Introduction

DrupalCon, a Drupal community event managed by Drupal Association, brings together thousands of people from the diverse Drupal Community – including coders, site builders, content editors, business professionals, themers, and more. Our audience is an amazing community of Drupal enthusiasts that contribute to the Drupal project on all levels. They are why Drupal exists, we are just here to support them. 

One of the ways we do that is by hosting DrupalCon twice per year, once in North America, and once in Europe. 

Site and Brand History

Beginning in 2018 we moved DrupalCon to a unified brand, with a central landing page on https://events.drupal.org, and the first event held using the new theme being DrupalCon Nashville 2018: https://events.drupal.org/nashville2018 

Key elements of the current theme and design system are:

• The DrupalCon brand itself, with a logo, design elements, fonts, colors, etc that are consistent from event to event. 
• Key elements of customization to highlight the host-city: 
  • The logo in the upper left of the primary navigation bar
  • The ‘Hero’ image and text on the main landing page of each event
  • A ‘Hero’ graphic in the main body of the primary landing page 
  • The logo in the lower left of the footer menu

Goals

The Drupal Association would like to retain the existing design and design language, and port the existing Drupal 7 to Drupal 9. This is not a rebranding. 

The existing Drupal 7 design system is made up of Fieldable Panel Panes, and we expect the new system to rely on core Layout Builder and supporting modules as needed. 

The existing design elements such as colors, logos, fonts, etc, are not expected to change, but need to be ported to Drupal 9’s Twig theming system. 

We also want to simplify the process of branding new events: instead of using subthemes, we would like to be able to control the host-city specific branding directly with Drupal configuration. 

Scope

As we port events.drupal.org to Drupal 9, we are moving away from a monolithic, purely Drupal solution (for example the Conference Organizing Distribution we used in Drupal 7) to a solution focused on integrating third party tools for things like registration and ticketing, session selection, etc. This significantly reduces the number of content types/entities that need dedicated theming.

Content is likely to include:

• Events (the container content type that event content is referenced to)
• Pages 
• News items
• Sponsors
• Google Ad Manager blocks
• Layout builder elements
• Views of the above

Content will likely not include: 

• Sessions
• Schedule items
• Tickets
• Checkout pages

As these will be included via third party integrations. 

Requirements

• Recommend a strategy for using Layout Builder(and any supplementary modules) for reusable design components throughout the site. 
• Design system, with guidance on how each design element can be placed and used, and the configuration options available for each element. 
• No sub-themes: instead we will define logos and hero images in Drupal UI/configuration for each conference. 
• Accommodate frequent use of third party embeds, for example:
  • Schedule embedded from Sessionize.com
  • Registration embedded or linked to a third party ticketing system
• Minimal use of Javascript and PHP directly in theme. 
• Image styles defined for each standard image element, to prevent too-large images from slowing page loads. 
• Responsive design, with a heavy emphasis on the mobile experience (commonly used by attendees while at the conferences). 
• Build process for the theme should be well documented, should our internal team need to make changes. 
  • Include documentation of where ‘base styles’ are defined (applicable to all areas of the site) vs. override styles, such as specific styles for the main conference landing page. 
  • Include step-by-step instructions for required build tools, e.g: npm, gulp, sass compilation etc. 
• Re-audit the completed theme to verify continued compliance with WCAG 2.0 AA, and if possible, WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standards. 

We will provide

The Drupal Association will provide an unthemed, reference implementation of the codebase with a representative example of the content types, views, layouts, etc that we hope to use in the Drupal 9 iteration of events.drupal.org. The vendor may modify this as necessary to support the design system and theme implementation. 

The Drupal Association will work closely with the vendor to adapt this reference architecture to the vendor’s recommendations to meet the requirements defined above and any additional recommendations from the vendor to ensure a flexible platform for future events. 

Vendor requirements

The Drupal Association will consider contracts from both individuals and agencies. 

All vendors must: 

• Provide a portfolio of prior work, including: 
  • Theme development for Drupal 9
  • Theme porting from Drupal 7 to Drupal 9
  • Responsive design
  • Design system creation
  • Accessibility expertise

An individual must: 

• Be a member of the Drupal Association

An agency must:  

• Be an active Supporting Partner of the Drupal Association, with special consideration provided to those who are Drupal Certified Partners. 
• Provide or link to a statement that reflects your organization’s commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Budget

We have $30,000 USD budgeted + opportunity for in-kind trade. This budget should be all-inclusive of design and theme development costs. 

The point person for this project at the Drupal Association is generally available between 15:00 – 23:00 UTC (8am – 4pm Pacific). We welcome global responses but we’d prefer meeting times to be within our standard business hours, if possible. 

Timeline

Individuals or Agencies who intend to participate should provide their bids and samples of portfolio work to the Drupal Association via email (rfp@association.drupal.org) no later than Wednesday, 8 December at 23:00 UTC / 5pm Pacific. We hope to complete vendor selection by 15 December, 2021.