Tips and tricks for working with GovCMS SaaS

GovCMS SaaS provides an easy entry for government agencies to quickly benefit from the awesome power of Drupal. The regular maintenance of the site’s code is very convenient and GovCMS support also helps build trust and expertise in the tools.

But that’s not to say it’s the easiest onboarding for a developer new to Drupal or to the GovCMS SaaS framework. From a developer’s point of view, any site has its “ghosts in the machine,” and the complexity of the GovCMS SaaS platform also can make getting started a challenge.

This session contains some of the most important lessons learned on my journey to efficiency on GovCMS. Come to the session to learn from my previous mistakes and hopefully your GovCMS development will become more joyful and productive. Feel free to bring your own lessons learned, so we all benefit!

GovCMS-specific topics and examples will include:
* Best practices in using config management.
* Enabling and using XDEBUG
* Using watchdog logs, even in OpenSearch

This will also include how to solve head-scratching issues:
* Has your gitlab pipeline finished but your site is still running the old code?
* Does your database import take too long?
* Are you sure you are running the same GovCMS release locally as the same one in production?

If any of the above questions sounds familiar, let’s tackle these together!

This presentation is suitable for any developer working with GovCMS SaaS sites, from beginners to experienced.