Drupal

Drupal is a free, open source content management system, primarily aimed at websites but equally capable of providing content to frameworks like React, apps, services like Alexa, whatever you can think of.

For many years in the Drupal community, I’ve found that my greatest pleasure is not in actually creating the next awesome feature (and, wow, we have some awesome features coming…) but in helping to mentor those who will in the future. Recently, an opportunity came up that interested me a lot. Cambridge University Press & Assessment were looking for a seasoned Drupal developer to help grow the in-house team as they deliver projects built on the platform. I could hardly say no! I very much wanted to look at how better active participation in the community can be a key driver for development of the team’s capabilities..

Once in a while, an opportunity comes along that is so interesting I simply cannot say no. Almost four years ago to the day, that opportunity was to join the Drupal Association as its first Community Liaison. Indeed, I even came up with the title whilst serving on the Drupal Community Working Group.

Working in the Drupal Association has been a wonderful experience, where I have had the pleasure to work with some of the most amazing people I have ever had as colleagues and friends.

My attention was brought to a whole bunch of "page not found" errors in the log of my website tonight. At first, I just thought it was just someone trying scripts to gain access so I sent an abuse report to Linode as they owned the IP address, 172.105.83.62.

Their reply was vaguely interesting, though. They said that they didn't regard it as abuse as it was a "security researcher" at work. Huh? On my website? Seriously? Wow - they need to set their sights higher!!! 

Tags

Let's first be honest; this isn't yet a post COVID-19 world and it won't be for some time yet. However, in-person events are beginning to happen and we need to consider what that means, practically.

How do we maintain reasonable levels of safety for those people who attend? What do we do about those who simply cannot attend, either through concerns over their health or the inability to travel? I might not even be allowed into events in the USA at the moment as the Astra Zeneca vaccine I had isn't recognised there.

“Would you like to come to my wedding?” I receive as a Slack message from a friend in the Drupal community.

“Sure! When is it? Where?”

“It’s in November, in Kota”

“Oh - wow - yeah, I’ll come if I can!”

At this point, it seemed like a good idea to look at a map - where on Earth is Kota????