Drupal

For this episode we have special guest Chris Eppstein join Addi, Kris Bulman, Micah Godbolt, and Carwin Young to talk about Sass and Compass. Chris is the creator of the Sass framework Compass, and is also part of the core Sass team.

• @chriseppstein on Twitter
• Sass project homepage
• Compass project homepage
• Drupalize.Me Meetup Memberships
• CSS Summit Online (JUly 23-25, 2013)
• SassConf (Oct 12-13, 2013)
• CSS Dev Conference (Oct 21-23, 2013)
• Chris' post about LinkedIn
• Compass project issue queue
• Sass project issue queue
• Drupal Magic Module
• Sass Globbing plugin
• Chrome Compass Search extension

Sass, Compass, and Drupal

Kayako is a help desk software that lets you manage email, tickets, live chat, calls and remote support. All in one place.

Helper module to book a table in restaurant with general form.

Rublon for Drupal

Rublon is the most secure convenient login system. It allows your visitors to log in via Rublon QR Codes.

Rublon increases website security by replacing passwords with decentralized mobile cryptography. Scan a Rublon QR Code using mobile to log in without having to remember anything. It's the most secure convenient way of logging into websites. Patent-pending technology. By using Rublon you don't have to enter any more passwords in order to log in to websites. Rublon also simplifies registering on websites. In such a case Rublon will ask you for your permission to pass your data that is needed for the registration. After that you will get logged in automatically in the future. Main features: - simplifies and speeds up access - instant users log in from every page - automatizes registration process - already verified emails to register users on the fly - provides easy account linking - automatically link by email You can learn more at Rublon

Note:
Please use the following callback URL:
/rublon/callback/
or:
?q=rublon/callback&state=%state%&token=%token%&windowType=%windowType%
if Drupal 'cleanURLs' option ("Configuration" -> "Search and metadata" -> "Clean URLs") is not set.

Topic: Drupal

Everyone dreams of making money while asleep. The term "passive income" is often defined as income that is received on regular intervals without requiring a great deal of work to sustain it. Usually some effort has to be put in upfront, but the payoff from passive income can last for years. Passive income is particularly relevant when it comes time to retire. Two techniques often recommended by financial planners are (a) rental properties and (b) dividend investing. Both can work well, not only as a retirement plan, but as a way to build steady income. Certainly the idea of collecting checks for the rest of your life with minimal effort sounds appealing.

Quite a few people that try to retire early are documenting their journey publicly. For example, Jason is trying to retire by 40 by investing in dividend growth stocks and Mr. Money Mustache retired at the age of 30 through rental properties. Many other great examples exist online; I love reading up on their stories and progress. There is a lot to like about their lifestyle too; a common theme among them is that they live frugally.

So what does this have to do with Open Source? I love Open Source and Drupal and would like to see even more contributors. I think a lot of developers would love passive income so they have the freedom to contribute to Open Source more, preferably even full-time. Many developers also live a frugal life; passive income may be a good option to explore. But also, what about a third passive income technique: (c) websites? I know several people who have a number of websites, some of which they haven't touched for months, yet they still bring in around $500 a month. Owning a few websites could provide a wonderful chance to earn passive income, and it so happens that many of us in the Drupal community have a talent for building websites ... Food for thought.

Topic: Drupal

Everyone dreams of making money while asleep. The term "passive income" is often defined as income that is received on regular intervals without requiring a great deal of work to sustain it. Usually some effort has to be put in upfront, but the payoff from passive income can last for years. Passive income is particularly relevant when it comes time to retire. Two techniques often recommended by financial planners are (a) rental properties and (b) dividend investing. Both can work well, not only as a retirement plan, but as a way to build steady income. Certainly the idea of collecting checks for the rest of your life with minimal effort sounds appealing.

Quite a few people that try to retire early are documenting their journey publicly. For example, Jason is trying to retire by 40 by investing in dividend growth stocks and Mr. Money Mustache retired at the age of 30 through rental properties. Many other great examples exist online; I love reading up on their stories and progress. There is a lot to like about their lifestyle too; a common theme among them is that they live frugally.

So what does this have to do with Open Source? I love Open Source and Drupal and would like to see even more contributors. I think a lot of developers would love passive income so they have the freedom to contribute to Open Source more, preferably even full-time. Many developers also live a frugal life; passive income may be a good option to explore. But also, what about a third passive income technique: (c) websites? I know several people who have a number of websites, some of which they haven't touched for months, yet they still bring in around $500 a month. Owning a few websites could provide a wonderful chance to earn passive income, and it so happens that many of us in the Drupal community have a talent for building websites ... Food for thought.

OG in Drupal 7 does not delete content of the group when the OG content type is deleted.

This module is an extension to OG that allows the group owner/admins to delete associated nodes when the group is deleted. This module provides following options which were available in Drupal 6.

