Tame Your Project: How to Build Your Project So It Stays Maintainable

When beginning a new Drupal project you might feel the need to dive right in and start building your site. This usually leads to missed timelines and a site with a hodge podge of modules with an incomplete feature set. With a little planning ahead of time, installation profiles and some key modules your project will have a better chance of being on time and easier to maintain.

I will go through the process UC Merced used to build the next version of their Campus CMS using drupal. I will also show how we built the site so it is a lot easier for a team of 3 to maintain 150+ sites.

What you will learn?

• One method of planning your site to have a clear understanding of your project deliverables.
• What is an installation profile?
• What are features?
• Where do installation profiles end and features begin?
• Building your site using drush make for consistent builds and upgrades.

What you can research ahead of time to help you with this session?

• Features Module http://drupal.org/project/features
• Drush for building your website through the command line http://drupal.org/project/drush

Watching this video will help you get more in depth with installation profiles and drush make.
http://chicago2011.drupal.org/sessions/zero-distribution-using-features-...