Panel Talk after Drupalcon Paris 2009 at Atlanta Drupal User Group Meetup on 10.20.2009. Meeting moderated by Jim Caruso.

DrupalCon Paris Panel | JimCaruso, Moderator | Atlanta Drupal Users Group from Jim Caruso on Vimeo.

DrupalCon Paris Panel Transcript

[00:00:00] Jim: Tonight is about why did we attend Drupalcon? What did it mean to us? Why did we want to go? What would we get out of it? And I'm Jim Caruso with MediaFirst PR-Atlanta and I've been a Drupal user for a while. We do a limited amount of web hosting and domain registration and things like that mostly to promote individual businesses. So I think I'll let everybody introduce themselves. Chris, why don't you go ahead.

Chris: I'm Chris Doherty. I'm president of Citizen Studio, which is a graphic design from Atlanta.

Paul: I am Paul McKibben. My company is no Verna interactive. It's a company of one. I do primarily Drupal development for hire

Jeff: I'm Jeff Diecks with Turner Sports.

[00:01:00] Jim: Okay, maybe I'll launch into why I went to Drupalcon Paris, you know, I was very interested in finding Content Management Systems (CMS) and I kind of got here from a bunch of really strange different angles. So I was very interested in semantic web is very interested in social media and some in some ways those seem like complete opposite ends of the spectrum and I guess what has really shocked me in the last year's I went to Drupalcon in the states and then could come in Paris and I ran into some of the people that I actually had been tracking and and I think that's part of the reason why I was so interested in Drupal and Drupalcons.

So I met Chris Heuer who founded social media club, and I was just blown away that he was that he was there and I'm fairly I'm kind of active in the Atlanta social media Club organization. And you know, [00:02:00] this guy Dan Brickley who's been doing some w3c stuff and friend of a friend and you know kind of the really techie end of social connections and.

Web activity. He was a speaker at Drupalcon Paris and I was just completely again blown away that these people that I had been like following over the last few years trying to figure out what is what difference does this make and then and it regular Drupalcon Chris Messina was there and he's one of the open web Advocates and data portability for social contacts.

And so, you know, I kind of ended up I think in the right. With Drupal, but a lot of the connections that I found were of great interest to me over several years is I found through Drupal and being able to go to Drupalcon lets you run into people like that. So that was kind of [00:03:00] my motivation to go to Paris and meet up with those people.

Paul: To go next. So I like that question. Why why did I go to Drupalcon had a few different interests in this, first of all, I mean Drupal is. A community and I wanted to get to know people in the Drupal Community Beyond Atlanta and what they were up to and what they were doing because there's incredibly interesting stuff going on.

Press flow was one of the things that Kent mentioned earlier press flow is I found out about press flow at Drupalcon Paris from the guys who were building it the guys at a company called for kitchens in Austin, Texas. Press flow is this hack. Drupal Fork of Drupal Drupal 6 with modifications to better deploy Drupal in a redundant database environment high-traffic type of environment where you have all this extra equipment around Drupal [00:04:00] now it is a fork of Drupal but the changes that went into Drupal for press flow are going to go into Drupal 7.

So that's just one example of why I wanted to get involved or to go to Drupalcon is to find out about this sort of thing. I. Know if I ever would have found out about it or found out so much about it without being their second reason is that I find Drupal to be Miss lens onto the web as a whole and I think Jim kind of alluded to that by saying the people that he tracked.

Otherwise were there at Drupalcon and so things that are going on in the web in general social media semantic web issues with scalability. Issues with usability all these things are going on in Drupal as well. And you know Drupal is my lens into everything else going on in the web. So that was the major weeds reasons on why I wanted to [00:05:00] go.

Jeff: Wouldn't I wanted to go to Drupal Con DC, but the North America Drupalcon that always takes places just at a busy season. For work and our site. So, you know the fall time framework better happen to be at a nice place, but that wasn't the driving Factor wanted to learn. You know, I knew there would be using about Drupal 7 there when you know become more familiar and figured we're better than there and it was as much for Learning and also just you know meeting up with some of them.

To pull development firms as well just to expand those contacts of folks that can help and support us.

Chris: Chris I would say there are a few reasons why I want one was its. one way to give back to the Drupal Community to get some [00:06:00] just for the also. I think it's a great way to sort of expand my focus on I'm a designer Running it all Burns. It's good to kind of take a step back in to see what sorts of applications people are building the truthful.

And then, of course, the networking possibilities, but definitely it's really great way to just kind of keep up with what's going on is such a vast world and it's growing so many directions. So I encourage you all to go next year. I mean, it's in San Francisco and April I guess right. Yes, the April in San Francisco. We try to make it.

Jim: Okay, one of the things that kind of had perplexed me as I was beginning to use Drupal was just the whole performance optimization thing with Drupal and [00:07:00] you know, okay it runs and it runs on lamp that's kind of the standard stack to use but how do you optimize performance? So one of the things that I was able to.

It was I was able to go to a birds of a feather and I was able to get the guy who does performance optimization for drupal.org to actually come to the thing and explain how drupal.org it is optimized and kind of go through the laundry list of what are the, you know, just like in a half an hour or less, you know, what are the top ways to optimize things and that kind of cuts right to what you're interested in.

So that was one of the advantages for me too. Drupalcon is I mean, there's so much information out there on any topic but you can like hone in on and find like the person who really knows and there were lots of people from the USA. They're in Paris. So this guy happens to be so that was one of the things I was looking to get out.

I was able to get out of [00:08:00] it. Was there anything else in particular? Like you said you want to me that you really liked the fact that like you knew you would hear about people who had developed? The module chair actually met them,

Paul: Right, so getting to meet people that you see their user ID on drupal.org, you know, they developed a module.

It's great to put a face to that to actually find out, you know, sometimes find out their real name if you don't know it and actually see a face so I met the guy known as sun which is real name is Daniel could intervene from Germany, but he developed the WYSIWYG API. He's involved with a few other things as well.

I think he doesn't. The devel module. I can't remember what else but he's a big name among Drupal modules, of course meeting a lot of Aloha Bots at the last to Drupal cons as well as the here now. I actually can picture them when they're talking on the podcast [00:09:00] that Emma Jane Hogben who wrote one of the co-authors of front-end Drupal so it's really just that was one of the big reasons to actually.

