The Drupal Architect Accelerator

From Consumer to Creator: Master the Kernel, Engineer Solutions, and Build with Independence.

Target Audience: Mid-level developers, Agency teams, and ambitious beginners.

Prerequisite: Functional knowledge of PHP and basic web technologies.

Phase 1: Foundation & Kernal (Week 1)

  1. Module 1: Professional Development Environment
    • Beyond Localhost: Setting up a team-ready DDEV environment (custom commands, service integration like Redis/Solr/Mailhog).
    • Composer Mastery: Dependency management, patching core/modules, handling merge conflicts, and understanding composer.lock vs. composer.json in production.
    • The "Senior" Difference: We don't just install; we script the installation so it’s reproducible across any server.
  2. Module 2: The Kernel & Request Lifecyclev
    • The Boot Process: What happens in index.php? Deep dive into the Request/Response cycle.
    • Symfony in Drupal: The Event Dispatcher, Routing system, and the HttpKernel.
    • Dependency Injection (DI): The #1 skill for modern Drupal. Service containers, autowiring, and why you should avoid \Drupal::service() whenever possible.
    • Activity: Trace a request from the browser to the database query using a debugger.

Phase 2: Data Architecture & "The Forensic Developer" (Week 2)

  1. Module 3: Enterprise Data Modeling & Migration
    • Entity API Deep Dive: Content Entities vs. Config Entities. When to create a custom entity type vs. using Nodes.
    • Field API & Typed Data: Understanding how data is stored and validated at the code level.
    • Relationships & Scalability: Designing for 100,000+ records. Performance implications of complex Entity References.
    • Migration Strategy: Introduction to the Migrate API—mapping legacy data sources (CSV/SQL) into your new Entity structures.
  2. Module 4: The Debugging Masterclass (The "Independence" Module)
    • Xdebug Proficiency: Mandatory session. Conditional breakpoints, stack traces, and variable watching.
    • Profiling Tools: Using Blackfire/XHProf to identify "why is this page slow?"
    • Log Analysis: Reading dblog and server logs to reconstruct a crash.
    • The "Break It" Lab: I will intentionally break the site. You must use Xdebug to find the line of code and fix it live.

Phase 3: Backend Engineering & Automation (Week 3)

  1. Module 5: The Plugin System & Events
    • Plugins Explained: Annotations vs. Attributes (Drupal 10/11 shift). Creating your own Plugin Managers.
    • Hooks vs. Events: When to use hook_ and when to Subscribe to an Event.
    • The Render API: Render arrays, cache bubbles, and #lazy_builder. Understanding the pipeline from data to HTML.
  2. Module 6: OO Architecture & Automated Testing
    • SOLID Principles in Drupal: Writing testable, modular code.
    • Services & Factories: Creating custom services to encapsulate business logic (keeping .module files empty).
    • Automated Testing: Writing Kernel Tests and Unit Tests (PHPUnit) to verify your logic.
    • Static Analysis: Implementing PHPCS and PHPStan to catch errors before you even run the code.

Phase 4: Modern Frontend & AI Innovation (Week 4)

  1. Module 7: Component-Based Theming
    • Single Directory Components (SDC): The future of Drupal theming (now in Core).
    • Twig Mastery: Advanced filters, functions, and debugging Twig.
    • Decoupled Concepts: Intro to "Headless" Drupal using JSON:API and GraphQL.
  2. Module 8: The AI-Augmented Developer
    • AI for Architecture: Using AI to brainstorm data models and generate migration YAML scripts.
    • Building AI Features:
      • Implementing AI Agents for content operations.
      • Integrating LLMs (OpenAI/Anthropic) via the Drupal AI module.
      • Semantic Search & RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) basics.

Phase 5: Capstone & Certification (Post-Course)

  1. Module 9: Performance, Security & Deployment
    • Caching Strategy: Page Cache vs. Dynamic Page Cache. Configuring Varnish and CDNs.
    • BigPipe: Streaming content for perceived performance.
    • Security Audit: Sanitization, trusted callbacks, and permissions (avoiding common CVEs).
    • CI/CD Pipelines: Deployment scripts, GitHub Actions, and Configuration Management strategies (config_split, config_ignore).
  2. Module 10: Final Certification & Capstone Defense

    Prove Your Independence. Earn the Architect Badge.

    This is the final hurdle. In this module, you will not be "taught" new material. You will be tested on your ability to apply everything you have learned in the previous 9 modules. To graduate as a JCS Certified Drupal Architect, you must clear two distinct milestones:

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