1. Delete all the content associated with group.

2. Delete the group and make the content public.

3. Move all group posts and memberships to the different group. This option is visible only to site admin who has access to 'administer nodes'.

This module currently works only with node types and needs to be expended for all entity types associated with OG.

The good news is there is a tremendous amount of buzz and excitement building for DrupalCon Prague! The unfortunate news is the website is still not live, which means we haven’t been able open up registration or call for papers. We wanted to let you know there is a lot of work being done to make DrupalCon Prague an awesome event, and that we are working hard to get the website up. We also want to thank you for your patience with the website, and provide a few details that will help you plan for the event.

Personal blog tags: DrupalCon Praguedrupalcon

A module automating the implementation of Unveil.js

See https://github.com/luis-almeida/unveil/ for more information.

Selecting an appropriate payment gateway is one of the most important choices to make when designing, building, and maintaining an eCommerce website powered by Drupal. Choose poorly and the out-of-the-box feature set may not fit all of the project's needs (e.g. "where's the recurring billing option?") or may not be possible at all (e.g. "where can I charge my customer's card for a future purchase?"). The payment gateway choice will also greatly impact the resources required (in terms of time, money, and expertise) to sufficiently secure the credit card transactions in order to achieve and maintain PCI compliance.

As a Drupal developer trying to wow clients with amazing out-of-the-box features, it can be tempting to focus on functionality over security. However, one of my biggest concerns for those selecting Ubercart as their eCommerce solution is its lack of available payment gateways that can achieve a clients desired feature set while still being able to reduce one's PCI compliance woes. The goal of this article is to encourage everyone to select a shared-management gateway solution (defined and described below) and to highlight that Drupal Commerce has more of these types of gateways available.

Payment Gateway Types

The Payment Card Industry (PCI) groups payment gateways into three basic types: merchant-managed, shared-management, and wholly outsourced. I'll explain each of them in reverse order.

Wholly Outsourced

In this implementation, the eCommerce platform is entirely hosted, managed, and secured by a 3rd party vendor that explicitly assumes the PCI responsibilities to secure the credit card payment process. Examples include: Bigcommerce, Volusions, etc. The only Drupal specific example I know of that that could fit this criteria would be Drupal Gardens using Cashie or Paypal. 

Shared-management

In this implementation, the shopping cart experience begins on a Drupal site and the credit card payment is submitted directly to the payment gateway by one of three types of methods:

• Hosted Payment Page (HPP). This involves redirecting a customer to your payment processor's website where they enter their payment information directly on the payment gateway's servers. Once the transaction is successful, the customer is redirected back to the Drupal site to an order confirmation page with an authorization code so that Drupal  knows the payment went through.
• Direct Post. This is essentially a slight of hand in which the credit card form on a Drupal site is modified such the credit card details are posted (through an HTML post over HTTPS) directly to the payment processor instead of being submitting to the Drupal Form API . Once the payment is approved, the payment gateway sends a one-time verification token back to the customer, which is then processed through Drupal Form API and sent back to the payment gateway. The token is used simply so that Drupal can verify that the payment was accepted.
• iFrame. This is essentially a combination of the above two methods. Here the credit card form is embedded on the checkout pane through an iframe. Therefore the form, being hosted on the payment processor's server, receives the credit card data directly and returns a token that can then processed through Drupal to charge and/or verify a payment with the payment gateway.

Merchant-Managed

In a merchant-managed implementation, the credit card information is submitted directly back to a Drupal site through the form API. Drupal then processes and transmits the card data to the payment processor and receives a response code to let it know where the payment succeeded or failed.

PCI Compliance Considerations

Choosing a merchant-managed solution is the most risky because you assume more of the responsibility and liability in securing the entire credit card transaction process. Choosing a wholly outsourced solution is perhaps the most restrictive because you essentially lose all the benefits of using a flexible and feature rich CMS like Drupal.

Shared-management solutions are the balance point between these two extremes. They allow one to leverage most of the flexibility and functionality of Drupal while significantly reducing the amount of time, effort, and resources required to achieve and maintain PCI compliance.

Comparing Ubercart and Drupal Commerce Payment Gateways

At first I wanted to create an exhaustive list of every payment gateway, but I decided to focus on a subset to simply illustrate the point. If I have neglected any gateways that would paint a different picture, please be sure to alert me in the comments section and I will correct these tables.

Here a the breakdown of several payment gateway options for Drupal Commerce:

Gateway Merchant Managed Direct Post HPP iframe Authorize.net ARB X       Authorize.net CIM X       Authorize.net DPM/SIM   X X   Authorize.net Hosted CIM       NA Braintree   X     Hosted PCI       X Paypal WPS     X   Stripe   X    

And here is a similar breakdown for Ubercart.