That these people are real people to that Aaron wind-borne whose big multimedia guy. I met him after the book on DC. So I'm not going to stop name-dropping now, but just don't want to know.

Jim: In particular you were trying to meet or any particular session or technology. Like I mean, one of the interesting things about our panel is like Chris on the creative and theming side Paul's like really Technical and Jeff does lots of really really big Drupal stuff and I'm just kind of a small business [00:10:00] user of Drupal but has kind of all these things that I'm interested in and so we each have our own little perspective on it. Maybe there's something. You guys want to contribute.

 

Jeff: Yeah it one of the Fallout you mentioned kind of meeting the people that developed modules. I saw doing some reference afterward. I was looking up some of the people who were a lot more live blogging during the sessions and then their comments afterward and I saw somebody reference.

All right, a few takeaways. I learned from Drupalcon one is, you know who created the modules that you're going to talk about because he's like he was describing a module to the guy who wrote it. Hahaha of that was you know, there would be people giving sessions. I went to one that I can talk about a bit for WYSIWYG editor and how to put images inline.

It was a really good session just over [00:11:00] all about managing WYSIWYG editors and making them better workflow and everything but the woman who's given the presentation kept kind. Waiting over she was answering questions of somebody sitting in the front row. It's like the guy that wrote all the image modules and so he was helping her answer, you know, the things you know in how she was applied his modules to her presentation that was interesting in terms of meeting people at you know, I went to the one session for Earl miles who created views thinking else.

Yeah. I think it's neat that he no longer is the one that supports views, but he created it but it lives on and it's been. Other folks and he described a suite of tools called the sea tool Suite so it's hard to actually find what those things do because the module is not named for, you know, see tools and text that right but in it was like, oh, that's the thing.

I wish I'd known about three months ago. If you'll remember I had a presentation here was asking about [00:12:00] a certain kind of volt voting or polling thing. We wanted to take a red sari registration. That was really the end. It was like a multi-page form that we're trying to do. So he starts a session with so how many of y'all tried to do a multi-page form.

And how many of you all enjoyed that, you know, so included in the suite of tools, which is basically like his little toolbox to do work around and things as a forms wizard that does multi-page forms for you. I was like, no thanks. We should have known about that while ago but now I do basically all the code he's writing to make views and panel work right now may be made available.

Paul: Other module developer than wants similar ajax type functionality [00:13:00] and sure.

VO: Sure, lots of recipes in you know political conversations about a year. This is the best way that's great. What did you get any sense of know clearly of Direction on where those two things WYSIWYG editing and image handling are going and see.

Jeff: I'm not sure about seven, but I got kind of clarity of if I'm going to start a new project tomorrow and I need to do WYSIWYG editing with inline images.

I now have kind of an approach and before I give some detail about those sessions. I've got some notes here first apply some from another session. That was Jeff Eaton from Lullabot for architecture is for everyone. And you know, whether is this approach the best Ur, not one of the statements he had in there was if you can only think of one way then you're doing it wrong.

So there's [00:14:00] like anything else in Drupal there are lots of ways to you know to solve for it. And so that was one of my main questions like, you know, should we stay? Eyes on Tiny MCE. Should we use FCK editor? And you know, I got an answer from that session and that's what I would use but there's no such thing as the right answer right?

It depends on how it applies to the situation. But what in this presentation is by Jennifer Lamson from chapter 3 out of San Francisco and it's just you know, she was speaking with some Authority could tell she felt, you know, the types of sites that apply to my situation and you know dealt with you know, I.

Have been one of her clients that you know, she's describing right she captured his you know, WYSIWYG editors or a necessary evil right at you know to a developer it messes up your code, but every client needs it so you have to support it. They standardized on Tiny MCE as via the WYSIWYG module so you can stall the WYSIWYG module then use tiny [00:15:00] MCE out of it.

And the main reason why and this is why you know, I guess I agree with the decision even though I've. The others and they all have their pluses and minuses is because of the availability and kind of the strengths of the plugins that come along with or available for tiny MCE and it's through use of some of those plugins and some other help or modules that she walks through this demo of how to make uploading using images and then place them in line and you know, just select this is an image left and it pops it over there.

You know, she's got the style sheet everything to support it. It's. So we'll plug in that kind of empowers that I think it's called them yet. Tiny MCE plug-in font style. And then you add options to font style for left and right image and then you have some CSS and theme file adjustments to make and it just kind of works.

Paul: It's the name of the CCK feel that she used for important. But the first time I'd seen this was that that [00:16:00] precludes that presentation the special CCK field that would allow you to upload an image, but then place it in line in yours. Was it again? Yeah, I mean this is literally like the I didn't feel it wasn't IMCECCK else like CCK got it.

Okay, CK inline image or something like someone just walked through the rest of the notes here.

Jeff: I guess. This is like name dropping from the coat. These are like module names and things that are right among the things I would do at the sessions is like somebody mentioned a neat project, module, or something.

I just make sure to at least capture the name of it to go research. Later, and the videos are available for all this we can talk about, you know, how to track them down a little clunky to find it but they're there. Let's see. There's a better formats module so that you can assign different formats to user roles think that gets better in seven anyway, but that's that weirdness of the input formats and to end-users.

Nobody can ever figure out [00:17:00] better formats. You can use that to specify for a user in this role. They are. Let's just get this format. So you can just kind of handle that and take that out of the decision point and so it controls the visibility of and default nature of an input format file field insert allows you to upload.

It inserts something in line. I'll feel the insert. Yeah, and then file field sources sounded interesting because that what that one does is file field is upload from your local machine, basically. The file field sources give you the option to plug in a URL something from elsewhere. Like here's the URL of my image on Flickr or something like that and it'll go fetch it copy it over put it in there and then you can use IMCE in that mix somewhere.

Jeff: This is the point of the presentation where she started checking with Nate without you know, it doesn't really do that. You don't need to rub the module so we could say IMCE would then allow you to browse stuff [00:18:00] that's already on your server and use it through file field sources to use it again, or.

Over this how I understood that and then yeah, then the mix of the Left-Right positioning use the tiny MC plug-in font style yet options in so that puts like a drop-down in the tiny MCE editor so you can say this is a header and this is a dad or whatever and so you can apply that style left or right the image that you've inserted in your code by highlighting it and then you have style sheets behind it the deal with that font style.

