fidzu : Drupal

I've been involved with Drupalcamp Colorado since 2007. Sometimes I've had a significant role, other times I've taken a bit more of a back seat. I was also pretty heavily involved in Drupalcon when it was in Denver. Over the last 8 months or so, I've had quite a bit more insight into the Cons themselves through my interaction with the Drupal Association. This last year I've been the project manager for Drupalcamp Colorado 2014. This has left me with with some personal insights that might help others wanting to run a camp.

Agile has become a big buzz word recently in the project management world. In this post, I'll try to clarify where some of the lines are being blurred between terms like Agile and Scrum, and what some of these terms actually mean.

Keep in mind while reading this that I am primarly trained in Scrum, so my descriptions of other Agile methodologies are only decently informed. :)

What is Agile Project Management?

From the ever-present wikipedia:

Swiss knife of Drupal 8's REST api

Hi! Drupal Community.

As we all are working very hard for upcoming major release I am feeling excited to write this. This blog is all about REST Export feature of Drupal 8' view. Let me first brief you about what is the REST api and than I will explain you how REST Export is important for building custom REST api for your Drupal 8.

REST (Representational State Transfer) is a web service architecture to expose your resources to outer world. It follows http architecture to expose the resources of your web site i.e you have GET, POST, PATCH,DELETE etc methods to manipulate resources with out web interface. In context to Drupal , a node will have GET method that will require node id and it will return you details related to that node in XML, JSON or HAL + JSON format. If you have ever used REST api for some famous web services like twitter, facebook then you will find those API very well defined for example GET on /status will give you current status details and GET on /status/comments will give you comments posted on your current status. In context to Drupal we should get node details with GET on /node/{id} and comments on particular node with GET on /node/{id}/comments. In Drupal 8 we have first REST endpoint but we don't have second. Drupal has opt for different approach. In Drupal you can use contextual filters on view to filter content as per your parameters passed in URL . The same concept we can applies to REST Export . We can attach a REST Export to a view that only show comments with contextual filter with nodeID as parameter. So the rest export will return XML or JSON for comments related to particular node.

Here is a screenshot for it.

We can use REST Export with taxonomy_terms for particular vocabulary as parameter. This concept will make Drupal 8 REST api robust and it also provides good example where view modules and REST module works to gather to provide developer flexibility to develop custom REST api for their Drupal site.

Tags:

• Drupal Planet

I had this checklist documented internally, but I keep referring back to it so I'll make it available here in case anyone else needs it. The idea here is to document a minimum (not an ideal) set of modules and tasks which I do for almost all projects.

Questions to ask of a client at the project launch

• Is your site bilingual? If so is there more than one domain?
• What type of compatibility do you need: tablet, mobile, which versions of IE?
• How do you see your post-launch support and core/module update contract?
• Do you need SSL support?
• What is your hosting arrangement?
• Do you have a contact form?
• What is your anti-spam method? Note that CAPTCHA is no longer useful; I like Mollom, but it's giving me more and more false positives with time.
• Is WYSIWYG required? I strongly suggest using Markdown instead.
• Confirm that all emails are sent in plain text, not HTML. If you're sending out HTML mail, do it right.
• Do you need an on-site search utility? If so, some thought, and resources, need to go into it or it will be frustrating.
• What kind of load do you expect on your site (anonymous and admin users)? This information can be used for load testing.
• If you already have a site, should old paths of critical content map to paths on the new site?
• Should users be allowed to create accounts (with spam considerations, and see if an admin should approve them).

Sprint Zero: starting the project

Here is what should get done in the first Agile sprint, aka Sprint Zero:

• If you are using continuous integration, a Jenkins job for tracking the master branch: this job should fail if any test fails on the codebase, or if quality metrics (code review, for example, or pdepend metrics) reach predefined thresholds.
• A Jenkins job for pushing to dev. This is triggered by the first job if tests pass. It pushed the new code to the dev environment, and updates the dev environment's database. The database is never cloned; rather, a site deployment module is used.
• An issue queue is set up and the client is given access to it, and training on how to use it.
• A wiki is set up.
• A dev environment is set up. This is where the code gets pushed automatically if all tests pass.
• A prod environment is set up. This environment is normally updated manually after each end of sprint demo.
• A git repo is set up with a basic Drupal site.
• A custom module is set up in sites/*/modules/custom: this is where custom function go.
• A site deployment module in sites/all/modules/custom. All deployment-related code and dependencies go here. A .test file and an .install should be included.
• A site development module is set up in sites/*/modules/custom, which is meant to contain all modules required or useful for development, as dependencies.
• A custom theme is created.
• An initial feature is created in sites/*/modules/features. This is where all your features will be added.
• A "sites/*/modules/patches" folder is created (with a README.txt file, to make sure it goes into git). This is where core and contrib patches should go. Your site's maintainers should apply these patches when core or contrib modules are updated. Patch names here should include the node id and comment number on Drupal.org.

