I do not consider myself a coder. My contributions in the issue queues both in drupal.org as well as in the GitHub repository of Backdrop CMS had very little to do with actual code. That was until a few months ago Geoff (a.k.a. @serundeputy) showed me a way to create PRs though the GitHub UI that I find very easy (although not very coder-like).
In Backdrop, as in Drupal, there usually seems to be more than one way of doing the same thing, and in this blog contribution I am not suggesting that this is THE way to theme your site, it just happens to be a way I have used with some success.
If you are just getting started with Backdrop CMS and are looking for a quick overview of how to engage with the community, consider this your primer.
Where to start?
Backdrop CMS is participating in the Grace Hopper Celebration, Open Source Day 2020 (Oct 1, 2020). Here is a special welcome we wrote for participants.
Dear Open Source Day participants,
This is a slightly updated/modified version of this article, written by Wes Ruvalcaba (@wesruv), the creator of Basis (the default frontend theme of Backdrop). It is being republished here with his kind permission. Thanks Wes! ❤️
If you've been holding back from using Backdrop because your site requires the popular and powerful CiviCRM, hold back no longer. You can now easily install CiviCRM on Backdrop, or migrate it from your Drupal 7/CiviCRM setup.
CiviCRM and Backdrop CMS, two projects who focus on helping non-profits, fit together quite nicely. You can now easily install CiviCRM on Backdrop and benefit from the robust Drupal-like architecture with an extra helping of the user-friendliness added by Backdrop.
Audience: developers creating forms programmatically
For many years now, I've been using #states in many of my pull requests that were around improving the admin user interface. I've found that hiding/showing form elements depending on various conditions, in many situations may result in a much better user experience for content editors and site builders using Backdrop.
Use case: Develop Backdrop sites and be able to continuously deploy patches, updates and features cleanly and easily on Pantheon. We, the Backdrop Community, hope to offer Backdrop local drush out of the box in the near future, but for now here are the steps to get you going on Pantheon, Terminus, Drush and Backdrop CMS right now!
Install Backdrop CMS with terminus:
