The Denver Boulder User Group September Denver Meeting (2010)

There's been some discussion recently (example) about changing the format of the Denver DBUG meetings, and I'd like to talk about this at the meeting. Obviously anyone really interested in talking about how we should run meetings are at the Meeting Management meetups, not the DBUG meetups. So this might be a boring discussion for some. Still, I think it's important to get some wider input so it's not just those of us who are most involved making it work better for ourselves in ways that might be worse for everyone else. So I'd like to have a short (~10 min) meta-discussion about what we like and don't like about how DBUG works.

The last few meetings I went to had a few guys discussing specific module setups and how they are beneficial. My personal opinion is this is the most helpful part of the meetings along with the open forum atmosphere to ask questions. Perhaps we could take a poll to see what most people want to learn about or are challenge with and ask for volunteers to head up a lesson around those topics... maybe even specific use cases. I'm not a programmer but would be happy to talk about a number of topics around modules I use everyday in my sites that maybe would be helpful to others. Topic Ideas: CCK, Views, Panels, Feeds, Mobile optimization, SEO related tasks, basic styling of drupal, etc....
I have tested a ton of modules and have narrowed down a batch that are the most useful and applicable to many projects. If someone has a specific project in mind... I'd be happy to put together a lesson on how i'd go about it and leave it up for open discussion for other's opinions. If we centered the meeting around a particular project idea each month, I think that would be very useful for everyone. Again, I volunteer to kick it off but please provide feedback if you guys think this is a good idea and what you want to talk about so I can have some prep time. If successful, perhaps we get a volunteer at this meeting to head up the next topic of interest.

We could form our own repository for meeting notes, how to articles, videos, etc... using some of the ideas posted here but the main problem I see is that we don't have enough input as to what people want out of the meetings. Newbies are asking for help but with no specific topics posted so I'm not sure how the meetings become more effective without more active discussion. I offered to conduct a training session on common topics I know about that I think newbies could get value from but noone has responded with any feedback. Doesn't seem like the group page is being used as effective as it could be to share resources and knowledge amongst eachother. Please, if anyone wants to get more out of the meetings then please help by getting involved in the discussion. Again, if I can help others by preparing a training session for next meeting or future meetings... let us know now so I or whomever else can prepare for a specific topic of interest they are comfortable with.

I am a newbie who has attended about three meetings over the last year. I have many questions but I don't have a nice, neat list of them. They usually come up when I run into a problem or when I'm trying to figure out how to do something. I've brought up several of these issues at the meetings and have gotten helpful responses, but I often have more questions when I get home and try to apply the recommendations.

What would really be fantastically helpful is a web site for local Drupal users, where one could ask questions and followup with additional questions if needed. I'd rather see the meetings used for high-level questions rather than detailed problems.

One specific question I'd like to have answered is what are the top 20 Drupal modules that developers use and for what.

