Sessions

Automated Security Reviews of Drupal

greggles — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 01:16:17 +0000

Speaker(s):

greggles

This session will start with some basics about security in Drupal: what are the most common problems, what do they look like, and a little bit about how to protect your site. Then we'll jump forward into techniques for detecting problems with your site in an automated fashion. Finding security bugs can be boring repetitive work, the kind that we should delegate to computers to let humans focus on more complex and interesting problems.

Learn about the kinds of vulnerabilities that can exist in your Drupal site
See how to identify and exploit some of those vulnerabilities
Get quick tips on how protect your site from those vulnerabilities
And then learn about the various automated tools available to identify those problems for you

About Greg

Greg's security experience is based in his time with the Drupal Security Team, writing the security book Cracking Drupal, and doing security reviews for Drupal Scout.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 13:45 - 14:30

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

site building

Experience level:

Advanced

Using the Migrate Module for Fewer Headaches when Relaunching a Site

John Fiala — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 18:38:56 +0000

Speaker(s):

John Fiala

Video by Variant Studios

The migrate module has been overhauled by Cyrve into a version 2.x branch which has been used at Examiner.com, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, and NREL to move data from various other sources to Drupal 6 and 7.

I'm going to go into how to use this version of the migrate module, what things it does well, what things you may need to fudge, and the sorts of things that I've discovered while working with it on a large project.

People attending will probably want to be developers, and there's going to be a fair bit of code involved, and should be familiar with both object oriented programming and drush.

Slides:

migrate_module.odp

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 15:15 - 16:00

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Pragmatic Drupal Development

John Fiala — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 18:06:13 +0000

Speaker(s):

John Fiala

Video by Variant Studios

Drupal development is not that hard. If you know a few simple hooks, a smattering of php, and and have an idea, you can create a module to extend a site.

But just because you can create something doesn't mean you should, and the pragmatic programmer knows when to whip out the coding skills, and when to use another skill to get the job done in a quick, reliable, and efficient way. Come join me for a discussion of best practices, reliable tools, and a roadmap for finding the best way of getting from your spec to your result.

Labeled as Beginner, but topics should be applicable to developers of many skill levels.

Slides:

pragmatic_drupal.odp

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 13:15 - 14:00

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

development

Experience level:

Beginner

Understanding CTools Page Manager

EclipseGc — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:35:14 +0000

Speaker(s):

EclipseGc

Video by Variant Studios

Page Manager is perhaps the most misunderstood module in the drupal ecosystem. Exposing a user interface to hook_menu() is confusing for most developers, much less site builders. Come have the fundamental building blocks of page_manager explained, why they exist, how they work, and how best to utilize them for your own benefit.

Topics:

Page Manager's plugins (Tasks, Task Handlers, Context, Arguments, Relationships, Access and Content Types)
Why you think you know what panels is, but you actually don't. (and what that other implications that has)
Staring into the void of the infinite, or how page manager can give you nearly limitless possibilities and customized tools you can take with you.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 13:45 - 14:30

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Creating a New Administration Paradigm

EclipseGc — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:42:26 +0000

Speaker(s):

EclipseGc

Administration within Drupal tends to be a monolithic structure that users must learn to navigate and utilize if they ever want to take full advantage of the platform. In addition to this, the permission architecture of Drupal can be a bit arbitrary as to who gets access to what, often failing to have an appropriate level of granularity. In this session I will show you how to deploy custom administrative environments for your users, create a more granular access system, and save it for long term use and re-deployment.

This session will focus primarily on the context_admin module and its relationship with ctools/page_manager. A working knowledge of features module will help in understanding this session, as well as experience with panels.

Intended audience:

Feature creators, ctools/panels enthusiasts, developers, advanced site builders

Questions answered by this session

What is the Contextual Administration module and why does it exist?
How does this let us build a more granular access control system?
What does this have to do with Features?
How can Panels be used in conjunction with this?
How do I extend Contextual Administration for my own administrative purposes.

Track:

development

Experience level:

Advanced

How to Build Beautiful Forms in Drupal 7

chrisshattuck — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:55:08 +0000

Speaker(s):

chrisshattuck

Drupal 7 adds some nice usability tools for building pretty amazing forms from scratch. In this session, we'll start simple, introducing you to the Form API. Then, I'll showcase many of the built-in tools to really make forms shine, like dynamically adding new elements, creating custom auto-complete inputs, and more.

If you're looking for a way to really harness the power of forms to capture user information, or extend and modify existing forms, this short session should add a slew of tools to your arsenal.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 10:30 - 11:15

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Extending Page Manager with Custom Plugins

EclipseGc — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 16:58:42 +0000

Speaker(s):

EclipseGc

sirkitree

Custom plugins can drastically change the page_manager experience, and the velocity of your development on sites. In this session we will discuss and give examples of creating customized plugins for various scenarios:

Access paradigms
Content display mechanisms
Layout
Style
Context (and arguments and relationships)
Custom pathing
Custom page definitions

Primarily we’ll focus on access, content display and layout, but the others will at least be given in an few examples. The objective is to give attendees a practical introduction to the ctools plugin framework, and how it applies within page_manager/panels/etc. To accomplish this, we’re going to provide an example module that uses a handful of custom plugins, and page manager to create the same sort of features as content profile.

This module will have an access plugin for determining whether a user has created a node of a particular type, a layout plugin for displaying the content of the node type we’ll use and perhaps some custom display plugins for use with that node type as well. This will be provided as a sandbox on drupal.org for attendees to dissect in their own time. We will cover every custom plugin in class if the time allotted allows for it.

Track:

development

Experience level:

Advanced

How I Built "Build a Module.com"

chrisshattuck — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:19:10 +0000

Speaker(s):

chrisshattuck

Build a Module.com (http://buildamodule.com) is a video tutorial site for Drupal developers, and since its release I've gotten a number of questions about how the site was created, what tools I used, and questions about moving from freelancing to product sales. This will be an open session to answer whatever questions I can to help attendees move forward on their own products and projects.

To add a question you would like answered, go to http://chrisshattuck.com/bam and vote or add new questions.

The goal of this session is to answer any questions you might have either as subscribers or as individuals wanting to launch a product-based model. Some topics I anticipate covering:

Tips on setting up recurring fees on a Drupal site
Tips on video encoding and distribution
How to prepare for product distribution
Thoughts on making the leap from a contractor to a product developer
Tips on building a highly usable site
Dealing with piracy
Tips on how to view competition as healthy and important
What modules and which theme were used, and why

Looking forward to it!

Experience level:

Beginner

Project Management Strategies for Successful Drupal Projects

mdorman — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:06:45 +0000

Speaker(s):

mdorman

Video by Variant Studios

Discover a strategy for ensuring successful outcomes of Drupal projects of any size. “We don't have to manage our Drupal projects differently; Drupal allows us to manage them in different and more efficient ways” is an important statement. In addition to being a powerful Web Content Management System, Drupal is an incredible development framework allowing you to use thousands of existing tools (modules) to speed the development of your projects.

This session will quickly review common Project Management strategies, as well as go more in depth into how expanding your knowledge of Drupal will require you to change some of those existing practices. We will not be promoting any specific methodology (Waterfall, Agile etc), however there are of course vital components of each that are necessary for completing a project.

The most important step in ensuring a successful project is defining what success actually means to the stakeholders. This session will be successful if everyone leaves with the understanding of how outcomes of past projects could have been changed, or at least one thing they'll change in future projects.

Intended audience:

This session is geared towards anyone who is ready to start a Drupal project or towards those coming off a not-so-successful one. Project Managers, Drupal business owners, Business Analysts, Drupal team leads, or anyone involved in managing or constructing Drupal project teams.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 10:30 - 11:15

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Introduction to Views: Build a Slideshow

vegantriathlete — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 03:48:40 +0000

Speaker(s):

vegantriathlete

Last year I did this presentation using Drupal 6. The only contributed modules I used were Views and Views Slideshow. This year I will do the same thing with Drupal 7. With the additional baked in goodness of Drupal 7 I will have more at my disposal to make things less "kludgy."

