My Experience in the Drupal IXP Program with Seed EM
I'm Ángel Daniel Gálvez Posada, and between April and October 2026 I did my internship as a developer at Seed EM. I arrived with a foundation in software development but little experience, and over these months I worked on real projects involving site building, content migration, components and quality control. In this article I share what my time in the Drupal community's IXP program was like and what I learned along the way.
Getting Started in the IXP Program
The IXP (Inexperienced, meaning developers with no prior experience) is a Drupal community initiative that helps developers without professional experience land their first paid job, with the support of mentors.
Taking part in this program through Seed EM allowed me to bring my software development knowledge into a real work environment. It gave me the opportunity to work on projects in the Drupal ecosystem, learn new technologies and understand how web development, content management, migrations and quality assurance fit together.
My experience began in late April, and over the following months I gradually took on different activities and technical challenges. As I progressed, I was able to work on more complex tasks, from page configuration and content management to component development, writing tests and researching the inner workings of Drupal Canvas.
An important part of this process was the mentorship I received from John Camilo Bautista, Kevin Santiago Lopez, Juan Camilo Susa and Harold Moreno Ligarreto. Each of them supported me from a different area and contributed to my learning.
John Camilo provided technical guidance on using software tools, explained concepts to me and helped me carry out tasks on Drupal projects. His advice was especially important on Tecmilenio and on the Early Childhood Center (CPI) project for Tecnológico de Monterrey, where I was able to better understand the technologies involved and move forward with my assigned work.
Kevin Santiago helped me understand the fundamentals and processes of quality assurance (QA). Thanks to his explanations, I gained a better understanding of how testing works, particularly visual regression testing. I later applied this knowledge at AcceNorte, comparing environments and identifying visual differences.
Juan Camilo gave me technical guidance on backend topics, especially during the upgrade of the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano website from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11. His support helped me better understand the technical side of this process and some of the challenges involved in migrations and site configuration.
Harold, for his part, helped me resolve technical questions and explained fundamentals of Drupal, its architecture and how it works. His guidance allowed me to build a more complete picture of the platform and better understand how its different components relate to each other.
My Experience on the Projects
Tecnológico de Monterrey Early Childhood Center
One of the projects I worked on was the Early Childhood Center (CPI) for Tecnológico de Monterrey, developed in collaboration with Playful. My work focused mainly on Drupal Canvas, where I helped build and validate components using React, TSX (TypeScript XML) and Tailwind CSS, based on designs created in Figma.
I also worked on integrating components with content coming from Drupal, reviewing features, and writing and running frontend and backend test cases. Part of my responsibility was to verify that implementations met the requirements of the user stories and visually matched the designs on both desktop and mobile devices.
In addition, I researched the inner workings of Drupal Canvas and Single Directory Components (SDC). Based on this research, I built a technical support tool that helped me organize and make the most of what I had learned. This experience helped me dig deeper into the relationship between frontend development, components and content administration in Drupal.
Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano
On the Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano project, I supported one of the lead developers, especially during the upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 11. I collaborated on content migration tasks and on configuring some pages of the new site. This experience gave me hands-on insight into the challenges of working across different versions of Drupal and showed me how important it is to transfer and organize information correctly.
Universidad Tecmilenio
Another important project was Universidad Tecmilenio, also in collaboration with Playful. There I worked on loading and organizing academic content, mainly master's degrees and specializations. To speed up the creation of programs and their related information, I developed a solution based on YAML (YAML Ain't Markup Language) files, aiming to structure the data better and reduce repetitive work.
Beyond content management, I worked on resolving issues through Jira. These tasks included fixing translations, checking links and buttons, adjusting components and resolving content inconsistencies. I also took part in functional and visual validations. One recurring problem was that some programs did not save changes correctly and threw timeout errors. In those situations, I had to review the behavior, reproduce the problem, investigate its possible causes, and either fix it when it was within my reach or follow up on the issue.
AcceNorte
At AcceNorte I mainly worked on quality assurance through visual regression testing. I compared the development and production environments to identify differences in pages and components, also reviewing how they displayed across different resolutions and devices. This allowed me to identify issues that were reported in GitLab to be fixed. I used Playwright to support these validations and detect inconsistencies. I also studied Cypress to broaden my knowledge of test automation, although I did not use it for the visual regression tests performed.
Banca de las Oportunidades
My involvement with Banca de las Oportunidades was more limited and focused on visual and content validation of the site. I also helped review page elements and organize and manually save the content for the news section.
My Contribution to the Drupal Community
In addition to my work on Seed EM projects, I had the opportunity to contribute to the Drupal community by translating modules. Through Localize Drupal, I reviewed and translated text strings to help make Drupal features available in Spanish.
This experience showed me another side of the ecosystem: the collaborative work behind the tools we use every day. I came to understand that contributing to an open source project is not only about building features; you can also contribute through translations, text reviews and other tasks that improve the experience of users and developers.
I found it especially rewarding to contribute to an international community with my own knowledge while learning how localization contributions are organized. My contributions and translations are available on my Localize Drupal profile.
What I Learned
During this experience I strengthened my knowledge of Drupal 7 and Drupal 11, Site Building, content management and migration, and the configuration of pages, modules and components. I also went deeper into Drupal Canvas, PHP and Twig, as well as backend tools and concepts such as Composer and Symfony within the Drupal ecosystem.
In quality assurance, I learned to write and run test cases, validate user stories, identify functional and visual bugs, and verify the fixes applied. Playwright and Jira became key tools in my day-to-day work. I also learned to spot repetitive processes that could be optimized, as happened with creating programs from YAML files at Tecmilenio.
Beyond the technologies, one of my biggest lessons was understanding that software development takes much more than implementing a feature. You need to understand the requirements, investigate when something doesn't work, document problems, verify solutions and collaborate with other people to deliver quality results.
Conclusion and Advice for Anyone Starting Out with Drupal
My experience in the IXP program with Seed EM allowed me to grow technically and professionally, work on real projects and get to know different areas of the Drupal ecosystem. Working with content management, migrations, component development, quality testing and translations helped me build a broader view of web development.
I also learned to tackle technical problems more independently, to research before looking for a solution and to make the most of guidance from more experienced people. The support I received and the chance to apply my knowledge on real projects were essential to my learning process.
To anyone who wants to get started with Drupal, I would recommend first building solid foundations, practicing with real sites or personal projects and learning to use the official documentation. From there, you can move on to modules, migrations, component development and testing. I would also encourage you to get involved in the community, even with small translations or contributions.
You don't need to know everything from the start: what matters is staying curious, practicing constantly and being willing to learn from your mistakes.
Published by Ángel Daniel Gálvez Posada, Seed EM · .