Building Drupal sites for authors that provide flexibility and usability in the same place is sometimes a challenge. This session shows tools, patterns, Drupal modules and methods that help sitebuilders to provide usable backends for content authors. With these approaches content authoring becomes easier and faster and makes Drupal in the backend more usable. Also Drupal content staging and content distribution across multiple site instances is a topic that these slides cover.

1. Building websites with Drupal
that content authors love
– Drupal Camp Ruhr 2018 –

2. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Why is a great user experience
important for your authors?

3. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Why is a great user experience important for your
authors?
• Content is King!
• One-to-one
communication
• Content becomes more
complex

4. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Spend less time with tools but
more time with content

5. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Build tools to make content
publishing a no-brainer

6. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Build tools to make content publishing a no-brainer
• No copy paste for content staging
• Create once deploy many times
• Focus on customer contact journeys not
on tools
• Plan it!

7. Please,
do Drupal a favour:

8. Avoid shiny frontends with ugly
backends!

9. Focus on the
"author journey", too

10. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Focus on the "author journey", too
• Which content-flexibility is
needed (not possible!)
• Content first to define authoring
features
• Which features are NOT needed?

11. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
• Use the „author user story mapp“
• Create mockups to manage
expectations
• Define content elements instead of
pages

12. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
• Involve users early
• Get feedback early
• Improve continuously

13. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Content Staging
&
Content Sync

14. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Content Staging & Content Sync
What you see is what you get?
Unfortunately not really.

15. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Content Staging & Content Sync
• Make content previews realistic
• Make campaign preparation easy
• Publish campaigns with a click

16. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Content Staging & Content Sync
• Allow content publishing accross
sites
• Keep content synchronized
• Avoid manual copy & paste work for
authors

17. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Let authors benefit from digital automation in
the same way as you want your customers to.

18. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Or combine these tools
Tools
• deploy module
• NodeJS
• Drupal Content Sync.
• Headless Drupal

19. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Why is a great user experience important for your
authors?
• Heavily content-based
• Authors have to work with the system every day
• Do not make it painful for them !
• Help authors to create new content
• Simple Landingpages/Sites
• Authors are using the system maybe once per month
• Give them a system that is easy to be understood

20. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Grouping fields

21. • Why should we group fields?
• Clear arrangement
• Helps authors to understand what
fields are for
• How should we group fields?
• Put them into a logical context
• How to do it in Drupal
• Module: Field Groups

23. Just show the essential

24. Just show the essential
• Avoid displaying fields on content
creation pages which:
• Are not necessary for the authors
• Do not make sense to be filled in logically
• How to do it in Drupal
• Module: Conditional Fields

25. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Use Media --force

26. Use Media --force
• Media is in core since Drupal 8.4.x
• To use or not to use Media?
• Just do it!
• Use Entity Browsers
• + Entity Browser Enhance(d|r)
• Set it up over and over again? NO
• Create a reusable feature
• Put the feature in a composer
package?

27. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Better referencing with Entity
Browsers

28. Better referencing with Entity Browsers
• „And now I just have to
reference Mr. Müller... o.O”
• Entity Browsers allow you to:
• give your authors a better
overview of available entities
• filter the available entitles
• sort the available entities
• create new entities

29. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs
Hail to the king !

30. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs
• Flexible content based on „Content – Elements“ aka Paragraphs
• Simple to use
• Content elements can be ordered as the editors wants them to be
ordered
• No fix content structure
• Module is well maintained

31. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs Browser
• Give your editors a preview of what they are going to add
• Simplify their work by not just giving them a Paragraph name
• Group Paragraphs by their function
• Search by paragraph name

32. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs BrowserParagraphs default widget

33. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs preview
&
Paragraphs previewer

34. Paragraph Preview
• Do not show paragraphs as „open“ • Do not show paragraphs as „closed“

35. Paragraph Preview
• Create your authors a nice little preview

36. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs Previewer
• Contrib module
• Live preview using the frontend theme styles
• Works for already existing and new paragraphs
• Resizable to show mobile layout

38. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Paragraphs Browser vs. Paragraphs Previewer
• Currently not working together
• Both bring their own field widget
• We are working on a patch for both modules
• Lets combine the power and be awesome !

39. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
It’s all about the small things

40. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Easy linking with linkit
• Contrib module
• Project: linkit
• Linkit helps your authors to link
content using your ckeditor.
• Free SEO improvement
• Links are updated when a node
alias changes.

41. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
-> Cleanup your entity types
• Remove inputs which are not relevant
for your authors.

42. -> Automatic entity labels
• Contrib Module
• Project: auto_entitylabel
• Reuse field values for the entity titles
• Save time
• Avoid confusion
• Easy right? Use it J

43. Building websites with Drupal that content authors love
Which challenges do you face in
your authoring workflows?

44. Contact:
Manuel Pistner, CEO
Mail: pistner@brightsolutions.de
Sebastian Gurlt, Head of Drupal
Mail: gurlt@brightsolutions.de
Visit our blog for content like:
• Content Staging und Content
Deployment mit Drupal
• Inhalte in Drupal zentral über einen
Content-Pool verwalten
• Ein Drupal wie Redakteure es lieben –
technische Serie
• Drupal Deployment
-> www.brightsolutions.de/blog

45. #strategisch #technisch #kompetent
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