure theory, and 
• theme selection considerations.

We'll also introduce resources for non-developers who want to realize their project without custom theming and development. My hope is, you launch a nice looking, functional, and productive CMS to production when you apply the opinions and follow the steps laid out in this session.

Drupal was launched in 2009! The era when Facebook was coming out of the shadows and Web2 was cementing itself in the world while Web1 was fading away.

If the folks would remember, those were the days of open protocol, open source advocacy. Microsoft vs Linux and proprietary was looked down upon.

Then proprietary won, open internet became a dream and Web2 cemented itself with monopolies. Web2 failed to achieve the vision of the founders of the internet.

What was missing was the monetization component of it. Web2 incentivized keeping the gates locked to make money. While projects like Drupal flourished slowly, hundreds of open source developers never saw the same returns as folks working in the proprietary world.

Web3 is changing that. With crypto at its core, Web3 is structured to incentivize the community, encourage contribution and ensure that the money & power is not within only a few people. Web3 would achieve what Web2 didn’t.

We would walk into a make believe world which would focus on:

--> What if Drupal was launched in Web3 world
How would the core contributors, module developers and agencies would make money
--> How Dries would’ve never needed to start Acquia :)
--> How the ecosystem would’ve taken platforms like SiteCore and Adobe.
--> And can we do this now! $DRUPAL coins! How would it work?

This is a fun thought experiment talk! No takeaways, but we can definitely explore the world of open source technology where the contribution motivation is driven by made up coins.

With what is happening in Wordpress world! This is great fun/thought experiment.

Learn how to propel your website's growth by implementing proven scaling strategies used by Fortune 500 companies right from the outset. This presentation will cover:

    •    Infrastructure choices for scalable architecture
    •    Techniques for robust performance optimization
    •    Do's and Don'ts with examples from Fortune 500 companies that use Drupal
    •    Best practices for load handling and traffic management
    •    Insights into industry leaders' scaling frameworks
    •    Steps to future-proof your website from day one

Discover how to lay a strong foundation for your site by adopting these tactics, ensuring your web presence is engineered for long-term success.

Break free from the grip of big tech and take charge of your digital world. This session explores self-hosting services like Nextcloud (Google Drive/Dropbox/Contacts/Calendar replacement), Immich (a Google Photos alternative), Jellyfin (media server), Security Cameras, or anything you can dream up, using tools like Docker, NixOS, and Tailscale. With self hosting you can even run Home Assistant to orchestrate all your smart home devices and even keep using voice control without your data ever leaving your house. Beyond reclaiming your data, self-hosting is also a great way to dip your toe into server management, build skills, and even breathe new life into an old computer or that Raspberry Pi collecting dust. Whether you’re motivated by privacy, curiosity, or career growth, this talk will show you how to get started.

This session offers an in-depth guide to installing configuring, and mastering the Gutenberg editor within Drupal. Gutenberg, a modern block-based editor, revolutionizes the content creation experience compared to Drupal’s traditional editing interface. You will learn the essentials of setting up Gutenberg, customizing its interface, and creating custom blocks tailored to your site’s needs.

You’ll gain a comprehensive understanding of the pros and cons of using Gutenberg in Drupal.  This session details both the improved flexibility for content creators and the technical considerations for developers. You’ll see coding workflows for building custom Gutenberg blocks, showcasing how they can extend Drupal’s content architecture. By the end of the session, you’ll have the practical knowledge to implement and customize Gutenberg in your own Drupal projects, whether as a supplement or a replacement for Drupal’s default editor.

Learn to install, configure, and customize the Gutenberg editor in Drupal. We will explore the pros and cons of using Gutenberg, compare it to traditional Drupal editing, and demonstrate coding techniques for creating custom blocks.

The future of digital experiences will be driven by the intersection of content and context, with context taking the lead.

In this talk, we will explore how multi-experience marketing across web, mobile, wearables, voice, and digital displays becomes an integral part of a marketer's daily tasks and how AI is accelerating this trend.