Basic module list (always used)

• views
• context
• strongarm
• admin_menu
• markdown
• transliteration
• globalredirect
• redirect
• config_builder, almost always useful to create a single form allowing clients to change site variables.
• context
• features
• logintoboggan

Development modules (not enabled on production)

I normally create a custom development module with these as dependencies:

• diff
• devel
• realistic_dummy_content_api (part of realistic_dummy_content)
• coder
• context_ui (part of context)
• views_ui (part of views)
• devel
• devel_themer
• masquerade
• search_krumo
• simpletest_turbo
• devel_generate (part of devel)
• config_builder_ui (part of config_builder)

Multilingual modules

• i18n
• potx
• l10n_update

Launch checklist

• Design a custom 404, error and maintenance page.
• Path, alias and permalink strategy. (Might require pathauto.)
• Think of adding revisions to content types to avoid clients losing their data.
• Don't display errors on production.
• Optimize CSS, JS and page caching.
• Views should be cached.
• System messages are properly themed.
• Prevent very simple passwords.
• Using syslog instead of dblog on prod

In conclusion

Most shops, and most developers, have some sort of checklist like this. Mine is not any better or worse than most, but can be a good starting point. Another note: I've seen at least three Drupal teams try, and fail, to implement a "Drupal Starter kit for Company XYZ" and keep it under version control. The problem with that approach, as opposed to a checklist, is that it's not lightweight enough: it is a software product which needs maintenance, and after a while no one maintains it.

Walkhub

• You've been on the show before to talk about walkthrough.it, but some things have changed since then. So, can you give us an overview of what Walkhub is?
• What are walkthroughs?
• What is your pricing model on Walkhub?
• You're in the process of a second Indiegogo campaign, but what was the first one for?
  • How did your first Indiegogo campaign go?
• What is the current Indiegogo camaipn for?
  • What's the status on that?
• Why are you doing another campaign? Why aren't you out of BETA yet? What's the story there?

AMA

• You just did an AMA on Reddit yesterday. How did that go?
• What were some common questions? Or ones that stuck out to you?

The Drupal 7 Panelizer Module allows you to panelize (or use panels) for any entity type on your Drupal 7 site. This allows you to change the layout of a node page, user page, or any other type of entity that you can think of. Although it's a little more complicated to set up, the Panelizer module allows you to set up a slimmed down panels interface for other site managers to use.

For more info about the project and it's progress see the post on groups.drupal.org.

From volunteering your time at events to making a donation, there are plenty of ways to give back to the Drupal project - but by and large, one of the most important things individual Drupalers can do is donate their expertise and become a mentor.

Currently, we have only 24 mentors signed up, and we need 40 mentors to make DrupalCon Amsterdam a success. We're anticipating several hundred individuals sign up for to join the sprint on Friday and mentorship is a great way to help people new to contributing learn Drupal and, eventually, contribute back valuable time, resources, and code to the project.

To become a mentor, click here to sign up. We need mentors for all levels of Drupal expertise, from teaching absolute Drupal beginners to assisting advanced users how to navigate the Drupal.org issue queue.

Need a ticket to attend?

There are a limited number of free DrupalCon ticket coupons available for people who sign up to mentor, and the deadline to sign up and request a ticket is Friday, 1 August. Don't miss out on an opportunity to help others and get your ticket sponsored!

We're looking forward to the Amsterdam Mentored Code Sprint and the First-Time Sprinter Workshop. We hope that you'll join us there!

--
Cathy Theys (YesCT)
Brian Gillbert (realityloop)
Ruben Teijeiro (rteijeiro)
DrupalCon Amsterdam Sprint Leads

We're thrilled to announce the addition of four new staff members to the Drupal Association team. Please help us give a warm welcome to Oliver Davies, Archie Brentano, Phillip Bulebar, and Ryan Aslett!

Oliver (opdavies) started with the Drupal Association in May of this year as a Drupal.org Developer. He has been active in the Drupal community for several years, has contributed numerous patches and modules, and prior to working with the Drupal Association, he contributed to the accessibility of the project. Since joining several months ago, Oliver has already made tremendous contributions to the Association and has seized the opportunity to give back to the community in any way he can.

Archie Brentano (isntall) is the Association's new DevOps Engineer. Previously, Archie worked as a Multnomah County System Administrator, focusing on enterprise Drupal sites on Amazon Web Services infrastructure. Archie will be concentrating on the infrastructure side of Drupal.org, and has joined the organization because he was impressed by the Drupal community and saw a perfect opportunity to learn more about Drupal and become better involved.

Phillip Bulebar (pbulebar) comes to the Drupal Association with a long and successful track record in marketing and web content management. As the Association's new Content Manager, Phillip will be creating and optimizing content on Drupal.org to help ensure it meets the needs of visitors. Prior to joining the Association, Phillip held management roles for companies including Nike, Nautilus and other specialty retailers, with much of his focus on creating, delivering, analyzing and optimizing digital content.

Ryan Aslett (mixologic) is joining the Drupal Association as the organization's first QA Engineer. Previously, Ryan worked as a freelance full stack Drupal developer in the Portland, Oregon area; he has a wide variety of experience in everything from working with Perl to engineering composting toilets in Ecuador and Colombia. At the Association, Ryan will be improving BDD tests for Drupal.org websites, and we're thrilled to welcome him on board.

Please help us give a warm welcome to our four newest staff members. We're thrilled to have them on board and know they'll do great things for the Drupal community.

A month or so ago, this question came up in a LinkedIn Drupal group:

I wanted to post this here, since this is more of my sounding board for the Drupal community, but the details are on my personal blog: starting October 6, I will be working for Acquia as a Technical Architect in their Professional Services group!

What does this mean for this site/blog, Hosted Apache Solr, and Server Check.in? Not much, actually-they will continue on, likely at the same pace of development they've been for the past year or so (I'll work on them when I get an odd hour or two...). I am still working on completing Ansible for DevOps, and will actually be accelerating my writing schedule prior to starting the new job, since I'll have a little wedge of free time (a.k.a. unemployment!) between Mercy (my current full-time employer) and Acquia.