Modules Unraveled Podcast

## Features * Let’s start off with the basics, if you don’t mind. Can you give us the 30 second pitch for what Features is? I’m sure there are people listening right now that don’t use Features regularly. * What kind of data or configuration can you package into a feature? * What does Features do well? * Where does Features fall short? * What are some of the things people currently use Features for, that perhaps it wasn’t intended? Are there issues as a result?   ## Configuration Management in Drupal 8 * If you don’t mind, I think it’d also be helpful if you could explain what CMI is in Drupal 8 so that when we compare the two, everyone knows what we’re talking about. * What does CMI do well? * Where does CMI fall short?     ## When to Use Features in Drupal 8 * With CMI in core, where does Features find its place in Drupal 8? * How will we use Features differently in D8 as compared to D7? * Talk about config packager   ## Developing in Drupal 8 What was your experience building Features in Drupal 8?  Did you

## Web Content Management * When you replied, you said that Drupal 8 is the most important product release in the history of the WCM market. Can you start out by explaining what WCM stands for and what qualifies software as a WCM product? * You also mentioned that the 2nd most important release was Day Software’s CQ5. What is that? * When I hear about Drupal’s competitors, I generally hear about Wordpress and Joomla. Why aren’t either of those number two?   ## Drupal’s Place in the WCM Market * How has Drupal faired in the WCM market so far? * What do you see Drupal 8 bringing to the table that sets it apart from other products?   ## Questions from Twitter * Jacob Redding     * How does Drupal 8 change the comparison with AEM? Specifically what are the features with Drupal 8 that bring Drupal to a more level playing field with AEM? Is there a single specific feature that Drupal does hands down better than AEM?   * Doug Vann     * MY MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION         * Drupal promotes an "Ownership Society" wher

Hey everyone,   Super exciting news this week! I've secured sponsors for the next two months to provide EVERY video on ModulesUnraveled.com absolutely FREE for you!   It's a bit of a long story, so if you don't care, [just go learn some Drupal](/videos). But, I thought you might be interested in the back story, so here goes...   (P.S. If you're not a reader, I recorded this as an 8 minute podcast just for you.)   ## Why Modules Unraveled is now FREE for everyone   Late last year, there was a moment when I realized that it had been a long time since I had thought about why I started Modules Unraveled in the first place, and whether or not I was still on course with that original vision. I decided that I wasn't.   For reference, Modules Unraveled started with a video demonstrating how to setup Organic Groups in Drupal 7, back in 2011, when Amitai took over development, and did a complete re-write. Nothing was the same, and there were support requests all over the internet from people who didn't know how to use

## Wysiwyg Fields * What is the Wysiwyg Fields module?     * Discussed three years ago on episode 35… Finally a stable release :| * Why did it take so long to release a stable?     * Life * What’s new since we talked about it last time?     * Re-architected, focusing on splitting out major components into separate modules for re-usability and sustainability:         * Field Tokens         * Token replace AJAX     * As well as leveraging existing modules insto to re-inventing the wheel:         * Icon API         * Token filter     * Now based on CKEditor module instead of Wyswiyg API module.     * Beta release available and it works! * What types of fields can be used? * Is the field still a separate field, but just inserted into the wysiwyg field? (So, if I were to disable the module would it be outside the wysiwyg text area?) * Can you use something like Panels to display the field in another region? * What kind of control do we have over the output of the field? Can it be styled and positioned with css? Or

## Math Field Module * What does the Math Field module do? * Why did you develop it? What hole does it fill? * You mentioned EntityForm... * How does it compare to the Computed Field and other modules? * What are the limitations? When wouldn’t you use it? * You mentioned before we started recording that you actually rewrote the entire module to use core’s AJAX framework instead of custom jQuery. Why was that? and how did it go?   ## Use Cases * What types of sites do you see this being of most use? * I might be using this on an upcoming project   ## Future * What are your plans for D8? * What other general features are planned? I saw the note on the project page about issues with multiple parameters and multivalue fields.   ## Questions from Twitter * [Rick Nashleanas](http://www.twitter.com/RickNashleanas) Any performance implications using the Math Field module? drupal.org/node/2484065 (Yea, I know, this is a plant!) * [David Csonka](http://www.twitter.com/DavidCsonka) Is there a practical limit to how many

