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Siege is a useful load testing tool to add to your performance testing tool kit. From the website: "Siege is an HTTP load testing and benchmarking utility. It was designed to let web developers measure their code under duress, to see how it will stand up to load on the internet. Siege supports basic authentication, cookies, HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols. It lets its user hit a server with a configurable number of simulated clients. Those clients place the server 'under siege.'"

Load testing is useful for testing the performance of your site, and the infrastructure that it runs on. There’s nothing worse than having one of your blog posts end up on Hacker News and then having your site crumble under the load. Siege can simulate activity on your site, and you can then use your site from your browser as you normally would, while your siege is running and really get a feel for how your site responds under load.

This blog post will cover installing Siege on OS X and Linux, and running a basic load test with Siege.

This week we are wrapping up our Introduction to Project Management series. We've talked with the Lullabot sales and project management teams about many aspects of working with people, and setting your project up for success. As we wind things down we're going to discuss dealing with problems and and red flags that may be taking the project off course, along with different ways of adding quality assurance. We'll then get to talk about demoing your work and conducting retrospectives to review your processes. Finally, we get to tips for a successful launch and the importance of celebration!

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is way of organizing your code to be more efficient, and it takes advantage of some really nice features in modern versions of PHP. One of the basic concepts of OOP is, not surprisingly, an object. Directly related to working with objects is understanding PHP classes. Drupal 8 is taking big steps to move to an OOP architecture, and so you will get very familiar with both of these as you start to jump into Drupal 8 development.

This tutorial, based on the video Create a Basic PHP Class, will explain what a class is, show you how to set up a class, and look at a PHP object. By the end of this tutorial, you will be able to create a class, an object, add a property to your object, and set the value of the property inside the class.

Drupal 8 represents a lot of changes and a steep learning curve for many Drupal developers and themers. While many of these changes are exciting, there are many things to learn just to get started. One way to learn about the code involved with Drupal 8 modules and themes is to take a look at core's modules and themes for examples to follow. Another, is to use a code scaffolding tool like Drupal Console to generate boilerplate code and comments that you learn from and then customize.

One of the hardest things about a project is finding the right balance when working with your client. This week in our Introduction to Project Management series we take a look at client relations. Lullabot's project and account management teams discuss client communication, managing expectations before and throughout the project, and getting the project started off right from the kick-off meeting.

It's that time again! Here's an overview of what we've been working on at Drupalize.Me.

In this next installment in our Introduction to Project Management series we're going to look at the people on a team. We'll cover how to figure out who should be on a given team, some ideas about how to break work up on large project teams, and then talk about how to keep in touch with the human side, keeping your team happy and productive.

Need some insight into the estimation process? New to the world of software project services contracts? Looking to become a project manager or improve your skills? This week, we are pleased to release the next three videos in our Introduction to Project Management, a series of interviews on topics related to project management, leading teams, reporting, tools and methodologies and more.

Tail is command for Unix and Unix-like systems (like OS X) that allows you to take a peek at the contents of the end of a file. From the manual page: "tail - output the last part of files." Tail can be really useful for debugging purposes, or for taking a look at the recent access_logs from your Drupal setup. Tail can be particularly useful in a production environment when you may not have PHP error reporting enabled, and need to find the cause of serious errors with your Drupal site.

In this week's Drupalize.Me podcast, hostess Amber Matz chats about all things Project Management with Seth Brown (COO at Lullabot) and Lullabot Technical Project Managers Jessica Mokrzecki and Jerad Bitner. To continue the conversation, check out Drupalize.Me's series on Project Management featuring interviews and insights from these fine folks and others at Lullabot.

We are excited to introduce our latest series, Introduction to Project Management. This series is quite a bit different from our usual format. Instead of screencasts and walk-throughs, we've interviewed Lullabot's technical project managers, the Chief Operating Officer, and the Account Director, and organized the footage into a series of lessons on topics that project managers deal with on a regular basis, including contracts, communication, estimation, tools and methodologies.