The Graceful Exits blog

Wednesday 1: Kevin Bridges, "Drupal 7 entities and fields"

jp.stacey 25 August 2010

Example module
Used to just live in CVS, now on d.o at project/example
Needs help

Install file
No longer need explicit hook-schema - fields API provides it
Revision control no longer needs to be self-rolled

node-example module defines and invokes 3 fields, bundles up a content type and then creates an instance of type node using that bundle.

Field definitions as a structured array
Cardinality is number permitted of this field
Field type - images in core

Define widgets as part of instances
Define displays as part of instances

• Read more

Tuesday 5: Florian Lorétan, "10 Reasons why you should be using features for your Drupal project"

jp.stacey 24 August 2010

A lot of blogposts talking about features recently. It's a wave.

We forget about how good CCK is with its drag and drop
We also forget how hard Views is to understand, but how good it is when you get it
When we show our developers features, they know how problematic config in the database is.

What are features?

They're little cute monsters which come out of eggs. Er, no.

1. Features puts configuration into code

What can be exported: exportables

views
imagecache presets
ctools panels
ctools open layers
rules
blocks (via context)
variables (via strongarm)

• Read more

Tuesday 4: Jakob Persson, "A method for getting early estimates right"

jp.stacey 24 August 2010

Early estimating using prior experience

As you make better estimates the picture comes into focus, and what you find might surprise you.

Forecasts on uncertain specs

Early estimate usually by a single person; in-project done by the whole team

Effort and accuracy - small effort gives you decent accuracy

[We've found this: specs tend to be "fractal" and breaking them down just leads to more accurate small items which total up to very similar to the original estimate]

How made?

Spreadsheet
and dedicated developer

1. Timebox work beforehand

• Read more

Tuesday 3: Poul-Henning Kamp, Varnish HTTP Cache Server

jp.stacey 24 August 2010

Usually writes operating systems, but writing

"Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel"

Content production not new. Not a lot has changed. Text, images, get it together and deliver and replicate. Now we do it with computers, not humans.

Content creation needs
input methods
flexibly typography
cross-referencing
composition rules
user-generated content

Used to be printing needed massive amounts of weight
Now with "the Heidelberg wing" much lighter.

Varnish delivers content fast and reliably.
100,000 requests per second

Setting goals

• Read more

Tuesday keynote: Dries Buytaert, "State of Drupal"

jp.stacey 24 August 2010

"Get ready to dance with the elephants" - that happened

Capgemini intranet - Royal Mail
95,000 employees
$9 billion

Been meeting a number of companies

Turner Broadcasting (Ted Turner)
Working with e.g. Lullabot so people are tangibly benefiting from them moving to Drupal
Problems: Config mgt, Code staging
Everyone has this

NY Stock Exchange
Pulled plug on expensive project with closed-source CMS
trying to hire 50 Drupal people

REI Systems - prompted by govt Drupal adoption, hiring lots of Drupal people

Drupal unstoppable (?)

• Read more

Tuesday 1: Peter Wolanin and Jakob Suchy, "Drupal security for coders and themers"

jp.stacey 24 August 2010

Your own site - you have a duty not just to your data and your users, but also your casual visitors - untrusted sites rapidly get blacklisted by the Internet as a whole

APIs - if you use "known APIs" [what does that mean?] you have security "guarantee" [what does that mean too?] but not if you use other functions.

Resources - drupalsecurityreport.org Cracking Drupal (book recommended by webchick, tech ed by chx)

Across all apps XSS is the largest vuln overall; SQL inj is the next
In Drupal XSS is by far the most common vuln - themers should be most worried

• Read more

Unconference: Andreas Haugstrup, "Drupal for beginners"

jp.stacey 23 August 2010

Really Drupal tips. (Rich: turned into an Agony Aunt session!)

Theming the same content type differently in different locations is hard. But Display Suite is a replacement to Panels that can help.

Can use Panels for complex layouts, but not recommended as a complete replacement for blocks. Any alternative to Panels welcome.

Node Composite alternative to Panels. Easy to use.

Rich: Display suite + context nicer than Panels? Definitely need to try that!

Unconference: Mark Gazel, "Wordpress"

jp.stacey 23 August 2010

Wordpress began as a blogging platform. Best for single-person and small company sites. Can now manage a multi-user network of many sites.

Five-minute installation (but see Hagen's talk) and easy upgrade. Also one-click plugin upgrading

Wordpress spinoffs - microblogging, bbPress, BuddyPress, Gravatar. WP not intended for large scalable websites (although it can do it) but it has more flexible uses.

"Wordpress community involvement? in Drupal sometimes hard to understand how features get into final release. Same?"

• Read more

Unconference: Christian Jul Jensen, "Typo3"

jp.stacey 23 August 2010

Typo3 features

Typoscript is NOT a scripting language. A configuration language. Learn a config language before using the CMS? thinks it's worth it.

Template view- looks like RegEdit! Creating a hierarchical menu - using scripting. Also things like creating users.

List module, like basic Drupal views, but has multiple editing built in.

Templating module, assigning templates to the subpages of given pages. Flat HTML. Define structure in interface. Map fields to... tokens in the templates? This is like blocks in Drupal.

• Read more

Unconference: Hagen Graf, "Drupal, Joomla, Wordpress"

jp.stacey 23 August 2010

Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal

Hagen Graf (writes on all three)

What site is what platform? Hard to tell. Katy Perry, Atlantic Southeast Airlines, Schweizer Illustrierte, etc.

"Have to show us the source!" So does it matter?

Drupal has no showcasing, unlike J and W.

Try to download Drupal 7... Hard to find.

Huge number of modules

Google trends... all except W going down gently, W pretty flatlined.

All three: installation to a content type with an image.

Joomla - smooth, will even create db. Slight glitch removing installation directory. Sample data.

• Read more