CTE Visions

Drupal: From Blank to Blog in 30 Minutes
Dirk Howard – IDK Software

Things that you will need to get started are:
Server (Ideal environment setup would be Apache, MySQL PHP)
Drupal software
Unpack
Install / Configure (answer the questions)

My first thought of Drupal is that it has a really nice install process. But for my personal likes it is just too much. I am comparing this to my experience with WordPress which took me like 5 mins max. It took me longer to download WP then to install and configure it.

Just when you thought your site was done and Drupal gives you a “Finished” page you still will need to go through the Admin page.

I must admint now. I can not compare Drupal to WordPress because Drupal is trying to be a sites Content Management System (CMS) and WordPress is just a blogging program. Drupal is an extensible CMS that is used for blogs, forums, photo galleries and many other projects.

Installing Drupal on a blank website can be done in as little as 30 minutes (if you read everything in the installation process and really who does that). All you need is a web server that can handle PHP, a MySQL or PostgreSQL database, and either FTP or shell access to the web server.

From there you can be blogging your way on your site that you can customize anyway you want.

SSH Tips and Tricks
Aaron Burgemeister – Novell

With large IT shops with many servers running on a variety of Operating Systems, there are times when connection to a machine does not require the full graphical enviroment (VNC, RDP etc.). There are timew when files need to be copied from one server to a dozen others securely.

Aaron did a great job as well. My first reaction to this as he was starting his presentation was that it might be a little over my head since I do not under stand all the ins and outs of SSH, but to my amazement Aaron was able to touch some topics that were still very basic and neat to know.

Aaron showed how you can connect to another computer via the command line and pass parameters to move and/or copy files from one server to another securly.

This is something I am going to pursue a little more to learn just how the ins and outs work on this.

WordPress Performance and Scalability
Joseph Scott – Automattic

This presentation coved the techniques for increasing the performance of WordPress. Joseph talked about how to reduce individual page load times by scaling out to handle higher traffic loads.

Joseph talked about what you can do to the pages and mostly what you can do to help reduce the calls to the MySQL database. He did a very good job and I must admit that I was having problems with my own personal computer during this presentation so a lot of what Joseph was talking about went in one ear and just kept going through.

I do know Joseph though cause he does come into the place I work. Joseph is a very nice and knowledgable guy. He knows what he is doing and he knows how to make it work to the best of its ability.