I'm not doing it justice as far as the approach. It was a really good presentation. She said stuff and tells you here's all the modules. I'm using here are all the things. I have enabled and kind of walks you through and I think she was going to make the slides of the presentation available online as well.

Paul: The I actually watched the video. I didn't go to the presentation and the video is really good that I've got the captures everything really well. So are those on the group will come inside? All right. I've got org. Yeah, it's [00:19:00] hard to find out or be kind of hard for us. Yeah. Almost every single.

Jeff: Yeah, if not all them. Yeah, Jennifer Lamson, not Lullabot, but chapter 3, it's a firm in San Francisco.

Jeff: Yeah, they say FCK editor. And that's the one I've been following and after sitting through this session. I've changed my ways, I guess Michael. That's not the best way it seems.

Paul: Lullabot book was published in early this year. I think right early 2009, which means they wrote it during 2008.

Paul: The WYSIWYG API was beta sometime around August of 2008 and didn't really become released until late 2008 early 2009. So kind of missed the window for all of us, but it does it gets like a mention

Jeff: like I say and you might want to check the developments of this for [00:20:00] something better to come along but that's about as far as it was.

This is the road. We're going to funnel all these approaches down to this for not in the core four seven. That doesn't sound like having any image handling image management image handling. Let me see a noted yet image Fields going into court if it's an image field and image cache of illegal cash.

Yes. And so yeah, I mean the other thing we could do, you know just got a few notes of the sessions. I attended we can cover them as we go. Do you want me to quickly touch on the performance ones?

Jim: Let's get crazy.

Chris: Well, I wouldn't say there was one specific person was there to see but you know, obviously the big development was 7 and so trying to navigate between finding funding interesting talks.

Chris: I want to see and also just getting a good preview for seven. There's a lot of excitement about that. So for me, that was a big deal. yeah,

Jim: I mean we're talking [00:21:00] about image handling one of the things that Drupal as a. Pain management system gets a not for every now and then is just the fact that image handling isn't integrated into the core part of them the Code so I know everybody has been saying how difficult it is like a brand new user to figure out which is the best route.

Paul: Yeah. It's kind of touches on a topic that was brought up in dries keynote and has been going on on podcasts and blogs ever since what is Drupal. Is it a Content management system? Is it a framework? Is it a product because what you define it to really affect what should go into it and it affects its future Direction and I think the debate is still going on.

What should Drupal be at its core. There's a whole small core movement saying Drupal core should be as small as possible. And then you add the things you need onto it to build the product you need [00:22:00] that's kind of my side. That's where I side but there are also those who. Drupal core should have everything you need to build a certain kind of website, but then that excludes certain other kinds of websites that were brought up in Greece keynote as well as what is Drupal.

Paul: Is it a product is it see if I can find my notes on that? Yeah.

Jeff: He said it should be considered both a Frameworks and the Prada right? Which good luck. Yeah, it's pointless. You have Frameworks create bespoke systems, but that was interesting because. Two weeks later. I came back and the office kind of the team that's working on our internal CMS product.

Jeff: Use the same phrase of bespoke systems. Like are you there?

Paul: [00:23:00] Acquia it comes in gardens and Orchards damages. Yeah. but I think another Direction that's heading the Drupal is heading in is to have these special distributions of Drupal, press flow being one of those open Atrium being another one where. somebody a company will put certain modules together aqua drupal's and another one actually will put a bunch of modules together with Drupal and send that out as a distribution there animal.

Open publish.

Jim: Yeah, I'm using and then the Tattler app just came out this week. Yeah. So what is it Tatler? Is say it's like if you want to track a subject it gives you a way to track. Surfing on the content all over the web catalog. Yeah Tattler exactly maintaining a list of these different distributions and what their best applied for its kind [00:24:00] of as well as anybody maintains a list of anything and that you're well, I mean sure it's out there somewhere the other advantage to going to the Drupal con is you kind of see who the players are in the industry, which was another thing I wanted to do like I need to step in here.

Jim: But so by doing that you kind of figure out what. What are the things that people are working on? So some people are working on a very semantic web kind of stuff and tight with the Calais orders people. There are other people who are doing geographic information system stuff and do and actually sometimes it's the same company but you start to find out that people are doing segments and stuff and you find out that some of the I don't even know if they're big companies, but kind of some of the PowerHouse players in the Drupal Community have these individual projects.

And they're often promoting them at Drupalcon. So that's where I heard about open publish and that's and it's fascinating. You will not [00:25:00] work actually has a section where they have the profiles, you know distillation profiles and I would say it's comprehensive but not this quite a few longer if there's a new posting as a.

Jeff: Relatively recently, its kind of the front about more of a focus on the installation profiles and kind of having some general ones out there for this and that type of sites and a lot of times these column distributions are products or whatever. It's like open Atrium, which is basically a group of modules installation profile and you know features and things like that kind of package together for you.

Paul: But it's still, you know, some version of Drupal for and then they might do some things like impressing flow to then change some poor behaviors for their particular purpose things that are appropriate to go back into core get put back into court for the next release, but at the same time you have these distros that serve different [00:26:00] purposes.

That seems to be the direction Drupal is going now is Drupal at its core basic and then distributions to serve specific needs. I think that's the direction. I think that's the direction. Yeah, I think it is too. There's a big to me that the court has grown since I started using the have that degree system all core movement, right?

That's why there is a small core movement. I think that is the future Direction. Yeah, but now they're there the thinking about having to both Solutions a small core movement and then a product movement where you have insulation footballs are trying to make installation profiles easier because right now even if you.

Installation profile you still have to physically download all the pieces. Put them in all the right places before you can run the profile on the thinking about packaging everything together. So if you download Acquia Drupal, for example, they have all the modules in there already or if you downloaded the pictures option, they have all the modules in there already.

Paul: Those are [00:27:00] distributions. That's kind of takes a Step Beyond installation profile, right? I'm running hot, but it doesn't have everything you want. So I'm running lots of modules. Beyond the aqua Drupal module. So it's not a complete solution Acquia Drupal is just a good starting place exactly as then you don't have to go out and grab all those pieces again over and over again and Jeff to do everything.

