The Night Before DrupalCon

Twas the night before DrupalCon

When all through the hotel, Not a developer was coding, not even Crell

The Coffee Mugs were placed by the laptops with care, In hopes that our Dries, soon would be there

The speakers were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of Drupal 8 RC danced in their heads

and my boss in his t-shirt and I in mine too just sat down to the bar to throw back a brew

When out in the hall there arose such a clatter

I  sprang from my stool to see what was the matter, out to the hall I stumbled and fell, tore up my new DrupalCon t-shirt and and exclaimed “oh hell”

When, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a bright yellow taxi driven by a man with a beard, with a spiky haired passenger wearing glasses and jeans I knew in a moment it must be Dries 

More rapid than Varnish his contributors they came. and he commented, and messaged and called them by name: Now JJeff! now Quicksketch now Webchick and Nicxvan

On MerlinofChaos On Stella On KarenS and Eaton! To finish the beta blockers, YES, finish them all, Now Code away! Code away! Code away all!

As I held my last brew and was turning around, into the hotel Dries came with a bound.

He was dressed in the typical geek turn CEO garb, but wrinkled and untidy from his trip across the pond.

One-strapping the pack of tech on his back he looked like a man that could use a night cap.

His eyes how they twinkled! His smile how Merry! His glasses were awesome, kind of like Drew Carey. 

His code and ideas are legend you know, from a dorm room in Antwerp to a  board room so quick, if you think it was luck, you just missed the trick.

With 10 Years of DrupalCon and no signs of slowing, we’re expecting Drupal 8 to keep this show going.

I see in his face, years of spearheading his vision, from Drupal 1 to 7, it’s been a community mission.

A wink of his eye and a twist of his head soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread. 

He spoke not a word, but went straight to his work, and filled all the coffee cups, then turned with a twerk

The ding of the elevator, up to his room he went. To rest his head before his keynote event

but I heard him exclaim as he walked out of sight Happy DrupalCon to all and to all a good night. 

Topics

• Doing it yourself vs accepting a third parties content model

• Determining content types

• Fields

• References/content relationships

• Defining authoring experience

• Tools


Module of the Week

• Christmas Snow: https://www.drupal.org/project/christmas_snow

This is a very small module that adds a Christmas Snoweffect to your site.

Modules

• Entity References - https://www.drupal.org/project/entityreference

Resources

• Build Spec Spreadsheet - https://t.co/pMk5IBATrl
• Gather Content - https://gathercontent.com/
• Good Typographic on the Web by Jason  - http://www.printmag.com/featured/good-typographic-design-for-the-web/

Hosts

• Stephen Cross - www.ParallaxInfoTech.com @stephencross
• Jason Pamental - www.hwdesignco.com @jpamental
• John Picozzi - www.oomphinc.com @johnpicozzi
• Nic Laflin - www.nLightened.net @nicxvan

Topics

Latest Drupal News

• Blogs
• Curators 
• Google Alerts
• Podcasts
• Attending camps/cons/conferences
• Meetups
• Social Media 
• Company Reading Lists or Newsletters
• Writing!

Industry Trends 

• Blogs
• Podcasts
• Attending camps/cons/conferences
• Publications

Module of the Week

ImageAPI Optimize

https://www.drupal.org/project/imageapi_optimize

This is a toolkit for ImageAPI. It requires imageapi_gd or imageapi_imagemagick or any ImageAPI toolkit to work.

ImageAPI Optimize allows you to use your preferred toolkit and optimize (losslessly) the image when it is saved. Practice for web performance suggests that images should be optimized for better loading time. With this module enabled, Google's Page Speed will always give you an A in image optimize.

Resources

Aquia Blog 0 https://www.acquia.com/blog

Lullabot - https://www.lullabot.com/contact/mailinglist

Drupalize.me - https://drupalize.me/ (newsletter signup at the bottom)

Weekly Drop - http://www.theweeklydrop.com/

Drupal Planet - https://www.drupal.org/planet

Lullabot - https://www.lullabot.com/

reddit.com/r/drupal 

Drupalize.me - https://drupalize.me/

Drupal Easy - http://drupaleasy.com/podcast

Modules Unraveled - https://modulesunraveled.com/podcast

Design4Drupal - http://boston2014.design4drupal.org/

NEWDcamp - http://www.newdcam.com

ExploringDrupal8 - http://Exploringdrupal8.com

DrupalPVD - http://www.DrupalPVD.org

Google Plus  - https://plus.google.com/communities/111161359890617128846

Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

The Verge - http://www.theverge.com/

This Week in Tech (TWIT)  (http://www.twit.tv)

The Web Ahead  http://5by5.tv/webahead

The Dirt Show - http://www.freshtilledsoil.com/category/podcast/

The Big Web Show http://5by5.tv/bigwebshow

Shoptalk Show http://shoptalkshow.com/

Responsive Web Design - http://www.responsivewebdesign.com

An Event Apart http://aneventapart.com/

Artifact http://artifactconf.com/

Future of Web Design https://futureofwebdesign.com/

A List Apart http://alistapart.com/

A Book Apart series http://www.abookapart.com/

O’Reilly http://www.oreilly.com/

.Net Magazine http://www.creativebloq.com/net-magazine

Hosts

Stephen Cross - www.ParallaxInfoTech.com @stephencross

Jason Pamental - www.hwdesignco.com @jpamental

John Picozzi - www.oomphinc.com @johnpicozzi

Nic Laflin - www.nLightened.net @nicxvan

Topics

• Managed vs Non-Managed

• Website characteristics

• Backups

• Hosting Companies

• Drupal Specialized Hosting


Module of the Week

• Role Export - https://www.drupal.org/project/role_export

The Role Export module allows roles to have machine_names and generates a unique role id (rid) based off of the machine_name. Roles can be exported with Features and get the exact same rid if imported on other sites. Because of this unique rid there is no need to create plugins per contrib module that use the rid in their export code, such as Views, Ctools, Rules, etc. References to this role id will not break on other sites.

Resources

• Hosting Companies

Dreamhost


A Small orange


Linode


Media temple


Digital Ocean


Ramnode


Black Mesh


Site Ground


Hosts

• Stephen Cross - www.ParallaxInfoTech.com @stephencross
• Jason Pamental - www.hwdesignco.com @jpamental
• John Picozzi - www.oomphinc.com @johnpicozzi
• Nic Laflin - www.nLightened.net @nicxvan