## DrupalCon New Orleans * Where is the DrupalCon going to be?     * New Orleans convention center * When is it?     * May 9-13 2016 * Why New Orleans?     * We are seeing an incredible rebirth of a Great American City.  Hurricane Katrina was such an unbelievable disaster, 80% of the city was flooded.  Surrounding Parishes even worse, (we have Parishes instead of Counties), St. Bernard Parish, just down river, 99% was flooded.  In the last 10 years we have overcome seemingly unsurmountable rebuilding, and have plenty more in the works.  DrupalCon coming to New Orleans is great affirmation of progress we have made.  It has a vibe like no other city, you can feel the life. * Why were you so driven to bring DrupalCon to your town?     * It’s such a great place to be!  Growing up 5 miles from Bourbon Street, we tend to take our City for granted.  We do things that are rarely seen in the world!  Food, Festivals, Family activities, Music, and of course you can drink in public!  The general attitude across the whole

## Dropfort * What is Dropfort?     * Dropfort is a suite of tools to develop and manage Drupal applications.   On the development side, it integrates with GitHub and GitLab to track commits, issues and tags. It then packages releases based on those tags and lets you share those releases with your Drupal sites. Same way you tag and create releases on Drupal.org. The only difference is the released modules are private. Meaning a site that wants to use those modules needs to authenticate to download them.   For example, if you want to download a custom module to your site from dropfort, you can just do a “drush dl mymodule --source=https://app.dropfort.com/fserver/release-history”. Dropfort generates the same XML data for its modules as does Drupal.org for contrib modules. Meaning the Update module works with Dropfort, all your Drush commands work and Drush make works too. It’s all pretty seamless. The only difference with our XML is that it's not publicly available. Your site has to be allowed to see the updat

## Training While at DrupalCon recently, someone mentioned my recent podcasts about training and hiring Drupal talent, and mentioned that Cameron had been a part of a somewhat unique program to train new talent through a two month training program, with the intent to hire some of them. I was intrigued (and based on the great response of recent episodes on similar topics) I decided to get ahold of him, so here we are.   * What company were you working for when you did this? And what was your role there?     * ProPeople (Now FFW) * How did the idea come about?     * We were inspired by a similar program they did in the Moldova office. * Who were you targeting?     * Current college students, and recent grads * What did you hope to accomplish?     * There were two goals. One: We wanted to be able to hire people in the Boise area. Two: To get our name out there, to university students, as well as the broader tech community in the Boise area so that when people were looking for work in the future, they’d look at P

## NodeSquirrel * What is NodeSquirrel?     * Backup and Migrate (over 300,000 sites using it)     * Only cloud backup-as-a-service for Drupal     * Backup database and Files     * Every site should have automatic off-site backups configured. * That leads great into the pantheon acquisition, because now everyone can create free off-site backups with NodeSquirrel.   ## Pantheon Acquisition * How did the aqcuisition come about?     * Drew - BadCamp October 2014. Sitting at a Pantheon party, ended up talking to Zack about running a services firm and product at the same time. The excitement, issues etc. involved with that. And it happened. * Did you pitch it to him? Did he pitch it to you?     * Me. * So, what’s in it for them? Why did Pantheon buy NodeSquirrel?     * They want to build great tools that developers can love and trust and use.  * What’s new now that it’s been acquired by Pantheon?     * It’s FREE! (There’s a new free tier)     * It’s not a trial. It’s always free.     * It’s not just for Pantheon c

## Writing a Book for D8 * What’s it like writing a book for a piece of software that isn’t even officially released yet? * How long did the writing process take?     * Packt publishing sent us a proposal to write this book in December of 2013. We got started quickly, sending them an outline of the chapters and an estimated page count in the same month. The original estimated page count was 150, it turned out to be around 120. We received a pretty strict time line, having to finish a chapter every two weeks, starting in December of 2013.      * We managed to finish most chapters in two weeks, but some of the longer ones took a little longer since we also started one of our biggest projects we had had until then, also in January. That was pretty tough because that project took up way more than a regular full time job, so we ended up having to write all of the chapters late at night and on the weekends. In May, all of our chapters then went to the editors and we didn’t hear back from the publisher for a really