Experience level:

Beginner

Mobile first: Drupal and HTML5

lauras — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:03:22 +0000

Speaker(s):

lauras

Mobile is the most rapidly growing platform category for accessing and using the web. Whether with Responsive Design or dedicated mobile versions, websites and web apps need to not just consider the mobile experience but start with the mobile experience in terms of design and implementation.

HTML5 is a means to bring that experience to life. And yet with Drupal this isn't always so easy.

This presentation focuses on the challenges and techniques for implementation of HTML5 on Drupal 7 sites, plus discussion of initiatives to implement support of HTML5 in Drupal 8. Examples will be drawn from the Mobile theme that is undergoing active development to support HTML5, as well as HTML Base and HTML Tools.

A basic understanding of Drupal theming is assumed.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Using Views Programmatically

jyee — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 19:59:08 +0000

Speaker(s):

jyee

Video by Variant Studios

This session will cover progressing beyond simply configuring and using views to creating and modifying views programmatically with both views hooks and views templates.

Despite not being a part of Drupal 6 or 7 core, Views has become a cornerstone to nearly every Drupal site. And while Views provides some wonderful out of the box tools such as exposed filters, paging and sorting, it's often frustrating for developers who are accustomed to creating complex sql queries and other data manipulation to work within the confines of the standard views user interface. This presentation will aim to provide developers the information to break them free of the view ui.

The session will include

Creating views in code - allow your modules to create views and a discussion of why you should do this.
Modifying views output - we'll discuss views templates and focus on views hooks so you'll know when and where to manipulate data to get the results you need.
Query altering - for the hard core SQL folks, we'll discuss how to modify view's SQL queries to perform operations that are difficult or impossible with the standard views UI.

This session has a companion demo module available from: http://drupal.org/sandbox/jyee/1180682

Slides:

Using_Views_Programmatically-20110612.pdf

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 10:45 - 11:30

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Modern Web Typography

Scott — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 20:54:01 +0000

Speaker(s):

Scott

kenwoodworth

Video by Variant Studios

Today's browsers are no longer limited to Arial and Times New Roman for fonts. You can now safely use nearly any font you want on your websites. We'll give you everything you need to get started with web typography in Drupal, including tools, techniques, legal issues, and design considerations.

Slides:

Modern Web Typography (9.9MB PDF)

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 14:15 - 15:00

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

design

Experience level:

Beginner

I Can Haz Awesomer

joelsteidl — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 21:19:02 +0000

Speaker(s):

Scott

joelsteidl

MEOW! By popular demand, I Can Haz Awesome returns to DrupalCamp Colorado. This sequel, (don't worry if you missed the first one...think Rocky) will give you some new ideas about pimping out your Drupal site. We'll take a look at various Drupal design tools, techniques, and cats.

Experience level:

Beginner

CSS3 and LESS: Faster, easier, more powerful CSS

kenwoodworth — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 20:55:20 +0000

Speaker(s):

kenwoodworth

Video by Variant Studios

CSS3 is here and ready to use. We'll dive in to new techniques for creating elements purely with HTML and CSS. We'll also discuss LESS, a CSS preprocessor, and how you can use it to streamline your web development workflow.

Slides:

CSS3 & LESS (6.6MB PDF)

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 10:45 - 11:30

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

design

Experience level:

Intermediate

Drush - making everyday tasks fun again

TechGirlGeek — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 21:30:29 +0000

Speaker(s):

aaronott

TechGirlGeek

Video by Variant Studios

If you are a command line person, and ...

Would much rather type in some commands than spend time clicking checking boxes in the UI.
Create aliases for EVERYTHING.

Then this is the session not to be missed.

Slides:

Drush-presentation.pdf

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 13:15 - 14:00

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

I Cant Believe Its Not Code - Making Views That Rock!

Steve Kessler — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:30:40 +0000

Speaker(s):

Steve Kessler

Video by Variant Studios

In this session we will dig deeper into views and look at how to do cool things with this powerful tool. Being able to do better things with views means you can break out the PHP to solve new problems saving time and being more efficient.

We will focus on:

Some cool new features in Views 3
Relationships
Arguments (Contextual Filters)
Rewriting Field Output
Importing & Exporting Views

We will focus on Views 3 for Drupal 7 but we will cover how to do most things in Views 2.

In this session we will focus on a few real world examples. Comment on this session and we can try and use yours.

Get the slides on Google

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 14:15 - 15:00

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

site building

Experience level:

Intermediate

HEO - Human Engine Optimization: Conversion > Traffic

jsnoles49 — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:51:41 +0000

Speaker(s):

jsnoles49

There's no purpose to site traffic if you cannot convert it into your end goal. Whether it be a purchase, phone call, or an ad click, HEO, also known as CRO (conversion rate optimization), is the art of structuring, designing, and optimizing your site to convert your users. Take your SEO to the next level by adding HEO.

This session will cover the other side of the SEO coin, HEO and Conversions. How do we optimize our sites for people, not just robots? Why should we spend more time focusing on conversions and not allocating all our efforts to gaining traffic?

-Defining HEO
-SEO vs HEO
-Where does HEO Go?
-------HEO during Structure/design
-------HEO in keywording & content
-------HEO linking
-Tools to help with Conversions
-Modules to engage your users

This session does not cover in-depth SEO topics, and is not intended to downplay the significance in a good SEO strategy. This session is built to show you WHERE in the SEO process to add HEO thinking.

Intended audience:
This session is intended for anyone who is working with a Drupal site and is looking to increase conversions from their current traffic to their end goal. It is a great session for use to step back from SEO buzz and remember who we are trying to appeal to, our users, their experience with our site, and converting!

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: How can i convert more of my users and visitors to do what i want them to do?
Question 2: What is conversion rate optimization (CRO) and why are you calling it HEO?
Question 3: Why should we spend more time focusing on conversions and not allocating all our efforts to gaining traffic?
Question 4: How do we optimize our sites for people, not just robots?
Question 5: Where in the SEO process can i add HEO and CRO thinking?

Experience level:

Beginner

Pre-Development Planning for Site Structure, Taxonomy, and to Build a SEO Perfect Site

jsnoles49 — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:53:24 +0000

Speaker(s):

jsnoles49

In this session we will discuss how to architect a websites content, structure, hierarchy, and purpose into a meaningful work-flow that is easily managed for SEO.

First, I will walk through the steps that were taken to architect a service oriented website as well as discuss how to incorporate:

-content
-target marketing
-products/services
-user experience
-conversion rate optimization (CRO)

into your model to build a website before you even begin to install Drupal.

Next, we will go through an example of a website that used well thought out architecture to:

-accurately display all its content
-directly appeal towards a specific market
-be easily managed with content types
-display correlating content through taxonomy

to obtain the end result of a very well structured website for easy SEO execution and target marketing.

The goals of this session are to help attendees understand how to execute a pre-installation planning for their website. This type of activity will help develop a far superior website architecture, dictate design, and drastically improve the way the SEO by having the team consider multiple factors before beginning any development.

Intended audience:
This session can help anyone who is involved in pre-development planning of a website. If you are a designer this can help you setup meetings to find out what clients need in their site before doing any designing. As a developer, this practice can help you find functionality and other requirement needed so that they don't creep up mid project. Lastly, as a business owner, this session can help you piece together your needs for your web project.

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: What should i include on my website?
Question 2: How do I build a site structure for improved SEO?
Question 3: How do I make my site more user friendly?
Question 4: How do i best convey all my websites content to the end user?
Question 5: How can set up a site to easily manage new or changing content?

