I attended DrupalCamp PDX 2008 yesterday at the Portland State Business Accelerator. With nearly one hundred attendees, it was evidence of Drupal's accelerating popularity. Here are the two photos I took during the CCK session (photos from other attendees are available here):

My notes from the event are below.

Drupal Best Practices

• update.php hooks
• install profile API / install profile wizard
• Database merging/migration tool: navicat
• selenium
• modules:
  • Database Scripts
  • macro (included with devel)
  • menu_access
  • content_access
  • book_access
  • category - turns taxonomy terms into nodes) (difficult to undo)
  • bio (merged with usernode in drupal 6)
  • content profile (drupal 6)
  • CCK field permissions (search does not respect these permissions)
• limit theme template files to print/if/foreach (no other php code)
• Drupal 6: menu_alter
• Drupal 7 will tentatively allow attaching CCK fields to any object

SEO

• presentation site
• card sorting
• Google adwords keyword tool can be used to define taxonomy term names based on high-ranking keywords
• inventory.overture.com - keyword selector tool based on Yahoo search
• top three Drupal SEO items: page title, body (content), URLs (pathauto)
• Yahoo and MSN seem to like meta tags, but generally not necessary
• meta description will replace the search result snippet, but Google will do a better job of selecting the best content to show as the snippet
• modules:
  • page_title
  • taxonomy term menu (deprecated in favor of edit term module)
  • edit term (currently has a bug with pauthauto)
• SpryDev podcast about SEO and Drupal
• don't hide things via CSS (Google doesn't like this and may consider you a spammer)
• views list pages can negatively impact ranking if there are many pages that are listing the same content (with links to the same pages)

Workflows

• Types
  • Basic Moderation (publish/unpublish)
  • Editorial
    • e.g., Writer -> Editor -> Publisher -> Public
  • Forms
    • e.g., Manager -> HR -> Internal Workforce -> Public
  • Business Process Management (BPM) - refers to documenting, automating, and improving business processes
    • e.g., Department 1 -> Department 2 -> Department 3 -> Workforce
• Elements
  • States
    • States are defined stages a workflow moves through.
    • With the workflow module, you define your own states.
  • Transitions
    • These allow you to define what states you can move to from your current state and the roles that are allowed to make these moves.
    • Transitions introduce some level of permissions to your workflow.

  • Actions (actions.module)
    • Actions allow you to associate some command when a workflow has moved to a particular state.
    • E.g., sending and email, moving the node to another state, etc. Not necessary in a workflow, but powerful.
  • Roles
    • Defines who has permission to act on the workflow when the workflow is in a specific state.
• Modules
  • Workflow
    • basic module to allow the creation of arbitrary workflows in Drupal
    • "creation" state automatically added to a new workflow
    • patch available for workflow module to allow showing of only certain form fields during creation of content
  • Workflow Access
    • allows access to nodes based on roles and depending on the workflow state
    • allows defining of who can view/edit/delete *within* a state
  • Workflow-ng
    • allows one to customize Drupal's built in workflows in a very flexible way.
    • it's a rule-based event-driven action evaluation system.
    • can work with the workflow module
    • used by a number of other modules like Ubercart
  • Workflow Owner
    • works in conjunction with workflow and optionally workflow-ng so that admins can designate "Owners" of various states for a given node.
    • can allow for specific permissions - e.g., allowing a specific person to edit a node when the node is in a specific state.
  • Actions
    • Drupal actions
  • State Reference
    • Adds a CCK field type for referencing workflow states in CCK content types.
  • Workflow Workflow NG
    • allows you to integrate workflow and workflow ng
    • requires workflow_token patch
• Matching Workflow Goals with Modules
  • Editorial: Workflow, Workflow Access, Workflow Owner, Workflow-ng, Actions
  • Forms: Workflow, Workflow Fields, Workflow-ng, Actions
  • Business Process Management: Workflow, Workflow Fields, Workflow-ng, Actions
• Notes
  • Many tutorials available online
  • when editing workflow, be sure to give Author permission on the creation/draft state so that they can actually create the content
  • module: revision moderation (allows you to keep current page revision public, but create a new unpublished revision)

CCK

• Consider using a CCK field instead of Taxonomy
• OOP paradigm in Drupal
  • OOP - Drupal
  • Variables - CCK Fields
  • Functions and Sub Classes - nodeapi hook

Panels 2

• only for Drupal 5 at the moment
• panel node
• module: advanced profile
• panels 2 documentation with examples

Views 2

• only for Drupal 6

Drupal for Non-Profits and Political Campaigns

• presentation site
• CiviCRM
  • CiviMail - Mailer with click tracking. Plugin available to allow sending mail through a separate server.
• Hosting
  • Dreamhost - free hosting for Nonprofits
  • Linode - VPS provider
• Many mass mailer services available, such as iContact
• Example sites:
  • Arts for LA
  • Blog for Oregon
• Sections module
• Events functionality
  • events module
  • CCK with Date, Calendar, Views
  • embed Google calendar
• Google Analytics
• XML Sitemap (formerly Gsitemap)
  • submits new content to Google
  • can help reduce Google's bandwidth usage
• Mollum