$100 Drupal Site Series: Part 3 - Tools
In the previous instalment of my $100 Drupal site series I covered resources and infrastructure. In this post I will be covering the development tools I think you need in order to build and sell Drupal sites at the $100 price point. Given that Drupal 7 is close to release, it is assumed that the sites will be built using D7. I don’t believe that it is smart to invest heavily in Drupal 6 for new long term projects, given D8 could be out in 18 months and D6 would then be unsupported.
git
You are going to need a version control system for storing all of the code. There are many different version control systems available, but I think git is the most flexible and powerful option. Git allows for distributed development, offline commits and best of all, Drupal is switching to git. Gitorious is an open source clone of github which allows you to browse your git repository and manage integration of code from all of your developers.
If you are new to git I strongly recommend you get a dead tree copy of the book Pro Git.
drush
Drush is the DRUpal SHell, a command line interface for Drupal. It is an invaluable tool for developing and maintaining Drupal sites. Simple things like running “drush cc all” to clear all caches when developing sites, through to being able to sync databases from one server to another, or one continent to another, save many hours. Even if you’re only running a handful of sites, you should have drush installed on all of your servers.
Modules
There are a few modules which you should be using if you want to be able to create polished Drupal based platforms. My list includes:
Features module allows developers to package up configuration as a Drupal module, including access to all the normal hooks that a module can implement. Feature is version control friendly and includes the ability to reset to a known good state, either via the Drupal web GUI or by using drush on the command line.
Strongarm exports values from Drupal’s variables table, allowing sane defaults to be set. This means your site will always be configured the way you want it to be.
Context allows you to manage contextual conditions and reactions for different portions of your site. It gives you control over displaying blocks,hierarchy of breadcrumbs, themes and other context sensitive configuration options.
Admin is a menu module which makes it quick and easy to access items. (Disclaimer: I co-maintain the module)
Coder can perform static analysis of your code to ensure it is secure and complies with the Drupal coding standards. The module can also be used to upgrade code from one major version of Drupal to the next.
Devel is a collection of tools to help developers create Drupal sites and modules. Devel integrates with Admin to provide easy access to the devel actions.
WYSIWYG provides a pluggable framework for integrating rich text editors into a Drupal site. Given the target market for the $100 sites, we can’t expect our users to hand craft HTML, they’ll be expecting “something like Word”.
Skinr provides a way for end users to apply predefined CSS to designated parts of a site, without the user having to understand CSS.
Installation Profiles
When most people install Drupal for the first time they are blissfully unaware that they are using an installation profile. An installation profile sets out a base configuration for a site that is installed by Drupal. Until recently installation profiles contained a list of modules to install and a large chunk of hand crafted PHP code which setup all the configuration for a site. These days most of the configuration can live in Features and so an installation profile can be very lightweight. It is worth reviewing some of the more popular installation profiles, such as Open Atrium, Managing News or Drupal Commons, for inspiration. Installation profiles have changed a lot in Drupal 7, so you will need to port the ideas to the new way of doing things.
Drush Make
Drush Make is a tool for building Drupal platforms. Drush Make allows developers to specify all the components of their site in a text file, then use the command line tool to “make” the site. It is possible to specify a version of Drupal core (including Pressflow), contrib modules and themes, third party components, patches and external libraries.
Aegir
Aegir is a Drupal site deployment and management tool built using a collection of Drupal modules. With Aeigr you can manage your DNS, http (web) and database servers from a common UI. It is possible to move a bunch of sites from one server to another in a matter of minutes, not hours and the downtime will be measured in seconds. When security fixes are released, testing can involve a few minutes of work then a few more clicks to deploy it to all of your sites.
Workflow
Instead of me explaining development workflows, I’ll defer to Miguel Jacq (aka mig5). Miguel’s blog post entitled “Drupal deployments & workflows with version control, drush_make, and Aegir” is considered by many to be the key work on modern Drupal development workflows.
What’s Next
Many of the tools I’ve covered today should be in your Drupal developer’s tool bag. My next post will cover what I think are the important considerations in building the platforms for the service.