Experience level:

Beginner

Treat Yourself like you treat Your Clients - Internal Development Projects

jsnoles49 — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 22:56:48 +0000

Speaker(s):

jsnoles49

Web Development seems to be the only industry where we treat our own company not nearly as well as we treat our clients. Internally we don't keep deadlines, we don't put forth our best work, and we often have a far less superior site compared to what we deliver to our clients.

This Session will not only cover how to manage yourself as a client but also ideas on how to put your best foot forward on your own site. How to show off your experience, capabilities, and services through not only the content on your site, but the site itself. Lets walk through creating an amazing website and portfolio for our very best client, OURSELVES!

-Managing internal projects as if they were a client
-Resource allocation for internal projects
-Creating the portfolio
------Blog
------Testimonial
------Industries
------Products vs Services vs Core Capabilities
------Case Studies vs Clients
------FAQ

Lastly, I will share how an exercise like developing a detailed company website or a company wide wiki can help drive the company towards its strengths, focus its view on the correct path moving forward, and help management assess positioning and growth.

Intended audience:
This presentation is for owners of Drupal development companies, freelancers who have personal portfolio websites, and even the end client who wants to see how a project can be managed and executed as well as gain ideas for what to include on their own website.

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: How do I staff my internal project?
Question 2: Who is accountable for managing my internal project?
Question 3: What do I need to put on my website to attract and convert more clients?
Question 4: How do I leverage my core strengths on the web to sell more business?
Question 5: What other value do I get from committing time and resources to an internal project?

Experience level:

Beginner

Drupal SEO walk through

jsnoles49 — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 23:04:18 +0000

Speaker(s):

jsnoles49

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps improving the volume and quality of traffic to your web site from search engines via "organic" search results.When optimizing a website, you should consider how search engines work and what exactly is your potential target group looking for. Generally, optimizing a website aims at increasing the website's relevance to specific keywords and removing barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

This session will cover a typical walk through for setting up SEO modules and optimizing you website for search engines.

Page titles
Meta Tags
Other tags
Content Optimization
Internal Linking
External Linking
Site Structure

Intended audience:
-The target group are people responsible for architectural decisions, as well as those who implement them.

-This presentation is highly recommendable for e-commerce, corporate and rich content websites.

Questions answered by this session
Question 1: What are the the most important steps to be considered when talking about SEO and in which order do they have to be implemented?
Question 2: What are the top strategies for a successful website architecture? In which cases should we use the different strategies?
Question 3: How to approach these strategies with Drupal and are there some examples that show and describe these strategies?
Question 4: Which modules do I have to use to achieve the previously described goals? Which practical tips and tricks should be taken into account?

Experience level:

Beginner

Getting started with Drupal

ultimateboy — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 01:35:13 +0000

Speaker(s):

ultimateboy

Video by Variant Studios

So you're new to Drupal... we all started somewhere. This session is going to be a crash course in Drupal 7. Learn about nodes, permissions, content types, fields, views, blocks, taxonomy... the session will move fast and cover a lot of ground, but you'll walk out thinking you can rule the world. Hopefully this will start your Drupalcamp experience off on the right footing.

We'll start from scratch, download and install few contributed modules, and then jump right in to building a site, complete with multiple content types, views, and blocks. I'll explain Drupal's permission system, how to add roles, and how access control works on a basic level.

Get ready to become a Drupal rock star!

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 10:30 - 11:15

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

site building

Experience level:

Beginner

Basics of Search Engine Optimization: Making Your Drupal Site SEO Friendly While Improving Your Online Presence

dohnelly — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:01:15 +0000

Speaker(s):

dohnelly

pattiw

Video by Variant Studios

Learn about the essential strategies of search engine optimization and how to utilize these techniques in Drupal. This session covers best practices for on- and off-page search engine optimization as well as the necessary modules that will enable you to customize your site’s SEO. Learn how search engines crawl and index your site content, and ways to control this indexation. Increase qualified traffic and conversions by following these best practices in a pro-active and continual approach.

Learn about the differences between Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 with these modules and any other methods that may change on the new version.

We are SEO Specialists at a Golden, CO based web marketing company working with over 350 clients across the United States and Canada. We are exclusively focused toward the design and optimization of websites on the Drupal platform.

This session is geared toward small business websites and those involved in the service industry. We will provide resources for your on- and off-page optimization strategy, so you may continue to learn about new SEO practices beyond the Drupalcamp session.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 14:45 - 15:30

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

site building

Experience level:

Beginner

Doing More With Drupal (Using contributed modules)

bhosmer — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 11:04:23 +0000

Speaker(s):

bhosmer

Drupal core includes some great functionality right out of the box, however to truly make it awesome, you need to find, install, and then use the thousands of contributed modules created for drupal.

This session will focus on where to find contributed modules, how to install them, and how to get help using them.

Track:

community

Experience level:

Beginner

Debugging Drupal

databoy — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 03:38:00 +0000

Speaker(s):

databoy

Do not fear the White Screen of Death! Debugging stops problems before they start, finds issues buried deep in code, and can help you work faster and smarter. Drupal development is an awesome experience when you have the right tools. This presentation will start from absolute scratch and without compiling(!), will show how straightforward it is to incorporate PHP xDebug (it's built in) within the Eclipse IDE (the support is right there). You will be stepping through your code from function call to function call in no time!

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Zero to Drupal in minutes

bhosmer — Sun, 10 Apr 2011 17:19:20 +0000

Speaker(s):

bhosmer

One of the most daunting tasks to a beginner can be actually configuring a web server and getting Drupal installed. This session will use webenabled to create a Drupal site in minutes and then walk through creating a simple blog, adding some users, and also creating a simple announcements content type and then adding a menu for that content type.

Track:

community

Experience level:

Beginner

Cross Browser and Platform Video with VideoJS

bhosmer — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 08:21:30 +0000

Speaker(s):

bhosmer

With the popularity of ios devices and different browsers supporting different types of video formats, it becomes difficult to support video on your Drupal site. This session will demonstrate the installation and configuration of the VideoJS module to create a video node that will be viewable with all four major browsers as well as ios devices without plugins using the VideoJS module.

Track:

community

Experience level:

Beginner

How Much Is This Baby Gonna Cost Me?

sethlbrown — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 17:53:56 +0000

Speaker(s):

sethlbrown

sirkitree

This session will examine common approaches to estimation, and, in particular, the technique of Wideband Delphi Estimation that Lullabot uses in its sales engineering process. It also talks about different approaches to Top Down Design, the process of breaking a project up into actionable tasks, and how these artifacts can be used through-out the project.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 09:45 - 10:30

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Intermediate

PPLD.org - An Odyssey

vfranklyn — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 16:54:35 +0000

Speaker(s):

vfranklyn

Join Pikes Peak Library District on an adventure as we recount our journey from an html-based website to Drupal 6 goodness. We'll cover Project Plans, Configuration, Usability Studies, and the Building process. We're not afraid to relive the madness, warts and all, for your amusement and learning pleasure.

Track:

development

Experience level:

Beginner

Custom RSS Feeds in Drupal

jshamley — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 02:02:21 +0000

Speaker(s):

jshamley

Ditch the core RSS functionality and build highly customisable syndication in Drupal 7!

The default /rss.xml that is built by Drupal is not generally optimal when large amounts of content is changing frequently on a site. I will cover the basics of building RSS feeds using Views and a few other contributed modules to extend and customise syndication in Drupal 7.

Drupal 6 handles these functions in similar ways, I will highlight the differences when applicable.

Track:

design

Experience level:

Beginner

Design in the Browser: Use CSS to Stop Lying to Ourselves and Our Clients

canarymason — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:40:45 +0000

Speaker(s):

canarymason

Video by Variant Studios

Call it "Hard Boiled" web design, Agile Design, or simply Design in the Browser, we now have the tools to create, present, and get sign off on design without resorting to creating an endless series of static images that are at best an approximation of the site we'll eventually build.

