February 2009: Building a Better Blog With Drupal: When, Why and How

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dale42's picture
Start: 
2009-02-26 18:30 America/Vancouver
Organizers: 
Event type: 
User group meeting

Join us at 6:30pm on Thursday February 26, 2009 at Raincity Studios for the Vancouver League of Drupalers February meeting. This month's feature presentation by Rick Vugteveen from ImageX Media is a fast paced and informative session on building a kick-ass blog using Drupal. And yes, he'll discuss the trade-offs between Drupal and other popular blogging platforms like WordPress and Typepad.

This month's mini case-study presenter is Pedro Posada. Pedro is webmaster for the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (vlaff.org) and he'll discuss the site in his presentation.

Date: Thursday February 26, 6:30pm
Location: Raincity Studios, 1 Alexander Street, Suite 400 in Gastown. [Map]
Cost: There is no charge and all are welcome

For those who don't need to leave right away there's typically a more social discussion at a local pub afterwards.

Agenda

Building a Better Blog With Drupal: When, Why and How

Have you ever been frustrated by the limitations of blogging software or confused about how to blog with Drupal? Join Rick Vugteveen from ImageX Media for a fast paced and informative session on building a kick-ass blog using Drupal. He'll cover the following:

  • When and why you should create blogs with Drupal. Learn the trade-offs between Drupal and dedicated blogging systems such as Wordpress or Typepad.
  • "Isn't this what what the blog module is for?". Learn a better, more flexible approach to building blog functionality using Views and CCK.
  • How to custom tailor your blog's structure and administration to your focus area and content. No coding required!
  • Additional tips on how to: optimize and simplify comments, handle comment spam, create "hackable" urls, "burn" your RSS feeds, ping blogging services and delegate your blog's url to an OpenID server.

Rick Vugteveen's work at ImageX Media focuses on providing solutions to the complex online problems organizations face daily. He started working with Drupal in 2005 and quickly became a believer in both the software and the open source values associated with it.

Real World Mini-Case Study: Vancouver Latin American Film Festival

This month's mini case-study presenter is Pedro Posada. Pedro is webmaster for the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (vlaff.org) and he'll discuss the site in his presentation.

Drupal Q&A

Bring your questions on anything related to Drupal from how to do something technical in PHP to what modules are needed to implement a feature you want.

Location Details

Raincity Studios

Raincity Studios are located at 1 Alexander Street, Suite 400 in Gastown. [Map]
There's a security intercom at the door, so you'll need to buzz to get in. Take the elevator to the top floor, then take the flight of stairs to the floor above that.

Wireless Access

There is a Free the Net wireless access point accessible from the Raincity offices.

Kid's Room

In recognition of people with families the Raincity conference room is available as a kids room. It is next to the presentation area and has glass walls so your kids will always be in sight. We can't provide child-minding or babysitting services - we just provide the room and leave it to you to entertain your kids. We suggest you bring appropriate toys/books/other entertainment.

Thank You Raincity

Our thanks to Raincity Studios for making their office available for our meetings.

Drupal Association

We encourage everyone receiving value from Drupal and the Vancouver League of Drupalers to join the Drupal Association: http://association.drupal.org/membership

Not only does this directly support Drupal, it supports the groups.drupal.org website where our group's web presence is based.

Comments

At the January meeting I

dale42's picture

At the January meeting I announced the February meeting was going to be the 3rd Thursday. I'd forgotten about Northern Voice (d'oh), so the meeting will be the last Thursday of February.

is there actually NV stuff

arianek's picture

is there actually NV stuff going on thursday? i only ask because launch party is also scheduled for the 26th... busy busy!

federico's party is on thursday february 19, 2009

Roland Tanglao's picture

so yes there is NV stuff happening on that thursday :-) !

Hello Techcouver!

rickvug's picture

Looks like there's a lot of tech events in Vancouver this month. Dale and I didn't know that Launch Party conflicted when the date was set. In my opinion having two events on one night is about the best problem one can have.

What is "Launch Party"?

katy5289's picture

Please explain - What is Launch Party?

Launch Party is...

rickvug's picture

Katy, see http://launchpartyhq.com for more information about Launch Party.

sounds interesting, will be

nickytu's picture

sounds interesting, will be attending! :D

dale42's picture

Horray, Pedro Posada, webmaster for the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (vlaff.org) has volunteered to present a mini case-study on the VLAFF website. His email included a Napoleon Dynamite reference, providing a hint he might enjoy his film festival work and proof he has a sense of humour!

rickvug's picture

I want to remind everyone that there is a Vancouver League of Drupalers meet-up tonight at the Raincity office. I'm looking forward to talking all about how to create your ultimate blogging setup in Drupal. I hope to tailor the talk to cover what those attending want to know. Feel free to post any questions or topics you'd like addressed here and I'll do my best to cover them.

See you tonight!
Rick

Can this be published as a series of blog posts?

Cecily's picture

I only just found out about this tonight and can't make it because of a prior commitment. Is there any way that the author might consider doing this lecture as a series of blog posts?

need blog recipe for Drupal 6 to beat Wordpress

katy5289's picture

I'm sorry I couldn't make it tonight. I'm interested in a blog recipe for Drupal 6. I hope to see it soon.

Katy :-)

Slides & Video Coming

dale42's picture

Rick mentioned he'll be posting his slides.

I recorded Rick's presentation but am currently working on Jim DeLaHunt's November presentation on Multilingual sites. I did a quick spot check of Rick's recording and it looks good, so just a matter of time.

Slides are up

rickvug's picture

Thank you to everyone who made it out on Thursday. I enjoyed the open discussion and learnt a few things myself. I've attached my slides to this post. However, they may not make sense if you haven't seen the presentation itself. @Cecily and a few others on Twitter have suggested that I turn the presentation into a series of tutorials. I'd love to do - I just hope that I can find the time.

Rick

Am I missing something?

Cecily's picture

Hi Rick,

Am I missing something? I don't see your slides.

groups.drupal.org still isn't liking the attachment...

rickvug's picture

So I've posted the slides on my own blog (direct link to the PDF). Thanks for your patience!

thanks rick for the great concise presentation

Roland Tanglao's picture

you have worked on it and it shows!
sorry about my rant about not using the drupal admin user! Having people use admin and run into problems and complain about it :-) makes me hyper sensitive to that subject!

No worries about the rant!

rickvug's picture

I completely hear you about not using admin. I personally tend to use admin during the initial development of a site as it presents me with no roadblocks. I then go and use the site with actual user account(s) to make sure that everything is working properly. I think that we can both agree that user 1 should be used sparingly and never be given to a client as they can do some serious damage with it.

You're not missing anything...

rickvug's picture

Looks like the file attachment didn't work. I'm out now so I'll try again when I get home. Sorry about that.

Presentation Video now up

Vancouver

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