Traditional content-building practices have transitioned from a focus on topics and keywords to a sophisticated, holistic approach where content and context are intertwined.

Consider this:
--> By 2026, it's predicted that 91.4 million American consumers will use voice-enabled smart speakers for inquiries.
--> Also by 2026, 38.8 million people in the U.S. will use smart speakers for shopping-related activities, accounting for 13.6% of the population.
--> The wearable market is expected to reach USD 265.4 billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 18.0%. By 2029, there will be 1.2 billion wearable devices in use.

The web as we know it today will quickly become a smaller subset of a much larger digital ecosystem. Marketers worldwide are recognizing this shift and are rushing to adapt their content strategies to incorporate more context.

What does this mean? How will it impact marketers globally? These questions are at the heart of this talk!

Here are some key takeaways:
--> Why a contextual content strategy is critical for marketers in today’s world
--> Examples of Multi Experience marketing in the enterprises
--> How the shape of content and marketing campaigns would change in the multi-experience world?
--> The basics of optimizing your campaigns & content for voice, wearables and digital displays
--> How and Why to make your content future proof
--> Why AI ready content should be your next strategic investment

Altering thousands of Nodes, either by moving content from Node fields into separate Paragraphs, populating metatags on existing content or re-tagging everything can be a challenge.  It is hard to do these kinds of large operations reliably,  smoothly, and log it all at the same time. This session explores easier and more reliable ways to do large scale batch operations on big sites. See how the Department of Veterans Affairs and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services contributed a module so everyone can make big changes more reliably, on the record and with less effort.

Abstract:

Neurodiversity encompasses a range of differences in thinking, learning, and interacting with the world. This presentation will explore the lived experience of being neurodivergent and its implications for community engagement, universal design, and workplace inclusion. Drawing on personal stories and evidence-based insights, the session highlights practical strategies to foster environments where neurodiverse individuals can thrive. Attendees will leave with actionable tools to better understand neurodivergent perspectives and implement thoughtful accommodations, benefiting all.

Learning Objectives:

1. Define neurodiversity and understand its importance in fostering inclusive environments.

2. Identify common challenges faced by neurodivergent individuals in personal and professional settings.

3. Implement universal design principles to create accessible and welcoming spaces for neurodiverse people.

Target Audience:

• Community organizers

• Educators and trainers

• Workplace leaders and HR professionals

• Developers and UX designers interested in accessibility

Key Highlights from the Session:

1.  Personal Narratives: Sharing impactful moments from the speaker’s journey as a neurodivergent individual.

2. Understanding Neurodivergence: Exploring conditions such as autism, ADHD, and dyslexia through real-life examples.

3. Universal Design in Practice: Practical advice, such as leveraging low-light environments or strategies to address time blindness and sensory sensitivities.

4. Call to Action: Encouraging empathy, patience, and kindness in professional and community spaces.

Speaker Bio:

J. Matthew Saunders brings nearly two decades of experience as a leader in the Drupal community, including roles as a founder and chair of Drupal Colorado Inc, Drupal Association Board Member, and a founder of the Drupal Event Organizers Working Group. He combines his expertise in technology and advocacy to champion neurodiversity awareness and inclusion. As a Director at Pfizer and creator of the “My NeuroDivergent Brain” YouTube series, Matthew bridges personal insights with professional expertise to inspire and educate.

The traditional way of working with DDEV is from the host side, where you can ddev ssh or ddev exec but you're kind of on the outside looking in.

But with VS Code's Dev Containers extension you can actually work inside the container, which is just like working on your server. Instead of ddev drush you just do drush.

Mike Anello has long taught this technique, but it has a few rough edges. We'll work on those rough edges and show the whole thing.

Setting up a design system can help create consistency and guardrails for authors, designers, strategists, developers, and all involved in creating and maintaining websites or applications.

But what happens when that design system needs to expand to support numerous applications and websites, each with a different purpose and audience?

