Drupal Site Building with Paragraphs.md

Drupal Site Building with Paragraphs

Table of Contents

1. The problem with static-fielded CMS's
2. Intro to Drupal
3. Installation
4. Entities
   1. Bundles
5. Nodes
   1. Content Types
6. Solving the problem - Paragraphs
   1. Paragraph Types
   2. Paragraph Node Field
   3. Dynamic templates based on fielded data in any order
7. Wrapping up

The problem with static-fielded CMS's

• Pre-defining all the layouts a client will need
• Strict limitations of what is developed
• Shoving everything in the body, or other predefined fields

Intro to Drupal

• Enterprise level open source content management system/framework
• Built on top of Symfony components
• Highly extendable
• Can build a management system to suit the project needs
• Massive community / module ecosystem

Installation

• Clone this repo: https://github.com/johnny5th/twd-drupal
• Run composer install
• Run docker-compose up
• Open http://localhost

Entities

• The building blocks of Drupal
• Almost everything is an entity

Bundles

• Bundles are sub-configurations of entities

Nodes

• Nodes are special entities that create most of the pages on a Drupal site

Content Types

• Node entity bundles are called Content Types
• They allow the creation of structured data types to hold site information displayed as individual pages

Solving the problem - Paragraphs

Credit: CSS Tricks

• Paragraphs gives a content writer the ability to create rich, dynamicly formatted page content without writing any HTML
• Paragraphs provides a new Paragraph Reference field to embed small Paragraph entities within the node editor interface

Wrapping up

• Regardless of the CMS you use, this dynamic structured content, or "Content Blocks", approach is a great way to client-proof your management interfaces
• Some great CMS implementation comparisons and discussions can be found at: https://css-tricks.com/different-cmss-handle-content-blocks/