Popular modules - depends really on the project because there are SEO modules, Social Network modules, etc... that may or may not be relevant but here is my list of must haves in no particular order with short description. This is for my particular needs so some may or may not be important for you.
1. CCK - any content in your site that needs more than title and body need cck unless you're creating your own modules.
submodules for CCK
2. Views - Displays content with filters, arguments, relationships for pages, blocks, etc.. in your site. Like queries in MS Access but much more powerful.
3. For images and file uploads - filefield, imagefield, imageapi, imagecache
4. Token - populate various field values into other sections of the site
5. Poormanscron - basically refreshes your site on a specific time basis. For example, if you've setup a feed, your site will look for new content from that feed on each cron run.
6. Pathauto - rewrites urls into defined aliases to be more SEO friendly and usable throughout the site. (node/1 becomes article/1 as example).
7. Captcha - protects forms from spam
8. Date - create CCK date fields in your content
9. Email - create CCK email fields in your content (makes links for you)
10. Global Redirect - prevents duplicate urls that look like duplicate pages to SEO and is bad. So node/1 redirects to article/1 and keeps search engines from thinking those are 2 different pages.
11. Jquery UI - usually a requirement for many modules
12. Rules - easily create page redirects and various other actions based on a condition. Example, after creating new article > if specific role > redirect to a url, set to published, display a message... and so on.
13. Admin Menu - makes the site much easier to navigate for administrators
14. Chaos Tools - used by panels, context, feeds to make content exportable, provide context, etc...
15. Panels - (optional) - I use this in all my sites because you can easily create custom layouts and put blocks, views, etc.. into those layouts. You can use context, selection rules, etc... to control what is shown for all kinds of different criteria that is much more powerful than the simple blocks options. Using this module in conjuction with User Relationships, you could conceivably create your own social network. You can create many styles and custom layouts and can be saved for reuse or export to another system. Extremely powerful module that is worth learning in my opinion.
16. Location - I use this anytime I'm collecting address information in a form. It can be used in conjunction with GMAP to do display any or all locations in your site on a google map for instance. I've also figured out a way using views to create a static map from the values of location fields for use in mobile sites. Important to have static maps because many mobile phones don't have javascript enabled.
17. Embed gmap - i use this for simple sites that need to display one location on a map. I used it in conjunction with rules and location module. Basically someone fills out the location fields which are required and then I have a rule populate the embed gmap field with the address info to automatically create a map for that node so users don't have to reenter the info in the same field. This module prevents the need to get a Google API key which is a requirement for modules like GMAP. If just one node to display on the map, I use this module, if multiple... I use GMAP and get the API key.
18. Mobile Tools - use it in conjunction with Panels to create mobile version of the same page for your site. I know alot of people use subdomains for that but in order to use the same content on a shared hosting environment, I don't know of a better way. The domain module is overkill and doesn't work for shared hosting for this need (at least I havn't figured out a way to do it).
19. Feeds - I build alot of sites that have the same content so I create views of type feed on my devel site and feeds on the other sites to connect to the main site and import that content. Theres other ways of using feeds but I use it simply for automation of building sites.
20. Features - This module is incredible for automation. Create a content type, view, rules, panel, etc.. and features allows you to package a replica of that into a module for use in other sites.
21. Strongarm - used in conjunction with features to export variables. For example, allows you export all the defaults from your content type into a feature (stuff like comment settings, published or not published, etc...)
22. Nodewords - metatags and metadescriptions for SEO
23. Page Title - create custom and default page titles across your site for SEO
24. Site Verify - allows you to claim ownership of a site for use in google webmaster tools to analyze your site. Nodewords has a feature for this also but it doesn't work.
25. XML Sitemap - create sitemaps and submit to major search engines so they know about important pages on your site. SEO related.
26. Path Redirect - if you are creating a site for an existing site, you probably need this. If old site had page /about-us and new site has path /about, the old page creates a broken link which is bad for SEO so pathredirect allows you to correct this.
27. Views Slideshow - easily create slideshows of content within views
28. Views Slideshow Dynamic Display Block - my new favorite plugin that works with views slideshow. Really cool slideshow layouts to use from various templates you can download. Great for front page banners, featured articles, etc...
29. Ubercart - only if setting up ecommerce site.
30. User Relationships - only if setting up social networking within site. Best module out there for this in my opinion especially combined with panels. Theres a few addon modules that also work with UR to mimic facebook as much as possible.
31. Add to any - post content to facebook, twitter, etc....
32. Printer, Email, and PDF versions - I use this for printable versions of coupons in my sites but can be used for various other purposes.
33. Organic Groups - I use sparingly, primarily for membership subscriptions to topic categories, workgroups, etc... I've used this more for internal collaboration of employees on projects.

Okay, i think this covers the essentials. Maybe theres some good stuff I missed that someone else wants to chime in on but these I think are the most essential to learn for a variety of projects. If anyone wants a lesson on how to do something with these modules for a meeting topic, take a vote and let me know.