Sharing Our Thoughts on All Things Digital

There’s never been a better time to be a Drupal user in Canada.

Since I started using Drupal in 2008, I’ve seen anecdotal evidence that Drupal is popular in Canada. Since 2006, and probably earlier, there have been active users groups in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, that organize regular conferences and meetups. These local groups are key to the Drupal community’s culture of open source and knowledge sharing. So I wasn’t surprised to learn that Canada is fourth in the world in terms of active users on Drupal.org (behind the US, Great Britain, and India).

The Layout Builder is one of the most exciting new features in Drupal 8. It's a site building tool that makes it easier to configure how your content is displayed in Drupal. You can use a drag-and-drop interface to combine fields, nodes, and other content, and actually control the layout used to contain that content.

This year's edition of Drupal North has come to an end and what a great experience it has been. We got to connect with so many people in the community, share our experiences, and learn from others. Here are some of the highlights and key takeaways from the last 3 days:

Another successful day at Drupal North is now complete! This day was packed with sessions from all kinds of speakers, including our very own Jigar Mehta and Robert Ngo. Some great discussions were had amongst the Drupal community which was out in full force. Here are some of the ideas that we saw repeated throughout the day:

Today marked the kick-off of Drupal North 2019, and Evolving Web is excited to be a part of it for the 4th year in a row. Day 1 was packed with trainings, summits (for the 1st time!), and networking opportunities.

Why create and style something twice if you can do it once? This is one of the guiding principles behind programming. The Drupal UI Patterns module brings component-driven development to Drupal. This means that you create a component once and then reuse it anywhere on your site.

Search is a key feature in web experience, and for a lot of people, it's the go-to method to find content. We use search countless times a day on our smartphones in various contexts. And yet, when we're building out websites, search is often an afterthought that we don't spend much time on. Search gets added to the laundry list of site features, like meta tags and social media links.

We at Evolving Web are really excited to see the progress being made on improving the Drupal admin UI. As a designer, I’m curious about the process that drives such a huge project. I talked to the designer in charge of the refreshed interface, Cristina Chumillas, and got super interesting insights into what’s behind the new design.

I recently helped a friend hire an agency to build her website. It made me think about the process of hiring a web agency from the Client perspective. Here’s what I learned from the questions she asked and the advice I gave:

Before you approach a web agency, ask yourself the big question “Why”.

It’s a new year, and one of your resolutions might be keeping a more minimalist lifestyle. A few years ago, I read Marie Kondo’s book about the benefits and practice of keeping things tidy. And it planted a seed in my mind about how this applies to content. And in particular, your content strategy. How can we apply the same techniques that result in a well-organized drawers and closets to well-organized content hierarchy and navigation? How can they guide your next content audit?

I’ve recently been researching, writing, and talking about content editor experience in Drupal 8. However, in the back of my mind I’ve been reflecting on the site builder experience. Every developer, site builder, themer who learns Drupal is going to try out the admin UI to get their site up-and-running. What are some things site builders often struggle with in the admin UI when learning Drupal?

In my previous blog post I gave some tips about layout and design theory. Now I want to speak about typefaces, which is a really fun part of my job as a designer.

Typography can make all the difference in a design. You can even create an entire website with just type. Today, even brands with smaller budgets can access excellent, industry-standard fonts, completely free. The trick is knowing which ones to choose. That's why it's critical to understand design basics, and always be searching for more inspiration.

Over the last few months, I've been involved in a UX study to shed some light on what would make a good content editor experience in Drupal. I helped run a survey asking content editors for their feedback about the Drupal admin UI and got some interesting results.

There is exciting work being done in the Drupal community to improve the Admin UI, including the JavaScript Modernization Initiative and an overhaul of the look and feel of the Seven theme. Meanwhile, I've been working with a group in the Drupal community to research what user experience improvements we should be making for content editors.