They've tested it. I like the monitoring aspect of it a few minutes.

Jeff: So I'll start it, you guys. Absolutely chime in but you know that was obvious it was actually day to day one was a Drupal Camp Paris thinnest uncompressing. Yeah, but you know they too which is really kind of the main start right after the keynote which was obviously focused on Drupal 7, and when the code freeze was going to be and [00:28:00] everything Ain't You by Iron from the robots really gave a lightning presentation of like all the wonderful.

Stuff and status update on Drupal 7. Just some of the key ones that I pulled out is the usability improvements with the work that Mark Boatman folks have done that. The main thing there is they looked at the types of things you would try to be doing on the administrative side or you know, the site management side and put things into groupings like you might be wanting to.

Jeff: With the content of your site the structure of your site the appearance the people user logins and stuff like that or the configuration of your site and then they map that to how it was grouped in Drupal 6 and you know color coded and every single menu and everything had this mixture of colors. And so they kind of reformatted there's [00:29:00] you know groups for you know, everything you want to do for contents all together in one place or this attempted to be and then on theirs.

Vertical tabs and some other things on what I'll call the content entry screening of the note to add things. So the confusing part down below where there's the hidden author information input filter all those fields. It's been improved so that it makes a little more sense. It's easier to see that their stuff there and like it shows what set there by default so you don't have to open it to see so just some you kno when you think about it some simple stuff is like, oh, yeah, that's why that was weird.

Jeff: Um, I'm looking forward to that as much as anything because that's the one area where you get people that aren't familiar with Drupal to try to use the system and you have to wind up theming around all that stuff to make it usable. And so some of that's handled better mention native image handling image Field image cache [00:30:00] fields for everything.

So this is FCK going into the core, but it's for more than just content so you can add Fields basically. Two nodes to users to comments taxonomy terms. So all of those things can now have additional attributes, which is what cck used to do for Content plus if you're writing your own module, you can make it feel double evening.

Jeff: They feel the ball fields and Fields attaching whatever it is that you're developing. Yeah, that's going to be very interesting the content area and themes for those who dealt with beaming used to be just one big block of stuff. They had little control over had to work around and now. And dollar sign content in there's an array of page properties that you can deal with individually

Paul: anybody who has done them had to put a block in the content area.

Anybody who's been frustrated by that because you can only put that block in one place. Now, you can in your page template you can actually redefine that the content itself is actually a block so I don't [00:31:00] think so.

Jeff: Yeah, you can also take it off of a page of front-to-front like have a home page without that content area, right?

Jeff: You can aren't they going to sort of. Everything is a region approach or everything's alive. Yeah, so they took out some of those weird things that were kind of just hardcoded in the TBL file or whatever and it's yeah that the header and those other things are not blocks to the content good because I single block for it is several.

It's a block that you can also call for just individual components within it like the author name or the timestamp or all those things. All you can kind of get it those easier. If you've ever had to get certain pieces out of your content from a page template that is now going to be a lot easier in Drupal 7 because the page will now be an array and each element in that raid array will be author headline body.

Whatever you can do book page [00:32:00] Alternatives. They can do hook page altar now Pharmacy.

Paul: When's the soonest you think he would take a stab at doing something in Drupal 7 Just Hits this week had code freeze. It was in code slush on November 15th was another group that if it's November 15th is when I start playing with it for it after that would be when I'd first consider playing with it for non-production site, right?

We want to use it on production. Wait till it's really seeing us sometime in the spring is the. To guess releases when when it's done and I'm done now that's their answer is when you ask what's going to be way still say when it's done and honestly, I would say is probably going to be somewhere before you really consider moving the production side there because the modules have to catch up.

Paul: Well, actually there are a bunch of people that are committing to happen. [00:33:00] Look at d 7c x. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see and so there's yeah there's some there are some improvements to convert things from six to seven. I just had some notes here. Oh, I guess this is pages on drupal.org for an overview how to do it, you know update modules.

Jeff: I've 6/7 update theme. So I just accept vegetables. Those are I think like how to or whatever there's also the coder module which is supposedly able to examine, you know pieces of your module and if it does a thing. And help instruct you on what you would need to change to upgrade it. So I think some lessons from the five to six change seem to have been learned and that combined with a simple test, which I don't want to talk about that here, but we're getting through the yes.

Paul: I [00:34:00] think that's just yeah and how Drupal does things. The upgrade will be some work and the fully take advantage of some of the backend changes the database improvements. If you're migrating an existing database some of those changes don't come with at the specific want to know about is from the scalability session where so we start a new site in Drupal 7.

Jeff: There's a storage type called InnoDB which is the default storage. The engine in Drupal 7 which will 6 it's my is a I sent ya and that locks the whole table when it's being accessed, you know DB locks by row. So it is much more useful. So if you start a new one, it will be you know db2 by default if you migrate Drupal 6 databases to Drupal 7, it won't automatically convert that part of it.

It'll stay as my is am you have it'll still work. It's just that if you want. Yeah, they won't take advantage of that. So there's. You know to [00:35:00] upgrade there's work to be done and lots of areas to you know, fully make it a flashy version 7 site and as far as things are concerned, I would strongly recommend sticking with the sub-theme groups like Zen adapter thing and pop mush or there's a new one for seven called Stark.

Jeff: That's right, which is they called it naked bullets? With nothing, you know, it's just totaling up and go from there the couple of their notes on 7 and then if you guys have others that also in core is jQuery UI which everybody seemed excited about so it's a combination of three things now for jQuery 1.3 jQuery forms 2.2 and jQuery UI 1.7 that didn't mean a whole lot to me, but I did go to the jQuery session and sauce.

It looked [00:36:00] and so there's more support of it and core that you I seem to be an interesting addition. What else today on this? They're looking to see if there's anything in my notes that mention them so far. I don't find anything. You mentioned before it's all depressing flow stuff for ya basis. Yeah, some of the that's true.

Paul: Anonymous users won't have a PHP session created or any HTTP session created automatically. Right now in Drupal 6. I think one of the things that block the ability to do front-end caching is a fact that a PHP session gets created. Even if you're anonymous and Drupal 7 will not do that.

