Hello, my name is Anwesha Saha. Though my background is in Geography, curiosity in technology pushed me to explore beyond my academic field - from mapping the earth to mapping the world. I started learning HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to understand how websites are structured and how functionality brings a design to life. Later, I picked up PHP basics to understand dynamic websites and how CMS platforms work behind the scenes.
During my final year of university, I joined Digital Polygon as their first trainee. This experience was a turning point in my journey from curiosity into capability. Under the guidance of an experienced team, I strengthened my understanding of web logic, site structure, and the fundamentals of site building.
It was only after building this foundation that I was introduced to Drupal, which opened an entirely new world of possibilities. Later, I joined the IXP Program, a fantastic initiative for beginners, which guided me through Drupal community contribution, teaching me its purpose, importance, and how to effectively get involved.
Learning by Doing: From Migration to Theming
The IXP Program built on my Digital Polygon training, giving me hands-on experience across Drupal site building, theming, and community contribution. The program was structured to help me grow step by step, starting with the basics of site building and moving toward more advanced tasks including theming, content migration, and community contribution.
1. Migrating Content from One Site to Another
One of my first major tasks was content migration. I migrated static pages, news articles, homepage sections, and related media files such as documents, images, and videos from an existing site into a new Drupal setup. This process sharpened my attention to data accuracy and taught me how to preserve relationships such as media attachments and menu links, and how important it is to validate data for accuracy and formatting after migration.
2. Building New Components
I created new Paragraph components with custom fields, integrated them into content types, and styled them using Twig overrides and custom SCSS. Reusability was a key focus—by making these components modular, editors could build flexible page layouts that align content, design, and development requirements without duplicating work.
3. Menus and Taxonomies
I worked on Drupal menus for the header and footer, styling them through Twig template overrides. I also configured taxonomies to organize and classify content, such as categories and tags. These were used together with Views to create dynamic content listings, making the site easier to navigate and content easier to discover.
4. Storybook Integration
Learning Storybook introduced me to component-driven development - an approach that mirrors how Digital Polygon and the Drupal community build for consistency and scale.
By following an atomic design approach (Atoms → Molecules → Organisms), I built reusable UI elements such as styled menu links, buttons, logos, and full header/footer components. I created dummy data files for preview, then integrated these components into Drupal Twig templates, ensuring consistency between Storybook and the live Drupal site. This experience helped me understand component-driven development and how it scales across projects.
5. Contribution to the Drupal Community
The most rewarding part was contributing back to the Drupal community - exploring issue queues, creating patches, and collaborating with maintainers. Getting credited on Drupal.org on a few issues I worked on felt like a big milestone, showing how individual effort can strengthen a global community.
Challenges That Shaped My Growth
- Learning Storybook: At first, understanding how to structure components in isolation felt challenging, but once I saw how easily they integrated with Drupal, it became clear.
- Content Migration: Mapping relationships correctly during migration was complex, but validating every detail helped me build confidence.
- Community Contribution: Working on Drupal.org issues wasn’t just about fixing a bug—it meant learning the contribution workflow and understanding the community’s standards.
Key Lessons Learned
- Reusability is essential—building components and Paragraphs the right way saves time and ensures consistency.
- Content migration requires precision—relationships such as media, menus, and taxonomies are just as important as the content itself.
- Storybook bridges design and development—it makes components scalable, reusable, and future-proof.
- Contribution matters—getting credited on Drupal.org showed me the value of open-source collaboration.
Looking Back
From Geography student to Drupal contributor, the journey has been both challenging and rewarding. Self-learning in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP helped me take my first step into tech, but the hands-on experience at Digital Polygon, turned those skills into confidence.
The IXP Program: My Gateway to Drupal Contribution
The Drupal IXP Program played a crucial role in my growth. While I already had hands-on experience with Drupal basics, the program introduced me to community contribution, teaching me how to pick issues, create patches, collaborate with maintainers, and submit solutions to the global Drupal community.
Through IXP, I gained mentorship and guidance, learned the importance and workflow of open-source contribution, and saw how even small contributions can make a meaningful impact. It gave me the motivation to continue growing as a developer while giving back to the Drupal community.
This journey proved that background doesn’t define potential - curiosity, perseverance, and the willingness to learn do. For beginners, start small, stay curious, and contribute often. Every line of code, every patch, helps us all build better.