Dive right in, the water’s fine!

Published December 20, 2012

This weekend I participated in the Brevard Code Sprint for the MediaFront Module. I must admit, being new to Drupal, it did cross my mind that I’d be more of a hinderance than a help. I couldn’t have been more mistaken! The dozen folks from the Drupal community were great to work with. To start us off, Travis Tidwell (travist), the MediaFront module maintainer, walked us through a demonstration of the module and Mike Anello (ultimike), of the code sprint sponsor DrupalEasy, facilitated the group in choosing assignments to work on. As he asked for volunteers to work on some novice code issues, I figured “No better time to learn, than when surrounded with help!” so I dove right in. With the help of some great new friends, at the end of the day I had created my first patch and was well on my way to my first commit!

We discussed some problems that the module was having and created the issue to Hide the full-screen button when they have controller only mode enabled. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I’ll just show ya... it looked like this:

controller bar with fullscreen

In working on fixing the problem we came up with a fix, but then realized the fix corrected the problem but left the look of the item needing reformatted because it just made a big space where the button was ... another chance to learn! I got some new GIT experience creating the patch, which fixed the problem and made the item look good. Making that contribution, encouraged me to look for other coding issues that I would never had even thought about attempting before going to this code sprint. I know you’re wondering so I’ll show you the fix:

If you are new to Drupal and trying to learn it on your own, I can’t encourage you enough to seek out these code sprints, DrupalCamps or DrupalCon community events no matter what your experience level. Everyone was so willing to answer any question I had or point me in the right direction to get over my hurdle. At times there were two of us side-by side working on one screen figuring out the best way to tackle an issue and there were times they let me do it on my own to learn at my own pace. In that one day I feel so much more confident in my Drupal understanding and much more comfortable asking for help. I’ve started some new relationships and strengthened some other ones.

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