₦airaland Forum

anitchec:
Drupal 8 RC rumored to be released on 7th, how true is that?

For the most accurate prediction: https://drupalreleasedate.com

anitchec:
... in due time i will be needing an expert review of my work to make sure am not breaking any Best Practices...lol. do you have a Group or a forum or any platform where you connect with your audience except Nairaland?

Sure. There's a very active group (Drupal Nigeria) that is active both online and offline. This is a group of both knowledgeable and upcoming Drupal practitioners in Nigeria. Every one is welcomed. On Facebook, www./drupal.ng, group website, www.drupalnigeria.org, upcoming group event website: http://2015.drupalnigeria.org.

The group meets offline at Shoprite, Ikeja at least once a month (last Saturday of every month).

You can connect up with me on FB (https://www.facebook.com/tony.ogbonna) or shoot me an email at tony@icelark.com and I'll help you out on any Drupal related issues as much as I can.

chipzidar:
dont really knw about drupal.. can u gimme link to a website using drupal?

For examples of Nigerian websites build with Drupal check out this page: http://icelark.com/projects (built by my own company: Icelark Projects www.icelark.com).

Other nigeria sites includes: http://www.mtnonline.com/, www.edusko.com, www.MeNowNews.com, etc.

Foreign websites built with Drupal: www.whitehouse.gov, https://www.usa.gov/, South African government (http://www.gcis.gov.za), French government (http://www.gouvernement.fr), New York state government (http://www.nysenate.gov), Australian government (http://www.australia.gov.au), https://www.grammy.com, http://www.wwe.com, https://blog.twitter.com, etc.

For the reasons why Drupal is the choice for big and serious website projects globally you may want to read this: http://www.govtech.com/policy-management/Why-Big-Sites-Run-Drupal.html.

Still want more?

anitchec:
... i have heard will not be easy due to the drastic change in its core, like the incorporation of symfony and all. i mean you cant just copy and paste, this time you have to practical rebuild your site from scratch?...

This is not true. Even though there has been drastic changes to core, one of the main reason the Drupal 8 core has not been released months ago is b/c there need to be in place the capability to easily upgrade your codes from earlier version to the current version (according to the goal statement a Drupal 6 to 8 upgrade would be possible).

So in its full maturity your should be able to easily port your Drupal 7 project to Drupal 8.

anitchec:
Well said! But i need an advice tho. migrating from drupal 7 to 8 as i have heard will not be easy due to the drastic change in its core, like the incorporation of symfony and all. i mean you cant just copy and paste, this time you have to practical rebuild your site from scratch.
My question is this, for someone who is starting a new project (time is not an issue), would you suggest he builds it on drupal 7 now that 8 is so close to Release Candidate phase?

The answer is an absolute YES: He should start with Drupal 7. The reason is simple, Drupal 7 is still the most stable version, and it will remain so for a few more years. To understand why this is so you have to understand that every Drupal site can be divided into two parts from the code perspective: the Drupal core (equivalent to the Drupal 8 which now close to a Release Candidate phase) and what is called in the Drupal circle Contrib modules (The plugins that extends the basic functionality that the core provides. https://www.drupal.org/project/project_module). The contrib modules are open sourced codes put up by savvy Drupal developers independent from the Drupal core.

A lot of the power of Drupal is derived from the Contrib modules space. So even though the Drupal 8 core is close to a stable release, most of the Contrib modules are not. It will take some time before the Contrib modules catch up, which will takes months to years, depending on which group of Contrib modules you are interested in.

So unless the project is the simplest website possible that do not require anything more than the Drupal core can provide AND you have no intention of adding new functionality anytime soon, you should start with Drupal 7. However you can keep monitoring the Drupal 8 Contrib space for the modules that you are interested in for when they are mature enough to port you project to Drupal 8 safely.

IMHO, if you have any serious (business) interest in Drupal (as I have) right now, you will be much aware that Drupal 7 still occupies center stage despite all the glamours of Drupal 8. There's still so much more to learn and exploit (from a business perspective) with D7. Right now, and for about at least 2 years from now, you can not undertake any real serious project with Drupal 8. This is because it will take that long for D8 to mature to the point of being marginally useful (A critical quantity of key contrib module will have to catch up with the maturity of the D8 core for this to happen).

So if it seems that there is no or not much buzz around the upcoming stable release of D8 among Naija Drupal practitioners, just know that it has less to do with lack of interest and more on practicality (ie D8 has no business value locally for now). But be assured the buzz is going on among the local Drupal community, through series of local meetups (http://drupalnigeria.org) and online elsewhere, outside of nairaland (https://www./drupal.ng, http://icelark.com/blogs/a-journey-towards-drupal-8-development-mastery-the-road-map, http://2015.drupalnigeria.org).

So keep the faith, the buzz will build up rapidly, VERY SOON.

I leave you with the two references. Draw your own conclusions.

(1) Should your site be responsive?
Let’s keep this one simple: Yes. Responsive design is the most cost-effective way to deal with the widest possible array of devices, and the simplest way to future-proof your web site. On their Responsive Design Podcast, Karen McGrane and Ethan Marcotte have talked to dozens of organizations about the challenges and the payoffs: there’s no denying its effectiveness.
https://www.lullabot.com/articles/why-responsive-design

(2) M dot or RWD. Which is faster?
http://bigqueri.es/t/m-dot-or-rwd-which-is-faster/296

All of your points are very valid, but you are only telling less than half of the story, i.e you only highlighted arguments against RWD. I can assure you arguments for RWD out weights those against, and I will mention just a few:

1) Device proliferation: There are dozen of device types with varied screen sizes, and many more are entering the market regularly. To make matters worse (or better depending on your perspective), based on screen sizes the distinctions between mobile and desktop are not so clear-cut any more (Are laptop 'mobile' or 'desktop'?): large screen phones, tablets of varying sizes, phablets, etc. So having just two strict versions of a website (mobile and desktop) just wouldn't do (try viewing a mobile version of a website on a large tablet to get what am saying). RWD is a clear winner here.

2) Cost: With separate versions of a website for mobile and desktop will essentially be creating and maintaining two websites with exactly the same content. So you are effectively doubling your cost and efforts.

3) SEO friendliness. With two versions of the same site each piece of content will have two urls thereby reducing the seo ranking factors of both.

4) The future favours RWD (even Google thinks so): Your argument relies heavily on resources downloads, like image sizes, for credibility. But techniques like image lazy loading (load without images, determine the browser environment and load the appropriate image), modernizr, the upcoming (or already here) picture tags, etc, makes the main point of your argument less credible.

RWD wins no matter how you look at it. Why would one choose an out-dated method (having a separate versions of the same website) over a strongly supported upcoming one? There's no argument here: RWD wins. QED.

www.icelark.com

Cool! An NSE API link that actually works. Just what am looking for.

Thanks a lot.

Hi,

I need help here. How do I get an NSE API for my website?

Any pointer would be appreciated. Please people.

Hi,

I am very interested in an NSE API for my website. The link you posted, visit http://nse..net/ is not active/expired.