The only questions about PressFlow. I know what's pressed flow is mainly. Architecture for [00:37:00] large installs with multiple database servers and subordinate configurations, but are there optimizations in press flow that could be used to Advantage on a simple shared hosting site. My understanding is you don't want to use press flow for that.

Paul: Press flow is actually geared towards redundant databases and that sort of thing. You're going to want your own server. At least you're going to want well probably two Surfers here at least but I guess that's my question or is the majority of the benefit based on a multi-server. Yes, figuration. So you're not really going to gain a whole lot.

You're not going to be as far as I know. You're not going to gain anything. Okay instead you might be better off, you know, maybe you need some front-end caching or something like that. But you are using a shared server and you're heading those kinds of problems. Maybe you need a bigger server to start with.

Jeff: Yeah before you take the restart. Yeah, [00:38:00] yeah the so the guy from four kitchens David Strauss did have a session on Drupal scalability and performance where he covered it was interesting because he covered all the. Drupal 7 kind of performance improvements and he kind of introduce each one talk about why this matters he put them on a nice graph, but you know, I don't know what you call those things.

But it had two quadrants in one was like better performance and better scale. And so it was in the upper right? It's like better for both, right? So we walk through all those so that's an interesting session but he's again from for kitchens and interesting thing you did as he also was showing for each of these things.

Jeff: Like is it available in Drupal 6 isn't available and press blowing. Will it be available in Drupal 7 and so you can kind of compare the three of these areas again, that was all about the multi-server. Traffic [00:39:00] high-scale websites. Did he mention an upper Bound for how much this solution is capable of handling if he did I didn't capture it.

Paul: I don't think you mentioned when I've gotten looking at my notes from that same session. Yeah, has anybody mentioned in any cell? I did have one session where there were some numbers thrown out.

Jeff: I think it was some of that. Acquia guys session followed his sorry guys.

Jim: sleeping through his papers. I think I think what else is. Was kind of very impressed going through looking at all of the Drupal Community was looking at the transition from 6 to 7 and especially usability aspect. So [00:40:00] I enjoyed sessions that Mark Bolton did and Mark was hired to look at drupal dot org, and also look at these abilities, but they seem to have thought a lot about all the problems that people were having.

Jim: And having had some problems myself and my beginning to use Drupal just that was very encouraging to me to find that that was true, but they were really looking at hard really thinking about it and really coming up with what seemed to be good Solutions. The funny thing is that hold usability effort has also created a rift in the yeah, and then the diners are well.

Paul: Yeah, I know. Where is it for some Builders? Yeah. Designers don't need all three of these are different potential audiences for Drupal and who should that audience be that discussion is still going on but it kind of came to a head and a between the last two Drupal cons. And I think there was a lot of making kissing and making up at the Paris Drupalcon [00:41:00] between designers and developers were a lot of this Rift has happened and one of the things that happened right before Drupalcon Paris was that Mark Bolton sent out a tweet complaining about the mark-up emanating from views.

Paul: And evidently that offended Earl Myers miles the guy who created views and it created all this flak in blog comments and other tweets from people in the Drupal Community sticking up for one side or the other. Marco we're going to work with HTML markup. It didn't yeah, it wasn't the way Mark Bolton thought it should look and yeah, there's it's very difficult.

And I know you had to dip in the dip in a div in a div in a div. But it makes it very easy to use CSS to femen. So there's either was the rationale behind it the mark never intended to offend Earl or whatever. What happened was you have the designer point of view and the developer point of view and who you really building this for?

Paul: So that [00:42:00] conversation is actually still going on. The person that Mark Bolton was working with Lisa Reichheld post something on her blog maybe two weeks ago now proposing that maybe the audience of Drupal is developers and that. Then the Drupal distributions would have an audience inside builders.

Jim: There's definitely been a lot of effort in the last one. I mean, I've only been to two Drupalcon. So I'm looking around this room over here a lot of focus on femurs and making themers feel like they're part of the community and they kind of like being another creative. So test first. Yeah. What was your take on those discussions?

Jeff: The mark-up never bothered me. I found it find it. Like you said it gives you a lot of different points where you can apply CSS so that I still not sure I understand that argument, [00:43:00] but. But I as a designer team felt like an outsider and I think both sides are. Kind of missing the point where usability to me and my definition of that mountain right or wrong.

It's what I was talking about earlier. It's the end users of your site who are entering the content or managing the site that doesn't know either the design or the development. They just need to use the selections and check those things to do it. And right now, you know, it takes a lot of work to take a Drupal site and admin interface and put it in somebody's hand who is not.

Jeff: They're those things are very unexpected operate the site and that's why you know, the usability that encouraged by is where they've addressed that and some of those things have made things more logical just to somebody who doesn't know. Why there's I right. Yeah, I find after every site. I [00:44:00] develop I end up putting together a 20 25 page manual on how to use it and it's hard because I'm so used to the interface.

I'm not. You know, I have to go back and think about what is it? Like if you've never seen this before you're not a tech person, so I agree a hundred percent that that's where I'm most excited about enhancements to 7 is that hopefully it'll lighten my workload on after developments. So I found some maybe I missed this but a very basic question.

What is the compelling reason to use? I mean just boil down to three bullet points. To me using the latest stuff fixed. No, I mean I came out. It was very clear on some of the compelling advantages of 6 over 5, and it was like three or four bullets. [00:45:00] I mean they were more because the beautiful main one that was just wondering if the same case.

Is it the same for seven and to me it dead? I think there are sort of four easy to identify ones for. Locations of its scalability and performance is improved and or it's easier to make a site scale and perform, right? It might take some work, but it is less work and less hacking than six the usability that I just talked about for, you know users who are neither desire developer, but just a site manager it's not perfect but it's better and so it's another the things that you know takes all that workload out, you know having.

Jeff: Those workarounds. Those are the two main ones aside from his latest beaming well now they also theming and of it is a lot easier triple six had a bunch of being Innovations Drupal 7 will now have even further theming Innovations such as content being its own block. So you can move things [00:46:00] before the content or after the content or get rid of the content and some of the other things I mentioned about the page having an array of stuff in it that you can display or hide if you Dorothy Murr.

That going to be accessible from through the UI because right now you use team developer from devel to see what what variables it's actually spitting out and then you go and take content out and do prints of those individually. So at least the content itself is a block now and so you can use the block and Min tool UI to remove the content as a whole or to move it before this block or after that block as far as like.