In this session, we’ll share some challenges we’ve encountered when working with large design systems that need to scale. We’ll discuss the following challenges:

- scaling and maintaining design patterns
- naming systems at scale
- maintaining a “system of systems.”
- governance and adoption at scale
- component content flexibility and guidance at scale

This session is for those already familiar with design systems but unsure how to scale them to multiple websites and applications.

Git can be confusing, with plenty of sharp edges to cut yourself on, but it gets a lot easier once you understand How Git Works. Luckily, understanding Git is a lot less daunting than it sounds. Join us for a Git deep dive, while keeping our feet firmly planted on the floor. No jargon, no assumptions. We may even have some fun.

For the past few years, an internal revolution has been brewing in Drupal. The more I see of how our initiatives are evolving the more I'm convince that the way we build Drupal sites are about to fundamentally change.  Let's me make the case for:

• How you and your team should rethink how you make Drupal sites
• What you can do today to being the shift to a new way of working
• The benefits for clients if you do

In my day job, I provide long term support for Drupal sites built many different ways.  I support sites built with Acquia Site Studio, Layout Builder, Paragraphs and a couple of unique builds.  I'm seeing a convergence of ideas on how best to build these sites.  Let me share with you a strategy for getting your sites ready for the future.

Did you know that around 1 in 68 people are diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder? People with autism and Asperger's are becoming a growing part of civilization, and a growing part of the tech workforce, yet in spite of their high intelligence and remarkable creativity and passion, they often go unemployed and underemployed within our society.

This presentation will attempt to debunk myths around autism and present autistic strengths and challenges, while also sharing why we believe it is important for Drupal firms and other employers to start considering accommodating potential employees with autism spectrum disorders.

The presentation will cover the following topics/issues:

1. Debunking the Myths surrounding the Autism diagnosis, which would include providing information about this diagnosis and how it might present in the workplace or in general, which would include providing statistics as to the percentage of autistic individuals who are in the tech field and what tech employers, including Microsoft, are offering them.

2. Covering the challenges and strengths of an individual on the spectrum and how his or her participation in the tech workforce could be a very good fit for this individual and the tech employer.

3. How does the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) impact the tech employer when it is considering employing an individual who is on the Autism Spectrum.

What are some examples of reasonable accommodations that an employer should legally offer an employee or potential employee with autism under the ADA?

What are potential modifications to the workplace that the individual with autism wants an employer to offer even if the employer is not legally required to do so under the ADA.

Presenters:

Lynne Knox, JD. As a retired Administrative Law Judge who headed the Employment Security Division of the Connecticut Labor Department, Attorney Knox specialized in labor law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act. She is also the mother of her co-presenter, Morgan Giosa, who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and is a Drupal web developer.

Morgan Giosa. Morgan has studied extensively with Dr. Mark A. Friedman, who is a Drupal specialist who taught at both Trinity College and Central Connecticut State University. Morgan has also been employed as subcontractor for Redfin Solutions and has developed websites independently for his clients, including Andres Forero, who is currently drumming in the Broadway musical, Hamilton. He is also an accomplished blues guitarist and visual artist.

Speakers

Lynne Knox
Connecticut Department of Labor (Retired)
Retired Administrative Law Judge

Morgan Giosa
Tempera Solutions (www.temperasolutions.com)

Morgan Giosa has studied Drupal web development and computer science extensively with Dr. Mark A. Friedman, a Drupal specialist who taught at both Trinity College and Central Connecticut State University. Morgan has also been employed as subcontractor for Redfin Solutions and has developed websites independently for his clients using both Drupal and WordPress, including Andres Forero, who is currently drumming in the Broadway musical, Hamilton. He is also an accomplished blues guitarist and visual artist, who has recorded and released multiple albums of original music, his latest of which, “Feelin’ Fine Today”, has received airplay on college radio stations throughout New England including WESU 88.1 FM and WCNI 90.9 FM, and has performed at blues clubs throughout New England, including the prestigious Black-Eyed Sally’s in downtown Hartford, CT. He also produced and created an autobiographical documentary film, "Outside the Box", which has been screened in New Haven International Film Festival and Mystic Film Festival in 2019, and has exhibited his paintings and photographs in galleries throughout Connecticut.