Designing web pages as static images is usually a time-consuming exercise and produces a lie we tell ourselves and our clients. We're not designing pictures of websites, so why ask clients to sign off on one? Web work is dynamic, and needs to be seen and evaluated as early and often as possible in many browsers.

By designing in the browser we're able to solve a number of issues we face as people who make and sell web sites. Our mockups behave like web pages because they are web pages. We don't accidentally design features that are impossible to code. Any troublesome css technique will be discovered and addressed at the beginning of a project rather than in it's final days. We can experiment and implement the latest and best html5 and css3 techniques. And maybe most importantly, clients are never asked to sign off on a static facsimile of a web site that we all know will be at least slightly different from the final site we deliver.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 15:15 - 16:00

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

design

Experience level:

Intermediate

An Introduction to Drupal Commerce

rszrama — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 04:55:04 +0000

Speaker(s):

rszrama

Video by Variant Studios

Building Drupal powered e-commerce websites is more powerful than ever before with Drupal Commerce. The project was built from scratch on Drupal 7 to take advantage of its greatest features, depending heavily on the new Field system to provide you with the tools you need to build any type of e-commerce website. Additionally, the Commerce modules are deeply integrated Views 3 and Rules 2 so you can create advanced configurations and customizations without resorting to PHP.

In this session, Ryan will introduce Drupal Commerce with a few notes and slides about the vision of the project and the architecture of the core modules, entities, and fields. That will be followed up with a technical demonstration of the latest release of Drupal Commerce that covers everything from installation and configuration to store administration and the customer experience. Any time remaining will be spent on Q&A, with attendees free to browse a demonstration site and/or explore a starter installation profile during and after the session.

To get a feel for Drupal Commerce in advance, check out the demo site or try your hand at installing with the Commerce Kickstart installation profile (currently available only through Git).

Commerce Camp attendees who did not catch Ryan's session in Chicago are highly encouraged to attend this session, as it aims to provide an introduction to every aspect of Commerce. Additional sessions may build on this foundational information to flesh out specific aspects of Drupal Commerce site building and module development. If you can't make the session but still intend to check out some of the more specific Commerce sessions, you may benefit from first watching the session video from DrupalCon Chicago.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 13:15 - 14:00

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Beginner

Introduction to Rules for Drupal Commerce

rfay — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:42:37 +0000

Speaker(s):

rfay

Rules is a powerful web-ui based programming language that allows Drupal to take certain actions when an event occurs. Rules is a fundamental tool that sitebuilders will use when building a store, so it's important to have an up-close-and-personal mastery of rules.

We'll cover:

The basics of rules: Event-Condition-Action
Some simple rules for basic site activities
Basic rules for Commerce, including conditional taxes.
Commerce events, conditions, and actions you should know about

Since we'll be working with Drupal Commerce, this will all be with Rules 2 in Drupal 7, but the concepts are the same if you want to work with Rules in D6.

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

Sales Tax, Discounts and Rules in Drupal Commerce

rfay — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:44:06 +0000

Speaker(s):

rfay

Video by Variant Studios

Presentation Link

Drupal Commerce offers lots and lots of power in the realm of sales tax, VAT, and discounts.

In this session we'll demonstrate:

The difference in display between Sales Tax and VAT
Simple tax solutions
More complex tax scenarios (including multiple-jurisdiction sales tax)
Basic discounts
Date-based and location-based discounts
The basics of using Rules

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 09:45 - 10:30

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

Easy Steps to Creating a Dynamic Workflow

eoflah2 — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 20:14:18 +0000

Speaker(s):

eoflah2

This session will go through each step that needs to be done in Drupal to create a successful workflow. It will be broken down in such a way that anyone with basic Drupal experience will be able to follow along. Important modules to use and multiple methods to set up the workflow will be shown.

Questions that this presentation will answer: What kind of workflows can be created in Drupal? What do I need to do to create a workflow? Which is the better option; Rules or Triggers?

Experience level:

Beginner

Project & Development Best Practices: Good Cop/Bad Cop

Rick Nashleanas — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 21:48:01 +0000

Speaker(s):

Rick Nashleanas

Bryan Jones

draenen

This presentation takes a good cop/bad cop approach to project management and development best practices. We will poll the audience on the topics they would like us to cover. If there's anything not covered, we'll convene a BoF.

Does source control (git) absolutely need to be used for all projects, no matter the size?
How can I cost justify setting up a development, test production site for a small customer?
When should I build a user interface to change parameters? Will they pay for it?
Ticket tracking is great, but when does it get to be too much?
Can time tracking be made painless?
How do I manage misunderstandings in scope creep?
Ever asked to provide an estimate when you don't have enough information?
How do you convince the customer that he/she needs best practices when budgets are tight? (Sometimes you don’t.)

We rated this as intermediate, but everyone has or will have to face these basic challenges.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 11:45 - 12:30

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Drupal Commerce Nuts and Bolts

rszrama — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 23:09:27 +0000

Speaker(s):

rszrama

Video by Variant Studios

Drupal Commerce was the first major contributed module system written for Drupal 7 architected using fieldable entities, Views 3, and Rules 2. We started development during the unstable releases of D7 and dev releases of the contribs, taking our share of bumps and bruises along the way. However, the work required to stay up to date with the various systems we depend on has paid huge dividends. The first version of the Commerce modules is already one of the most flexible e-commerce systems available, and understanding its architecture will give you a huge advantage when bidding on and building e-commerce websites.

While I'll be sharing a mile high overview of the core Commerce components and modules in the introductory session, this session will be geared toward developers interested in digging a little deeper into the core architecture. We'll look more closely at the entities and fields defined by the core modules and how they're meant to work together. We'll also explore non-standard e-commerce configurations that the loose coupling of our core systems enables.

Additionally, Drupal Commerce introduces its own systems built on these core components that you'll want to be familiar with as you start building sites with it. I'll showcase a few important pieces of the API that you should keep in mind during development, and I'll demonstrate some of the dark magic behind Rules that allows you to create advanced discounts and checkout completion workflows without having to write a lick of code.

This session will benefit advanced site builders used to building complex Views and Rules and certainly developers of all stripes. I won't spend much time discussing ongoing contributed module efforts in this session, but I'll be available after the session is over to discuss these with anyone interested.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 16:15 - 17:00

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Advanced

Drupal Commerce Contrib

rszrama — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:13:24 +0000

Speaker(s):

rszrama

rfay

As Drupal Commerce gets closer to a final 1.0 release, the development of contributed modules providing "essential non-core features" has been ramping up. There are currently dozens of projects in various states of development that you will want to know about as you spec out your next e-commerce project on Drupal 7. This presentation will briefly explain the Drupal Commerce development strategy that involves:

Building a lean and more set of core modules.
Growing the number of contributed modules and directly supporting those dubbed as "essential non-core" (e.g. shipping quote calculation, payment gateway integrations, coupons, etc.).
Enabling site builders and developers to turn these into use case specific distributions.

After that we will look through the currently developing modules by category, highlighting projects that are ready for use and others that interested developers can contribute to to make a huge difference. Additionally, we'll highlight the various Ubercart contributed modules that are deprecated by the core functionality of Drupal Commerce thanks in large part to our dependence on Views and Rules.

Ever since our stable beta release prior to DrupalCon Chicago, the main limiting factor for new projects isn't the core itself but the availability of contribs. Our hope is for this session to inform you and motivate you to dive in and contribute through testing, documenting, and coding to the contributed modules that will really help Drupal Commerce shine.

