Site administrator

Overview

Version 2 of the popular Views module was rewritten from scratch to make it even more flexible and powerful. With more flexibility comes more complexity and quite some time was spent working out a user interface that could expose all these powerful features without becoming an enormous scrolling form. This session retraces the process that led to the current interface, showcasing how developers and interface designers worked together to find a working solution to a complex problem.

Agenda

- Views1 to Views 2: adding multiple dimensions of infinite flexibility.
- Concepts, wireframes, and other false starts.
- Two basic concepts: sentences and summaries.
- The end result. Do you like it? What could be better? How can we translate the good bits to other use cases?

Goals

First of all, this presentation wants to provide an overview of the design process for this particular user interface. The larger picture is that the web is rapidly evolving from websites into web applications. The Drupal UI toolkit has to be extended with smarter and more complex form widgets to build the interfaces for these web apps. Ideally the good stuff in Views 2 can find it's way into other Drupal applications as well.

Resources
Bring your own feedback on the new interface! What do you like, what do you think could be improved?

Overview

Over the past few months, we've seen a number of major drupal site rollouts that make extensive use of Panels2 (See, for example, http://drupal.org/node/241344 and http://drupal.org/node/242993). We've also seen a few modules implement the Panels API in rather different ways - most notably, Advanced Profile Kit and Organic Groups Panels - that hint at how flexible Panels can be.

We'll start this session by highlighting these different Panels implementations and providing a birds-eye view of how Panels' moving parts work. We want to make sure attendees have a good sense of what Panels2 can do now - because the second half of the presentation is all about the future of Panels - otherwise known as Panels3.

Panels3 isn't so much about changing the data model (that part already works pretty well) as changing the API and interface. One good way to think about this difference is to consider Panels2's limitations on who can use it. Right now, it's very difficult to scale down the power of Panels to a level that's appropriate for normal users. Panels3 aims to break down that barrier. We'll spend the remainder of the session overviewing some of the current plans for how Panels3 might do that, as well as noting attendee suggestions for some of the large-scale directions we might consider.

Agenda

* Briefly overview Panels2 to bring everyone up to speed on the most recent developments.
* Provide some concrete examples of ways that the Panels API is currently being implemented.
* Present some of the current plans for the future development of Panels
* Gather participant reactions to the proposed ideas, and take general input on possible directions to go as well

Goals

Participants should expect to leave the session with a grasp of Panels' capabilities in the present, and a sense of what to expect in the future.

Resources

None needed. Just bring yourself!

Overview

The Context and Spaces modules are tools to make complex site building tasks easier. This session will cover the approach of the Context and Spaces suites, and show developers how they can be used and extended. The examples in the presentation will focus on 'Communities of Practice'-style online collaboration, Sites-within-sites, and Intranet projects.

Background

The Context suite provides a way of mapping various architectures on top of Drupal's components. Allowing developers to define what panels, views, content-types, menus, blocks, etc comprise the recognizable 'sections' of their sites. Spaces extends this concept by integrating with Organic Groups. This allows you to associate 'sections' with groups and provides a way to enabled and customize these features on a group by group basis.

Agenda

• Introduction to Context and how it lets you map your client's IA to Drupal's IA.
• Context_ui in practice, moving beyond admin/build/blocks.
• Spaces for online collaboration, extending OG and giving groups the tools they want.
• Using Context and Spaces to extend your site as a non-coder, in ways that non-coders couldn't do before.
• Real live usage: Sites that use spaces to provide the right stuff for online collaboration.

Goals

To give developers and advanced Drupal administrators an idea of the advantages of using context and spaces on their projects. We'll review the standard set of problems the context and spaces aim to address and look at sites where it's been used.

Resources

http://drupal.org/project/context
http://drupal.org/project/spaces
http://www.developmentseed.org/tags/context-ui

 
Introducing Ubercart:
Where it is and where it's headed...

Overview

Ubercart is an exciting e-commerce module package for Drupal. It is a flexible, easy to use system that is already working across the web to sell physical goods, file downloads, site memberships, node access, and much more! This session will be all about exposure... presenting as much of Ubercart to as many new (and experienced) users as possible. The nature and size of the module package means there is always more to learn and share, and we couldn't be more excited about the rapid pace of the Drupal 6 migration.

The session will briefly cover the project's history, basic feature set, and points of integration with Drupal and other contributed modules. It will then showcase some of the advanced features Ubercart provides with demonstrations for setting up dynamic shipping quotes, selling paid file downloads, and selling role promotions. Each of these will be accompanied with real life use cases and demonstrations on live sites where possible.

