Spokane Day-time Learn/Co-Work Group July 14

Posted by jhodgdon on June 17, 2016 at 4:56pm

Start:

2016-07-14 10:00 - 12:00 America/Los_Angeles

Organizers:

jhodgdon

Event type:

User group meeting

We hope you can join us for the next meeting of the Spokane Day-Time Drupal Learning and Co-Working Group!

When: Thursday, July 14, 2016, 10 AM to noon
We meet on the 2nd or 3rd Thursday of each month at this time/location. Log in and join the Spokane Drupal User Group (see sidebar on https://groups.drupal.org/spokane-wa ) to be notified of future meetings, events, and discussions (typically just a few email messages per month).
Where: Spokane County Library - Argonne branch, 4322 N. Argonne Road, Millwood. We are currently meeting in the small conference room at the library. From the hallway, go into the library proper, past the checkout/information desk, take a right and you'll see the room on the right.

To be reminded, sign up!: To receive an email reminder closer to the date of the meeting, log in and click the "Sign up" button; log in and click "Cancel signup" at a later time if your schedule changes and you can no longer come. There's no obligation to come if you sign up (but we hope you will!). There's also no obligation to sign up in order to come (it's up to you if you want a reminder or not). However, the meeting could be canceled if the organizer isn't sure anyone is coming.
What: Learning and "co-working" time - bring your laptop, or just watch on the projector screen. Come with a project you're working on, a desire to improve Drupal in some way (documentation, programming, design, marketing etc.), a question about Drupal you would like to get an answer to, or a desire to help others with their projects and questions. Or just come and listen and observe.
Who: Everyone is welcome -- the only prerequisite is having some interest in Drupal. This group is usually 5-10 friendly people, with experience levels ranging from novice to expert, so you'll fit right in. Because of the size of the group, you will have time to share something you've learned, or get your questions answered, or both!

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Meeting notes

Posted by jhodgdon on July 19, 2016 at 2:27pm

Sorry -- I forgot to post these notes from last Thursday's meeting. Here's what we discussed:

Jennifer showed off her process (and output) for making automated screenshots for the User Guide. This uses Drupal's built-in "simpletest" automated regression testing system, which is part of Drupal Core in Drupal 7 and 8.
See: https://www.drupal.org/simpletest for more information about writing automated tests.
The User Guide is in copy editing phase! To help, see
https://www.drupal.org/project/user_guide
The Drupal.org documentation is in process of being reorganized. There is some information about this at:
https://www.drupal.org/node/2533684 (plan for what is going to happen)
https://www.drupal.org/drupalorg/blog/whats-new-on-drupalorg-june-2016 (blog about current progress)
https://www.drupal.org/node/2682083 (asking for volunteers to maintain sections)
John wants to develop several different sites, for testing out possible features and modules. How to do it best?
- Jon explained how they do it: with a development, staging, and live sites. Each has its own code and database. Visitors can only see the live site. On Blackmesh hosting, they have a "cascade" feature, which allows you to transfer code from development -> staging -> live. Jon also has development copies on his own local computer for more rough testing.
- Drupal's "multisite" feature allows you to have multiple sites running off the same Drupal installation, each with its own database. However, they share code, so the ability to test modules and features and updates etc. is limited -- if you change code, it will affect all of the sites. You can have some modules and themes specific to each site, however.
- Pantheon hosting has great tools for putting up multiple Drupal sites better
The Drupal.org documentation is limited and not always great. Other options:
- http://www.lynda.com -- training for everything, not just Drupal. Free for people with Spokane County or Spokane City Library card. Small monthly fee otherwise.
- http://www.buildamodule.com -- small monthly fee
- The new User Guide (see above) -- should be on Drupal.org/documentation eventually.
Jon connected Webform module to Salesforce with
https://www.drupal.org/project/webform
https://www.drupal.org/project/sfweb2lead_webform
This allows you to use the Webform module to create a form, and send the information automatically to Salesforce.
Jon uses Node Clone https://www.drupal.org/project/node_clone to clone his forms so he can easily make a new version of a form from a starting point.
Jon needed to have a mechanism for people to be logged in on various sites with different subdomains instead of having separate logins. You could use https://www.drupal.org/project/bakery to do that... But even simpler, you can also put something in settings.php for the cookie domain. See https://www.drupal.org/node/1096962 -- the section on $cookie_domain.
What to do if you find a problem on a Drupal.org page:
- If it is a Documentation page, log in and edit it. You can also add a comment, if there is a change that needs to be made, and you do not know what the correct information is.
- If it is a Project page (page for a module or theme), log in and create an issue in that project, explain the problem, and suggest better wording.
John asks how modules affect each other. Methods:
- Form alters. Module A creates a form page. Module B can use hook_form_alter() or similar hooks to alter that form. See
https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules%21system%21system.api.php/func...
- Hooks in general. Module A defines a hook. Module B can "implement" the hook, to alter how A acts. Example: hook_node_load() in Drupal 7 allows module B to add/remove things from a node after it is loaded from the database by the core Node module.
https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/modules%21node%21node.api.php/function...
There are similar hooks in Drupal 8.

- Theme-related alterations. See
https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/includes%21theme.inc/function/theme/7.x
for Drupal 7, or
https://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/core%21lib%21Drupal%21Core%21Render%21...
for Drupal 8

- You could just edit the code in the module yourself. But then you will have problems with updating, and will have to maintain the code yourself forever after.
Upcoming events:
- Next DrupalCon (huge) events: September 2016 in Dublin, Ireland; April 2017 in Baltimore.
- BADCamp - October, Berkeley CA, http://2016.badcamp.net/
- Pacific Northwest Drupal Summit, early 2017 http://2015.pnwdrupalsummit.org/2017
- Generic Drupal calendar: https://www.drupical.com/ -- uses data from https://groups.drupal.org/events
- Our group: https://groups.drupal.org/spokane-wa
How did drupalcal.com make its site? Answer: probably with Views and the GMap module or something similar such as Openlayers, and core Aggregator module.
https://www.drupal.org/project/gmap
https://www.drupal.org/project/openlayers

Drupal programmer - http://poplarware.com
Drupal author - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920034612.do
Drupal contributor - https://www.drupal.org/u/jhodgdon

Spokane Day-time Learn/Co-Work Group July 14

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