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Beginner

Engineering for the 80%, too.

jenlampton — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 06:04:50 +0000

Speaker(s):

jenlampton

chx

Video by Variant Studios

There's been a huge push in this community to "Design for the 80%". The idea is that you want to make Drupal really easy for 80 percent of the people who use it. This usually involves setting sensible defaults in form values, and putting things where most people would expect to find them. It means focusing on the usability problems that will affect 80% of the people who use Drupal, and ignoring (or at least setting as a lower priority) the crazy edge cases.

I want to suggest that we start engineering for the 80%, too.

What I mean by this is two fold.

1) I don't want Drupal to be engineered for edge cases.

Example: at least 80% of Drupal 7 sites will be running on MySQL, MariaDB, or comparable systems, but Drupal's new database abstraction layer (though awesome) was engineered for that other 20%. This is great for everyone who has been unable to try Drupal due to internal policies, infrastructure limitations, or other political matters. But what about Drupal's loyal followers? Is it really any better for any of us? What about the little guys - the non-profits and mom and pops who now can't run Drupal 7 because their shared hosting account can't support it?

2) I don't want Drupal to contain so many layers of abstraction that the barrier to entry becomes too high.

With every release of Drupal, we introduce a new layer of abstraction. In Drupal 6 we got a fancy new theme layer. In Drupal 7 we have a fancy new DB abstraction layer, we have the page-render drill-down, and who the heck really understands the menu system anymore?!

When I first started working with Drupal most of the code was written in plain logic. This means that anyone (programmer or not) could open a file and read it. They could see what was going on, catch bugs, and propose changes.

Today, there are a lot of smart people who have opened up a file to read it, seen a lot of stuff they didn't understand, closed it, and moved on. The more sophisticated our code gets - the more object oriented, the fancier, the more powerful, the faster - the fewer people who can read or understand it. This means our potential pool of contributors is shrinking.

Drupal didn't get to where it is today because it had the best code of any CMS - it got to where it is today because of the size, diversity, and involvement of it's awesome community (that's you!). Is improving our code worth loosing that edge? Is there any way we can continue to improve the code, without loosing potential contributors? Is there any way we can keep the code manageable for the 80% while building our layers of complexity behind the scenes?

Do you think better code is really better for Drupal?

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 11:45 - 12:30

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Advanced

Introduction to Module Development

ezra — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:22:53 +0000

Speaker(s):

ezra

This session provides a fun introduction for people who want to get started writing their first module or extending an existing one. The presentation is both conceptual and hands-on, and covers topics like Drupal's hook system and the Form API. By the end of the session, attendees should have resources and a foundation to start writing or extending Drupal modules!

Agenda
- What is a module?
- What is the hook system and how does it work?
- Overview and hands-on intro to the Form API
- Basic development troubleshooting techniques
- Resources & references for Drupal module development
- Answers to your questions about Drupal development!

Take away:
- Understanding what a module is.
- Conceptual understanding of how to use Drupal's APIs to write or extend a module
- A feeling of confidence that module-development isn't beyond yourself!
- Awareness of resources to help you continue learning after the session.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 15:15 - 16:00

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Beginner

Building Conference & Event Websites with COD

ezra — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 13:25:52 +0000

Speaker(s):

ezra

Video by Variant Studios

Come see why Drupal is the best platform for building conference and event websites that meet the needs of attendees, event organizers and sponsors!

In this session we'll build a conference website from scratch that provides robust features including:

* Proposing and voting on sessions
* Setting a session schedule for the event and for each attendee
* Making it easy for attendees to register, pay and provide profile information
* Managing a waiting list of attendees
* Collecting and displaying sponsor information

We'll see how Drupal's Conference Organizing Distribution (COD) can help get a conference site up and running quickly, allowing event organizers to focus on running the event and personalizing the site, and allowing attendees to participate actively before, during and after the event!

We'll also see how COD was used to build other conference websites, like DrupalCon Chicago 2011, an upcoming conference for the MeeGo open source project, and several DrupalCamps.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 11:45 - 12:30

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

The 10 Commandments of Photoshop Mockups

Pixel-Whip — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 16:21:10 +0000

Speaker(s):

Pixel-Whip

Video by Variant Studios

As designers we are often lured into the temptations of bad photoshop practices. We’re designing in the moment and don’t think about the consequences. But the reality is your clients’ requests to make a design more ‘edgy’ will lead to many extra hours of theming if not done right. The seemingly endless rounds of revisions caused by “I know it when I see it” type feedback, will take so much longer when you’re using the wrong tools. Following ‘The 10 Commandments of Photoshop Mockups’ will get you well on your way to eternal designer bliss.

In this session, I’ll stand upon my bully pulpit and evangelise the best practices for mocking up websites using Photoshop (Fireworks can come too.) Overall these techniques fall under the umbrella of The Two Mega Commandments:

Love Thy Self: It’s all about non-destructive Photoshop techniques. Giving you, the mighty designer, the freedom to flex your design muscles, while saving you loads of time on revisions.
Love Thy Themer: Somebody has to build it, right? This is either you, your co-worker or your client- in any case you don’t want them taking your name in vain when it’s time to make your design a reality. We’ll walk the path of the righteous designer as we look at ways to make your mockup transition smoothly to HTML.

And while I like to think what I say is infallible, we’ll definitely leave time for the group to share their own techniques.

This session is for those that design websites (not just Drupal) and the themers that make it happen. Previous Photoshop experience would be good, as there is much to cover and we might not have time to explain what a layer is.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 09:45 - 10:30

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

design

Experience level:

Intermediate

Preying on the drupal_alter()

vordude — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 20:19:40 +0000

Speaker(s):

vordude

When you're building your next Drupal project, The chances are pretty good that at some point you'll find Drupal is doing it wrong. The good news is that Drupal 7 core alone gives you around 80 opportunities to "make it right."

This session is way more than staring at a boring slide deck.

We'll crack into some code and check out some of the most popular alter hooks, and learn how to use things like hook_form_alter() and hook_menu_alter() (arguably the most "normal" _alter hooks).

Then we'll get really evil, and work through some new fun ones, like hook_block_view_alter() and hook_page_alter().

Then when while we're at it, we'll show you how you too can add your own alter hooks to a custom module. (So other developers don't have to say, "You're doing it wrong").

I'm not going to lie, there will be code. But, never fear! We're going to stay at a fairly basic level. If you're scared of writing a module, come anyway! Here's the best part: you may not even need a custom module.

Slides:

Alter.pdf

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 16:15 - 17:00

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

development

Experience level:

Beginner

Render API - Defining and manipulating renderable arrays in Drupal 7

eojthebrave — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 15:44:49 +0000

Speaker(s):

eojthebrave

Video by Variant Studios

One of the most interesting and potentially confusing features of Drupal 7 is the extended and improved Render API. Although the concept of renderable arrays existed in Drupal 6 they are now more important and pervasive and have become an essential tool for module developers and themers alike.

In this session you will learn what a "renderable array" or "renderable structure" is, how they are used in Drupal 7 and how they differ from Form API arrays in Drupal 6.

We'll disect a handful of renderable arrays from Drupal core and talk about the process that Drupal goes through in order to turn a structured array into an HTML string. Along the way we'll learn about some of the tips and tricks that you can use when creating your own render arrays to ensure that they are sane and that the content output by your module is alterable.

Then we'll take a look at some of the advantages this new Render API gives us including the ability for modules to alter the content provided by another module and for themes to modify and move elements the page quicker and and easier then ever before.

The session will conclude with a short discussion of how you can create your own renderable element types and encasulate complicated theme or module logic into a simple element #type.

Intended audience:

Theme and Module developers looking to take advantage of the new Render API and leverage the full power of Drupal 7. Anyone who is either not familiar with renderable arrays at all or that has a basic understanding of Drupal 6 Form API will benefit from this session. Attendees should have at least a basic background in either Drupal module or theme development and an understanding of basic arrays in PHP.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 10:30 - 11:15

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

The Client Perspective on Website Development and Operation

tonydorf — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:09:51 +0000

Speaker(s):

tonydorf

Rick Nashleanas

Video by Variant Studios

I have been a part of several efforts to create e-commerce sites and have had both good and bad experiences. This session will summarize lessons learned from those experiences and is designed for 2 audiences.