The formal session will wrap up with a word about Ubercart's development roadmap. In Drupal 5, a foundation was laid in both code and community development. In Drupal 6, we'll focus on optimization - refining the core, making it easier for developers to contribute, and taking advantage of Drupal 6's updated APIs wherever possible. Work on a D6 compatible Uber Tuber is well underway and will be reported on in this session.

If times permits, the session will close with a question and answer period.

As always, the developers are available after the session for further inquiries and are always interested in meeting new people. Feel free to stop any of the Uberdevs in the halls for a word or a high five.

Agenda

* Brief history of Ubercart.
* Ubercart features overview.
* Integration with Drupal core and contributed modules.
* Configuration demonstrations and examples:
  - Advanced shipping with Workflow-ng
  - File downloads
  - Role promotions
  - Setting up PayPal
* Development roadmap for Drupal 6 and beyond.
* Q/A if time permits.

Goals

Session attendees should leave with a broad understanding of what Ubercart is and what it enables them to do. Attendees will gain an initial familiarity with various parts of the administrative interfaces through the demonstrations, and they should know where to go to find help when they start their next Ubercart project. Finally, everyone will be brought up to speed on the current state of Ubercart development and find out how they can get involved!

Resources

* Ubercart project page - http://drupal.org/project/ubercart
* Community site/support forums - http://www.ubercart.org
* Documentation - http://www.ubercart.org/docs
* Live sites directory - http://www.ubercart.org/site
* Livetest (front end demo) - http://livetest.ubercart.org
* Admin demo - http://demo.ubercart.org
* Development roadmap - http://www.ubercart.org/forum/development/5115/...

More resources to follow... check back for updates!

Related sessions

Drupallers interested in more of the Drupal 6 work should consider attending at least the first part of the Ubercart in Drupal 6 session.

We'll also be performing A Hands On Guide to Module Development in which we will discuss the things we've done wrong and are starting to do right in module development. The session will include an example of developing a module that integrates with Ubercart.

Overview
The MySQL Server is a very widely used open source database system and often used as the storage backend for Drupal sites.
Creating backups and maintaining a secure installations are two very common tasks for any Drupal administrator.

In this talk, Lenz will provide useful hints and suggestions on how to improve the security of a MySQL installation and how to properly perform backups of the databases and tables. The session will cover both tools that are included in the MySQL server/distribution as well as common tools/facilities provided by the operating system (Linux in particular).

Agenda

• Improving MySQL Server security
  • On the server side
  • On the OS level
• MySQL Backup methods
  • Logical
  • Physical

Goals
Users attending this session should take home some useful hints on how to secure their MySQL installations and how to perform proper backup.

Overview
MySQL is a popular open source database system and often used as the backend for Drupal installations. This session will give an overview about different solutions and technologies available to make a MySQL Server system highly available.

After the theoretical part, a practical demonstration of a HA cluster for Drupal will be performed. With the help of Red Hat Cluster Suite, we will build a HA solution using MySQL replication. If time permits, we will then extend the solution to use shared storage device.

Agenda

• Introduction to HA, Terminology and general concepts
• Overview: MySQL HA solutions
• Replication: Topologies
• Heartbeat, Block device replication (DRBD)
• Shared storage/SAN
• MySQL Cluster
• MySQL Proxy
• Open HA Cluster
• Red Hat Cluster Suite (incl. practical demonstration)

Goals
Attendees will gain more insight into how MySQL Server setups can be made more fault-tolerant and how to ensure high availability. The practical part will provide an insight into how the RHEL Cluster Suite works, what you need to build a High Availability solution and configuration basics.

Overview

iwanttospeak.net is a worldwide language learning community. From the initial idea to its beta launch only a few weeks passed. This shows Drupals power and flexibility in "rapid prototyping". The goals were: Possible support of all world languages (managed by the community itself), Private messages, Custom User Profiles, easy but failsafe geographical tagging of users for a worldwide proximity search, ...

Agenda

* Rapid Prototyping to speed up developement
* Customizing Themes and Modules
* Multilingual support
* Geotagging of Users and worldwide proximity search
* Usability improvements

Goals

During this session we want to share our experience using Drupals army of contributed modules for „rapid prototyping“. We also would like to discuss, which contributed modules are essential for developing websites with Drupal. We think that knowing a number of contributed „keymodules“ is absolutely essential for developing websites with Drupal.

We will show how we used the Bio module for collecting all user related information during the registration process and storing this information as nodes.

A key feature of iwanttospeak.net is the worldwide proximity search for users. We will show how we used Googles API for the geospatial information and how we use this information to calculate the distance between users worldwide.

iwanttospeak.net is currently available in 9 languages (including Russian, Hungarian, German, Italian). All translations were contributed by members of the iwanttospeak.net language community with little technical knowledge and no Drupal experience. We will demonstrate how we used i18n module and a slightly modified version of the Localization client Module to let users directly translate the interface.

