Given the turnout (and the fantastic presentation) at the last meeting, it would be nice to keep the momentum flowing by having a few presentations lined up for upcoming months. Here are some ideas. Would you be willing to take one of these topics on?
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Module show and tell: a few people talk about a useful but obscure module.
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Scaling up Drupal across multiple MySQL backends or multiple frontends.
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A case study in moving to Drupal from another CMS.
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Theming show and tell: maybe making a theme from scratch or using one of the templates.
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What you can do with drush, the Drupal Shell.
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Drupal security considerations (what to do, what to avoid, how Drupal sites can be attacked, etc.)
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Deploying Drupal on virtual machines/"the cloud".
Maybe some of these ideas are stupid and/or too close to ideas that were presented recently. In that case you can use this opportunity to propose some more!
Maybe some of these ideas match your experiences/knowledge/interest area. In that case be brave and volunteer to present! We shouldn't leave all the burden for filling in guest speakers on poor Khalid's shoulders.
Comments
Agree ...
I agree on most of the above. The #2 one is something I try to avoid or delay as much as possible for large sites, since each has its complexities/drawbacks.
Here are some additional topics:
Site presentations: how you are using Drupal? Why you are using Drupal? Which modules are you using (core, contrib or custom).
Meet and greet, followed by Questions and Answers. Come and introduce yourself and ask questions or answer them.
Everyone else is encouraged to post about topics they want to see, and topics they can/want to present.
Drupal performance tuning, development, customization and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc..
Personal blog: Baheyeldin.com.
Setting up a local
Excellent ...
Great ideas, all of them.
Let us expand that first point a bit:
Although some of us do this stuff daily, it can be a daunting task for others.
How to take a copy of running site and replicate it on another machine (dumping MySQL from command line or phpMyAdmin, creating an archive via cPanel, or from the command line, other options ....
Points to consider (absolute URLs e.g. using sites/example.com/files/something.jpg, changing settings.php for the database, ...etc.)
Point 2 is worthwhile for sure. There are LOTS of changes. Let us wait until we have a release candidate. Also let us mention the D7CX movement.
For point 3, it would be great if contribution in non-code can be expanded on so people can give what they can ...
Drupal performance tuning, development, customization and consulting: 2bits.com, Inc..
Personal blog: Baheyeldin.com.
Offers or requests?
These are good topics. Are you willing to take any of them on? (And if so, when?)
I can for any of these, but
I can for any of these, but like Dave I'd like to let anyone who hasn't presented have a chance. At this point, I know I'll be away for the January meetup.
I don't think that filling up
I don't think that filling up meeting spaces is particularly selfish. How about you pick one of the three topics and present it in February?
We'd love to hear about this
I think some of my team perhaps can talk about [please wait to confirm the committment] on
While it's true certain topics do demand a 2-hr. presentation it would be great if we can have at least 2 presentations lined up for every month :0)
Thanks.
Lalit
lalit
Personally, I would be happy
Personally, I would be happy if there was ONE topic per month.
I think that the theming for accessibility would be great to see (although maybe others have seen it already...).
When you have confirnation for a topic why don't you go ahead and create an event for an available meeting slot? Just remember to make it the third Thursday of some month.
I'd be interested in
I'd be interested in accessibility topics as well.
See
See http://groups.drupal.org/node/32558, I've a list of IT centric discussions -- to assuage any concerns Khalid or others might have, I'd of course keep anything to a Drupal focus:
1) Application infrastructure (The Full Monty): Dev, Test, Production, Failover; Why, when, where, and how
2) Business Continuity: It ain't just about backup and recovery, it's about staying in business!
3) Performance: What is appropriate and when, How to measure, How to achieve; we can't all do Google-speeds...
4) Performance -- caching: What's available, appropriate, best, worst (this would include Drupal and non-Drupal options)
5) Security -- the basics: Who is the enemy, What to worry about; What not to worry about; How to monitor; Who to trust;
6) Security -- attacks: What is XSS, CSRF, Trojan, virus, worm, portscan, social engineering
7) Security - administration: SSH for security and performance; scripting for sanity; crontab; syslog; file system perms, RCS and more
8) Security -- tools: an overview of GnuGP/OpenPGP; SSL/TLS and configuring SNI, SSH tunnels, tripwire, Intrusion Detection, firewalls (types and misunderstandings)
9) Security -- Access control: Permissions in Drupal, what they are, how to administer, how to extend; interesting ACL-related modules
10) Administration: GUI vs Scripting (when to use one versus other); cool tools and how/when to use them (rsync, rdiff-backup, drush, phpmyadmin, sed, grep, perl, mysqltuner.pl & tuning-primer.sh)
11) Administration -- Overview: what is a: router, firewall, switch, hub, server, workstation, NAS, DAS, SAN, iSCSI, bootp, dhcp, bind/named, NAT, proxy, reverse proxy, load balancer (layer 3 and 5); (and why you need to know)
12) Administration -- Advanced: how to achieve 5-nines (99.999%) service (and what you should expect to spend); how, when (and when not) to perform "inline maintenance"; How to replicate mysql (and replicate the replica);
13) Service Level Agreements: What are they and what value do they bring? How do you create them? How do you measure them? When do you use them?
President & CEO, Global Alliance of Trusted Experts
http://www.gatevillage.net -- South-Western Ontario's Drupal Community Building Site
When?
It looks like some of the security talks would be popular. Maybe topic 5 would be a good start. Personally I think it is great that you are willing/able to present such a wide variety of topics.
When would you be willing to present? Would December work? January? Later is fine too, but I think it is good to schedule events early.
I wouldn't want to stop
I wouldn't want to stop anybody else from presenting, perhaps we should give enough time to allow people to put up their hands?... but I can do #5 on the 17th
President & CEO, Global Alliance of Trusted Experts
http://www.gatevillage.net -- South-Western Ontario's Drupal Community Building Site
I don't think there is much
I don't think there is much contention for meeting times. I will create an event for you for the December presentation.
I think the security topics
I think the security topics would be really useful, since all of the methods can be used to hack a site. Perhaps the tools would be too much to do in 2 hours, but a combination of "how your site can be hacked" + "how to keep your users in control with ACLs" would be awesome.