Spokane Day-time Learn/Co-Work Group Dec 18

Events happening in the community are now at Drupal community events on www.drupal.org.
jhodgdon's picture
Posted by jhodgdon on November 20, 2014 at 8:48pm
Start: 
2014-12-18 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, December 18, 2014, 10 AM to noon
Sign up!
Log in and click the "Sign up" button, if you think you will be coming. You will be reminded the day before. The meeting will be canceled if not enough people sign up by the end of the day the Monday before the meeting. You can always click "Cancel signup" at a later time if your schedule changes and you can no longer come.
Where
Spokane County Library - Argonne branch, 4322 N. Argonne Road, Millwood. We meet in the large meeting room - enter from the door out in the hallway before you go into the area with the books
What
Learning and "co-working" time - bring your laptop, or 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!

Note: If you'd like to have a meeting at another time that is more convenient for you, please feel free to organize it! See http://groups.drupal.org/node/161584 for a Wiki where people have listed when would be convenient for them to have meetings.

Sign up now! Log in and click the "Sign up" button if you plan to come, or probably will come, to ensure the meeting actually takes place. The meeting will be canceled if not enough people sign up by the end of the day the Monday before the meeting.

Comments

Web Accessibility

Posted by jhodgdon on November 21, 2014 at 4:30pm
jhodgdon's picture

At our November meeting, we touched briefly on the subject of web accessibility, in the context of making sure link text is accessible.

I really feel like it's important to make web sites that everyone can use... it's also the law if you're making a site for pretty much any government agency (Americans with Disabilities Act, etc.), and possibly other sites.

So what would you all think about spending maybe half of our December meeting discussing accessibility for web sites in more depth? I'd be happy to put something together, and we could go through the main guidelines (what they are, why they're important, and how to satisfy them), how to test your site, Drupal-specific and generic resources, etc.

Thoughts?

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

Web accessibility

Posted by LCozza on November 22, 2014 at 4:28am
LCozza's picture

Sounds like a great idea Jennifer. I look forward to learning more on the subject.

I agree...

Posted by Momseekingbalance on November 22, 2014 at 7:13pm
Momseekingbalance's picture

I agree with Lisa. This sounds like a great idea. Looking forward to next month's meeting!

Cookies

Posted by dmsid on December 18, 2014 at 5:13am
dmsid's picture

I am making Vegan cookies for the meeting right now!

What we did today

Posted by jhodgdon on December 18, 2014 at 8:05pm
jhodgdon's picture

At today's meeting we discussed:

  • We talked about public and private and temp files in the File systems settings in Drupal. Public files are faster, because they by-pass Drupal completely (your Apache web server just sends the file to the browser). Private files are more secure, because Drupal does access checking before it decides to send or not send the file to the browser. The temp file area is used for temporary actions, like building aggregate CSS files if you have that option checked on the Performance page, and uploading files (they go to temp and then to permanent storage). If these directories do not exist, your site will probably not work very well, especially public and temp. Backup and Migrate module uses Private.

  • You can check web page loading speed using:
    • http://yslow.org/
    • Google Analytics if you have it installed on your site
    • Firebug plugin in Firefox
    • Chrome dev tools (press f12)

  • Scott asked a question about Rules, so we did a quick runthrough of what it can do. https://www.drupal.org/project/rules

  • Jose asked about print CSS files so that the MAC web site pages can print better. Lisa mentioned the "Print Friendly module" which works great -- it makes PDFs and helps with printing of sites: https://www.drupal.org/project/printfriendly

  • To update a module:
    1. MAKE A BACKUP of all files and database
    2. Download new version of module to your local computer
    3. Log in as a user with permission to run the update script
    4. Put site in maintenance mode
    5. Delete the old folder and copy in the new folder with the module
    6. Go to (site)/update.php to run the database updates
    7. Make sure it is working
    8. Take off maintenance mode

  • And Jon brought COOKIES! Yum!

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

    Spokane, WA

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