Work Study Franklin University
Franklin University - Drupal 8
Position Description
My position at Franklin University is a student worker position that acts as a web developer for the franklin.edu, urbana.edu, and associated sites. Working with marketing and other departments I develop new and improve existing areas of the Franklin's web experience. This includes using Drupal 8, PHP, Twig, HTML5, CSS3, and general problem solving.
Interaction with Stakeholders
Largely speaking there are requests given to the department some small and others large projects based. I am either assigned or pick up a project and get the broad description. From this point I work with marketing to answer any questions I may have and determine exactly what I need to develop. Regular updates are provided via meetings, emails, and Jira.
Drupal 8
Modules
Working with Franklin has allowed me to develop custom modules within Drupal adding site functionality. Unfortunately I cannot show code examples but some of the work I have done is creating a PDF creation functionality. This created a cron job that converted and saved content in a PDF format as well as allowing the custom loading of content from another Drupal 8 website within a preprocess function for a node.
I have also developed a module that allows files to be replaced with files of the same name. This is a known issue within Drupal and was interesting to tackle.
Theming - Twig
Working with the User Experience Manager I have had to take his designs and theme them within Drupal. This has involved using views and node template theming in Twig templates. This also involves using JQuery and JavaScript as well.
Content Types
When theming and developing in Drupal content is displayed via content types. When developing a functionality I typically will need to create content types. These are then referenced based on their machine names within Drupal.
Communication
Communication is key with development work and I like to keep in constant communication with stakeholders. This not only allows me to ask questions as I develop functionality or think of a usability concern that needs addressed but also keeps from wasting time with project development.
Research and Problem Solving
Research is a large part of my job as there may be modules in existence that may accomplish what is needed or may help in accomplishing what I need. It also helps me assess and report the method I intend to take when moving forward to develop a functionality. Problem solving plays a large role in this as the more detail I have for a project and the further I can break it down allowing me to assess what the most difficult parts will be and work from there.