New England Regional Developers - DrupalCampMA

Bang for the Buck: Improving Drupal Site Performance on a Budget

cmsdave — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 04:00:36 +0000

We all want our Drupal sites to run faster. The need for speed only continues to increase as does the rapid growth of mobile users and the ever-expanding amount of rich content on the web. For many of us, Drupal is at the center – serving up our content to users who expect pages to load FAST. But despite its power, Drupal can be a performance bottleneck. For large projects, the solution may be as simple as provisioning additional hosting resources: more memory, additional server instances, load balancers, etc. However, increased server resources can come at a significant cost, which may not be an option for projects that are constrained by limited budgets.

In this session, we'll outline the spectrum of options for improving the speed of your Drupal site… on a budget. We'll begin with the premise that there are actually many things you can do to significantly improve the overall speed of your site without spending a lot of time or money.

Studies show that nearly half of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less, and that even a 1 second delay can contribute to an increased bounce rate and a decreased conversion rate. So, let's get that 1 second back!

INTENDED AUDIENCE: This session is perfect for those who want an overview of Drupal site optimization best practices and basics. Ideal for beginners or for established developers who want a sanity check. This will not be a deep dive into advanced Web Performance Optimization; there are many excellent talks and resources on that. Instead, we'll examine some often overlooked enhancements that can add up to significant speed-ups – with specific focus on free tools and techniques that can be implemented with relative ease and for little to no cost. At the end of the session, we'll share a checklist that you can use to assess your site.

Note: This session was originally presented at Drupaldelphia 2013 and has been expanded and updated. Many of the concepts in this presentation can also be applied to WordPress sites.

About the Speaker

Dave Sawyer is a Solutions Architect at OHO Interactive - a proud sponsor of NERD SUMMIT 2014. He has 15 years experience in web development and specializes in architecting multi-site solutions. Dave is an Acquia Certified Developer and works extensively with Drupal. He has given talks at numerous Drupal conferences and camps including DrupalCon Austin, Drupaldelphia, and DrupalCamp New Jersey. Previously, Dave has worked as a consultant and developer for Adobe Systems, Bloomsbury Publishing, and The Vineyard Gazette. You can follow him on Twitter at @cmsdave.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 12 2014 - 10:00am-Sep 12 2014 - 10:50am

Room:

162-75

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

Speaker Bio(s):

Design Patterns for Front End Developers

christophersmith262 — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 03:57:31 +0000

When front end developers talk about "design" they're usually talking about the look and feel that they're trying to create in the final product, not necessarily how it will be implemented. In this sense, it's easy to think about design as something static and tangible that can be directly copied from comp to CMS, but that's not how web projects work.

In reality, the visual design of any non-trivial site is never static. People change their mind. Designers think of new ideas a month later that you never thought you'd have to support. That's why it's important to address the scalability of your front end implementation early, even if it's quicker to just "copy the comp".

To address this, I'll focus on utilizing common Object Oriented design patterns emphasizing encapsulation of data and responsibilities, as well is consistency in the implementation. Basic knowledge of OOP will be required (inheritance, composition, virtual methods). These techniques should also serve to introduce Drupal 7 developers to OO design techniques that can be reused in Drupal 8.

Experience level:

Intermediate

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 12 2014 - 11:00am-Sep 12 2014 - 11:50am

Room:

162-75

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

Development

Speaker Bio(s):

Chris been developing in Drupal for over 5 years and have been a developer at http://isovera.com for the past year and a half. He holds a BA in Mathemtics and Computer Science from University of Massachusetts Lowell and specializes in designing scalable architectures.

Get Involved with Core sprint for new Drupal core contributors

leslieg — Sat, 16 Aug 2014 01:51:20 +0000

The "Get Involved with Core" sprint is an opportunity for first-time contributors to Drupal to get involved by spending the day working on Drupal 8.

