awebfactory - web application factory pattern

Preparation

Main site: http://aws.amazon.com/

Console overview, tour, all categories of info: http://aws.amazon.com/console/

For example, Amazon EC2 Features at http://aws.amazon.com/console/#ec2

I watched the EC2 tutorial at http://d36cz9buwru1tt.cloudfront.net/console/AwsConsole.html

AWS Documentation: http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/

EC2 Documentation (Getting started (recommended), user's guide, etc.): http://aws.amazon.com/documentation/ec2/

Signing up

Go to http://aws.amazon.com/ and click on the button which says Sign up for a free Amazon Web Services Account – Sign Up Now.

You can use your existing Amazon customer account email and password if you already have one.

So I'm back in L.A. and gearing up. No better way than to present at a local Drupal User's group.

We look at Features (actually a lot) vs Installation Profiles as everything in code process, which is necessary for the adoption of best practices in development.

Slides: https://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcg2pmwb_109hpc8m8c4

Video: http://blip.tv/ladrupal/installation_profiles_as_an_everything_in_code_d...

"It seems everyone is talking about using Features for "everything in code" development, but what about installation profiles? This oft-overlooked part of Drupal core is available to us all and provides the tools needed for successful, repeatable development and deployment. Victor Kane is an Drupal developer and trainer with deep roots in the Los Angeles Drupal community. He is the author of Leveraging Drupal: Getting Your Site Done Right. This presentation is a continuation of his articles on the subject at http://awebfactory.com/node/448 and http://awebfactory.com/node/458 "

Code: http://drupal.org/project/pft

I would really love some feedback on all of this.

If your business depends on adopting an agile Drupal devlopment process in Southern California, I can help. Contact me. See Mentoring at AWebFactory.

Project Flow & Tracker Status update for early January, 2011

As tweeted four days ago, Project Flow & Tracker is now an installation profile http://drupal.org/project/pft on d.o. Please read the project page for download and install instructions and road-map. The most important aspect is that since this is an "everything in code" install profile, there will be no more getting locked into an outdated version. Just by running update.php you will get access to all updates available as the pft modules evolve. Also, even though I am creating a SaaS platform, the "everything in code" paradigm will prevent a "commercial" vs "free" version since every advance made on the SaaS platform will be present in the installation profile base modules as updates right on http://drupal.org. As long as its there.

I have already written several articles on how this can be done, and I will be thoroughly documenting the workflow I have finally chosen in great detail.

I hope many will download and start using the install profile! Meet you on the issue queue!

A word on the Free software pledge

This gives me a material base upon which to make the free software pledge as a way of clearly showing where I stand on the "Drupal App store" debate. It is my way of struggling against such an App Store, and I hope others will make similar pledges.

I take this position for reasons I will elaborate upon in a future article (among many other things, greater and smaller, I would like to know who decides what goes in and what is excluded (no-one is addressing this question); and I would like to know how I can charge for stuff based on modules other people have developed, not to mention core...).

Project Flow & Tracker installation profile is now ready in basic, non-UI form at https://github.com/victorkane/ProjectFlowAndTracker/tree/6.x-1.0-alpha1 on the 6.x-1.0-alpha1 branch. Be sure to change to that branch after cloning the project or else before downloading the tarball. Instructions are on the README.md file for that branch.

The installation profile includes the following:

So, Drupal web app builders, Drupal 7.0 RC 1 Released. It's coming soon to a development environment near you! So, who can help dive right in? The very well written drupal.org announcement mentions the updating your modules and updating your themes pages and the Coder Upgrade module. But curling up with a good book would be nice too. So I was eager to review Drupal 7 First Look by Mark Noble in order to see if it could assist me in systematizing my own approach to becoming familiar with Drupal 7 and preparing myself for "the big shift" as a Drupal developer.