Site Demos and Reverse Teardowns

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druroot's picture

I'm always trying to think up good content that would spark discussion among our group, and I wanted to talk about the concept of site demos and reverse teardowns since they generally make great filler content and can usually initiate some good general discussions. I'd like to get some ideas for good sites to do these talk on. If you're not familiar with either of these concepts, read on, I'll explain what they are in more detail, if you have a good idea for a site to use for one of these, please post it below and we'll pick the most interesting sites to take a look at each month.

Site Demo
You've made a really cool site and you want to show the world what you did and how you did it. You can take us on a tour of the site you did, and the group will ask how you did this, or how you built that. This is a great exercise for getting some constructive feedback on your newly created sites.

Reverse Teardown
Reverse teardowns can work one of two ways, either you have access to a dev site that you can tear up, or you're examining a live site through the front end markup. Either way, you're trying to guess how a site was built. The person driving this talk should have no previous knowledge of the site, and will poke around to guess how things were built. Going off the markup gives you a basic ability to guess what's going on, and gives you no way to verify correctness, but it generally will spark some good communication. It's always nice to have access to the backend, because it gives you the ability to do a more in depth analysis, also, these types of teardowns usually have the sitebuilder in the room to verify correctness to the person driving the reverse teardown.

So if you have a site that you want to showoff, or one of interest that you'd like torn down, post here and we'll use the most interesting sites as demos and teardowns.

Comments

Can somebody livestream it?

rich.yumul's picture

Can somebody livestream it? I'm not going to be able to make it to tomorrow's meeting. :(

Rich Yumul
Sage Tree Solutions
www.sagetree.net

Cameras

druroot's picture

None of my digital video cameras seem to be compatible with the livesteam software, anyone else have one that they know works with it? I can always use my built in isight camera, but I think the quality is pretty bad with that...any thoughts from those who've seen on of the isights broadcasts?

I have my old Sony DV camera

Si_Rob's picture

I have my old Sony DV camera (HDR-HC1e) never tried it with live-stream but should work....

Yay!!! :D

jay.lee.bio's picture

Andrew, taking a look at the most interesting Drupal sites every month will probably make me the happiest person in the group! Thanks! Well at least until I finish climbing the Drupal learning cliff that is, but it's definitely a fantastic idea and I'll probably enjoy it just as much even after reaching the top of the cliff.

I'd love to request Musicolio.com as a candidate for a reverse teardown, simply because it will be a HUGE help while I work on my own current project. I've created an account there to see what the difference is between what an anonymous user sees vs. an authenticated user, so I can create screenshots too if that helps?

P.S. To bypass the initial splash screen as an anonymous user just go to http://musicolio.com/bigbillyclark.

Slow Link

jay.lee.bio's picture

Sorry for the slow link, I just realized that the more content a page has at Musicolio.com the more ridiculously slower it becomes. Go to the following link instead to bypass the initial splash screen as an anonymous user. Then you can look at the top menu and browse the various sections of the website to get a better idea of how it was made using Drupal:

http://musicolio.com/content/what-musicolio

Sites for reverse teardown

christophweber's picture

I have one or two sites I can share with someone for a reverse teardown. The sites are fairly simple, with a few twists to add flavor, and would be great material for a daring noob or intermediate Drupaler to analyze. Don't be shy, just grab the opportunity and run with it!

There is a third way to do reverse teardowns, which I prefer: You get the site a week or two before the meeting, check it out, and decide how you want to present it. I am not part of the prep, however, except to supply you with the code and database dump. I will only comment and/or help at the meeting itself, so surprise me with your take!

Hit me up at cwebersd(at)gmail(dot)com if you're interested.

--
Christoph Weber

Easy one for third option?

jay.lee.bio's picture

Is the third option open for newbies too? If it's an easy one I might be interested, since I need practice in this type of exercise myself.

You're in!

christophweber's picture

This is an excellent opportunity for you to learn more Drupal stuff. Not that my sites are particularly exemplary, but they'll serve the purpose and are simple enough. Moreover, discussing your findings at the next meeting with comments from knowledgable Drupalers will add a whole 'nother dimension. I'll make sure tonight or tomorrow that the site installs properly on my laptop and then forward you code tarball and db dump.
Thanks for volunteering, I'm excited to see what you'll come up with!

--
Christoph Weber

Ready or not, here I come!

jay.lee.bio's picture

I'll email you shortly and we'll go from there. It's gonna be exciting!

Imbee.com

jay.lee.bio's picture

I'd love to see this one torn apart at some point.

Artifact

NealB-1's picture

Let's have the person doing the teardown produce some sort of artifact along with the presentation, like a hand-out or a powerpoint, that people can review afterward. I would like to have time to study the work that the presenter did and learn more from it than I can just from watching.

San Diego DUG

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