The primary goal of this session is to help developers understand how to deal with a client...

The importance of communication (when you respond to questions can be even more important than what you say)
Documenting requirements and expectations
Dealing with requirements creep
Understand the frame of mind (clients can get a little crazy...but you already knew that)

Time permitting, I will cover the client frame of mind in an attempt to explain why we do what we do. Items covered will include...

Unrealistic expectations
Their role in development (e.g. understand how they want the site to look and feel like, don't worry how it gets done)
The importance of good requirements
The need for testing and the importance of budgeting time for this
Defining acceptance criteria
Varying levels of involvement in development and maintenance
The work just begins when the site launches (most of the work is in maintenance and administration)

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 14:15 - 15:00

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

Debugging Techniques for Drupal and LAMP

rgr — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 00:05:57 +0000

Speaker(s):

rgr

Video by Variant Studios

A general approach to debugging Drupal problems will be presented, followed by an overview of a variety of tools such as the Devel suite, krumo, xdebug, client side debugging such as Firebug and LiveHTTPHeaders. In addition to debugging functionality, approaches to performance related problems will be covered. Some of these techniques apply generally to all web applications or other PHP code.
A structured debugging approach that narrows down problems, rather than making random changes and guesses, is the main goal of the talk.

The audience will have a chance to share any debugging tricks they have during a question and answer session.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 14:45 - 15:30

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Importing a store into Drupal Commerce

rfay — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 14:33:46 +0000

Speaker(s):

rfay

Video by Variant Studios

Presentation Link

Many online stores start out as a list of products, descriptions, prices, and images. Sometimes this is a CSV file or other feed, sometimes it's a legacy site, such as an Ubercart site. We'll show how to use the Feeds and Commerce Feeds modules to build a complete store, using importing techniques.

This includes:

What is Feeds and what can it do?
Quick demonstration of importing a product catalog
Preparing the input data
- Where do I get my data?
- What form should it be in?
- What kinds of things can I import?
- What are problematic import issues?
Setting up your feeds importer (configuration, mapping)
Running the import to create products
Running the import to create product display nodes.
Maintaining your product catalog by syncing with an external data source.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 11:45 - 12:30

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

PCI: A Four-Letter Word of E-Commerce

vordude — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 15:22:17 +0000

Speaker(s):

vordude

m_rookie

mpotter

The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a widely accepted set of policies and procedures intended to optimize the security of credit, debit and cash card transactions and protect cardholders against misuse of their personal information. The PCI DSS was created jointly in 2004 by four major credit-card companies: Visa, MasterCard, Discover and American Express.

If you or your business ever deals with credit cards the standards of PCI Compliance affect you.

Why should you, as a merchant, comply with the PCI Security Standards? At first glance, especially if you are a smaller organization, it may seem like a lot of effort, and confusing to boot. But not only is compliance becoming increasingly important, it may not be the headache you expected.

During this session we will briefly go over the PCI-DSS and some basic do's and don'ts for PCI Compliance, with some personal stories from folks the trenches.

Slides:

PCI.pdf

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 10:45 - 11:30

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

Introduction to Views for Drupal 7

greggles — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:43:10 +0000

Speaker(s):

greggles

Video by Variant Studios

Views. It's huge! This session will take you from your first look at views to a point where you should realize its power, know when to use it (and when not), and be able to build a few views.

See how to use views to build a list of content like the homepage of your site
See how displays can work together to create a block of links, a page of teasers, and an rss feed.
Build a basic image gallery with Views and Taxonomy
Create an ajax gallery thinger to show a small list of images in the sidebar
Use Views Bulk Operations to create powerful administrative tools

The presenter:
greggles on drupal.org and @greggles on twitter.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 13:15 - 14:00

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

site building

Experience level:

Beginner

Sustainable Theming with Fusion

sheena_d — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:32:19 +0000

Speaker(s):

stephthegeek

sheena_d

Don't theme yourself into a corner. We built Fusion after years of feedback from designers, site builders, clients, and developers. It's a powerful and supported base theme, with layout and style configuration options built in that you (or your clients) can control through Drupal's UI using the Skinr module. Based on a simplified 960px or fluid 12 or 16-column grid, you can easily define your own custom grid if needed.

In this session we'll cover the basics of Fusion from a themer's point of view, and how it makes themes more sustainable and makes your work flow more efficient. We'll show you how to get started using Fusion as a base theme, how to use the collapsible regions and theme settings to set up the layout you need, and how to begin creating more sustainable themes using Skinr.

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 13:45 - 14:30

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

design

Experience level:

Intermediate

Collaboration and contribution in the Drupal ecosphere: Being active in the community

Ben — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 16:14:54 +0000

Speaker(s):

Ben

It's not enough to just use Drupal, modules, themes, or support anymore. To excel your personal expertise and grow your business you have to be active and collaborate. Contributing back is the new marketing strategy.

So, how and where do we get started?

It doesn't have to be code either, you can contribute back in so many ways, let's talk about a lot of them, and how you can jump in.

Slide short URLs

The slides reference short URLs at http://jnvs.me which will not stay around forever, please use bookmark these actual pages:

/gi http://drupal.org/getting-involved
/do http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupalorg
/cs http://drupal.org/community-initiatives/drupalorg-content-strategy
/doc http://drupal.org/contribute/documentation
/su http://drupal.org/contribute/support
/pa http://drupal.org/node/636570
/fa http://drupal.org/node/383956
/tc http://drupal.org/node/314199
/de http://drupal.org/contribute/development
/tr http://drupal.org/contribute/translations
/rc http://drupal.org/drupalorg-site-maintainers-guide
/cc http://drupal.org/node/717162
/iq http://drupal.org/node/317
/ev http://drupal.org/node/247945
/th http://drupal.org/documentation/theme

Slides:

contribute-drupal-dcco2011.pdf

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 15:15 - 16:00

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

community

Experience level:

Beginner

Introduction to Drupal Theming

c4rl — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 14:58:50 +0000

Speaker(s):

c4rl

Video by Variant Studios

For many of us, the first time we get our feet wet with Drupal code is in the theme layer. The familiar faces of HTML and CSS welcome us to an otherwise new and foreign landscape. After hacking through some of the tpl files, and maybe pasting some Googled code snippets into our template.php we need some fundamental understanding to get us along. How do we control these regions we're given? Where do these CSS properties come from? And what if we want to start from scratch? Where to begin?

This session is for newcomers to Drupal theming, or even newcomers to CMS websites. For those of you (like me) who have historically been markup control freaks, and you haven't been scared back to Wordpress yet, this session is for you. We'll cover:

*What is a theme, how themes are important, and the purpose of themes
*The fundamental building blocks of a Drupal theme, and where we can leverage these components
*Tools, modules, and base themes to help us along the way
*How and where to find help

Hopefully we'll have some time at the end for some Stump the Chump-style Q&A. If we run short on time, we can do a BoF later.

Goals: Improve understanding of Drupal theming architecture, tips and hints to get started theming effectively.

Prerequisites: Good understanding of HTML and CSS, elementary understanding of what PHP does, some poking around Drupal, confusion.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 11:30 - 12:15

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

design

Experience level:

Beginner

Theme preprocess functions: an Introduction

c4rl — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 15:15:25 +0000

Speaker(s):

c4rl

Video by Variant Studios

How many times has this happened to you:

You're theming a Drupal site, writing your CSS and making a few changes to the tpl files here and there. Everything is going great, then suddenly you realize you need to change one of those things that starts with a "$" inside those funny-looking <?php ?> tags. Panic!

