Technology is the devil, because it has a 1000 names! Ok, I just made that up, but it does sometimes feel like it.

Situation

Got hired as a web developer in Tokyo, working for a golf media company with an intriguing side-business: arranging golf reservations for international clients visiting Japan. After eight months, I transitioned to remote work and returned to Osaka.

Opportunity - Stepping away from your comfort zone

With the variety in client needs, including those using platforms like Shopify, WIX, Drupal, and Zoho CRM integrations, it was an opportunity to learn more and turning this into a rewarding, skill-building experience.

My Challenges:

• I had absolutely zero to some knowledge of the technologies used.
• My experience:
  • Once or twice set up Drupal for fun, but quit due to personal reasons, was not much into PHP back in the day, but more into C# and ASP.NET.
• Worst part? I work all alone, just me, myself & I and a steep learning curve! (much less now though, よかった!)
• I was facing all those technologies at the same time, it was going to be an epic battle!

The Drama:

• Yes, I admit I did bring a site once or twice down for half an hour or so lol. Well good thing is...I did create back-ups. However in all fairness, the friggin' button said "Update". Yeah sure I good fooled at the start. It happens, no-one is perfect.
• Understandably, this caused obviously drama. I needed to step up and learn these technologies on the fly.

My Drama:

Anyway, moving on I figured out the whole setup and understood how "views", "blocks", "displays" and such work. Figured out how to safely update all 199 (yes, one hundred and ninety nine) modules with composer and drush, instead of pushing a lovely button (twice, but second time was by accident, got bumped on the arm.)

Making it short, upgraded Drupal 9 to 10, not sure if I want to go through all of that again when upgrading to Drupal 11.

• Maybe better create the whole site from scratch and use different naming convention.
• Previously 3 different developers, before me, worked on the same site at the same time, without communication you will also have 3 different styles.
• All above was just PHP, so I will be skipping Shopify/Liquid and Zoho CRM/Deluge and other 3rd party apps.
• Yeah, ok I do not have drama, never a fan of it, and if so, overcome it as soon as possible.

Solution

There’s not much you can do besides:

• Learning on the fly.
• Watching YouTube videos or buying Udemy courses (not all is good for everyone, use your common sense! I truly can't stress that enough.)
• Using your own logic and common sense (from what you already learned, the basic is the same it might just come under a different name.)
• For some; technology is the devil, because it has a 1000 names, lol. Oh well, this would not make sense to many I suppose.

My Process (not yours) and achievements:

1. PHP Sites:

   • Learn the hosting party's setup and operations, you can get out lots of information, IF they have good documentation ELSE excellent support, if only both!
   • Used "composer" and "drush," which made life easier with modern sites.
   • Dealt with a nightmare project:
     • PHP 5.4.45 with CakePHP 1.3 in Docker that only supports PHP 5.6 and up.
     • Still have nightmares about this project!
     • Did not use composer this time, cannot really remember why but I was avoiding it in this Legacy setup.

2. Drupal 9:

   • Tackled concepts like "views," "blocks," and "displays."
   • Updated 199 modules (removed a lot only to discover dependencies!).
   • Successfully upgraded Drupal 9 to Drupal 10.
   • Considered redoing the site from scratch towards Drupal 11, but I won't create it from scratch, it works and I just slowly prepare it.
   • With the experienced gained I created a fully functional Drupal E-commerce site.

3. Shopify and WIX:

   • Those were actually a breeze with a low learning curve compared to Drupal, just understand the limitations and the pricing.

4. Zoho CRM/Books/Flow/etc:

   • Yup, still having fun with this one lol. In all fairness, every CRM has it quirks.
   • Actually even got a bit frustated with Zoho CRM and decided to make it work headless on a localhost (playground) using their REST API and OAuth 2.0, to realise that I should just actually not continue with it. First of all it is above my paygrade and they never requested such functionality anyway.

Closing Thought

During my time Tokyo and Chiba I met interesting and fun people (true though, because I really do not care about the annoying ones) started to play golf and continuing it here in Osaka.

Feel free to contact me if you like to play -a game! Might become après-golf because I am not that good.

Received some old gear from my family in law and therefor I use:

• Miura MC-101 for my irons,
• Scotty Cameron putter - Coronado Two,
• Tony Milled by Oda T-205 (I like this putter,)
• Callaway Big Bertha driver,
• Royal Collection Sand wedge FP 6.5 Special Groove Grinded by Crews,
• and the only club I could afford to buy, a PING i525 Utility wedge.