Lecture style

Overview

Memetracker is an exciting new module being written as part of Google Summer of Code. The module can be used to build news aggregator sites similar to Techmeme and Google News and also can serve as an excellent conversation tracker within online communities.

Agenda

* What is a memetracker (define terms, show examples)?
* Why would I want a memetracker?
* Different ways memetracker can be deployed or how to integrate memetracker into a Drupal site
* Future direction for Memetracker

Goals

That session attendees understand what a memetracker is and when and where memetracker is appropriate to use. The session is intended for newcomers to the memetracking world.

Resources

Ideally, session attendees will have installed and used the memetracker module. Failing that, session attendees will have read the memetracker handbook page (yet to be written btw, but will before Drupalcon).

SESSION OVERVIEW

This lecture-style session will present and discuss various approaches to improve front end performance. While server side performance has an impact on the speed websites are delivered, the vast par of loading time is spent on retrieving CSS, JavaScript and image files. For a truly zippy website, it is therefore vital to drastically lower the amount of time spent here. In his book “High performance websites”, Steve Souders discusses various ways to accomplish this. This session is based on that book but contains additional Drupal-related information and strategies.

AGENDA

* Anatomy of a web page
* Measuring the non-obvious and identifying bottlenecks
* The Hypertext transfer protocol
* Reducing HTTP requests
* Configuring Apache
* Additional optimizations
* Content delivery networks
* Related Drupal modules

GOALS

You should get a feeling for what “front end performance” actually means and where the main problems are located. You will also learn how to tackle these issues in a structured manner, measure the effects and get to know the basics of the foundation technology of the web, the Hypertext transfer protocol.

RESOURCES

You should be familiar with how a website is structured and know basic Apache configuration. Being familiar with HTTP is a bonus.

Overview

Analysts estimate that 75% of attacks against web servers enter at the application, not the network level. And as many as 15% of these attacks are due to poor coding practices. With the help of well known security firms, We'll discuss ways to secure your Drupal application.

Agenda

* See For Yourself - demonstrations of application attacks
* Case Study: Secrets to Securing a Social Network
* Key Habits of Secure Drupal Coding
* Vulnerability Detection to Remediation
* Security Resources for Drupal Applications
* Discussions

Goals

You will learn best practices you can employ right now to build secure Drupal Application code that meets security compliance standards and maintain customer confidence.

Overview

Installing and maintaining a Drupal site is a relatively straight forward process, even if most of the work required has to be done manually. Which is entirely sufficient when you have a single site, or even a small number of sites.

But what happens when you have ten, a hundred or even a thousand sites? These simple tasks literally become the 'death of a thousand cuts'. You don't even need to have a hosting company to become overwhelmed by this situation, the simple fact is that manual interaction can only scale so far.

Aegir is a new set of contributed modules for Drupal that aims to solve this very common problem. it does this by providing you with a simple Drupal based hosting front end for your entire network of sites. To deploy a new site you simply have to create a new Site node. To backup or upgrade sites, you simply manage your site nodes as you would any other node.

In Norse mythology, Aegir was the god of the oceans and if Drupal is a drop of water, Aegir is the deity of large bodies of water.

It is a complete rewrite of the Hostmaster system that has been running the Bryght hosted service for nearly four years, and has many years of research and development behind it.

The system was designed from the ground up by Adrian Rossouw (author of both PHPTemplate and the forms API) to be a first class Drupal citizen, allowing for integration into a wide variety of configurations, and has been sponsored by Raincity Studios, a well known face in the Drupal community, who acquired Bryght in 2008.

Agenda

* History - A system 5 years in the making.
* Goals - Guiding principles in the development of Aegir.
* Installation walkthrough - We show you how to install the system.
* User walkthrough - We show you what you can do with the system once installed.
* Under the hood - An overview of the system's architecture.
* Status - What's ready today? Can I start using it NOW?
* Roadmap - Where to from here? Extendability.
* Integration - Ecommerce, White boxing and more.
* Discussion - Questions and possible future features.

Goals

This session will help you understand the Aegir system, how the different pieces fit together and how it can help you or your business save time and money on tasks that are easily automated.

Work smarter, not harder.

Resources
* Ægir workgroup
* Overview
* Goals
* Design and terminology
* Roadmap
* Installation wizard slide show
* User tour slideshow

Overview

Drupal needs media handling, but more than that, Drupal needs a way to handle ''Social Media''. YouTube or Flikr are excellent examples of gallery-style media sites that have experienced organic community growth (Flikr more than YouTube). Facebook has fairly robust handling of photos and leverages their "social map" to deliver an exciting experience.

