DrupalCon 2015 - Los Angeles

DrupalCon 2015

DrupalCon 2015, Los Angeles, CA
May 11-15, 2015

DrupalCon is a global conference where thousands of Drupal developers, system engineers, designers, project managers, functional analysts, documentation specialists, media, and business people gather to participate in learning sessions, talks, code sprints, and social events.  There were people from over 50 countries represented this year!

The customary Drupal photo of the attendees.

There were several workshops and sessions available but these were a few of my top picks:


- Defense in Depth: Lessons learned securing 100,000 Drupal Sites -
with With Cellar Door, Nstielau and Geetarluke (Drupal users names)

It was a timely message as recently I had one of my sites hacked so these were key things that I learned to do:

1. Have the CIA security triad in place - Confidentiality , Integrity, Availability (confidentiality is a set of rules that limits access to information, integrity is the assurance that the information is trustworthy and accurate, and availability is a guarantee of reliable access to the information by authorized people.)  None of my sites provide confidential information, but it was good to be a aware of what to have in place.
2. Defense in depth (proactive defense is better than reactive defense when it comes to security)
3. Update security (regularly, don’t ignore messages to update security)
4. Back up your data (regularly, if you have backed up your data it is easier to restore the last good version before the data invasion.)
5. Use GIT to know what your code has done (this is a module that records changes that happen within the Drupal site.
6. Use secure passwords (complex passwords are more secure than simple passwords.

There are great tools and modules that I can apply to my current sites to make sure that my sites are secure and to also ensure that if a site is hacked again, I will have things in place to help me recover and also be able to identify what and/or how it happened.

My favorite shirt for the
conference! :)

- Ballin' on a Budget: How to Create Great Design Without Breaking the Bank- with Josh Riggs, Senior Lead UX Designer @ThinkShout


Because we love FREE at libraries, this was also a great session with lots of takeaways:

1. Design tips - Sort order is important when it comes to responsive design.  I'm building building more Drupal sites using responsive design and the order of the page really does matter.  If it's not in order, it will display incorrectly on small devices.  Something that I've noticed, but never really knew why.  It's starts with building it better.
2. Documentation - Always important for someone coming in behind you to know.  I do document on my code, but I could be more diligent about it when I do.  Sometimes I make a correction for whatever reason and don't always document the "why".  I will be better about that in the future.
3. FREE stuff - There are lots of free sites available to you if you need it but these are a few that I will be looking in to:
• https://www.google.com/fonts (Fonts)
• https://www.theleagueofmoveabletype.com/ (Fonts)
• http://losttype.com/ (Fonts)
• http://www.fontsquirrel.com/ (Fonts)
• http://thestocks.im/ (Photos)
• https://unsplash.com/ (Photos)
• http://deathtothestockphoto.com/ (Photos)
• http://tympanus.net/codrops/ (Code)
• http://codepen.io/ (Code)
• http://refills.bourbon.io/ (Code)

Putting my feet in the Pacific Ocean
(because I couldn't travel that far and not!)

I stayed at the
Historic Millennium Biltmore Hotel
which hosted the 1941 Academy Awards

Overall it was a great trip with lots of information.  I always come away from these events with information overload and so many things that I want to apply to my websites.  Of course it always looks great when someone else does it, but applying it to your own site doesn't always work out the same.  But overall, the Drupal community is great at helping each other out.  One of the BOF (birds of a feather) sessions was for "Drupal for Libraries".  It was a time to converse with other Drupal Library users to ask questions and see what everyone else is doing.  Most of the conversation was for academic libraries, but I did find out about the Drupal users listserv group for libraries and got added to the list so I look forward to getting feedback from other Drupal Library users. 

Los Angeles Public Library, Downtown