Spokane Daytime Drupal Group - Feb 14 - Argonne Library

Posted by jhodgdon on January 26, 2019 at 8:04pm

Start:

2019-02-14 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, February 14, 2019, 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: Spokane County Library - Argonne branch, 4322 N Argonne Rd, 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.

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 around a table, and a laptop with a projector. 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!
Need a ride?: If transportation is keeping you from attending, please log in and post a comment here. Our usual attendees come from all around the area: downtown Spokane, South Hill, Mead, Hayden, Spokane Valley, Post Falls, etc. So, we can probably find someone to give you a ride without going too much out of their way.

Comments

Meeting notes

Posted by jhodgdon on February 14, 2019 at 8:37pm

Here is what we discussed today:

Using Composer to download Drupal 8 with Drush (and later to get modules and themes), and storing the site files in Git
- Why?
  - Use Composer because it manages dependencies and increasingly this is necessary for Drupal 8 and its modules
  - Use Git because it tracks changes, so you can see how the site files evolve and if necessary, revert to a previous change
  - Use Git because it allows you to have a local development site where you try stuff out, and a production site that is live, and make sure you have the same software on both.
- How? Here are some links/notes that I sent to Diane recently when she asked me about this, and we went over some of it in the meeting today:
  Before you start... Read this page that's an intro to Git if you haven't read something like it already:
  https://www.drupal.org/node/991716
  
  Then:
  
  a) Set up a repository on GitHub for your site:
  https://help.github.com/articles/create-a-repo/
  You can skip the part about making a README though.
  
  b) "Clone" the (currently empty) repository onto your local computer. This will connect a folder on your local computer to the GitHub repository:
  https://help.github.com/articles/cloning-a-repository/
  
  c) Now download all the stuff with Composer. Here are some links...
  
  This is the page that tells how to download Drupal 8 with Drush, in one step, and also later how to download additional modules:
  https://www.drupal.org/docs/develop/using-composer/using-composer-to-man...
  
  This page tells how to update things you've already downloaded with Composer:
  https://www.drupal.org/docs/8/update/update-core-via-composer
  
  d) Then you'll want to "commit" the new files to the GitHub repository. For help on that... Hm....
  
  This page has suggestions for making a Git repository for a Drupal site, kind of oriented towards Drupal 7 but still useful:
  https://www.drupal.org/node/803746
  
  The only sections that are going to be relevant to you are:
  - Introduction
  - What can you manage
  X - Creating repository (you already did that)
  X - Locally cloning (you did that too)
  X - Updating remotes (not applicable to your setup)
  - Creating a working branch - yes!
  - Setting up .gitignore -- mostly yes. I think Drupal Core comes with one, but you can add to it. Good reading there though.
  ==> Note that in the meeting today we took some of the things the .gitignore came with and added more. It was oriented towards using Git to download stuff, and we were oriented towards using Composer to download stuff and Git to store the files afterwards, so the .gitignore was somewhat different!
  - Pushing Code - yes! And then it has instructions for deploying to your remote server, which you *may* be able to do on your hosting, but you'll need to use the GitHub clone URL and command from (b) and not the one in this drupal.org page. If they don't have Git on your remote server, you can just use FTP to get the files up instead.
  - Adding modules and themes -- you're going to use Composer instead of wget to get the files, but the git status, git add, and git commit commands are relevant.
  X - Probably skip the rest of the page after that section
We went over how to create a new database user in PHPMyAdmin and check the "Create a new database with the same name" box while doing that, so you get a unique database user name and database to go with it for your local site.
There were some questions about object-oriented PHP programming. John has recently taken the drupalize.me tutorials on thsi subject and thought they were mostly pretty good.