Contributing to Drupal
TopicAs an open source project, Drupal depends on community contributions in many forms including documentation, code, translation, speaking, organizing events, mentoring others, and even donating money.
The Drupal Community
TopicDrupal has an amazing community of people who create the software and help each other make the best use of it. This is one of the main benefits of using Drupal — and everyone should take advantage of that.
Menus
TopicA site’s main navigation elements, whether they be in the header, footer, or sidebar, are composed of links built using Drupal's menu system. Drupal allows site administrators to build menus while also allowing module developers to add and alter menus in code.
Layouts
TopicA layout can describe how various components are arranged on various levels—from an entire page from the header to the footer, to just the “middle” where the dynamic content goes, to individual components. It can apply to templates for managed content or one-off designs for landing pages.
Development environments provide a sandbox where you can work on your application without affecting the live site.
JavaScript in Drupal
TopicJavaScript files are included by a module or a theme by creating an asset library. Using this asset library system you can selectively choose which files to load, overwrite existing files, or customize them to suit your needs.
Drush
TopicDrush is a command line interface that enables you to interact with your Drupal site without clicking around the graphical user interface (GUI).
Forms (Form API)
TopicDrupal provides a standard, secured method for module developers to add forms to a Drupal website. Learn how to use the Form API to build, validate, and submit a custom form.
PhpStorm
TopicThe PhpStorm integrated development environment (IDE) contains dozens of useful features that make working with a Drupal codebase easier.
Hooks
TopicHooks allow modules to alter and extend the behavior of Drupal core, or another module. As a Drupal developer, understanding how to implement and invoke hooks is essential.
Blocks
TopicA block is a reusable widget that is placed inside regions (layout containers) of your theme. Blocks can be used by site administrators on the Block layout admin page or provided by a module using the Plugin API.
This tutorial teaches you everything you need to know about using the tutorials on Drupalize.Me.
Drush is the command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal. The most common way to install Drush is to install it on a per-project basis using Composer. We'll walk through the steps to do that, as well as how to set up the Drush Launcher tool (to make it possible to execute Drush commands without having to specify a full path to the executable).
In this tutorial we'll:
- Install Drush
- Verify it worked
By the end of this tutorial you'll have Drush installed.
Installing Drupal using the instructions in this tutorial will give you a working Drupal site that can be used for learning, or real-world project development.
Before you can work on a Drupal site locally (on your computer), you'll need to set up a local development environment. This includes all the system requirements like PHP and a web server, that Drupal needs in order to run. Our favorite way to accomplish this is using DDEV.
In this tutorial we'll learn:
- How to install and configure DDEV for use with a Drupal project.
- How to use DDEV's integrated Composer to download Drupal and Drush.
- How to install Drupal inside DDEV so you can access the site and start doing development.
By the end of this tutorial, you should be able to set up a local development environment for learning Drupal or working on a new Drupal project.
Standardized documentation is crucial to a project, whether it is just you or an entire team working on it. In this tutorial we're going to look at:
- Standards for
@docblockcomments - Standards for inline comments
- Why standards for documentation and comments are as important as standards for the rest of your code.
By the end of this tutorial you'll know how to add inline documentation for all the PHP code that you write for Drupal.
Formatting standards cover things like the use of whitespace, how to format control structures, and other aspects that affect your code's appearance and format.
In this tutorial we’ll talk specifically about standards regarding formatting. This is by no means an exhaustive list of PHP syntax rules, but rather is focused on formatting standards for Drupal.
By the end of this tutorial you'll know about the most common Drupal code formatting standards as well as where to find more information when questions arise.
Translations have their own special functions in both Drupal 7 and 8, and there are some rules for standardizing how they are used that make things clearer for everyone.
In this tutorial we'll look at:
- When to use, and when not to use, translation utilities to output translatable strings
- How placeholders work in translatable strings
- Tips for creating links inside of translatable strings
By the end of this tutorial you should know when, and how, to make strings in your code translatable using Drupal's translation utility functions.