All new contributors (developers, themers, quality assurers, documentation writers, business analysts, project managers) are encouraged to attend. No prior experience is needed. Please remember to bring your laptop. Mentors will be present during the event to help get you started and to help you as you work on an issue.

A general overview of the Drupal issue queue and how you can contribute will be held at 10:00 AM. This will be followed by an optional workshop to help participants set up a Drupal 8 development environment on their laptop as well as installing the other common tools used to contribute to Drupal. The rest of the day will be spent working on issues with the help of mentors.

Experienced Drupalists are also encouraged to attend, either to work on issues individually or in groups or to mentor newcomers.

kay_v and leslieg from Ownsourcing will be leading the sprint. Please contact leslie@ownsourcing with any questions or if you will be available to be a mentor on Sunday.

Slides can be found at bit.ly/nerdgetinvolved

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 14 2014 - 10:00am-Sep 14 2014 - 11:00am

Room:

163C

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

Development

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

Kay VanValkenburgh - kay_v, kay@ownsourcing.com

Principal, OwnSourcing

Drupal dev since 2007 (D5), Software dev since 1998, Trainer since 1990, Co-author, Definitive Guide to Drupal 7

Leslie Glynn, PMP - leslieg, leslie@ownsourcing.com

Drupal trainer, project manager, site builder at Ownsourcing

20+ yrs Project Mgmt, PMP certified by PMI, background in software development, trainer since 2000, Drupal since 2011

Drupal 101

Rick Hood — Sun, 10 Aug 2014 12:38:59 +0000

Introduction to Drupal starting with the basics: content types, fields, taxonomy, views, themes, modules, etc. The session will walk though setting up a Drupal site on your local computer, and then put it up on a web host for the world to see. Emphasis will be on "this is easy", because it is. This session is not just for beginner developers but also for non-developers who just want to better understand Drupal and content management systems in general. A contact management website will be built to show how Drupal can be used to build much more than just a blog. Besides covering the basics of Drupal, other topics covered will include: MAMP, Sequel Pro, CPanel, SFTP and DNS (how to point your domain to your website). Other topics that will be touched on briefly are version control, features, backing up and website hosting options.

Slides:

Drupal101.pdf

Experience level:

Beginner

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 12 2014 - 9:00am-Sep 12 2014 - 9:50am

Room:

162-75

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

Fundamentals

Development

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

Rick Hood has been doing web development since 2000 and Drupal since 2006 (Drupal 4.7). Rick is a partner and project manager at Common Media, Inc. http://commonmedia.com/

Contribute to Drupal with code

DamienMcKenna — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 21:43:35 +0000

The Drupal project is a GPL-licensed open source content management system that thrives on people helping out. I'll show how to contribute to the project by reviewing & creating patches.

This will be a continuation from another session, Contribute to Drupal without knowing how to code, attending both sessions is suggested but not required.

Experience level:

Beginner

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

After working with a variety of web technologies for several years, Damien became a full-time Drupal engineer in 2008. Since then he has lead development of many sites - from a standardized platform for a 30+ site publishing company, to the media-rich presence for a ten station radio company, to a kid-safe site for a non-profit organization. A very active contributor to the Drupal community, Damien maintains the leading Drupal 6 and 7 modules for SEO (Metatag, Nodewords) along with over a dozen others. While not working on his latest project or contributing, Damien can be found out and about with his family in their adopted home of Keene, NH, where he also helps run the local Drupal user group.

Contribute to Drupal without knowing how to code

DamienMcKenna — Mon, 09 Jun 2014 21:41:10 +0000

The Drupal project is a GPL-licensed open source content management system that thrives on people helping out. Let me show you how anyone can contribute to the project, without ever touching a single line of code.

This will lead into another session, Contribute to Drupal with code, attending both sessions is suggested but not required.

