Back-end Development

Load Testing with Locust

Load testing remains a straight-forward and simple way to test if a website can survive under some load. There are dozens of tools to write load testing scripts but you have probably heard of ab–Apache Bench. Apache Bench is good for quick validation but if you need more control or if you want to test specific user paths, you need a more sophisticated tool.

Five things developers need to understand about site building

Many Drupal developers consider site builders to be some of the most important users of their products. Dries regularly talks about how to “Improve the site builder experience” in his state-of-Drupal keynotes. But how well do you understand what site builders do? Do your solutions work for them? Who is this mythical site builder that is using the software you create?

Advanced Google Analytics (and other) integrations with GTM and dataLayer

While any site builder can quickly integrate Drupal with Google Analytics (GA) using the Google Analytics module, organizations are increasingly choosing to leverage Google Tag Manager (GTM) to integrate a variety of services (including GA) without requiring developer time and a deployment whenever new services or other changes are needed. In this talk, we'll cover:

Keeping Drupal relevant in a world of JamStack and CMS as-a-service

The face of web-development is constantly evolving. As Drupal nears 20 years of age it has remained relevant by continuously adapting to the changing landscape of the web. In this session we will examine the current crop of CMS as a service competitors, the value proposition they provide and what Drupal can learn from them. We will look in detail at the JamStack and explore what has fueled its rapid growth and how this relates to Drupal, exploring whether there is still a place for Drupal in this market.  

Getting started with Drupal code contributions

The plan of this talk is to explain what tools are available and how to use them to create a patch for contributing to Drupal. I will start with a project where I found a bug and then explain what the problem is. Then, I will show how to navigate the issue queue to check if a bug report already exists. Later, I will explain how to work on a new patch or contribute to an existing one. The example will show how to write a test and abide by Drupal's coding standards.  

Maximizing Composer

As a (aspiring or otherwise) professional Drupal developer, taking full advantage of what Composer has to offer can pay dividends. This session will provide some tips and tricks for using Composer with Drupal 8 and 9 projects, as well as provide a sneak peak at the improvements in the next major version of Composer.

Layout Builder Components Can Break Your Site—Part 2

This is Part 2 of the topic I delivered at DrupalCon 2020: Layout Builder components can break your site. Here's how. Watch Part 1 first to understand the problem that site builders, back-end developers and site architects face to ensure that several critical features of Drupal, including page revisioning, Workflow and Workspaces, don't break. Here is some feedback from the first session:

Developing Custom Views Plugins: Falling back in love with Views

Many developers have a complicated relationship with Views. The module offers a wide-range of out-of-the box functionality, including: query building, routing, cache controls, permissions, menu integration, and display rendering logic, among others.