Paul: The internals of the content. I think you still have to use the templates and that what your understanding is as well. I think that's what I understood from what I saw so far, I could offer two more for seven what these guys mentioned embedded Fields cck Fields now as part of core [00:47:00] which allows enormous flexibility and then also rdfa in court.

Yes. It's true. So it allows automatic semantic markup. Just content naturally without have any developer intervention. In fact that users are feel double now that solves like a lot of people's users profile problems that you can't add funds to the user. It was my understanding that that got stalled not that I heard profile.

Paul: No, there's no the reason I got stalled. I think it's because users are going to be feel double in Drupal 7. There is no need for like any special profile mode user profile goes. Well, I think that particular project that stalled at Sea. I saw a recent report by Angie of the top ten key features that were allowed to be developed during coach lunch.

Yeah, [00:48:00] and that was one of the 10 that didn't make it for got stalled. Does it go out to plant fruit born do a search for that? I hope I'm wrong because that really needs to be in there and I've heard continue talk of it being you know available or being going into Drupal 7. So I'm not sure about that.

Jeff: I don't have the update on what didn't it make it but I do have that listed 10 here. Oh, it's the image field field translations convert profile modules. Yeah that one that's it convert taxonomy terms to Fields. So same kind of thing. Relays, not sure what that was. Like that's the administrative overlay and it's actually one of the cool things about admin if edit anywhere which I think really the blocks shortcuts dashboard plug-in manager and RTF rdfa.

Jeff: But again, those were the things that were it was [00:49:00] October 15th freeze. They were going to you know, those were time boxed at six weeks to see what made it. What did I so? Yeah, the. Overlay was one of the things in Drupal 7 that I found really interesting that you know how if you want to go change like the edited note or something or go and it's something you have to go to a different screen to do it and then come back to where you were like, where was I again?

Paul: Admin overlay actually uses this kind of white box technique to Overlay this form over wherever you are you'd make your change you did enter you hit the okay button and overlay goes away back where you were before. Layer the question. What did you hear about the new database layer? Why was it rebuilt ones that we are protected what's in it for developers wanted the PDO player I think is what it's called.

It's actually a standard PHP abstraction between [00:50:00] PHP and databases to make it easier to use more and different data bases other than who I am right right now Drupal supports. My sequel course postgres and that is pretty much it. I think they're people that have tried to get it to work with might be of Microsoft sequel server what PDO allows you to do is makes it very much very easy to integrate with other databases because you're no longer writing SQL code from Drupal you're putting data into objects and then invoking methods on those objects.

Paul: And then this PDO layer will translate that into the proper sequel or whatever language that up database on the other end users. Because apart from other private developer and you want you want to know SQL anymore. I guess you could call it that yeah, there's a database abstraction layer is [00:51:00] what it is.

Yes. The profile module has been stalled. Fortunately as of course the day October the 8th 2009 they still had seven days. I think that affects the ability to add fields to users though. Is that the same thing? Yeah, because the profile module is basically fields that you can add to users that isn't part of the rest of the system.

So the idea was to. Make all user Fields part of the cck. The old API profile you examine cck to new users, right? So see your new profile module leveraging Fields

Jeff: API. Yeah started. [00:52:00] Yeah, I'm hoping I'm hoping they're going to make an exception for that in the code slush and because that really be. To get done the asteroid about upper bounds of love. It's not necessarily that the biggest number of traffic or whatever that I've heard referenced was in the scale building performance, but for kitchens guys, and they worked on the so I mentioned in my lifetime site of 70 million plus page views a month drupal.org.

I think they mentioned about 30. They mentioned the names of men like the. Missing Wikipedia and then some of the the kind of artist websites is also big sites, but necessarily share numbers and that was the four kitchens talk and the yeah, that's the one where he mentioned that the second one. [00:53:00] Was maybe in the performance and high availability talk which followed that and they mention?

Jeff: Parts of Disney's go.com meal parts of bed. It was kind of a stretch. It wasn't a specific disease were like, here's a big companies that also use it in some places to right right, you know like fox.com of like, well, it's not really fox.com right there. So, you know part of it as it in there the interesting when they mentioned Michael Jackson's website, which have a you know traffic Spike day obviously and to build.

Under to see but I think what they mentioned there was that they actually converted it on that day to use Akamai to serve it to be able to keep up. Well, it's one of the things I talk about be about asking them the same question and you know, they said if it's a site that doesn't have registered users.

That's just all Anonymous users, [00:54:00] which maybe Michael Jackson site was in that mode or something. You could do all kinds of caching and. And pushing out to see the ends and all that to theoretically make a site scale to Infinity no matter what you have behind it be a Drupal or anything else. But if it's registered users custom content per user you all that stuff.

Yes. There is a certain upper bound that Google provides wouldn't tell me what

Paul: else I would think that you could probably experiment week that to with multiple. Stalls and redundant data bases and keep growing man. But yeah, there is probably why they won't give an upper bound is because upper bound probably in flux.

Yeah, are there any tools to emulate different things and test it's going to be. [00:55:00] you. simple simple test is a testing framework.

The guy that did that I think he also did a simple test it. Maybe I maybe had a little confusing in Cleveland sure. They do, you know, the what's that plug-in selenium have you ever heard of selenium? It's a Firefox plug-in. They have a standalone thing that will emulate load. There's not group.

It's not true, but it's PHP sort of a kid wanted vocalizes request from somewhere else other than yeah. Yeah. It's leaving allows you to do is it'll record your what you're doing selecting things on the screen and so on and then you can just play it back. So it's like having a robot. Remember the name but [00:56:00] they also have sort of a I forget what they call it easy is it but it's like a standalone program if you just run and in Langley phone users access to websites.

I use something over the summer for that reason. I'm trying to do it was actually it's the rent for the job world, but you can use it on any website. I just can't even H. Yes.

And what is it for that's for melting and load testing. It will do load testing because you this one but they also have announced new PHP unit is the same say you guys did that code unit. Test framework for PHP software.

So what's simple test testing? Another unit testing framework, but not for load. [00:57:00] No that's actually for internal code. So you write some code you want to test that code as a small unit. So you write a simple test to test that piece of code and then that tests can be run automatically. So what Drupal was using simple test originally and then I think they invented their own testing framework for seven based on simple test.