## d8upgrade.org * What is d8upgrade.org? * When did you put the site together?     * Today * How were you offering the service before the site was up?     * Talk about MVP * Why did you guys create this service?     * Build a more direct communication channel for module maintainers - Mailing list (module devs talk to people using module     * Initiative to get out the catch 22 - modules aren’t ready, so you can’t upgrade, you don’t upgrade so the modules don’t get money to be upgraded. * Does it cost anything?     * Nope - it’s free * Are you planning to monitize the site in any way?     * We expect a lot of site owners will be looking for a way to upgrade their website, if they don’t yet have an agency, we can help them find a good agency. If this evolves how we imagine, this could fuel the sales pipeline for our consultancy and a few selected partners. We are not going to go hardcore salesy on this, but put in links for module work and 2for1 discounts and hopefully some of those will convert into customers

## How to Select Modules * So, let’s start out by talking about the genesis of your session. What made you think this topic needed to be covered? * What’s the problem with just installing another module? * What if I don’t program?     * Reuse modules     * Push back on requirements     * Make sure the cost of adding another module is not just the cost of the time it takes to install it     * Simple modules really aren’t programming * What are the potential problems with custom code?   ## How do you determine if you should install a module or write some custom code?   ## Specific Modules You Can (or Should) Avoid Not really telling people to avoid specific modules more about thinking twice when they select them.     * Entityform vs. Webform     * Entity View Modes     * Page title     * Commerce Custom Order Status

## AcquiaU While this episode might end up sounding like a giant advertisement for AcquiaU, it’s really not intended to be. I wanted to have you on to talk about the concept of, how a company that hires Drupal developers, can and should go about training them _before_ they are hired. In order to set the backdrop for the rest of our conversation, I’d like to quote a bit from the [AcquiaU website](http://u.acquia.com/about): The challenge the community is facing is one of supply and demand. Simply put, there just aren’t enough people to fill the needs. At any given time in the past 6 months, job aggregator Indeed.com has over 2,500 open position across the US for Drupal talent. How do we close the gap? Find the people with the right passion and grow their talent from the inside-out. We're not looking for people with years and years of Drupal experience. We're looking for people who are curious, motivated, determined, and who can inspire a little crazy in us all. At Acquia, culture and a person's POTENTIAL to co

## The current job market in Drupal * What does the job market look like in the Drupal space? * Let’s talk about the pipeline idea.     * Experienced developers vs. Junior developers   ## What to do to start your career * If you’re completely new what do you do? * If you’re a hobbyist, what do you do? * How do you get experience?   ## From the employers perspective * What should job descriptions look like?   ## Questions from Twitter * [Paul Booker](https://www.twitter.com/paulbooker) How should a small business, non-profit, charity, .. find a drupal developer when they need something doing? * [Damien McKenna](https://www.twitter.com/DamienMcKenna) For someone who knows nothing about web development, what's their best path forward? * [Chris Hall](https://www.twitter.com/cwork_chris) When do you know to ask for/be a Drupal Dev vs a PHP Dev with Drupal experience? Should/is there be a difference?

## Profiler Builder * What is Profiler Builder?     * Profiler Builder was created cause I’m lazy and wanted to just build a site, then figure out the profile, not build both at the same time. My work on profiler builder started to lead me toward the notion that install profiles and distributions can be more of a pain then they are worth, hence recipes. * Is there anything that Profiler Builder doesn’t catch? * How are you using Profiler Builder?   ## Drush Recipes * What is the Drush Recipes plugin     * Drush Recipes is a series of drush calls chained together in a lightweight command-file, similar to chef and it’s recipes / roles structure. * Why do this instead of just using standard drush calls?     * You might need to mess around w/ it to get a sense of some of the things you can do with it since it’s a lot more then just chain automation as it supports branching path logic, automatic recipe authoring, drush commandline recording to author recipes, the ability to take two sites and engineer the differen