Experience level:

Beginner

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

Using Drupal "Features" to Build and Deploy Sites

ddrapeau — Wed, 21 May 2014 13:57:57 +0000

The Features module enables the capture and management of features in Drupal. A feature is a collection of Drupal entities which when taken together satisfy a certain use-case. This module provides an easy-to-use mechanism for converting site configurations such as views and taxonomies into code – which ultimately can be version controlled and deployed.

During this presentation, we will walk you through everything you need to know about working with the Features module through the Drupal user interface, including best practices with:

Creating a new feature and packaging site configuration data
Using Features with Drush
Deploying Features on different sites
Strategies for effectively organizing Features to avoid common pitfalls (circular dependencies)
Drupal 8 and Features – Configuration Management Initiative

Experience level:

Beginner

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 13 2014 - 12:00pm-Sep 13 2014 - 12:50pm

Room:

168C

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

Dan Drapeau is a Consultant at NorthPoint Digital. He is an open source developer with a passion for emerging technologies and development tools. Prior to joining NorthPoint Digital, he specialized in applied machine learning and cyber security research and development. Dan received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maine in 2007.

To Patch or Custom: How to decide when to patch a contrib module or go custom

mikemiles86 — Sat, 12 Apr 2014 19:58:44 +0000

To use a contrib (community) module, patch a contrib module or write a custom module, that is the question.

With over 25,000 community contributed modules available for download it is rare to find one that does not offer the functionality you are looking for. However, when you cannot find a module that fits your needs you are then faced with a choice. Do you patch an existing contrib module? Or write a custom one?

To figure out the answer to the answer you just need to remember to R.E.A.D.

In this session we will go over the four steps of R.E.A.D that help you decide which path you should follow and how you can quickly and correctly identify if you should patch a contrib module or write your own custom module. We will use some real world examples to demo straight how these steps were utilized to make the correct decision.

We will also talk about the basics and best practices of writing and contributing a patch, and the best practices to follow if you decide to pursue writing a custom module and how to contribute it back to the Drupal community.

This session is geared to developer, site builders and functionality decision makers who consider themselves new to Drupal. This session can also prove to be beneficial to experienced drupalists who want validation on habits they have developed over time.

Slides:

toPatchorWriteCustom_nerd2014.pdf

Experience level:

Beginner

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 13 2014 - 11:00am-Sep 13 2014 - 11:50am

Room:

174-76

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

Fundamentals

Development

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

I have been working as a web engineer for over 12 years. I am currently the Associate Director of PHP at Genuine Interactive, where I help lead the Genuine PHP team in developing creative, interactive websites and applications utilizing PHP frameworks and platforms such as Drupal, Wordpress, Zend and Symfony. I have been working with Drupal for over 5 years and have done everything from themeing, module development to large scale platform architecture.

Editorial flexibility without tears

DamienMcKenna — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 18:47:38 +0000

See how Drupal sites can benefit from using the Panelizer module to provide tremendous editorial flexibility, without causing the editorial team to break into tears. Additional modules can be used to further this, for sites that need more granular control.

Slides:

nerdsummit 2014 editorial pain.pdf

Experience level:

Intermediate

Session Time Slot(s):

Time:

Sep 13 2014 - 4:00pm-Sep 13 2014 - 4:50pm

Room:

174-76

Allowed Types:

Session

Session Track:

Session Tracks (NERDSummit 2014)

DrupalCampMA

Sessions Topics:

DrupalCampMA

Speaker Bio(s):

After working with a variety of web technologies for several years, Damien became a full-time Drupal engineer in 2008. Since then he has lead development of many sites - from a standardized platform for a 30+ site publishing company, to the media-rich presence for a ten station radio company, to a kid-safe site for a non-profit organization. A very active contributor to the Drupal community, Damien maintains the leading Drupal 6 and 7 modules for SEO (Metatag, Nodewords) along with over a dozen others, including the module this session is focused on. While not working on his latest project or contributing, Damien can be found out and about with his family in their adopted home of Keene, NH, where he also helps run the local Drupal user group.