Resources

www.iwanttospeak.net

Overview

Messaging and Notifications are two complete frameworks for handling subscriptions, notifications about site events, or simply sending out messages using any kind of delivery method. The goal of this presentation is to show the new developments we've been building on top of these frameworks and the new and exciting possibilities that have happened in just the past couple of months since the first beta was introduced at DrupalCon Boston.

Background

Your Drupal site is generating all kinds of mail for all kinds of reasons: You have giant announcement list, a few dozen group discussions, automated content notifications, send-to-friend messages, petitions and postcards.
Now there is the Messaging framework that attempts to abstract all the needs of other modules regarding the sending of user messages, adding also a centralized way to manage all your message templates, filtering, and delivery settings. The Messaging framework accepts different kinds of plug-ins for different sending methods, like different email modules (mimemail, phpmailer), SMS, web notifications, etc..
The Notifications framework, which in turn uses Messaging as the delivery layer, attempts to simplify building subscriptions-like systems in Drupal. It is a collection of modules that provide a core set of notification types and developers API for building specialized user interfaces, use multiple message delivery methods (including email, sms and IM) and developing custom subscription types.

Agenda

* Moving beyond 'e-mail only'; let the users decide how to interact with your site.
* Enabling round-trip email discussions for any content type or topic
* The Messaging Framework - More than just email, IM & SMS plugins.
* Building on the Messaging framework: free message templating and sending for other modules
* Extending the framework with your own modules or distribution types
* Notifications modules - How to configure & use subscriptions and notifications.
* Integration example: Organic Groups now using the Notifications framework
* Real life usage: Some examples of live sites using this solution.

Goals

* Show you we can move beyond the mail only paradigm to sending and receiving messages through different methods.
* Raise awareness about new and exciting possibilities for user interaction or why just sending emails is not enough nowadays.
* Let other developers know how they can build on this framework and abstract message sending from their modules.
* Overview for site builders of how to set up a full featured subscriptions/notifications solution
* Present the latest developments built on these two frameworks and some new plug-in modules

Resources

http://drupal.org/project/messaging
http://drupal.org/project/notifications
http://www.developmentseed.org/tags/messaging

Overview

The Facebook Platform allows anyone to create applications which tightly integrate with the Facebook.com website. These Applications can write content to a Facebook user's Profile, News Feed, and also Canvas Pages. This content can be as rich and complex as any website, so Drupal is a natural choice for developing on this platform.

This session will introduce the Drupal for Facebook project, and the best ways to use it. We will include a demo of one or more live Facebook Applications powered by Drupal and show some of the basic configuration behind them. And we'll discuss some of the differences of developing for Canvas Pages versus regular web pages.

Agenda

* Brief introduction to the Facebook API
* Brief introduction to Drupal for Facebook
* Demo of live Facebook Application
* Behind the scenes configuration of that Application
* Canvas Pages (FBML) vs. HTML
* Question and Answer

Goals

This session will give a basic understanding of the Facebook Platform for those new to it. We'll talk about why one might make a Facebook Application a part of a Drupal-powered website; or why one might build a Facebook App from scratch using Drupal.

We'll also demonstrate how the Drupal for Facebook modules work. Those familiar with Drupal will leave with a sense of how easy (or difficult) it will be to configure one of these applications.

Resources

* Facebook Platform
* Drupal for Facebook project
* Drupal for Facebook canvas pages
* Drupal for Facebook HTML pages

Slides
http://www.drupalforfacebook.org/book/export/s5/1074

Overview

Drupal 7 will feature a newly rewritten database layer providing improved database abstraction, portability, and scalability features. This session will cover the thinking and architecture behind the new layer, with an eye toward understanding how it fits into the larger scheme of high-performance Drupal sites. There will be some discussion of code, as well as words of advice for others looking to revamp one of Drupal's core systems.

There will be some code in this session, but you should not need to be a hard-core coder to follow it. This session will also serve as a lead-in to this code track session, which is aimed more at programmers.

Agenda

* Database abstraction: Why it's hard and even an unsolvable problem.
* The old Drupal approach, and why it's not good.
* The new Drupal approach, and why it's awesome.
* Leveraging the database on your own deployments.
* Request for feedback on some of the more big-iron-targeted parts of the new feature set.
* Recommendations for other core developers on how to (not) revamp Drupal subsystems.

Goals

After attending this session, you should have a good idea of ways to leverage the new, modernized database system for your own sites as well as how to go about making major changes to Drupal's infrastructure.

Resources

Knowing the basics of SQL servers before attending would be a good idea, for context.