You exclaim...

"Crap! Where does <?php print $content; ?> come from?! How do I change it?!"

or maybe...

"Crap! I need to have an extra CSS class on this body tag that depends on the taxonomy of the node on the page! Is that possible?!"

or perhaps even...

"Crap! This View is perfect, and it even says which posts are unread, but I need to have the background color for unread item to be different! How can I get that working?!"

Sound familiar? Preprocess functions are the diplomats of Drupal themes. They are the missing link between what happens in the modules, and what gets sent to the template files.

Goals: In this session, we'll dispel PHP fears, and get our feet wet with a little code that goes a long way to helping out with improving the flexibility of our theme.

Prerequisites: Some experience with Drupal theming, general understanding of the templating system, good understanding of HTML and CSS, some basic familiarity with PHP.

If you have a good grasp on the topics from from my proposed introduction to theming session, this is probably for you.

This session was presented at BADCamp 2009, DrupalCon San Francisco 2010, DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010, BADCamp 2010, & SandCamp 2011

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 16:15 - 17:00

Room:

Concert Hall

Track:

design

Experience level:

Intermediate

(not so) Silly Tricks for Content Managers

mpotter — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 18:36:43 +0000

Speaker(s):

mpotter

This session will focus on tips and tricks for building great Drupal sites that your Content Managers will love. Content Managers will use your site everyday, so learn to build sites that give them the flexibility and power they need.

The session will cover the following modules: Nodequeue, Taxonomy Menu, Nodes in Block, WYSIWYG (and various other editor modules), and Override Node Options.

This will be a hands-on practical session with live demos. I will be walking through the creation of a real web site...the site that I now start with for most of my own clients.

This combination of modules allows the Content Manager to easily move content between pages, add new pages/tabs to the site, move blocks around, all with a simple interface that protects them from messing up the site.

Time permitting I will cover some actual CODE that developers can use to customize this interface even more. But most of the session will focus on site building and not low-level code.

I placed this in the Business track because it's less about low-level Development and more about how to build a site for Business users who care more about manipulating the content of their site quickly and easily.

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

How to setup a Drupal Development Environment for Windows

John Fiala — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 23:15:36 +0000

Speaker(s):

John Fiala

Video by Variant Studios

Welcome to Drupalcamp!

If this is your first Drupal event, you may have a laptop along which you would like to try out the things you hear about during (or after) the sessions, but not know how to get things running - or, maybe you've gotten something installed halfway and it's gotten stuck.

This is the session to come to for help. I'll work with you to install the various pieces of support code that make Drupal happen, get them configured properly, and get your first site running on your local machine. Once that's running we'll work on support elements - an IDE and as much drush as will run on windows.

(And if anyone out there wants to help by becoming a co-presenter, I expect I could use the help.)

Update: I've added the handout for this session - please have a look and feel free to send me any suggestions for improving it. I've also added a page to my website at http://www.jcfiala.net/content/fod-installing-drupal-windows-machine to hold the same info.

Slides:

windows_drupal.odp

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 11:30 - 12:15

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

development

Experience level:

Beginner

Attachment	Size
windows_drupal_handout.odt	70.26 KB

The Ultimate Marketing “Module”

Benjamin Patch — Sun, 01 May 2011 21:14:17 +0000

Speaker(s):

Benjamin Patch

Adam Zeidler

kirei

If there was only that one perfect module which would drive endless amounts of highly targeted traffic to your Drupal websites. The truth is, when it comes to marketing your Drupal sites to the online world, there is no silver bullet. Which is why this session explores a wide variety of online marketing principals, tools and techniques from which any Drupal site, large or small, can benefit.

We will discuss topics such as:

Creating Great Content

Content is the single most often overlooked aspect of most websites. Everyone is guilty, from clients to designers and developers. Smaller Drupal shops in particular are usually expected to cover content even if they lack dedicated staff to do so. Which is why it's so important everyone has a solid understanding of what makes great content. Keyword research is arguably the most important step in crating great content, we'll discuss exactly why and show you how to do it.

Keyword Research
Copywriting
The Importance of Great Titles
Micro Copy and Micro Blogging
Visual Content
Video

Technical Considerations for SEO

Some say Search Engine Optimization is entirely about great content and while that is mostly true, there are some technical considerations that when in place will enhance the effectiveness of all that great content on the site. We'll talk about the following principals - what they are and why they are important:

301 redirects
Information Architecture
Site Maps
Page Titles
Descriptive URLs
Logical H-tag structure
Inbound Links
Meta Tags that matter

Beyond Drupal

Drupal's framework is second to none, but to truly make the most of a Drupal site, you have to go beyond the site itself. This is particular helpful for small sites for local clients.

Social Media
Local Search
Location Based Marketing (for mobile devices)
PPC Advertising
Email Marketing
Article Directories

Master What You Measure

After all this is done, don't forget to measure your ongoing success!

Google Analytics
Facebook Insights
Custom Reporting

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Workbench: Managing Content Management

Dave Reid — Mon, 02 May 2011 14:27:44 +0000

Speaker(s):

Dave Reid

Our clients often come to Drupal with expectations about the features of a content management system (CMS). In many cases, Drupal handles the features they expect. However, not all editorial tools are a part of Drupal Core, and Drupal has addressed these tools with various contributed modules. As a result, Drupal’s editorial space generally lacks a consistent workflow and interface.

Workbench incorporates contributed modules and has some new features of its own:

Hierarchical permission inheritance by “Sections” not just content types
Extensible workflow states
Single repository for media management
Modify live content without publishing changes immediately

Workbench provides a unified interface for managing content. In effect, Workbench hides Drupal from you and makes content management about your institution and your website, not about Drupal.

Resources

View slides from the presentation.

Intended audience

People who maintain sites for large organizations and decentralize control of content will learn how Workbench can improve their control over sections of the site and who is responsible for each section.

People who maintain any site who want a simplified user experience for managing content will see how Workbench provides a user interface that is consistent and easy to access.

Questions answered by this session

Question 1: How do you control content access beyond content type settings?
Question 2: How do you find the content that relates to each user and that user’s job (which is not necessarily the same as the hierarchy of the site)?
Question 3: Can you simplify Drupal’s use for content authors, editors, and publishers?
Question 4: Can you find that file you just uploaded and re-use it?
Question 5: What framework exists that allows you to extend functionality for your content authors yet still providing a unified user experience?

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 13:45 - 14:30

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

community

Experience level:

Intermediate

Earning Your Family Tech Support Merit Badge

amye — Mon, 02 May 2011 18:50:07 +0000

Speaker(s):

amye

The Family Tech Support Merit Badge has a long history with web
developers.
"Hi Mom."
"Hi honey! Look, this'll only take a few seconds, but I've got this great idea for a website."
"Ok, I have a few seconds."
"I want a website where people could create their own greeting cards then have the website print them out and send them!"
"That sounds a little complicated, Mom. What's your budget?"
"My budget!?! Do you know how long I spent in labor with you?"
"Sigh."

But fear not! There are (Drupal-y and other open source!) ways to keep earning your family tech support merit badges without losing your freedom and fun, and we'll go through your options. So the next time this happens, you won't be stuck with the answer, "Uhm, I only work on really big stuff..."

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

Keeping The Lights On - Operations and Monitoring Best Practices

nmcclain — Mon, 02 May 2011 23:54:47 +0000

Speaker(s):

trhein

greggles

nmcclain

Video by Variant Studios

So, you've built and launched the most awesome Drupal site ever? Once the launch party is over, the operations hangover sets in. This session will be focused on practical tools and techniques you can use to keep "your fingers on the pulse" of your site, from availability to performance to security. While this is intended for intermediate Drupal developer and administrators, we'll have tips and tricks that even experts will find interesting!

