Understanding Drupal

Drupal is an extremely flexible system. To achieve this, various layers of abstractions were built into it. A lot of concepts were created to explain these abstractions. Unfortunately, they are not always intuitive. For example, the ubiquitous word 'node' does not represent a point in a network nor a server side programming language.

Learning the basic building blocks for assembling a Drupal site and how they relate to each other is useful to start building sites having a broad overview of the system.

Have you ever asked yourself any of these questions?

* What is a node?
* What is a content type?
* What are fields and why are they useful?
* What is a block and what can I do with it?
* What is a view?
* What is a module and its purpose?
* What is a theme and how can it change the look and feel of my website?
* How are users and permissions managed?
* How can I create the navigation of my website?
* I'm not a fisherman. Why do I need hooks?
* Why does a kitten passes away every time I make a quick fix in the downloaded code? How can I prevent that?

Drupal 8 has been released and it ships with lots of cool new features. As you might imagine, it brings new concepts and more questions for beginners too. The Drupal community does not want new adopters and prospective contributors to go away for not understanding our parlance. Come to this session and figure out what Drupal is all about. Do not worry, it will not be a theoretical, boring talk. It will be a joyful conversation with lots of examples to help you understand Drupal and why it is so powerful.

See you there! :D

P.S.: The majority of the concepts that will be explained apply to Drupal 8 and previous versions. Those specific to Drupal 8 will be noted as such.