## Use Cases * Okay, I can already see huge benefits of utilizing these tools. But, I’d love to get your opinion on what the benefits are for Developers/Site-builders/Themers?     * There are two big benefits as I see them, and another not so apparent. First, a lot of these tasks are repetitive.  And things like copying a database may take a bit of time. Or merging code. Or running tests.  Etc.  Anything that you can automate means time you can spend on other things.  Second, not everyone is as experienced - or maybe they don’t have the permissions - to execute all the tasks.  You don’t want mistakes, you don’t want to give everyone permissions.  So you figure out the best way to do it and then you automate it.    The last reason is not as obvious.   I think a lot of times we hack things together in our development environments to get it working - but then may run into issues later on.  We don’t spend the extra time because its temporary.  By spending a little extra time getting it right, we have created a re

## Z-Ray  * So, let’s start out with the basics. What exactly is Z-Ray?     * So Z-Ray is a cool new tech that we introduced just a few months back which gives developers deep insight into all the PHP elements constructing their page, including Drupal-specific elements.      * It’s basically a toolbar that’s displayed right in front of you in your browser. No code changes needed. You don’t have to configure anything. Just open your app in a browser and you’ll see Z-Ray at the bottom of the page!    * How does is work? Is there a module that you have to install on your site?     * No. It’s not a module. Without going into too much detail: Z-Ray collects info while your app is being processed on the server side, and once the request is completed, Z-Ray’s JavaScript code is injected into the response with all the collected data.      * There are other mechanisms at work, such as Ajax support, but as a whole that’s all there is to it. It’s also the limit of my technical understanding of how it works :-)    * So w

## Entity Pilot * What is Entity Pilot?     * I’ve been working on Entity Pilot since February, and have slowly been working through my backlog of features - but now its ready for Beta testers so that’s why I here on the show. * How does Entity Pilot work?     * The basic premise is you create your content like normal and then create a new departure. You can add the content to your departure in logical groups, or you can create one departure for each piece of content - its a pretty flexible workflow. So if you were working on a new product launch you might create all of that content on your staging site. You’d be able to see what the site will look like with the new content, preview the front-page and landing pages etc. * You’re using airport terminology, like “baggage”, “departure” and “arrival”. Can you break those down, and explain what each one entails?     * Passengers     * Baggage     * Departure - When you create the departure the baggage handler service takes care of adding the dependencies - so if y

## Performance Optimization * Before we dive deep into Varnish, I’d like to get a feel for the various performance improvements anyone can make to speed up their Drupal. What’s the process you think through when optimizing a site?     * DB Tuning     * Boost     * Memcache     * Redis     * APC     * Varnish     * Module Choices!   ## Varnish * What exactly is Varnish? * When researching Drupal performance optimization, I came across a lot of references to APC and Varnish. What is the difference? * Is this for anonymous or authenticated traffic? * Is the Varnish module required to utilize Varnish with Drupal? * What are the steps needed to install and utilize Varnish? (Broad terms, not actual terminal commands) * Does SSL affect Varnish? * What doesn’t Varnish do? (What needs to be done by Drupal, or other software instead?) * How does Varnish affect a dev/staging/live workflow? Does Varnish need to be instlaled on the local machine?

## Deployotron * What is Deployotron? It’s a deployment tool.  A low-key approach to easy and safe deployment. * When did you start developing it? Dec. 2013 * Why did you feel it was necessary to add another layer on top of Drush? Needed simple, safe, easy to grok deployment process. Not a Swiss army knife. Other solutions proved to be either too complex/feature-rich or require 3rd party software beyond a simple drush command.  * How does it work? Deployotron is implemented as a drush command. When deploying it runs a set of “actions” that does the different steps of deploying. * What kinds of actions can you perform with Deployotron? * Is this extendable? Can other developers add their own commands to be performed during deployment? * Is there a way to configure deployment per environment? So that certain commands are always performed on Staging but not on Live. * What needs to be setup before you can use Deployotron? Deployotron requires drush and the appropriate ssh public keys on the target servers. And G