View source for Drupal Best Practices for Small Organizations and Small Budgets

facilitated by Jack Aponte

==Participants==
* Scott, David, Jack, and Thiago, experience w/ drupal
* Jack started working with drupal at 4.7
** Considers self a site builder.
*** Some would say web developer, but they write very little custom code.
** Focus on core + a toolset of widely used, supported and stable modules.

==Overview==
* "We're going to look at how people can make practical, long-lasting sites using tools that are often reusable and shareable without writing custom code, and getting mired in complexity."
* Works mostly with small budgets 10-15k sometimes less than 10.

==Using Drupal==
* Q. "Why would you pick Drupal over Wordpress"
** Avoid writing custom code, doesn't want to live in code-land.
** Wordpress has gotten more powerful (beyond post+page), Wordpress is catching up.
** Views is a clincher, the sort of control you have makes the difference.
* Nonprofits often get stuck with sites with tons of custom code (specially in older version of Drupal, before best-practices and modules 'floating to the top')... this creates costs over time.
* Use exciting modules, 
** but for key pieces of functionality, page layout, navigation, taxonomy use "tried and true" modules.
===How to define "Tried and True????"===

* Number of maintainers
* Frequency of commits
* How recently commit activity occurred
* Who maintains it (this takes a while, but with familiarity you start to see who documents well, what tends to work etc).
* Open issues, specifically bugs (for your version of drupal)
* Does the maintainer tend to reply to issues?
* Maintenance status.
===Tips and Tricks===
* [http://dgo.to http://dgo.to] (takes you to [http://drupal.org http://drupal.org] )... http://dgo.to/MODULE_NAME (takes you to the project page for a given module)
* Use Git!
** Explaining git a bit... 
*** Helps you recover from problems!
*** Also helps you store configuration changes in code ("exportables"  : features, we'll get to that later).
* Learn to apply patches!
** [http://drupal.org/patches/apply/ http://drupal.org/patches/apply/]

===FEATURES walkthrough (http://dgo.to/features)===
* Take something like "news and announcements"
* You can repurpose stuff for other sites!
* Why rebuild it for every site, when very little changes between implementations.
* Describe what components make up a feature
* "News and Announcements" Content Type
* Dependencies often get automatically added (views, fields, etc).
* Then they get exported to code, as a module.. and you can commit it to git. 
* Move it between installs.
* Or install it in a new site that has similar functionality.

===Drush===
* DRUSH! it's complicated, powerful and feature rich!
* Update all your modules, automate tasks, save thousands of clicks.
* drush fd - features diff - what changed in my database (via the ui) from the code version of my feature (code).
* If there are changes that aren't in code yet, it will show as "Overidden"

==Case Study==
* Usecase: [usworker.coop]
* Cost in the 15k range, but it does a lot!
** Quirky requirements 
** Two domain names
** One drupal install / database / codebase
** Two themes
*** [institute.usworker.coop]
*** [usworker.coop]
** One CiviCRM
** "Theres a module for that" : Domain_Access
** There were some issues with the NodeAccess ( no space _ ) module... access to different roles for different Nodes.
** Panels
*** Works nicely with views.
*** A nice way to make layouts, there are tons of layouts premade.
*** Custom pages for say "taxonomy term pages" or a specific thing "my for members page"
*** Overview of the node_view panel page... which lets you override the main node layout.
**** You can drag and drop panes in your layouts.
**** You can show bits of content to specific users and user types.
** You can also do things for specific nodes of specific sites.


==Some cool modules==

* Basic toolkit
* Views
* Panels
** Mini panes (exportable)
* ChaosTools (ctools) - needed for Views and Panels and has a bunch of nice little helper modules
* Features
* Backup migrate (They just use it for backup, can be set up to backup the DB x times a day)
* Login Toboggin (allows for email, improves the access stuff)
* Admin menu (improves the admin experience)

==Admin Modules and Themes==
* Module Filter

==Themes==
* Adaptive theme

==Other==
* Palante WYSIWYG is a nice feature that bundles a bunch of wysiwyg configuration.
* WYSIWYG - CKEdit
** And drupal 8 is going full CKEdit (3.61, 4 is still iffy on integration with D7)

* File field sources
** Uses IMCE (file browser for media assets, and is shared with your WYSIWYG)

==We're going to add Jack's BADCamp notes here==
* [http://pad.riseup.net/p/badcamp-notes-102613 http://pad.riseup.net/p/badcamp-notes-102613] 
* [http://pad.riseup.net/p/badcamp-notes-102713 http://pad.riseup.net/p/badcamp-notes-102713]