Build a Drupal website based on a topic of your interest and choosing. The topic should be legal, ethical, and moral. If you have questions about the appropriateness of your topic, please ask before you start.

PLEASE NOTE: Drupal 8 is in full release, but many modules and themes are still in beta, alpha, or dev – tread carefully!

This project is due May 12, 2017, at 11:59 PM. There are no regrades or extensions!

Here are the characteristics we’ll look for when grading your site.

90% of your grade includes the following:

• Site should contain at least 10 nodes of content. This could be blog posts, product information, general articles, etc. A “node” should consist of at least a paragraph's worth of information or so.

• “Lorem Ipsum” or similar placeholder content is not acceptable.

• Do not take content from other websites unless you wrote that content yourself, or unless it’s content for your company, your client, or a site you’re redesigning in some way and you have permission to use the content.

• It’s possible that you may include multiple nodes on a single page using Views or another module; so make certain you're counting only content nodes toward your 10, not the home page, or Views pages, or any other sort of page defined by a module or otherwise.

• Node definition:  “All content on a Drupal website is stored and treated as "nodes".  A node is any posting, such as a page, poll, article, forum topic, or blog entry. Comments are not stored as nodes but are always tied to one. Treating all content as nodes allows the flexibility of creating new types of content. It also allows you to painlessly apply new features or changes to all content.”

• Site should demonstrate that you understand Drupal’s basic page content type. Include at least one page using this content type. This page counts toward your 10 node total.

• Site should contain images. You do not have to have images on every page, but you should demonstrate that you understand how to insert images into nodes in your website. 

• Site should include a blog. A node listing View on Drupal’s home page counts, or you could use a blog module.

• Site should contain a menu visible and accessible on each page of the site. The menu may be styled however you choose.

• Create at least one custom content type for your site.

• The custom content type should contain at least 5 fields. There must be at least two different types of data for those fields. Example: text, Boolean, term reference, image, long text, email, phone etc.

• Create at least 3 nodes of information based on that custom content type. Those 3 nodes count toward your 10 nodes of total content for the site.

• Custom content must be accessible, in some way, by menu. This could be as navigation items on the main menu for the site, or as a supplementary menu, or on a page with a custom View.

• Include Views in your site. Configure at least one page or block using Views. Be sure to indicate where this page or block is located in the document you turn in. Pre-built Views shipped with Drupal Core DO NOT count toward this requirement.

• You need to include four modules for your site for the purposes of the project, not including Views, Display Suite, or the backup module.

• Two must be modules you have downloaded. Modules can be downloaded from https://www.drupal.org/download – make sure that you're using D8 modules, as D7 versions are often still available.

• Special note for those with shopping carts: Please do not plan to configure a shopping cart with your own payment system (i.e. you take your own credit cards online). This is expensive, time-consuming, and will not be covered in class. If you know how to do it, then fine, but we cannot provide support for this. If you are going to include a shopping cart, use PayPal for processing payments. You may leave the cart in “test” mode if desired.

• Two may come from Drupal’s core. When you look at the module list in Drupal’s interface, you may enable some of these core modules, configure these, and have them count toward your module count. Note that this does not include modules that SHIP configured and enabled.

• Four modules is the minimum. You may have more modules installed than this (in fact, it’s likely that you will!). You may install all 4 modules from drupal.org and if you do, you do not need to include any from Drupal core; however, you may count no more than two from Drupal’s core.

• Example: Erin installs Contact, Forum, and Telephone from Drupal’s core, plus CKEditor from drupal.org. This is NOT sufficient to meet the requirements since she did not install the 2 module minimum from drupal.org (3 from core, 1 from drupal.org).

• Example: Jen installs Contact from Drupal’s core, plus CKEditor, Superfish, and Google Analytics from drupal.org. This works, as the 2 module external minimum is met, and there are 4 modules in total.

• Views and Display Suite do NOT count toward the module count for your site.

• Your site includes a custom theme. One basic custom theme is required.

• The following base themes are acceptable:

• Bootstrap Barrio theme

• Bootstrap base theme

• AdaptiveTheme

• Omega

• Classy

• If you are an experienced Drupal themer, and you wish to use a different starting theme, please run it by me first. I will start a thread for this. What I want to see is a very basic starting theme, with as little styling as possible, which provides the template structure to assemble a theme. I’m not interested in themes that already have the majority of styling in place. There are many downloadable blank themes available, and perhaps you’ve even coded one yourself.

• If you want to build your Drupal theme from nothing on your own, that’s acceptable as well.