Paul: But what they're doing now is Drupal core has all these built-in unit. As for all the code that gets run automatically by a bot. I think once a day so anytime anybody makes changes to more or has patches to submit the Bots will actually test that code and test those patches against those unit tests.

Paul: And if something breaks the API one or more of those units has going to fail and the Bots will report it so actually adds an extra layer of quality control to Drupal. Its purpose is to [00:58:00] replace the things that used to require human to go, you know, right I'm doing this, but I need to now test it out to go in and pretend to create an article and do all the other things that you're not really working.

Paul: Just to make sure you didn't break them. Right and the test now you run it against it and it does that for you. It's actually really neat how they do. It it. It creates a full spare environment temporarily with prefix tables in your database and everything or wherever it's running the database.

Jeff: It's like a copy of everything it runs all the tests within those and then it goes and destroys all the stuff that it created and reports back what didn't and work so. Really need to the simple test session which there probably should be a video that as well since you're staying it but the guy ripped through I think he set a record.

He went through probably, you know, 30 slides and about five minutes. It was really hard to follow but probably good. You know [00:59:00] to just see the slides we have lots of data and things on there and he also mentioned there's a tutorial on simple test under drupal dot org. I'll just give this out or if you wanted.

Afterwards I can give you the number. It snowed 3 9 5 0 1 2 so that I mean, I just tried to take notes like that was there but I was like I'm going to need that because I didn't follow that session that he just gave at all.

Paul: Yes, if if you have any development skills and want to help out with the Drupal 7 effort one way you can do that is to write tests. And there's a whole bunch of issues. The issue queue on drupal.org for tests that need to be created. At one point they claim, you know, they were up to like 80% test coverage with Drupal seven core.

Jeff: And then with all the coke slush and all those faces that everything is echoing broke one of my test. In fact second go back and figure out what's wrong [01:00:00] with it.

Jim: So panelists, you have anything else you want to add? Paris was fun you would go back again?

Paul: Is one of the nicest things about drupalcon is not the sessions is not the Technologies, but it's actually kind of a back conversations you have at the bar at night and you're getting to meet some of the people. And I missed all of that because my family was with me, but she's a problem.

Jeff: I think I was more aware of some of the early morning sessions. Yes, some of these guys crawling back to your hotel. Had a good time in Paris Magic. That could make it worthwhile for either me too, though. if any of you feel now that as a result of having. Love and Rubicon and network and met certain people that if you submitted an [01:01:00] issue.

To a module writer or some particular person that you get a response back in less than a week. Oh, yeah. Depends on the person but I mean if you actually there are people that I've you know, I think would actually pay a little attention at least enough to say I really can't do this or at least say something.

Paul: Yeah. Everybody's going to have to be busy for one reason or another. so you're less of your less Anonymous if you actually be one of these people they stress it's kind of hard to tell somebody that you. Set up till 2:00 in the morning and drink beers with this. It's hard to at least not respond right here say something or if you have a question that you want to put in the Forum, you know, if somebody recognizes you they're more likely to answer it then.

Jim: There are some good Solutions coming up for of to I mean, it's heavily supported group is heavily supported in Europe. [01:02:00] There's just one company. I haven't really checked into it much I need to but it's it does. Out of monitoring kind of like the aqueous surface service called Drupal commander and I mean, these are things that you just wouldn't run into if you were here in the states and you just went through our group.

So if we do a wrap-up of this meeting on our website, but there's some favorite presentations that you meant went to where there are videos on this video site that you would highly recommend. Like five or six links and yeah, but hey, I got it tightened up here. So these are I just made like three or four points from everyone that I went to and only took up the video and any notes that somebody else took for full knows.

Jeff: I'll post that on there for y'all. But that's just limited to ones that I happen to go to I wouldn't necessarily call it favorite or whatever but [01:03:00] and there was a lot of good session Drees keynote I think is worth worth it for anybody to see. Everybody everybody. Yes, press power. Yes our cage.

Paul: They're both. If any of you are involved with bigger Drupal projects with multiple developers and each one each developer having their own box and then a staging site and then a production site. There was a really good session on managing Drupal in a multi. Environment and that's what it was called because it's really hard to do that and our prize Drupal Team Management so I can find it was in the he was in the dog was in the oven.

Jeff: Oh, yeah, the one of the room temperature control various real things was interesting. So the university so there was no air-conditioning right? Some of the rooms were like [01:04:00] down several miles of a close this window and. I believe that don't have the exact title, but it was something along the lines you they're staging Drupal or managing Drupal and multiple environments and involves the development staging and production.

Paul: And being able to take the work that several developers do move into staging and move that to production cleanly and this was done by a company called commonplaces up in New Hampshire. They that was their process that they use for the sites. They. I thought it's really good way to do it. Yeah, a couple of questions coming like that your project in multiple environments the ones right?

Jeff: Yeah. That's the one. Yeah the shallower and Chris Lea tests. the key note that the Drupal 7 status commonplaces more probably a good video to the Drupal 7 [01:05:00] status zeca, and the. We talked a lot about for those who care about the performance one comfortable scalability and performance by David Strauss.

Jeff: Yes. Those are the three that we seem to have reference the most here. Did you want to go sort of the patchy solar? I went to one in DC.

Jeff: One other that I went to the moon talked about it just found it interesting leverage rule-based automation. All guys from Germany accents were awesome. I enjoyed that part actually. Yeah, but Wolfgang and Klaus give us a rundown but rules was interesting because it's a more robust kind of replacement for the actions and triggers and you can integrate it with workflow and they walk through some really cool examples of.

Jeff: you know automating things and. making a workflow [01:06:00] for your site or just all the different ways. You might use rules. I could see the fly to a lot of different things again. I got another note number here. He said buddy. Let's all share this you can you can see it will post it. So that's supposed to be Place actions and Trigger you can use it instead because we're doing more stuff with it.

Jeff: Right action triggers are useful if the action turkey earthy trigger already exists, you know, I mean like they have. Instead of them but rules you can do for anything. It's almost like its own programming language in those conditions activities and events. It can be integrated with the workflow module.