Learn about site issues and outages before your customers do!
Know about critical issues without completely destroying your personal life.
Centralize and analyze your Drupal and web server logs.
Use the Nagios module to monitor tens or hundreds of Drupal sites.
Track and manage to SLAs (even if you aren't required to).
Use security tools and services to detect and respond to vulnerabilities.
Manage core and contrib software versions, updates, and patches.
Maintain ongoing compliance with security standards (like PCI DSS).

Session slides are available here!

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 09:45 - 10:30

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Usability Findings: What do users have to say about Drupal 7?

beeradb — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:00:36 +0000

Speaker(s):

beeradb

jenlampton

Bojhan

Three years after our first round of formal usability testing on Drupal 6, UX team did another series of testing to uncover usability issues with Drupal 7.

The intent of the session is to share findings from the study, and discuss how these findings might be helpful for a more usable Drupal 8. Attend this panel presentation if you are interested in understanding the user experience and the usability road map for Drupal 8.

Questions answered by this session:
1. How did we conduct the study?
2. What did we test?
3. Did our users succeed or fail accomplishing those tasks?
4. What was their overall experience using Drupal 7?
5. What does this mean for Drupal 8?

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 10:45 - 11:30

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

design

Experience level:

Beginner

Working with Clients and Keeping Your Sanity

justin2pin — Tue, 03 May 2011 00:14:34 +0000

Speaker(s):

justin2pin

Video by Variant Studios

As designers and developers, it is our responsibility to communicate effectively about our craft, to set expectations, and to manage the process. In this session, I'll talk about a few of the techniques we have found to be effective for working with clients -- while keeping our sanity mostly intact.

Just about all of us in the interactive field work with clients. Internal developers serve internal clients, agencies serve outside clients, and product creators serve customers. Clients are a normal part of the developer's life.

Yet almost every time I talk with other shops about working with clients, the conversation turns to horror stories. Scope creep, outrageous functionality requests, counter-intuitive design requirements, and endless feedback cycles are just a few of the common problems design and development teams face. At my company, we've definitely had our own fair share of client communication challenges.

Specifically, we'll cover:

Effectively communicating your process
Fixed-bid versus time and materials
The importance of clearly establishing goals before presenting deliverables
Keeping focus on the final product and experience, not the deliverables along the way
Avoiding endless "dead documents" that have no life beyond project launch

Slides:

Working with Clients and Keeping Your Sanity (14.8MB PDF)

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 16:15 - 17:00

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

How to launch a successful website: Drupal project management for end clients

mikejoconnor — Tue, 03 May 2011 01:20:49 +0000

Speaker(s):

mikejoconnor

According to the Standish Group, only 30% of web projects are successful. If you have ever launched a web site or worked with a web development company, you are familiar with the challenges of clearly defining the scope of work and managing the unforeseen problems that happen along the way.

This session is aimed at project owners and stakeholders who are hiring a Drupal shop to build their web site. The goal of this session is to learn:

How to evaluate features
How to specify features
How to verify features
When to launch your site

Track:

business development

Experience level:

Beginner

The State of e-Commerce in Drupal7

mikejoconnor — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:16:36 +0000

Speaker(s):

mikejoconnor

There’s a lot happening in the Drupal e-Commerce world. Spend an hour learning about pros and cons of Ubercart, Drupal Comemrce, and other e-Commerce options in Drupal 7, in a friendly and accurate presentation from Tim Rohaly(Ubercart maintainer), and Mike O’Connor(Commerce Guy).

We'll be covering the features and capabilities of the two modules, and discuss current status and roadmap for future developments. Audience participation encouraged.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 11:30 - 12:15

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Beginner

D7 + Commerce, a site builders dream

mikejoconnor — Tue, 03 May 2011 03:34:11 +0000

Speaker(s):

willvincent

mikejoconnor

Learn the ins and outs of building e-Commerce sites with Drupal 7 + Drupal Commerce from Will Vincent(The Nerdery), and Mike O'Connor(Commerce Guys), as they share their experiences from a joint project.

The key point of this presentation is how to build more, with less custom code, using the power of Drupal 7, views, panels, and Drupal Commerce.

Additionally, you should learn when code is required, and minimize technical debt when you do add custom code.

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

Git with the program

Crell — Tue, 03 May 2011 04:48:36 +0000

Speaker(s):

Crell

You want to contribute code to Drupal. Great! But how? What's this Git thing people are talking about that you seem to need to know how to use? You just want to write Drupal code, dagnabbit!

Git is the version control system used on Drupal.org, and it is important to understand how to use it in order to contribute effectively. Fortunately, it's a pretty darned cool tool in its own right.

This session will cover the basics of understanding Git, and show attendees how to get setup to share code with the Drupal community on Drupal.org. It will not be an exhaustive study of Git, but should cover enough to get people started on the right foot and understand what git is doing under the hood.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 11:30 - 12:15

Room:

Classroom 101

Track:

development

Experience level:

Intermediate

Concurrency in Drupal

TR — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:20:52 +0000

Speaker(s):

Concurrency is a topic that isn't often considered by Drupal module developers, because it doesn't affect "typical" Drupal applications such as blogs. But when it matters, it can't be ignored.

This talk will discuss the nature of concurrency in Drupal, including when, where and how it can cause problems and what can be done to avoid those problems. Specifically, I will focus on concurrency in e-commerce applications, where failure to ensure correctness in a multi-user environment has monetary and legal implications.

No prior knowledge of concurrent programming techniques will be assumed, but the material presented will be heavy on code samples to illustrate the problems and solutions.

Track:

development

Experience level:

Advanced

Ubercart for Drupal 7

TR — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:31:41 +0000

Speaker(s):

Ubercart has been the pre-eminent commerce solution for Drupal for more than three years. Now it's even better, more flexible and more capable; the new Drupal 7 version has been enhanced to leverage modules such as Views and Rules, and to use some of Drupal 7's new capabilities.

This talk will be an overview of what Ubercart is and what it can do, intended for anyone building a web store, planning on building a web store, or just wanting to learn more about using Drupal for commerce.

I will walk through setting up a simple store with a few products in order to demonstrate how to use Ubercart, show how Drupal core and contributed modules can be used to enhance the capabilities of Ubercart, and sample some of the hundreds of contributed modules written exclusively for Ubercart.

You will learn about the changes that have been made in Ubercart over the past year as well as what's planned for future versions. I will compare and contrast Ubercart with the Commerce module in order to help you make an informed decision about which will best fit your specific needs.

Schedule info

Time slot:

11 June 14:15 - 15:00

Room:

Recital Hall

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Beginner

Ubercart contributed modules: Strategies for reuse

TR — Tue, 03 May 2011 05:57:49 +0000

Speaker(s):

Despite their vastly different architectures, many contributed modules written for Ubercart have potential to be reused in Commerce. Chief among these are shipping and payment modules, which interface external APIs to Drupal.

As an author of several contributed modules for Ubercart, I have a personal interest in seeing my work put to good use and not go to waste. Reuse can potentially benefit both Ubercart and Commerce. Ubercart currently has a huge number of contributions representing tens of thousands of developer-hours to write and debug. Commerce is new and relies on contributions for a lot of functionality, so reuse is the shortest path to building capability.

This talk will give examples of how Ubercart and Commerce contributions can co-exist, thereby making both better, strengthening code quality, saving development
resources.

Track:

commerce

Experience level:

Intermediate

Drupalcon Denver: The journey so far, the peak to summit

Ben — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 22:35:20 +0000

Drupalcon is coming to Denver in March of 2012. Come get up-to-speed with where we're at in planning it, what you can do to shape it, and what we all can do to make it the best Drupalcon ever!

Schedule info

Time slot:

12 June 16:15 - 17:00

Room:

Classroom 105

Track:

community

Experience level:

Beginner