Spokane Day-time Learn/Co-Work Group March 17

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jhodgdon's picture
Start: 
2016-03-17 10:00 - 12:00 America/Los_Angeles
Organizers: 
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, March 17, 2016, 10 AM to noon
Sign up!
Log in and click the "Sign up" button, to receive a reminder the day before. 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 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.
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.

Comments

Meeting notes

jhodgdon's picture

What we discussed at the meeting today:

  • User guide testing / free training -- see https://groups.drupal.org/node/509557
    Decided that we want to do this, on Saturday, April 9, 10-4. This will take the place of our regular meeting in April. Jennifer will set up an EventBrite registration, and a web site explaining what the training is, with a PDF to download for the user guide. And reserve a library room.

    Suggestions:
    * On registration, ask what type of laptop they will bring (Windows, Mac, etc.)
    * Have you built a web site before?
    * Bring your own lunch/snacks/coffee or go out nearby
    * Indicate your level of experience with Drupal (will put very experienced people to work as "mentors")

    Publicity:
    * Post on our Drupal User Group
    * Craigslist
    * Inlander
    * Nickel's Worth
    * Diane to post on Build Guild
    * Linux user group
    * Diane to ask if she can put it on the Community Library Network site, NIC
    * Jennifer to ask if the library where it is held will post it as an event
    * Jon will check for other groups that might be interested, such as community colleges, universities, etc.
    * Jose will make a poster. Jon to email this to groups/stores, and post on the groups.drupal.org page.
    * Anyone who does publicity, post to the groups.drupal.org page so we do not duplicate efforts.

  • Jon mentioned translating web sites using the GTranslate module to use Google Translate https://www.drupal.org/project/gtranslate -- but some pages may want to be translated by a native speaker too, or written in the local language in the first place.
  • Jon talked about using the Domain Access module https://www.drupal.org/project/domain to have multiple web sites, each with their own domain name and theme, from the same Drupal installation. They can share some content but not all -- for instance, the India editor may write an article and mark it as "can be shared" or not. Then if it is shared, the American site editor can decide to add the article to the American site or not. The American editor cannot edit the article (that is controlled by a custom module on the site, not Domain Access itself).

    Jon also looked at using the core Drupal "multi-site" feature, but this didn't provide the flexibility they needed.

  • Lisa talked about why she recently switched her site from being hosted at HostGator to Pair.com, because HostGator had partnered with "SiteLock", who was trying to scam her into purchasing the SiteLock service. Jennifer and Lisa migrated the site by:
    * Made a database backup of the existing site using the Backup and Migrate module.
    * Downloaded all the files (Drupal, modules, and uploaded files) to local computer.
    * Uploaded all the files to the new hosting.
    * Updated the files for Drupal Core and several modules with security updates, on the new hosting.
    * In the new hosting control panel, imported the database backup.
    * On the new hosting, edited sites/default/settings.php file to point to the new database.
    * The new hosting gave us a temporary URL for the site. Went to (that URL)/update.php to run database updates for the updated Drupal Core and modules.
    * After that was done, the site was up at the new URL. We clicked around and made sure it was OK.
    * Later, Lisa changed the DNS record so it was pointing to the new hosting.
    Note: This is basically the same thing you would do to set up a development copy of an existing site.
  • Lisa asked about responsive ads that will change size properly for phones vs. desktop browsers. So, we looked at her site using (Thanks Jose!) the "Responsive Design View feature in Firefox (Jose says Chrome has the same thing) (Go to the menu > Developer > Responsive design view). She's using AdSense, and sometimes the ads seem to be kind of corrupted. Jennifer set up a "No Processing" text format for the site to make sure that no HTML tags are being altered or removed, and Lisa put the AdSense ad into a new block with this text format.. seems to be working better now.
  • Jennifer explained a bit more about what Text Formats do, and Jon gave some examples from his experience.

Event is up for April!

jhodgdon's picture

We're ready to go with the training event! Information is at https://groups.drupal.org/node/509913 ... Comment there if you have sent out any additional publicity, and if you make a poster, send it to me and I can post it on the page (it looks like you can attach files to pages but not to comments). THANKS!

One note relevant to the above meeting notes: It seems that Eventbrite no longer allows you to ask questions when people register. So... I set up 3 types of free "tickets" for the event (no experience, some experience, and "mentor").