Jeff: You all kinds of fun stuff. So they have like a tutorial that's published. So that's another one you can plug through and find that was a good that was in the upstairs of them. Nothing downstairs. What about favorite sessions from you from this end of the table? Yeah. [01:07:00] I mean by my favorite was going to that ball about performance that was by far and that wasn't videotaped, but I actually did review it at Atlanta bootcamp Atlanta and so on that panel Tim dwarf posted.

Jim: I don't know what that particular videos up. But but I kind of reviewed the 20 performance ideas starting with make sure you. APC on your server.

Chris: I went to a really great Bob Van was on features of features module, which I knew nothing about. There's also was. Really good, and it seems kind of small potatoes, but it was a it was a. any discussion about the image API module or [01:08:00] core module guess which is really neat is flies against keeping track, of course small, but I think it's really an integral things to have an enjoyable Source said about that there was nothing.

Chris: I did have. Particular favorite. I mean I would say most of them are really good while those stuff in my mouth. I think he could you know, the descriptions were in terms of when people propose the session you can still find those on the Paris drupalcon site to be fun when it sounds interesting that you can go find the video for it run it run it content of each of the things did a good job of kind of matching what they described.

Jeff: So that's almost as good a way as any to try to find the ones that you might. Watch.

Jim: any other questions from the audience?

Question about the cck be integrated with [01:09:00] core today when when I thought of something integrated core. I just think of it as moving from contributed modules section. To the module that says for is there anything different or is that pretty much it? They are actually divorcing the idea of fields from content so cck you have Fields but they are specifically for Content types in Drupal 7 core.

Paul: They're calling this the fields module or Fields API and it's not just for Content anymore. So it sounds like the from what these guys are saying a few minutes. That you won't be able to have user fields on users but like taxonomy terms are now Fields right people 7 and any module you write can become feel double meaning that you know, if you're like the presume it means if your module creates something in the database that you can create fields around that stuff using the fields API.

Paul: So it's no longer cck [01:10:00] where it's related specifically to content types. It's now now Universal. So does that mean it's a module will disappear what you don't write using that at all. That's right still be around for six. Right? Right. Yeah and you still create content types and you can still put fields in those content types.

Paul: It's just that you won't have to install a cck module to do that. Yeah. Now you just do it what happens with title and body for like they're going on in steel bodies of field. Yeah. That's actually one of the nice things about field. Or is that you don't have to have a title or a body anymore? So remember your life before Drupal now, it seems normal.

So no need for all kinds of handling for body which drove me nuts. Well now wait a minute body and you can do about bodies and Fields than there's no such thing as a [01:11:00] node, but actually it still says for to know noodles just created. Object notes there is yields. Sorry notes are still original groups of nodes are groups of fields.

Paul: It doesn't mean you're no longer just about a minute. But as I was no longer forced to have always had a title always have a body you don't have to do that anymore. Use the body you have to bend over backwards to make it work in your team. Yeah. and whereas all these other fields have these nice little interfaces that you can use to make them working with me right now body and title or now first class Fields just like any other field if Dixon Army becomes a field doesn't mean it will be like a straightforward when you create a view [01:12:00] it would be so horrible because right now you have to like presume so you have to jump through some hoops to make.

That work. It's a benefit.

Jim: Don't you want to say anything else about rdfa and fact that that's in for and how cool that is. So cool

is pretty cool actually know very little about what was planned for seven than what I had heard. The last news. I heard came from July. So what you guys heard in Paris was newer than that? I don't know that I've heard a lot new it's just you've got reference but there wasn't any real folks on the only two keynote was on semantic web, but I was I don't know.

I thought your presentation is better than I can. Oh, yeah [01:13:00] that one of the three who session is on the river. July was some very basic rdfa for basic core content types, but really nothing more than that, so probably not an overhaul internally, but maybe just the beginnings of getting ready I think in there but still even just a little bit of automatic rdfa is a lot because you're automatically cementing Market symmetrically marking up notes just by creating notes and making it better.

To the entire web without lifting a finger. So I think that's that's a big thing. It's not like Evolution making your site. better like off the page, but. just evolving the web just by having a Drupal 7 site up is that. I know it's not unique, but does that put Drupal like on the bleeding edge or [01:14:00] yeah, because yeah, it actually is unique is the only the only package that has a party at Bay like package.

Jim:

VO: That's what I burned for something. That's that the general-purpose content management system. Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that mean that that automatically is going to give truthful and SEO Advantage huge because also Google's is automatically prioritizing rdfa content. Yes, that's all it's doing that auto tagging and that's very search engine friendly because in my understanding cares about Google pagerank at Ya are.

Isn't Google purposely giving precedence to rdfa sites and moving them higher up in the Patriot. I happened to read that specifically, but I think the answer is yes, but I think so and there's lots of things people have you Larry's coming out that you can exist out there that you can pour don't know if it Priority [01:15:00] isn't a killer, but you can take advantage of where your.

Jeff: A search result from your site that's tag. That way appears more things will be expressed that it doesn't know about sites that aren't tag that way. Well, I mean, so you get a more robust. Wish I could remember where I read that but I think it's has to do with Pate rank algorithm and they back it is going to give precedence to that content since it knows that the content that you're looking for therefore.

It's it's automatically going to be higher. In the page rank because of the way the algorithm is being changed, but like I say, I'm not sure but I seem to remember reading that somewhere. I mean what I like is we create content that had lots of company names in it and sometimes their public company names of if I forget to tag something it D'Amato bags and so it just and that makes it much more search [01:16:00] engine friendly and I get a lot of traffic.

Jeff: It's. Like to me it just means that. It does more for you to give you a better foundation and starting point, even if you're not conscious of it thinking about it, but if you really want to be serious about setting your site up in that way, you still have some work to do and need to focus on it.

Jeff: It's not going to make it the perfect out of the box, but it's you're starting ahead of everybody else because it's doing stuff for you. Sure begin with you. Say you're going.

Traffic that we're using Drupal 7 already and no, but I'm running I'm running. As many Acquia modules as

Jim: well as I can run without creating a white screen of death.

Jim: I'm good at doing that. But like then think Lee. He was he was talking very specifically about the advantage that Drupal add over, [01:17:00] you know other content Management Systems as as being search engine friendly. I like that.

Jim: So, should we thank our panelists