Surrey Drupal Meetup

Join us on March 14, 2013 at 6:30 pm for Mapping in Drupal 7 - Using OpenLayers

Our next meetup is Thursday, March 14, 2013. We are back to our regular meetup date.

We are excited to have a guest speaker, Renee Stephen of http://www.reneestephen.com/ at our next Drupal meetup. Renee will be presenting on:

- Create interesting, attractive location-based maps
- configure a map to use different layers or tilesets (even add your own!)

Our speaker tonight is not able to make it due to illness. We will be watching a video presentation on "What's New in Drupal 8" by Chris Weber of  TheNerdery.com. He gave this presentation to his Drupal User group. http://vimeo.com/40266383

While I was searching the Internet for a good video to show tonight, I did some research on the new features in Drupal 8. The following article outlines what I found. Credits: http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/whats-new-drupal-8

Drupal 8 has been in development since March 2011 and is now in Feature Freeze. This means that no new features will be added to Drupal 8. Drupal 8 is planned to be released in Sept. 2013. Here is a brief description of the new changes in Drupal 8:

Theming Changes
-    Drupal 7 uses PHPTemplate to produce themes
-    Drupal 8 will be using the Twig framework theming engine
-    Twig will simplify theming by using better code. See Jen Lampton’s talk at DrupalCon Sydney –
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIqu_Te0PA&feature=youtu.be)
-    Twig allows templates to be compiled down to PHP code which is stored in RAM for superior performance as it reduces disk access

Katy will be giving a presentation on Optimizing Your Drupal Workflow including lively group discussion.

This presentation is an overview of best practices and valuable tools to improve workflow for solo devs and small teams.

Are you having problems when trying to build Drupal websites?

1. You installed a new module and the site broke
2. Help! A team member overwrote my changes
3. Client changed his mind (again!) and wants the version from last week
4. What was I thinking when I did this?
5. How to save time when cloning Drupal sites

Learn valuable tools and best practices for building Drupal websites more efficiently. Recommended tools include:

• using command line shortcuts
• Git version control for documented backups
• Drush commands for automating Drupal site build/upgrade tasks
• Using local development environment, staging server to test your sites

I will be posting my notes in a series of blog articles so stay tuned.

Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/96450112/

This is a reminder that you are invited to join the Surrey Drupal Meetup on Nov. 8th, 2012 at 6:30pm at ABC Restaurant, 15373 Fraser Hwy, Surrey, BC Canada

We are excited to have Aimee Chung of Mobix Creative (mobix.ca) to speak on Designing and Building Mobile-Friendly Websites. Learn about best practices and principles of mobile website development. Understand the market for smartphone/tablet development and which ones to best focus on. Be aware of the different types of external factors that affect the user interface design decisions that you make. Look at different tools for emulating mobile websites, validating, and testing. Get some useful tips for building mobile-friendly websites for Drupal. We’ll also discuss about how best to develop a mobile site, whether standalone or an all-in-one responsive site. Katy will be giving a short demo on Using Adaptive Theme to Build Responsive Drupal Website.

Please RSVP: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/85032732/

Event: Surrey Drupal Meetup
Date: November 8th at 6:30pm
Location: ABC Restaurant in Fleetwod area of Surrey, BC Canada.

We are excited to have Aimee Chung and Michael Whyte of Mobix Creative (mobix.ca) to speak on Designing and Building Mobile-Friendly Websites. We are also looking for web designers and developers to share about your mobile-friendly projects. How did you redesign an existing desktop website to be responsive? Or did you go with a separate mobile-only website? Contact Katy@seascapewebdesign.com if you are interested in doing a demo/lightning talk for our meetup.

Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/85032732/

Join us on Sept. 13th at 6:30pm where Sheila Mullins and Francis Pilon from The Jibe (thejibe.com) will provide an excellent introduction to Drupal Commerce. Drupal Commerce is the next generation ecommerce suite for Drupal. Based on experience learned from the team who built Ubercart, Drupal Commerce combines ease of use and flexibility.

The presentation will cover the various components of Commerce Kickstart, an install profile that helps you get started in minutes. This presentation targets site builders who have some experience with Drupal, but everyone is welcome!

Join us for our next meetup on May 10th at 7pm at the ABC Restaurant at 15373 Fraser Hwy. The doors are open at 6pm if you would like to arrive early, that's OK. Katy of SeascapeWebDesign.com will be presenting on How to Build an Intranet with Drupal 7. Katy recently built a documentation library for a company intranet. Come prepared to share your ideas and experiences on how to build an Intranet with Drupal.

We are looking forward to our meetup this week on Nov. 10^th at 6:30 pm. Trent Stromkins of ImageXmedia.com will be presenting on Tips for Building a Responsive Website with Drupal. Examples include GetLaunchKit.com built with the Omega theme. Come at 6:30 pm to chat with others and the presentation starts at 7pm. You are welcome to order food and drinks, but it’s optional. A 15% gratuity is added to each bill since the ABC Restaurant does not charge us a fee to rent the meeting room. Wifi is not reliable so bring your Smart phone and tether your laptop to your phone if you must have Wifi :-)

FREE Drupal and PHP Dev Tools
On Sept. 15th, the Surrey Drupal meetup is having a panel discussion on Drupal Development Environments called How do you Drupal? So in preparation, I'm writing about the Dev environment I use everyday, (XAMPP 1.6.8 for Windows), ones I've tried out (Acquia Dev Desktop, Zend Studio) and one I plan to install soon (VirtualBox, QuickStart and Drush). What are your favourite Development platforms and tools? Leave your comments below.

Join us for monthly meetups and other events
We are looking for speakers for upcoming events. Share your expertise and get visibility for your project or company. It's a great way to give back to the community. Contact the organizers and sign up here: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal