There's a module for that! Don't use it!

In Drupal development when you have a new need on your site you are often told "There is a module for That!".  While the availability of thousands of free modules on Drupal.org is great, it can lead to sites with hundreds of modules enabled. For Drupal 8 though many contributed modules have been ported there are still a lot of modules from Drupal 7 that have not been ported yet.

In this session we will look at when a little bit of custom code may be a better solution then installing yet another module. We will also look at how you can solve some problems with a little custom code for modules that have yet to be ported to Drupal 8. 

Often contributed modules provide much more functionality then you need for any specific site. It is easy to find yourself installing a complex module when you only need a very small part of it. When this is the case you have tons of extra code running on your site that you don't need(and probably don't want)!

This extra code causes your site to run slower, adds the potential for bugs and conflicts with other modules, and makes your site more complex than it needs to be.  With hundreds of modules running on your site tracking down where a particular problem is coming from can be a real pain. In many cases you can replace the need to install yet another module with under 10 lines of custom code.

We will also look at risks of custom code compared to contributed modules and ideas for mitigating that risk.

Audience:

You should have some programming experience. Drupal 7 or 8 coding experience would be good but not necessary.