For more information on Morgan or to see his work, please visit the following websites:

temperasolutions.com (partial Drupal/WordPress portfolio)

morgangiosa.com (visual art/music website)

Web Components are native browser implementations of of custom HTML elements that were first introduced in 2011, and are currently supported by all current major browsers.  They're a popular approach when there's a need for a micro component that can enhance usability, without having to resort to a heavy-handed framework like React.

Web Components are not without their gotchas, mainly surrounding the use of the Shadow DOM.  If not done correctly, you can create a Web Component that functions, but:

• Cannot be styled effectively for the look and feel of the site in which it's implemented
• Isn't SEO friendly
• Introduces Accessibiity issues into your site

In this session we'll discuss the architectural premises of Web Components, and include some tips on effectively leveraging the power of the Shadow DOM to encapsulate functionality without compromising SEO or Accessibility, and driving your Front End developers insane.

You may have heard this before:

• I need a website, could you help me?
• How long will it take to build my website?
• What tech stack would you recommend for my website?
• What will a website cost me?

This session has different items one should consider when building a website.  Some that we will take into consideration are: 

• The type of websites:
  • Marketing landing page.
  • Family and friends website.
  • Small business
  • Medium size business.
• The requirements of their site: 
  • Number of editors
  • Number of pages
  • Average number of visitors. 
• The different forms a website can take:
  • Static websites
  • CRUD apps vs Websites.
  • CMS websites: WordPress and Drupal.
• Their budget, market, and long-term maintenance goals
  • 1k - portfolio project to play with new tech.
  • 3k-5k - Small websites, basic needs. Likely set it and forget it.
  • 10k - Includes one or more editors. Maybe a set it and forget it.
  • 50k - Includes multiple editors and likely includes ongoing maintenance and support.
  • 100k+ - Agency style websites. Multiple editors. 

This session aims to help answer those questions for them and help you as the developer find the fastest, simplest solution for each type of challenge.

This session includes a quick intro to recipes and insights on improving the out-of-the-box experience on new themes. Rather than figure out how a site architecture fits together on our own we can reverse engineer a complete example.

In other words, the WordPress theming experience in Drupal.

We will follow the YAGNI (You Aren’t Gonna Need It) principle to improve our feedback loop and allow others to get started quickly.

Be ready for an interactive session, rich in examples and prompts that encourage attendees to wonder and think about the wide array of possibilities this might enable.

If you or someone you work with has ever asked you these types of questions:

• Why do we work to make things accessible?
• What's the point of making this change only to be accessible?
• Why can't I just make that accessibility fix later?

...or anything similar, this talk is right for you.

What is "the why" you may ask? It's knowing how and why our accessibility improvements make the web better for users with disabilities. It's always a good thing to understand why we do what we do to make things accessible. Let's explore how we can build empathy into our teams by showing them "the why". 

I'll do this with demos! We'll look at various Assistive Technologies (AT)  and Adaptive Strategies to explore what it's like for users with disabilities to navigate and experience the web. Not everyone has experienced a screen reader, screen magnifier, switch device, text-to-speech, TTY (phone communication), etc., and that's our challenge. Challenge accepted!

Security measures and accessibility don’t always play nice. Captchas, timed logins, alert pop-ups, gated content, and modals are often used for security, but not all users and assistive technology can get their users past the barriers.
We’ll look at practical and straightforward ways to implement open-source solutions that are both secure and accessible, keeping folks from abandoning ship.

Objectives

• You will learn how some security efforts can be barriers to those who use assistive technology
• Learn how different user agents interact with digital assets
• You will walk away with accessible solutions to generally inaccessible 3rd party options

We’ll look at practical and straightforward ways to implement solutions that are open source, secure and accessible, keeping folks from abandoning your digital assets.
 

