Notes from the Metaverse, the WordPress edition

(Update: This is the second in a series of live posts from DrupalCampWisconsin, with a little cleanup and added links.)

One mass intro session on the Drupal Ecosystem. Larry Garfield (aka crell) presenting.

IRC Freenode
#drupal (project)
#Drupal-Support (help)

Drupal Working Groups: Regional and project-oriented. How to get active in the community. “If you are willing to help and be helped, the Drupal community can be amazing.” Open and supportive.

Example: Angie Byron doesn’t do much code, but practically everything else. Laptop was stolen from her car at a conference. community donated enough $$ to buy new laptop in 48 hours.

Drupal Association: Steward of the Drupal Ecosystem. Manages drupal.org, organizes conferences, let the coders code. 25 permanent members, led by 9-member board, including this person. 22 euros ($50) gets you (as an individual) in.

DrupalDojo active help on specific topics, on IRC Sundays. Informal webcast.

Drupal welcomes women into the project; ~15% participation.

Security is a showstopper when patches are contributed. Active security team working through core and contributed packages. Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP author) searched forever to find some hole, and eventually found a really obscure spot.

DrupalCon Boston, scheduled for March 3-6, 2008 is expected to be the largest and longest yet, 4 days of sessions for all skill levels. If there’s something you want to see, blog about it, let me know.

Question about searching forums: Forums are big! Look for the issue queue on specific issues with specific modules (KarenS).

No place (yet) for comparing similar modules. When in doubt, pick a module that use other APIs (CCK, Views). James Carlson: It’s evolving in a rational, orderly fashion (yes).

Comment: Using cmsmatrix.com to compare different CMSs as well. It would be nice to have this for Drupal modules. Crell: Module ratings have been considered, and are in the works. Question is how to do it right. Maturity is a good sign too. Check for a group on the module/topic. Use Views and CCK as far as you can, then use advanced search on projects for useful modules.

#drupalsupport a good place to find a good rich-text editor, among other things. Karen: Starting to get good “site recipes” to produce different types of sites. If you do something really well, post to Drupal Showcase forum. Drupal.org has a higher Google pagerank than Slashdot (but traffic won’t bring you down–Drupal can handle the spike)!

Bug reporting process: Larry submits a bug to CCK.

Great opener!

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