Tutorial: Panels as Blocks
Blog postIn this tutorial, you will learn how to place panels in any region of your theme using Drupal's Blocks UI and a module packaged within the Panels project: Mini Panels. This tutorial is based on a free video in our library, Placing Panels in Blocks with Mini Panels
This week we're kicking off our new, and completely free, Using MailChimp with Drupal 7 series. This series will teach you everything you need to know about integrating Drupal with the MailChimp email marketing service.
Load Testing your Site with Siege
Blog postSiege 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.
Why is SEO important to site owners? What tools and strategies can be used to gather and analyze site visitor data?
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!
In this lesson you will learn about different approaches to Quality Assurance (QA), the importance of doing QA throughout the project, and how QA can be used as a basis for documentation and help for the client.
Additional resources
Testing the front end with CasperJS
Automate Your Life with Phing
CSS Regression Testing with Resemble.js
Write A Hello World Test for Drupal 7 with SimpleTest
Automated Testing in Drupal 7 with SimpleTest
Quality Assurance with Selenium
Careful with that Debug Syntax
In this lesson, you’ll learn about demoing your progress to the client and the team, along with some things to consider in a prototyping process. We'll also talk about retrospectives, when the team takes time to review not just the work produced but the process behind it as well.
In this lesson, you’ll learn strategies for identifying and dealing with problems, risks, and red flags on a project. You’ll also learn tips for being a proactive and diplomatic communicator, ensuring that progress and velocity is up to speed, and the importance of minding the boundaries of your relationship with the client and how to effectively advocate for the project, without forgetting the people who can ultimately make the project successful.
Additional resources
In this lesson, you’ll learn some tips for ensuring a successful launch and the importance of celebrating the accomplishments of the team.
PHP Classes and Objects
Blog postObject-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.
Learning Drupal 8 from Boilerplate Code
Blog postOne 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.
In this lesson, you’ll learn about the essential elements of a successful project kick-off meeting or on-site, including who should be there and what should be done during this time.
In this lesson, you will learn some strategies for aligning and managing client expectations from the perspective of sales and account management. Learn how you, as a project manager, can work with an account manager to effectively communicate with a client to find out whether or not expectations are being met.
In this lesson, you will hear a variety of perspectives on the many facets of client communication. As trust directly impacts communication, you will hear about how trust varies depending on the type of project. In difficult conversations, learn about the importance of listening. To build trust and manage tricky situations, learn about transparent, proactive communication of risk factors. On a practical level, you’ll learn about the importance of translating client discussions into action items for the development team, and how the ticket queue can be a great place to capture important discussions and facilitate client communication with the project team.
Drupalize.Me Update, June 2015
Blog postIt'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.
In this lesson, you’ll learn about the human side of project managing; what people skills are important to have, and ways to detect burnout and help team members get back on track.
In this lesson, you’ll learn some strategies for how to put together teams, especially for large projects. You’ll hear about the advantages of organizing a project into work streams, what that means, and how it can be advantageous to break up a large project team into smaller, more efficient groups.
In this lesson, you’ll learn about the challenge of determining how many people are needed for a project, what questions to ask when determining capacity, and finally signals that may indicate that it’s time to bring others in or remove team members from a project.
Additional resources
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Frederick P. Brooks, Jr.