We have all been there. We submit an article or technical content and the editorial team formats it in a way that changes the content or breaks accessibility.

Often, writers will submit their content in Google Docs. An editor then has to strip out all of Google's Gremlins to paste into the Drupal editor, so they end up with just a wall of text, left to add headings, links, bullets, and code blocks, and maybe in a way that changes the content.

Enter Markdown! 

Markdown is very popular for authors and developers. It's lightweight and straightforward to learn. Its open format allows it to be used across environments and tools, and you can keep control over your editorial experience. And guess what? It's in CKEditor 5.

In this talk, we'll learn about the benefits of Markdown and move through some of the basic syntax so you can start using Markdown immediately (live demo). We can also do a quick review of editors that have gentle learning curves.

Three takeaways

• Platforms can easily convert Markdown to HTML
• Markdown has a very gentle learning curve and is human-readable
• Drupal Core and contributed modules support Markdown
   

Picture this: It's February 2025, and while Drupal 7 was supposed to be having its final farewell tour, it's somehow still crowd-surfing through thousands of websites. Like the tech world's most persistent party guest, it just won't take "time to go home" for an answer, and honestly, that might be a good thing.

Welcome to the real world of post-EOL Drupal 7, where thousands of sites are doing the digital equivalent of running with scissors. But before you panic-migrate your way into next Tuesday, let's talk about how to turn this potential disaster into your next success story.

In this session, we'll cover:

• Why your Drupal 7 site is like that one friend who's still using a Hotmail address (functional but concerning)
• How to transform your "technical debt" into "technical dividends" (yes, we're making that a thing)
• The art of keeping your site secure when official support has left the building
• Why HeroDevs is basically your site's designated driver through the afterparty

Perfect for: digital strategists putting off difficult conversations, developers tired of explaining why "just migrate it" isn't always the answer, managers wondering why their weekend plans keep involving security patches, and anyone who's ever had to make legacy software work well past its expiration date.

Leave knowing not just why your Drupal 7 site can survive, but how to make it thrive. Because sometimes the best parties happen after the lights are supposed to go out.

Warning: This talk may contain excessive metaphors, actual solutions, and at least one reference to how supporting Drupal 7 is like keeping a Tamagotchi alive in 2025—surprisingly possible and weirdly satisfying.

The IXP-Fellowship, a Drupal community initiative for onboarding inexperienced developers has its initial goal of using Drupal's contribution credit system as an incentive for Drupal organizations to hire new and inexperienced Drupal developers. 

One of the major challenges for new Drupal developers is landing their first paid gig. As a community, we can't expect Drupal to grow if there are limited ways for new, inexperienced Drupal developers to gain that important initial experience.

Over the past year, the IXP community initiative has worked to define and implement a process to utilize existing drupal.org functionality to incentivize Drupal agencies and other organizations to hire trained, inexperienced developers in exchange for drupal.org commit credits.

In this session, you'll learn about the overall scope of the initiative, its current status, and how you and/or your organization can get involved.

This session invites you to explore the power of headless Drupal using JSON:API and GraphQL backends. It will help you to unlock a more flexible and dynamic content delivery for decoupled front-ends especially evaluating when to use JSON:API versus GraphQL. You will gain insight into how these APIs provide powerful options for managing and delivering content to a variety of front-end applications. You will dive into the architecture, understand the strengths and trade-offs of each API, and discover how they can complement your modern front-end development efforts.

We will also discuss the differences between a monolithic Drupal setup—where built-in features like menus, user authentication, and form handling come out of the box—and a decoupled architecture where such functionalities require custom front-end development.

Attendees will gain strategic insights into setting up and optimizing JSON:API and GraphQL for a truly decoupled Drupal experience. While we won’t engage in hands-on coding, we will share code samples to illustrate implementation strategies, best practices, and potential real-world use cases.

Join us to explore how JSON:API and GraphQL empower headless Drupal architectures to deliver content seamlessly across digital channels. This session will cover architectural considerations, API setup, and front-end integration while comparing the built-in advantages of monolithic Drupal to the flexibility of a decoupled approach.