• You are not required to use Bootstrap, Foundation, or any other responsive design template. If you choose to use one of these, that’s fine. If you choose to make your design responsive, that’s fine. If you choose to make your design work on a desktop configuration only, that’s fine.

• You may use Display Suite for adjusting styling on your site within one of the starter themes.

• Site should work in either Firefox or Chrome (does not need to work in both). 

Instructor's Choice: 10% of your grade might include:

• A particularly lovely color scheme or professional-looking layout 
• Nice use of type in the design
• Well-structured, interesting, engaging content (not eligible if you use existing content)
  • NOTE: These first three items must be different from your first two assignments if you wish to use them on assignment 3.
    
• Making the site mobile-compatible using responsive design (a great option for DGMD E-27 students)
• Stretching beyond what's covered in class, digging a little deeper. Examples might include: use of several extensive plugins (proper, thorough configuration -- more than just installing -- of something complex like Commerce or Panels certainly would apply here), excellent styling, lots of functionality that is relevant -- don't load your site up with a lot of crap just because!
• Building a Drupal theme from scratch
• Something else that catches our eye

An example of an awesome project

There are so many options with Drupal that it can be a little overwhelming. If you built this portfolio site following the directions here Download If you built this portfolio site following the directions here

 (PDF; note: this is for a Drupal 7 site, but it's still a good reference for a suitable finished product), that would fill most of the requirements of this assignment.

What Rebecca Cares About

• You have demonstrated that you know how to research and identify quality modules.

• You have installed that module successfully.

• You have spent time configuring that module to work with your site.

• The module compliments the content on your site. Including a calendar in a site with one event per year does not make sense, for example.

• You have demonstrated that you can manipulate a starter theme in Drupal to get the look you want for your site.

• Your template is at least minimally styled so parts of the page are recognizable: site identity (like logo or text identifier), navigation, main content, supporting information (like columns, modules, etc).

• You understand how to create a custom content type, and understand why this may be important for your site.

• You understand the purpose of Views and have demonstrated their use on your site.

• You post “real” content for your site. The C in CMS stands for content, so show that you know how to create some and make it work in a website.

What Rebecca doesn’t care about

• You are an awesome graphic design with great color choices and beautiful layouts. This is not a graphic design course. Your site should be recognizable as a web page and should be navigable. It does not have to be beautiful.

• The theme isn't "pretty" or the colors don’t match. I’m interested in functionality more than anything else.

How to turn in your assignment

Create a comment in Canvas when you turn in the assignment, or create a separate document and upload it. In this comment or document, include the following information:

• Your name.

• Your URL for the front end of the website.

• An administrator login for the back end of the website. It’s suggested that you create a separate login for this. You may delete this login as soon as you get your grade.

• Your site must be online and available for our access through May 31, 2016, or when you receive your grade, whichever comes first. After that, you may make any additional changes to your site that you wish (like swapping out themes, adding/removing functionality, etc).

• Detail your modules added to the site. Include the module name and a link to its listing on the Drupal site. Indicate where on the site this module is in use. For example: “calendar” link in main navigation, or right column on “about” and “contact” pages.

• Indicate what your custom content type is, and how it’s viewed on your site (i.e. through a custom view, linked to the menu directly, etc.)

• Indicate the View used on your site and where it’s located. (It’s possible this is covered by the previous bullet, but in case it’s not, please detail this information.)

• If you started with a theme other than one of those listed above, please provide a URL for the theme’s download. If you have created this starting theme yourself, please provide a copy of the starting theme in the dropbox.

• Indicate what operating system/browser pair is working for your site: Mac/Windows, Firefox/Chrome.

• If you have known issues on your site due to using an alpha, beta, or dev module, please indicate this in your submission along with any workarounds. Please note that your site must still work – module bugs don't give you an excuse to not complete the assignment, but awareness of bugs will help prevent us from triggering them while grading.

• Detail your Instructor's Choice item(s).

As always, submit this document and URL in the assignments area in Canvas.

Oh no! I can’t make the deadline!

This project is due on May 12, 2017, at 11:59 PM Eastern time. It is expected that you will turn the assignment in on time.  Because this is the final assignment and up against end of semester deadlines, we cannot accept requests for extension.

If you are unable to turn the assignment in on time, you must petition HES for an extension to the course. There are no extensions offered directly through this course – you will have to complete Extension paperwork.

Grades will be posted online in Canvas. Jen will send an email when these are posted.

Regrading of assignments

Because grades are due to HES shortly after this assignment is due, there will be no regrades offered for this assignment.