Trainings

Our full and half day training programs can help you sharpen your skills, develop new insights, and tap into a support network for your Drupal projects. 

Taught by industry experts, these classes are an excellent value for $85 (full day) and $45 (half day). The trainings will be held on Friday, February 1 at 701 Carnegie Center in Princeton, New Jersey. Breakfast and lunch are included in the ticket price. 

Agenda

  • 9:00 am – Check-in and Breakfast
  • 9:30 am – Classes begin
  • Noon – Lunch
  • 5 pm. – Classes end

Web Accessibility

Trainer: Suzanne Dergacheva, Evolving Web

Learn how to apply accessibility standards to your design and development practices. Get hands-on experience testing and implementing accessibility improvements through Drupal site building and theming.

The training will cover the following topics:

  • Accessibility terminology and concepts
  • Understanding web accessibility and assistive technologies
  • Creating more accessible content
  • Design considerations for accessibility
  • Identifying and resolving common accessibility issues at the code level
  • Using theming techniques to resolve accessibility problems
  • Accessibility testing tools
  • Incorporating accessibility best practices into your workflow

Object Oriented PHP (OO PHP)

Trainer: Nick Selvaggio, Sego Solutions

Suited to: Developers with a basic understanding of PHP and little or no experience with OO principles, who want to gain a solid understanding of OO principles/concepts, how they apply to PHP, and ultimately Drupal 8.

We will take students through all the core pillars of OO programming. We will start with general knowledge applicable to all OO environments, then focus on PHP specifics. We'll end with an introduction to some core Drupal concepts and how they relate to the OO foundation we provided during the day.

We will be distributing environments via StackStarter.io, so there's no need to have your own preconfigured environment for the training. Just bring your laptop and a willingness to learn!

Best Practices in Website Personalization for Higher Ed (1/2 Day, 9:30am - 12:30pm)

Trainer: Ray Saltini, FFW

Digital personalization is everywhere and your students have come to expect personalized experiences in their digital journeys. How can colleges and universities launch programs that will achieve their marketing goals and satisfy students and other stakeholders? This half day training examines personalization concepts and best practices and how they apply to the higher ed community. 
 
We'll cover topics such as:
  • First steps and prerequisites
  • Content and workflow
  • Using the right technology
  • Privacy and accessibility 
  • Moving toward personalized education
Who should attend:
 
This session is great for Communications and IT team members who contribute to strategy and technology planning. We won't focus on coding or configuration, but we will talk about how to plan and structure your data to build an effective personalization program. 

Project Management for Drupal Projects (1/2 Day, 1:30pm - 4:30pm)

Trainer: Ray Saltini, FFW

Open Source Drupal Development is a specialty and so is Drupal Project Management. What can you do to ensure your next Drupal project is a huge success for your organization? Join us for this half day training as we share our experience working with some of the largest and most complex projects ever built and help you understand and implement best practices at every stage of your project. This training is designed to help organization project managers, product owners, decision-makers, and stakeholders understand how Drupal differs from other systems and what you need to do differently to get the most out of Drupal. This class discusses the various stages of Drupal project development from planning to maintenance and gives you practical guidance on how you can support your team to deliver the best possible outcomes at each stage.
 
Experience level: Beginner to Intermediate
 
Who Will Gain the Most From This Training? Anyone charged with leading a Drupal project.

GatsbyJS

Trainer: Dustin Schau, GatsbyJS

Gatsby is a blazing-fast app generator for React. Smart defaults, an incredible plugin ecosystem, sourcing data from anywhere, and more all bundled up an intuitive, developer friendly package. In this full-day course, you’ll learn the ins and outs of configuring Gatsby, hooking it up with a Drupal CMS, and creating compelling content experiences with the full power of the React ecosystem. Specifically, you’ll learn:
  • Configuring your environment for Node development
  • Creating a project using Gatsby
  • Installing and using plugins
  • Creating a progressive web app with offline functionality
  • Authoring templates with React’s JSX language
  • Sourcing data at build time from a headless Drupal instance
  • Querying data with GraphQL
  • Building and deploying with Netlify

Modern CSS Layout Techniques

Trainer: Levi Sigworth, XIAH

We will explore current best practices for layouts using CSS Grid and Flexbox. Inflexible and predefined grid systems are no longer necessary, and we don't have to rely on quirky float-based layouts anymore.

The overall goal of this course will be to provide an intro to CSS Grid and Flexbox. Students will receive free resources that they can use in the future to review and reinforce the concepts, and they will also leave with a Drupal project that implements CSS Grid and Flexbox.

Course outline:

  1. Work through the videos on cssgrid.io together.
  2. Implement CSS Grid concepts in a Drupal site via the Layouts API, Views module, and Twig templates.
  3. Highlight important videos about Flexbox in flexbox.io
  4. Build a responsive menu in Drupal using Flexbox.
  5. If enough time remains, introduce design components via Pattern Lab and how CSS Grid, Layouts API, and Pattern Lab can work together.

Note: a laptop where you can run a local Drupal environment is required in order to work on the code examples in class.

Exercises: https://xiah.io/writing/modern-css-layout-techniques