abridged

This post is part of our Abridged series, which aims to explain the basics of some of the more ominous yet awesome Drupal projects in simple and practical terms. We hope these posts will help demystify some of these projects for people who have been hesitant to try them out!

This post is part of our Abridged series, which aims to explain the basics of some of the more ominous yet awesome Drupal projects in simple and practical terms. We hope these posts will help demystify some of these projects for people who have been hesitant to try them out!

Here, we'll take a look at the SimpleTest module/framework, including a review of its history within the Drupal project, the current state of the module, how to start using it, resources, and a note on how we've been using it ourselves. HUGE thanks to Drupal SimpleTest co-maintainer Rok Zlender for teaching us about using SimpleTest when he was in Vancouver last summer - the code samples are care of Rok's example custom test.

This post is part of our Abridged series, which aims to explain the basics of some of the more ominous yet awesome Drupal projects in simple and practical terms. We hope these posts will help demystify some of these projects for people who have been hesitant to try them out!

Here, we'll take a look at the Features module, created by the fine people at Development Seed, including a review of the challenges that led to its creation, the current state of the module, how to start using it, resources, and a note on how we've been using it ourselves.

Background

Everyone who's spent hours doing the same site configurations over and over again, for one site and then another, knows how repetitive config tends to be.  Install profiles have been the main tool for avoiding this work for the last couple years, but even with the (now defunct) install profile wizard, many people found them to be a bit overwhelming to figure out and start using at a production level.  Yet install profiles have grown to be fairly well used, especially since they can be customized and reused for certain types of sites - sport teams, churches, radio stations, languages, etc. - there's a big list of them here.

DrupalCon is about to descend on Paris in a matter of days. Sadly no, I will not be attending. But you're in luck, because our very own Disseminator of Awesome Shawn is on his way to represent Affinity Bridge and enjoy his first DrupalCon! In my absence, I thought I would write up a little DrupalCon End-User Guide of sorts, for all those first timers out there. Finding the optimal balance of geekery and socializing is key to making the most of the week, so consider these tips to lead you on the path to finding that balance.

This is the first "AB Abridged" post – a series of posts explaining the basics of some of the more ominous yet awesome Drupal projects in simple and practical terms. We hope these posts will help demystify some of these projects for people who have been hesitant to try them out!

Background

The previous version of Aegir, called Hostmaster, was developed by Adrian Rossouw (g.d.o member 1337 coincidence...?) for use at the now defunct Bryght, where they did mass Drupal hosting for several years. Its main components are the provisioning system, which manages some of the server side and back end configuration, and the hosting front end, which allows you to treat each site as a node and manage it through a Drupal interface. The hosting system also handles and allows you to watch the status of queued tasks on the server. Screenshot of the admin interface c/o Dev Seed