Meeting notes: January 27, 2012

Topics covered: Backups in web hosting; regular meeting time (but none in March); local Dev environment on laptop; git & D7 profile; C&M updates.

 

I. Scheduled backups in Web Hosting

  • It's easy to do and, can save you if you accidentally delete, for instance, your database. Some people keep only the latest 2 weeks of their nightly backups.
  • Some people configure the Backup & Migrate module to do this for their databases (and FTP it or send it to a private directory). The Demo module was also mentioned.
  • It was suggested that web hosting be set to do this automatically, as a sensible default setting.
  • The question was asked of Scheduled backups: do they lock table rows before creating a backup?

II. Regular meeting time for this group

  • The group decided to meet with the following schedule:
  • There's a lovely cafe with food from Highland Bakery on the first floor (which only takes Buzz Card or cash).
  • Our room has a projector for our laptops, so we'll be set to fiddle with Drupal together.

III. DrupalCon Denver 2012

  • There is no meeting in March (as many people will be at DrupalCon Denver). But we will meet in April and the DrupalCon attendees will fill us in on interesting tidbits from the conference.

IV. Local Dev environment on Laptop

  • Easiest way to develop quickly (with no lag between server and your development machine), is Aquia's Dev Desktop, downloadable at: https://network.acquia.com/downloads/7.x  Tips for making this better:
    • You can have more than one site running (or even more than one version of Drupal) at the same time.
    • The Aquia dev control panel will quickly create another site for you at the click of a button, as well as letting you easily find phpmyadmin for your databases, and etc.
    • You can go into the file system and delete all the extra modules Aquia puts into THEIR default installation, to avoid module confusion and conflicts.
  • XAMPP is another good option, if you want more control over your Dev environment and you test software and code that is not Drupal: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html  Brian knows some great ways to set this up, if you need tips.

V. Git & Drupal 7 installation profile

  • Alfred and Adelle are going to talk, along with Lew, about what a default Drupal 7 installation for GT could/should contain.  Ideas floated include:
    • Mercury blocks (news/events)
    • LDAP (a number of people have this working in Drupal 6)
    • People
    • CAS
    • Footer, Gold bar links & main menu
    • WYSIWYG
  • There is currently no git repository that is GT-wide, though, of course, there is much interest. (Matt Todd, at Git, was a recent GT graduate). A number of places are running their own, though, including:
    • College of Computing
    • DLPE
    • Others?

VI. Communications & Marketing

  • Brian will set up an IRC channel for GT drupal developers, so we can try it out and see if it helps us communicate better in between meetings.
  • Communications and Marketing is currently undergoing a comprehensive and campus-wide web assessment, and is in the exploratory stages of a Georgia Tech web redesign.
  • Communications and Marketing currently only supports Drupal 6, because there are still too many bugs and time-consuming issues with Drupal 7 (it's not quite ready for prime time in their opinion). They are exploring Drupal 7 and developing a strategy for an upgrade process that will likely be covered during the aforementioned web redesign.

 

Meeting Attendees: approximately 10.