Spokane Web Technology Group - July 23 - Online [formerly Spokane Daytime Drupal Group]

Here is what we talked about at today's meeting:

• Next meeting in two weeks! I'll schedule it after I post this. We plan to devote some of the meeting to the basics of Search Engine Optimization. People who want to can create an account on both the Google and Bing search and webmaster tools sites before the next meeting:
  https://www.google.com/webmasters/
  https://www.bing.com/toolbox/webmaster/
• Events:
  - Events may be happening online, so you could meet people from all over the world -- check https://groups.drupal.org/events?type%5B%5D=regional for events
• We discussed web strategy for a project, where a library is making posts with information about native plants. Should the library leave the information in just Facebook, put it on a 3rd-party site like Tumblr, or put it on the site? Considerations:
  - Space -- the main space user is the images, but they don't take much space if appropriately sized -- maybe use settings to limit the upload size to 500k or something like that? Or a module/plugin for Drupal/WordPress that would resize images after upload and avoid even storing the larger original images on the site? Space is also cheap.
  - SEO/Marketing -- it's a good idea to have good content on a site, to draw in search engines and to draw people to the site
  - Using a 3rd-party site for this would counter the goal of bringing people in to the library site as a source of information
• In Drupal 7, a site was set up using Features
  https://www.drupal.org/project/features
  One of the features included some permissions... turning the feature module off and back on ended up screwing up some permissions. Why? (we didn't figure this one out, but Jennifer did point out that it's possible for a module in Drupal 7 to have some code that responds to modules being enabled/disabled -- there are hooks -- so there is no guarantee that for sure, disabling/enabling a module leaves the database in the same state.)
• CMS (Content Management System) vs. DAMS (Digital Archive Management System) for archiving data about memorability:
  - Shawn did some work with Drupal for the MAC, and they had spent a huge amount of time and money trying to work with a DAMS, when they could have just built a simple Drupal site with images for the capability they needed.
  - But some DAMS have specific capabilities -- such as for advanced image searches. You would upload a picture of the eye of Mona Lisa, and it will scan its images to try to find the full image of Mona Lisa.
  - You need to have specifications for what the site capabilities should be now and in the future. If they need advanced image searching like this, they might want to go with an existing system that does this. If they only need text database capabilities, Drupal might be a good fit.
  - Video and audio streaming is a whole separate issue that should be considered. You can use YouTube, but you need to read the license agreement before you decide to use YouTube. Vimeo, while not free, gives you more control of ownership for videos.
  - One issue is usability -- you may need to create a Dashboard for admins to add content, similar to what you'd see if you log into WordPress.
• Matt demoed a Project Estimator tool, for potential clients to be able to see how much it might cost to hire him for a project, on his Drupal 8 site. He found that he could use a Computed Twig field in Webform for this (part of the base Webform module), to set up a webform that would let site visitors select parameters and calculate an estimate. This let him create all the logic in Twig, which has a bunch of logic functionality, to calculate the results.
  https://www.drupal.org/project/webform/
  He also had to spend a couple of hours learning Twig (version 2 is in Drupal 8 currently), which was not too difficult even for someone who isn't really a programmer. Twig documentation:
  https://twig.symfony.com/doc/2.x
  As an added benefit, if someone made an estimate, there's a button to "Create a project" which would let people put in their contact info and generate a lead, or "Send estimate to yourself" by email, which gave Matt their email.

  For learning how to use Webform, do a web (Google etc.) search and you can find numerous videos. Jacob Rockowitz, the author of WebForm, has made many of them. They may not have exactly what you want to do, but they might give you an idea.

• Learning about what's available out there in Drupal:
  - Doing a web search to find how to do a specific thing you need to do can be helpful, but sometimes it's hard to find the right search terms
  - If you have time, browse the sessions from past conferences that have videos of the presentations. People often give talks on particular modules. Some conferences have YouTube channels; some have web sites that archive their past sessions. Try a web search to find Drupal "camp" or DrupalCon video archives. There may be a lag of a week or a few weeks between the conference and the videos appearing.

  Also you can subscribe via RSS to "Drupal Planet", which aggregates numerous Drupal blogs together in one place:
  https://www.drupal.org/planet

• Phishing/spam emails -- if you run a site, you may get "phishing" or spam email messages for the following:
  - Broken links -- they want you to pay for a link checking service
  - Fake messages about stolen images
  - Search engine optimization -- you can do the easiest things yourself, and this is what these businesses are doing, just the easy stuff
• Checking a site for broken links:
  - There are free link checkers out on the Internet
  - If you use a service that is free, in general that means you are the product, so keep that in mind! Some free sites may also be malicious
  - There is a link checker provided by the W3 organization, which is a non-profit foundation that has no ulterior motives:
  https://validator.w3.org/checklink
• Lisa is seeing some Google Ads on her site that have empty URLs. Why? She will post the question on our discussion group, and she hopes Jon DeK might have an answer.
• Smart IP module -- tells you where your site visitors are located (including both legitimate and hacking attacks):
  https://www.drupal.org/project/smart_ip
  Matt wanted to know if this was "creepy" -- Shawn thinks it is standard practice. You can go beyond that and consider blocking traffic out of Ukraine or China.
• Adding Back button to pages on your site, vs. letting them just use the Back button on their browser:
  - Why duplicate the function people probably already know how to use?
  - Maybe instead of a Back button, you need to add some navigation to the most commonly needed pages users would need? Or maybe they need a more prominent Cancel link or button for actions like node/add and node/edit?