High Performance Drupal meetup in Santa Monica on October 11, 2011 at Yahoo!

The High Performance Drupal meetup has moved to Yahoo! at the Yahoo Center in Santa Monica and we're meeting this time on Tuesday, October 11, 2011. Join us!

The meetup begins at 7:30pm but the doors open a little earlier at 7pm for Users Helping Users, which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal. Several of us may be going to a local bar or restaurant after the meetup for a Drupal After Dark.

If you'd like to give a presentation, announce a job position or ask any questions of the group, please leave a comment below and plan to come a few minutes early. If presenting, be sure to bring your laptop (and power and display cables) and whatever else you need.

This event is free – in fact, there will be raffle prizes and food and drinks will be provided – and no RSVP is required. Those who sign up, however, will have last-minute details (if there are any) sent to them before the meeting. It's also good to know how many to expect so that we can arrange adequate seating, food, drinks, and so on, so please sign up by logging in and clicking the Signup button at http://groups.drupal.org/node/175834#signup

We want your feedback!

During the meetup, we'll be gathered in the #drupal-la IRC channel and all are welcome to join us. The event organizers will also be checking Twitter for feedback and questions that mention @ladrupal or use the #ladrupal hashtag.

Agenda

   6:30pm
   Users Helping Users
   Projector and tables / chairs setup

   7:30pm
   Introductions and job announcements
   Community questions and answers

   8:30pm
   Steve Tchorzewski presents "Improving Front-end Performance with YSlow"
   Ali Anwar and Christefano present "Profiling Drupal with XDebug to Improve Performance"
   Raffle prizes!

   9:30pm
   Wrap-up, Clean-up and Close-up
   Drupal After Dark and networking session

Users Helping Users

The meetup begins at 7:30pm but the doors open a little earlier at 6:30pm for Users Helping Users, which is a chance for members of the community to help and be helped by others with whatever questions and problems they're having with Drupal.

Please note that while Users Helping Users is not designed to be a replacement for bona fide consulting from a Drupal professional that there are plenty of Drupal experts and professionals who attend our meetups and sometimes they need help, too!

Presentations

Improving Front-end Performance with YSlow

Did you know that search engines now rank fast websites in search results higher than slow websites? Do you want to get the most out of your site's performance but are limited by the options from your shared hosting? Steve Tchorzewski (@stevethewebguy) introduces Yahoo's YSlow browser tool that measure page load time and explains their checklists of performance-enhancing suggestions.

This presentation is geared toward getting 100% validation with YSlow and includes tips and tricks that are valuable for everyone (goblins not included). The CDN module, cookie domains and Apache rewrite rules will also be covered in this presentation.

Profiling Drupal with XDebug to Improve Performance

If there is time, we will give a general introduction to improving performance by profiling Drupal code. Ali Anwar and Christefano (@christefano) will demonstrate XDebug, a debugging and profiling tool for PHP applications. We'll be using Quickstart, an out-of-the-box Drupal development environment that includes Eclipse, XDebug, WebGrind, XHProf and more, all running in a Linux virtual machine in VirtualBox.

Get your copy of Quickstart and VirtualBox in advance of this presentation and you can follow along as Ali shows how to use XDebug to tune your Drupal site for more performance.

Location and directions

   Yahoo Center
   2400 Broadway
   Santa Monica, CA 90404

There is on-street parking as well as validated parking in the parking structure. Remember where you parked! This is the largest parking structure on the Westside and the last time we had an LA Drupal event here (at a code sprint at Riot Games), several people had trouble finding their cars.

The Yahoo Center is accessible by public transportation. Take the #1 Big Blue Bus line to Santa Monica and 26th.

What to bring

Just bring your laptop, your business cards or whatever else you need. Food, drinks and parking validation are provided by our venue sponsor.

About LA Drupal

LA Drupal is one of the world's largest regional Drupal user groups and is Southern California's largest hub for all things Drupal. In addition to scheduling 4 regular meetups a month and occasional trainings and social gatherings, LA Drupal members produce special events, code sprints, and the annual DrupalCamp LA and Drupal Design Camp LA conferences.

Attending LA Drupal events is one of the best ways to meet and talk with other Drupaleros and we encourage you to attend meetings and special events regularly. Whether it's to find solutions to problems you've been having, sharing something you've learned or just meeting interesting like-minded people, the LA Drupal events are an essential resource for Drupal professionals and hobbyists alike.

If you aren't already part of LA Drupal, it's easy to become a member and find events in our community calendar at http://groups.drupal.org/la/events