Drupal is already an excellent platform for building robust social networking sites and community collaboration spaces. Media handling is rapidly improving. With the current discussion on how to formalize media handling in Drupal and the continued development in the social networking space, Drupal is a natural choice for developing social media projects. All that is missing is a straightforward implementation path. The Scald platform -- first developed for a groundbreaking new project from Chicago Public Radio -- is a first step down that path.

Agenda

• What is "Social Media"?
• How "social" and "media" are currently accomplished in Drupal
• The argument for a new framework
• Scald architecture highlights
• Brief demo (Vocalo.org)
• Current Status
• Future plans & how you can help

Goals

Attendees should leave feeling that they have a grasp of how Drupal currently stacks up in the Social Media space. They should understand the basic Scald feature set, its architecture (on a high level), the rationale behind its development and some ways that Scald can be used as an effective tool in developing social media websites.

Resources

• Social Media on Wikipedia
• Vocalo.org
• Scald module page

Drupal theming isnt that hard (at first) - but after the first sweet feeling of geek stardom, the truth comes sneaking...
Some elements in a drupal sit can be a little tricky, unless you are willing to dig a bit deeper and get a little dirty.
so this one is all about pimping the crap outta your site, and in the process build up a libary of pure awesomeness

Agenda

• - a Ménage à trois - Theming understanding
  and theres more than one position...
• - the quest for a the nada-html template.
  Cleaning up the css & html and remain some of your sanity.
• - access all areas pass
• - this my son is the kingdom you shall inhert
  how to steal win the prince (or princes), steal the gold and get a kingdom for your self
  or how to use the build in inheritance (thank you zen)
• - forms vs. the themer
  round 1.
• - Pimping the menu
  use the source luke
  Menus and the art of theme function overwriting
  css based coolness
  imagemaps -oh yeah we old skool
  image based menus - the designers love em ...
• The land of milk & honey
  drupal6 theming

Goals
To show some of the possibilities that are hiding just under the hood of drupal, and a couple of approaches to sex up your drupal life, and give the universal answer to the question that more than once have been shouted out:
"How the F!"#" do i get this menu to look like that the designer gave me - why cant we just use plain text menus and be done!"
and go from : "aaaargh I hate designer I hate drupal I aaaaaargh" to
"woohoo Drupal is the sweatest system in the world - wheres Dries I wanna kiss that guy, and by beers for all in the community"

Resources
basic css ,html, some php & basic drupal theming knowledge, and not to offended by the words that start with F.

Overview
Usability is a big factor in the success of a website or a web
application. With some usability knowledge developers can improve their
modules.
I will show what changes have been made (and will be) to Simplenews and
Header Image modules (the modules I maintain). Along the way I will share
my thoughts and considerations regarding contributed module usability.

Usabiltiy is no rocket science, just applied common sense.

Agenda

* What is usability and why do we need it
* Common mistakes
* Simplenews and Header Image usability past, present and future

Goals

To make module developers, users and decisionmakers aware of usability
aspects of module development.
Resources

* Common sense
* Books: Don't make me think by Steve Krug

Report as inappropriate:
http://szeged2008.drupalcon.org/mollom/contact/d6913aa9de19dc61

Overview

In this BoF, we will discuss practices for securing PHP from the Server Administrators view. This includes various web server settings, php.ini settings and demonstrations of less-known attacks.

Agenda

* Web server settings for PHP security
* See for yourself - demonstrations of weird attacks
* php.ini settings
* Discussions

Goals

After you walk away from this BoF, you will know more about PHP settings, how to secure it and most importantly: How to sleep better at night.

Overview

I would be talking about how drupal supports the RIA like Flex based applications.

Agenda

* Introduction to RIA
* Introduction to Flex
* How drupal supports Flex based applications
* Difficulties involved
* Future support

Goals

To make the people aware of the support provided by drupal to use RIA.

Resources

Flex based drupal modules.

Overview

I've been asked to give a talk on the specified topic by the track co-chair. Since I am now running large scale Drupal installs for over two years (mainly drupal.org) I have learned a few tips about making your Drupal code run fast and not give your server a hard time which I want to share.

Agenda

* Drupal caching in core
+ Drupal 5
+ Drupal 6
+ Drupal 7
* Mistakes to avoid when programming Drupal
* Tips and tricks.
* Different cache backends.
* Other stuff (basic server config)

Goals

I'd like attendees to gather an understanding for why caching is important and the pitfalls that may occur.

Resources

General familiarity with Drupal is going to be helpful.