Spokane Daytime Drupal Group - March 19 - ONLINE!

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jhodgdon's picture
Posted by jhodgdon on February 20, 2020 at 9:00pm
Start: 
2020-03-19 10:00 - 12:00 America/Los_Angeles
Organizers: 
jhodgdon
Event type: 
User group meeting

We hope you can join us for the next daytime meeting of the Spokane Drupal User Group!

When
Thursday, March 19, 2020, 10 AM to noon
We usually meet on a Thursday morning at a library out in the Spokane Valley area. 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
Due to the libraries being closed, this meeting will be held online. See comments below for the link.
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
We spend two hours in a question and answer format, with the participants in a shared virtual space this month. Come with questions about a project you're working on, something you've learned that you'd like to share with others, a desire to improve Drupal in some way (documentation, programming, design, marketing etc.), 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!

Comments

Canceled!

Posted by jhodgdon on March 15, 2020 at 11:24pm
jhodgdon's picture

The library has canceled all use of meeting rooms until who knows when... Stay healthy!!

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

Video conference?

Posted by CProfessionals on March 15, 2020 at 11:29pm
CProfessionals's picture

I was actually sick for our last meeting. Was looking forward to this one. Any interest in doing a video conference?

Let me know, and I can set it up.

Sounds interesting...

Posted by jhodgdon on March 17, 2020 at 12:13am
jhodgdon's picture

I've already made other plans for this time slot this Thursday, sorry!

Regarding video conferencing in general... Many video conferencing platforms do not support Linux (my desktop and laptop computers run Ubuntu Linux, not Windows or Mac). But I've had good success with using Google Hangouts for Drupal meetings of several people, as well as Zoom. Using either one, participants can mute their audio except when they're actually speaking, and share their screens if they have something to demonstrate, and it seems to work pretty well.

So if we want to set up a different time for a virtual meeting, and can use Hangouts or Zoom, I'd be up for it! I'm available on March 26 or April 2 (both Thursdays) at our usual time.

Is there anyone else interested in meeting that way? That is probably the best we can do between now and the end of April at least.

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

I vote yes!

Posted by Momseekingbalance on March 17, 2020 at 6:20pm
Momseekingbalance's picture

I could virtually meet either Thursday at our usual time. My fingers are crossed!

Tomorrow OK too

Posted by jhodgdon on March 18, 2020 at 2:12pm
jhodgdon's picture

I'm now available again this Thursday, 3/19... looks like we have yes from Shawn, Diane, and me. Anyone else interested in a virtual meeting?

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

Virtually meeting game-plan thoughts?

Posted by Momseekingbalance on March 19, 2020 at 2:05am
Momseekingbalance's picture

I took a look at both Zoom and Google Hangouts. For the free-pricing, it appears Zoom has a limit of 40 minutes on the group meetings. I do not see any time limits for Hangouts.

I sent an invite

Posted by CProfessionals on March 19, 2020 at 4:31pm
CProfessionals's picture

I sent an invite out.

https://hangouts.google.com/hangouts/_/calendar/ZWJ1bGxpZW5jZTcyQGdtYWls...

Edited event

Posted by jhodgdon on March 19, 2020 at 4:46pm
jhodgdon's picture

I just edited the event to say we are meeting virtually. See you online in 15 min! Thanks for setting that up.

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

Meeting notes

Posted by jhodgdon on March 19, 2020 at 6:49pm
jhodgdon's picture

Shawn set up a Google Hangouts meeting for us, and we had 6 people attending virtually -- it went well! Here's what we discussed:

  • If you have questions in between meetings, please post them on our group! Go to https://groups.drupal.org/spokane-wa (make sure you are logged in), and click "Create discussion" in the sidebar. Then be patient -- most of us in the group monitor the group, but in daily digest format, so we won't see your message immediately.
  • Events:
    - DrupalCon -- supposed to be in May but it will be postponed
    https://events.drupal.org/minneapolis2020/coronavirus-covid-19-disease-p...
    - MidCamp -- went all-virtual this year: https://www.midcamp.org/
    - PNW Drupal Summit -- https://pnwdrupalsummit.org/ -- postponed but we don't know when it will be rescheduled.
  • Drupal 9 release should be June 3. Beta starts soon.
  • Drupal 7 to 8 migrations -- not foolproof!
    - You can apparently customize migrations to do just part of your site:
    https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/upgrade/customize-migrations-when-upgradin...
    https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/api/migrate-api/executing-migrations
    https://www.drupal.org/project/feeds/
    https://www.drupal.org/project/feeds_migrate
  • Blocking spam site registrations (Jon): Their site was having trouble where too many people were registering for bogus accounts, and then trying to access pages, and the form caching table (cache_form) got huge out of control. Once it was really big, the cron tasks would not run. So, they needed to prevent people from registering bogus accounts. Used the following modules:
    - Drupal Core -- allows you to ban specific IP addresses
    - Automatic IP ban module -- create logic for banning IP addresses. Use the log analysis tab to set up some starting points, and then test the rules you try to create https://www.drupal.org/project/autoban
    - Blocked IP expire -- automatically expires IP bans after a while https://www.drupal.org/project/blocked_ips_expire
    - Email domain restrictions -- blocks fake registrations https://www.drupal.org/project/email_domain_restriction
    - CAPTCHA -- Using ReCaptcha as well as simple math question captchas -- testing which ones work better -- https://www.drupal.org/project/captcha
  • Managing Drupal 8 code base with Composer and Git
    - You can do a "composer dry run" when you want to do an update, and see what would be updated. But the "dry run" doesn't seem to work well.
    - Suggest just doing a separate Git clone and trying the composer update there so that you can test it in a separate workspace and see if it will work, without affecting your local working dev site.
    - Since you're using Git, you can revert changes pretty easily before you commit them. You can remove all the files in a directory and then refresh them by using a git checkout command.
    - You might want to make a shell script, or keep a list of commands (using Drush commands and other command-line commands) to spin up a local development copy of your site quickly. Here's a page in the User Guide on making a local copy:
    https://www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/install-dev-making.html
  • How big can your Drupal site database be before it's a problem? Jon says 8 GB database is not a problem, but it would depend on your hardware. However, using PHPMyAdmin to import a database dump for a large database is definitely a problem! You want to instead using the mysqldump command to export a database, and mysql command to import.

    You don't need to export all of the data in the database either! Such as the cache tables (you need the table structure but not the data in them).

  • Need a way to put large audio files in separate storage, and let people on the site access the files. The files are stored in a Google drive somewhere. This will work with standard Drupal media modules, because they normally allow you when you create a media item, you can point it to either a local file or a URL.
  • We looked at debugging an error in the Drupal log

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