Rebuilding a data-driven Drupal site: Separating data objects from pages
In the previous post in this series, I described how we rebuilt our page templates with Layout Builder. I ended that post by mentioning that templates are less suitable when the page hierarchy must be derived from the data itself.
To explain that part of the rebuild, it helps to look at a more basic change. In the Drupal 7 site, an imported data object and the page that presented it were the same node, whereas the rebuilt site stores them as separate entities.
On today's show we are talking about Site Templates, What they do, and How you can use them with guests Tim Lehnen & Adam Globus-Hoenich. We'll also cover Haven as our module of the week.
Haven - Site Template - Designed for non-profit sites, this template features a bright, warm design that can be adapted for many use cases. It comes pre-confifgured with blog, projects and people profiles, as well as newsletter signup, donation add-ons and more.
Every new theme for a Drupal Commerce project starts with the same sequence: define your colors, configure button styles, set typography, style your forms, change icons, and then wire all of it into whatever page-building paradigm Drupal currently offers.
After twelve years, our front-end team accumulated a long list of friction points and recurring tasks. Centarro Bootstrap is the result of addressing all of them in a single, reusable foundation. What used to take weeks of custom theming can now be accomplished in hours.
The problem Centarro Bootstrap solves
Beyond making it faster and simpler to complete repetitive theming tasks that every custom Drupal website must perform, Centarro Bootstrap also helps with dynamic page layouts.
Drupal has gone through several iterations of page builders, both as contrib modules and part of Drupal core.Canvasis the current tool, which brings a Figma-like experience. Users can place components directly on a page, compose layouts visually, and see immediate results. Content teams can create single-use content straight from the interface.