Sessions

Drupal, What is it Good For?

This proposal has been accepted as a session.

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Accepted Session
Cooking
Short form
osb2009-0030
Scheduled: Wednesday, June 17, 2009 from 10:00 – 10:45am in Marquam
Session notes

Excerpt

Unlike war, Drupal is good for many things. On the other hand, Drupal is far from a one-size-fits-all solution, and some projects are a much better fit for it than others.

Description

Drupal is growing leaps and bounds these days, powering everything from ma and pa brochure sites to Obama’s recovery.gov. Does this mean it’s a great fit for any website? Not exactly.

Drupal has been defined as many things, including a content management system, a web application framework, and community plumbing. In some ways, this is both a blessing and a curse; there’s so much you can do, in so many different ways, that new users are crushed under the weight of the options and lack of clarity. In addition, all of that flexibility does come with a cost, in terms of performance and conciseness.

This presentation will cover some Drupal basics including history, core concepts, and system structure. From there, we will dig into Drupal’s strengths and weaknesses, finishing off by discussing the types of projects Drupal is best suited for, including specific examples for each case.

My hope is that developers new to the platform will gain a better understanding of when to approach a new project with Drupal, more experienced developers will gain a bit of insight on when not to use it, and non-techies will have some help in choosing a platform for their projects along with an understanding why developers they work with select a given platform. Please note that this talk will not delve deeply into the technical details of Drupal.

Presentation slides: http://www.slideshare.net/loubabe/drupal-what-is-it-good-for

Tags

Drupal, cms

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