Posted by druderman on January 26, 2016 at 4:54pm
Start:
2016-03-10 14:00 - 15:30 America/New_York Event type:
User group meeting
This Users Group meeting is Thursday, March 10 at 2pm in ISB 145.
Meetings are open to anyone interested in Drupal and not limited to the UMass Amherst community. Bring problems, questions and ideas. Offers to make presentations are welcome.
Meet at the UMass Integrated Sciences Building (ISB) (See map here.
Room 145 is a meeting room near the elevators on the first floor.
(Regular meetings for the UMass Amherst Drupal Users Group are usually the first Thursday of the month, but not this one.)
Agenda:
- Introductions
- Open topics: discussion, problems, show and tell, best practices, etc.
Please post here if you have questions or wish to address a topic at the meeting.
Please use the 'Signup' feature on this events page for a reminder.
Comments
Just a reminder folks. There
Just a reminder folks. There is no users group today. It's next week on 3/10.
Reminder, folks. The users
Reminder, folks. The users group is this Thursday, 3/10 at the usual coordinates.
Demos for next time
Nice seeing everyone today.
There was interest in Organic Groups - I am happy to do a demo of that next time, as well as D6 > D8 migration.
3-10-16 Meeting Notes: UMass Amherst Drupal Group
UMass Amherst Users Group 3-10-16 Meeting Notes
Who attended:
Joanne Patalano-UMass AF Systems, Hailu Dyami-UMass IT, Gary Parker-UMass IT, Bill Leahy-UMass University Relations (UR), Samm Delorey-UMass Enterprise Systems & Development (ESD), Rick Hood-Common Media, Hilary Caws-Elwitt-Five Colleges, Matthew Mattingly- UMass ESD
Meeting Items Discussed
After introductions, we set the meeting agenda items.
What are people using for video players for locally hosted videos? (Hilary)
• Bill: UR uses brightcove
• Hailu: IT has used Media
• Matt: ESD has used video js module https://www.drupal.org/project/videojs on http://www.umass.edu/safefoodfarm2kid/. Matt gave us a demo.
• Discussed video compression. Bill recommends Handbrake: “a tool for converting video” to widely supported codes - https://handbrake.fr/
UMass Tokens Module
This custom module (developed by Dave Ruderman-UMass UR) was recently updated to use session variables. If you use it or are interested in using it, contact Joanne Patalano-co-maintainer.
Wierd error with webforms and file field (Bill)
• Issue with multiple fields of type file on a webform
• On upload, threw error
• We created a webform on the fly to attempt to recreate the problem
• Discussed possible causes
• Suggestion to check the error logs – always
Quick review of best practices for addressing errors (Gary)
• resolve 404 (eg use redirect module)
• get rid of php notice messages as much as possible
• increase log retention
• on high traffic sites, don’t store logs forever in the db. Instead use sys log.
• drupal error logs won’t contain “fatal errors.” If your screen goes white, that’s a fatal error. Fatal errors are logged in apache's error logs.
Workbench Moderation Demo (Rick)
Rick demo’ed the workflow module, workbench moderation module https://www.drupal.org/project/workbench_moderation. He uses it as a stand-alone – without Workbench. “Works good.”
Live Chat feature – What’s out there? Who uses what? (Matt)
• UMass library uses live chat (not drupal)
• Drupal has a live chat module
• Discussed use cases – anonymous vs authenticated users (and authenticated with shibboleth)
• We side-tracked into discussion about Shibboleth. Request to Gary for demo on shibboleth, shibb authentication and look at back-end. Gary is interested and is considering a demo at next meeting.
• Maybe come back to discussing the Live Chat module at another meeting.
D6 to D8 migration: Anyone done it? (Rick Hood)
Rick Hood will do a demo at our next meeting on April 7, 2016 of migrating a site from D6 to D7. This led into discussions of other modules including Features and Bundle Copy.
Features
Rick gave a quick demo of how he has used features. Joanne has also recently used features to export a feature to another site. Would like to return to this at another meeting and review in more detail.
Checking for Dead Links: Who uses what? (Joanne)
Joanne asked what people do to keep on top of dead links. She’s used the Link Checker module. Bill has also used it. Link Checker depends on cron. This led into a discussion on cron. Gary talked about Drupal’s core poor mans cron vs traditional cron and how it works. We also touched on the elysia cron module.
Monster Menu Module (Hilary)
Hilary demo’ed the monster menu module developed by Amherst College. It has a high level of functionality that allows for customized set-ups.
Other
• Rick likes Talking Drupal: talkingdrupal.com for drupal podcasts.
• There was interest in talking about Organic Groups at another meeting. Rick Hood will demo Organic Groups module at our April 7, 2016 meeting.
• What's out there (modules) to filter users / for user management?
• Usability: Don’t make me think - still a good book. Is there an updated version? What are other usability resources? Would like to revisit this topic at a future meeting.
• Accessibility: Samm recommends using http://diagramcenter.org/
Next Meeting and Agenda Items
• We meet next on Thursday, April 7, 2016.
• Rick Hood to demo Organic Groups
• Rick Hook to demo D6 to D8 migration
• Gary Parker to demo shibboleth, shibb auth, back-end (tentative)
Thank you all for coming. Great meeting.
Sounds like you covered a lot
Sounds like you covered a lot of ground!