Pairing Drupal + USWDS v2 to build better government websites
Published in
2 min readAug 12, 2019
At DrupalGovCon 2019, CivicActions engineers Dustin Boeger and Brian Seek led a panel discussion to explore the benefits and challenges of using Drupal with the newest version of the U.S. Web Design System (USWDS) for building government websites. They were joined by Dan Williams, Product Owner and project lead for USWDS.
The discussion included implementation best practices, potential challenges to watch for, and the roadmap for future development, in addition to audience questions. This panel was followed by an in-depth discussion on practical use cases for Drupal + USWDS in prototyping and site building.
Highlights
- 4:33 — Current landscape of the U.S. Web Design System and where it’s headed
- 14:00 — How the USWDS Drupal theme aims to refine Drupal’s markup so it works with USWDS library
- 15:50 — Don’t be confused — there’s another base theme in Drupal utilizing the USWDS
- 16:28 — Different methodologies and architecture of the two themes
- 17:44 — How to maintain community and connection among folks who are building gov websites using USWDS
- 22:53 — How can you customize USWDS in Drupal without breaking the core UX features that make it a good component?
- 28:25 — How might non-technical people help shape the USWDS outside of actual contributions to the module? (Hint: it takes human effort and proactive community management)
- 32:49 — How will USWDS be handling future updates and taking care of folks who are still using older versions?
- 34:57 — Developers in the audience dig into specific questions they have about using USWDS with Drupal
Resources
- Follow up talk: Using Drupal and USWDS v2 for Prototyping and Site Building
- U.S. Web Design System website
- USWDS Drupal theme (co-maintained by CivicActions developers)
- USWDS base theme in Drupal (maintained by Michael Feranda of U.S. Dept. of Education)
Connect with Dustin
Connect with Brian
