any advice for CMS for Developers practicum (coding theme from scratch)?

[Jnix284]

What did you learn from completing the practicum that you wish you knew when you started?

[BFisher · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jnix284! Great question. Brooke here, Developer Professor with HubSpot Academy.  Creating a practicum is a big undertaking, but we, as graders, are excited for every submission we receive. When we're grading your practicum, we're looking for a few key things: 

- The files are all your own

- You have demonstrated a clear history of working on the files yourself

- You've created a folder structure 

- You include items in your fields.json that you then call in your CSS

- You use repeating fields inside your module

@BBrophy and I did a Practicum Exam Prep last year for WCW 21 which you can view on the HubSpot Developers YouTube page. Also, please reach out if you have more questions! 

Thanks 🙂

[Anton · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jnix284 

the practicum is awesome to get a starting point on developing custom themes/modules.

If you want to get much further my advice for you would be: Don't think as a developer. HubSpot is a marketing tool and most users don't have the technical knowledge (and many of them don't care about it).

You should try to get in their shoes and think about the easiest possible way to achieve a goal.

For example(from the marketers point-of-view): I want to build many pages with a lot of personalizations/smart-rules and want to save time. 

From the developers pov: The marketer wants to save time on personalization. I should create custom modules for the needed parts and create a preconfigured (dnd)-template where he a) only needs to copy/paste the content and b) can save time while creating personalizations/smart-content.

Because: If you've got a card-thing with an dnd-image, a rich-text and a button - the marketer needs to create 3 smart-rules for every "card". So if there are 3 cards in a row, he'll need to create 9 rules. This is - imo - a huge amount of time invest and possible setup failures.

But if you - the developer would combine those three elements into one custom module - the marketer would only need to create onle smart-rule for each card. So less time and less possible failures.

hope this helps

best, 

Anton

[Jnix284]

Thank you @Anton , this is super helpful, especially since I am more of a "marketer" than a "developer" and have been trying to come up with a game plan for how to tackle this.

I do have a lot of html, css and js experience, but HubL is fairly new to me and my exposure is limited to editing what other developers have already created.

I'm committed to the challenge of creating a theme for the practicum, not really sure that I would offer it in the marketplace though. I completed the original Design certification back in 2016 and it was a huge accomplishment at the time; I've had my mind set on CMS for Developers since it came out and have been putting in the work to get it done - it's definitely more of a personal goal than anything else. 🤞

[Anton]

This is awesome @Jnix284 🎉 Marketers who can/understand code are quite rare.

Yeah - the certificate was quite different back then. Was it with the V1 design-manager (grey version) or already the new/current one? Don't remember when the current one was released.

Editing other devs code/Hubl can be really challenging because there are many different aproaches out there. Some prefer to put all settings at the top like

{% set NAME = FUNCTION %}
...
<div class="{{NAME}}">
...
</div>
...

others like to put everything next to each other like

...
{% set NAME = FUNCTION %}
<div class="{{NAME}}">
...
</div>
...

I've seen many things in marketplace themes. Many of them were great aproaches and helped me to find "my way to go".

But - it's always a challenge to try to understand them 🙂 The best way would - possibly be - to stick one theme for almost every client. And since you're putting out your own -  best way to go, since you know how everything is connected. Tipp: Do yourself a favor and make it as easy to maintain/changable as it get. 

Just a slight glimpse of a monster json/theme I'm doing currently:

Over 600 lines button-settings, 1000 lines form settings, 2000 lines blog settings, over 300 lines for socials in the fields.json. And I'm not finished yet 🤐

[Jnix284]

@Anton  yes, it was original v1 design manager and it had to be a fully-functioning published micro-site. It was definitely the most difficult certification (until HubSpot Reporting came along)...

I am currently working with maka Agency out of Munich to offer tech support for their theme, which has been really helpful in building my knowledge for theme development. This is also why it is a personal goal, I do not wish to compete! 🙂

I really appreciate your insights, I'm a little more motivated and a little less afraid now. Thanks again!

[BFisher · Accepted solution]

Hi @Jnix284! Great question. Brooke here, Developer Professor with HubSpot Academy.  Creating a practicum is a big undertaking, but we, as graders, are excited for every submission we receive. When we're grading your practicum, we're looking for a few key things: 

- The files are all your own

- You have demonstrated a clear history of working on the files yourself

- You've created a folder structure 

- You include items in your fields.json that you then call in your CSS

- You use repeating fields inside your module

@BBrophy and I did a Practicum Exam Prep last year for WCW 21 which you can view on the HubSpot Developers YouTube page. Also, please reach out if you have more questions! 

Thanks 🙂