Drupal Planet

Kicking off some posts about various performance challenges we've fixed.

N Factorial

[Edit: Thomas point out this is not really factorial, because it's addition of each number in the sequence intead of multiplication].

What can you do about this page being so slow? That's a question we've been asked by half a dozen customers in the past 6 months, and as it turns out, we can do quite a lot.

We've been getting several inquiries related to document management in Drupal, and occasionally about OpenAtrium, a Drupal distribution we've used as a base for several projects that needed strong group collaboration functionality.

Heerad asks:

Everybody is writing about Heartbleed this week. The reason? It probably affects more people than any other vulnerability we've ever seen. If you ever log into any web site, anywhere, your password might be revealed -- and that is just the start. The biggest problem?

Previously we learned why a custom web site is not a car. But it is a lot like a building.

"Make me a building. How much is it going to cost?"

"My budget is really tight, can you get the project started and show me what to do to finish it?" -- Yet another request from several different prospective customers.

It goes something like this:

(Client): I want to add a shopping cart to my site. I heard that xyz cart is free, can you add that for me?

(Developer): Sure! That looks easy.

There's a little controversy in the Drupal world, a fork by Nathan Haug, aka QuickSketch. Last week he tweeted:

1. EMBRACE YOUR INNER PESSIMIST...

This doesn't mean you can't be your usual, happy-go-lucky self! In fact, it's absolutely vital that you approach any project with a healthy 'yes we can' attitude.

Results. Return On Investment. Value. How do you measure these things in a website? There's one thing you can easily measure -- cost. Or at least the amount you actually spend to build and maintain a site. The others are far more troublesome to measure.

If there's one thing that's constant in the web world, it's change.

If you've used a web ontology before, or any other large-scale data repository, you're likely familiar with one of the chief concerns facing anyone in such a position: how do you get your data into the system? Moreover, how do you get large amounts of data into the system with (relative) ease? And if you've used a content management system before, you've likely faced a similar, albeit inverted problem: how do you get your data out?

If you can accomplish these preliminary items without a good deal of effort, you're finally left with the task of transforming the data from one, and allowing it to be recognizable by the other.

If, instead, you haven't used either of these, you're likely wondering why on Earth you would want to.