In today's rapidly evolving work environment, successful teams embrace diversity in all its forms, especially neurodiversity. Neurodivergent individuals—those with ADHD, autism, dyslexia, and other cognitive differences—bring unique perspectives, creativity, and problem-solving skills that can supercharge team performance.

This engaging talk will explore how neurodivergent team members enhance collaboration and innovation by leveraging their strengths. From heightened attention to detail to out-of-the-box thinking, neurodivergent minds offer invaluable assets that drive productivity and foster a culture of inclusion. Attendees will learn how to create environments that support all employees, encouraging each team member to contribute fully.

Drawing from personal experiences and research, we’ll dive into practical strategies for building neuro-inclusive teams and how embracing cognitive diversity can lead to better outcomes, greater empathy, and long-term success.

What will you learn?

• The unique strengths neurodivergent individuals bring to teams—such as creativity, problem-solving, and attention to detail—and how these qualities can boost overall team performance.
• Practical strategies for fostering neuro-inclusive environments, including how to create spaces and workflows that accommodate different cognitive styles to ensure all team members can thrive.
• The importance of empathy and patience when collaborating with neurodivergent colleagues, and how understanding diverse perspectives leads to stronger communication and more effective teamwork.

To be successful at creating things, we have to be able to solve the problems we introduce along the way. Let’s learn to troubleshoot and debug issues!

We'll organize our approach to a problem by analyzing it, simplifying it, splitting it into its component parts, and finding what part has the problem.

After dividing the problem, we'll use classic debugging techniques to pinpoint the error and find a solution:

• Use a debugger like XDebug paired with PhpStorm or VS Code to step over and through key sections.
• Set breakpoints where we suspect the problem may lie or where we can inspect variables and data.
• Inspect the contents of the database to see what is happening there.
• Use old-school techniques like printf-debugging and calling die() to find where problems happen.

For extra credit, we'll take a look at how to use git bisect to determine when a bug got introduced. We will talk about using tools and techniques, like version control and database snapshots, to assist in the problem-solving task. ChatGPT is bound to make a cameo as well.

The team that developed content moderation in Drupal 7 is back with collaborative editing for Drupal 10. Using open-source tools, the Edit Together module provides secure, real-time collaboration inside the Drupal editorial interface. Editors may update content simultaneously and leave threaded comments requesting clarifications or changes. And it all works with content moderation workflows!

Like content moderation, collaboration is a game-changing feature for Drupal as a Content Management System.

In this workshop, we'll cover the following elements:

• A quick demo of collaboration features
  • Editing
  • Commenting
  • Versioning
• Introducing the tools required for collaboration
  • Yjs as a stable dependency
  • ProseMirror and the need for end-to-end data integrity
  • WebRTC and signaling servers
• Current state of the Edit Together module
  • Installation requirements
  • Core workarounds for Edit module assumptions
  • Test scenarios and support
• Open question and answer

By the end, you’ll have an understanding of how EditTogether looks and feels, what sorts of configuration options it offers, and how you can use it to streamline your content workflows. EditTogether is built to serve the Drupal community, so bring your thoughts and let’s chat about them!

If you are maintaining a Drupal module or theme on drupal.org, did you know that you can get automated previews of any Merge Request? In this talk, we will walk through adding a Tugboat config.yml to a contrib module or theme. We should also have time to help a lucky member of the audience with their module or theme!

With Drupal CMS 1.0 released in January, we're now well into development of the next version. 

So it's a great opportunity to explain which processes we’ve followed so far, provide updates on how we are tracking and discuss what we have planned next on the roadmap.

Some topics that will be covered:

• Features and areas we're working on now

• Plans for future versions ongoing

• What we're looking for from contributors

• How we defined the strategy and scope

• Which role research played on the product definition

• Using the strategy to define the roadmap and what it looks like now

• How the community has come together to work toward the same goal

• Highlights from the initial work tracks and what we learned from them