Gateway Merchant Managed Direct Post HPP iframe Authorize.net ARB X       Authorize.net CIM X       Authorize.net DPM/SIM   X X   Authorize.net Hosted CIM       NA Braintree   NA     Hosted PCI       NA Paypal WPS     X   Stripe   NA    

Sadly almost every (available) shared-management implementation for Ubercart involves a redirect to a hosted page, which clients in the United States are usually resistant towards because they dislike not being able to keep the client on site during the entire checkout process (sidenote: citizens of the EU tend to be much more accepting of hosted payment pages, so this stigma against HPP's is not necessarily going to persist). Thankfully there is at least one known direct post method (Authorize.net DPM) for Ubercart, but this option cannot be used in conjunction with card on file or recurring billing capabilities. As for including iframe implementations, such as Authorize.net Hosted CIM, it's already been ruled out as unlikely to happen for Ubercart.

By comparison, Drupal Commerce has several different options with respect to companies offering shared-management implementation (Stripe, Braintree, Hosted PCI) and actually offers an iframe option (Hosted PCI). The Drupal Commerce community is also very active and growing while Ubercart's community will likely hit end-of-life in the next year.

Author's Note: I know there are many many more Ubercart payment gateway modules out there, but many of them are deprecated, have fewer than 50 users, and/or are unmaintained.

Summary

• Selecting the right payment gateway is not a decision that should be made lightly.
• Shared-management gateways tend to offer the best balance of features and ease of achieving/maintaining PCI compliance.
• Drupal Commerce offers more shared-managment solutions, both in terms of the quantity of companies to select from as well as the diversity in the types of implementations.

To learn more, please read my previous article (Let's Talk About PCI Compliance for Ubercart and Drupal Commerce) and stay tuned for the PCI compliance white paper that should be ready in a few short weeks!

Tags: Drupal PlanetPCI compliance var switchTo5x = true;stLight.options({"publisher":"dr-8050e384-1b1-b22e-b17-7e272ca1dc8f"});

View the discussion thread.

Giving design feedback is hard, but with a few quick tips you do it like a pro.

The Design Feedback Sandwich.

The best way to keep designers happy and your project on track is to use what I call the Design Feedback Sandwich. Start by telling your designer a few things you like about the design. Next, tell the designer which pieces are problematic. Finish by telling them something positive thing about their work. Validating the positive ingredients keeps morale up and will create a healthy work relationship. Remember - people are more creative when they're in a good mood.

Frame Your Feedback Around the Goals

To become a true design feedback pro, frame all your feedback around the project goals. For instance, instead of saying "I don't like that blue," say "I don't think that blue effectively conveys a sense of excitement to our target teen audience." By framing your feedback within the goals you immediately win. You help keep the team on track and you remove your own personal bias. Go you! You are becoming a pro already!

When You Get Stuck, Test

When your team gets can't agree on the feedback, try testing. Using cheap and easy tools such as FiveSecondTest or UserTesting.com to bring in a fresh perspective to the conversation. Fresh eyes and new data can usually unblock creative gridlock.

Define Roles

As I learned from Paul Boag - It's the client's job to define the problem, and the designer's job to solve it. Keep this in mind when giving feedback. For instance, a common piece of feedback is "i think the page looks too busy. Lets add more padding." Try to remember to state the problem, not the solution. Instead, allow the designer to explore solutions to the problem. When you tell a designer how to do their job, you unknowingly limit their creativity. For example, adding more padding may make the page feel less busy, but so might reworking the copy, adjusting the type size, or reworking the layout. In short, trust your designer to find the best solution.

NOTE - many clients have fantastic suggestions and collaboration is key, but it's good to remember the roles to play to each others strengths.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Being both respectful to each other and validating each others efforts produces long term fruitful partnerships. When collaborators feel heard, moving forward becomes effortless.

This is my list. I'd love to hear yours. Design feedback can be a tricky business, so the more we share the better.

Provides PagueloFail payment method for Payment.

It supports:
- PagueloFacil Botón de Pago

TODO:
- ONSITE payment integration

Eight days after Confab 2013, and I have finally come down from my conference high. The conference was insightful to say the least - it is by far the best industry conference I have ever attended. This past week, I have sifted through notes, read recommended articles and reports, replayed in my mind all the thought-provoking presenter one-liners, and had many a conversation about the value of things like content “chunking” versus “blobbing”...the usual things you do when you come back from a conference feeling equipped with the knowledge you need to change the world.

I had a moment, as I sat down to write this post, where I asked myself “why does any of this matter?” There seemed to be something missing in all my thoughts and ideas after Confab. It all seemed very...tactical. I felt like I was missing a larger theme that timed all of these topics together.

It came to me as I read an interview with Paul Adams of Facebook in Fast Company. “People!” The theme that tied all of the Confab sessions together was the focusing on the needs of people consuming content.

Michael Brenner of SAP defined content strategy best:

“Content strategy is about delivering the content your audience needs, in all places they go.”

Content strategy is about meeting the needs of people. We often get lost in conversations about content, asking questions like:

1. What CMS should we use?

2. How do we create a great editorial calendar?

3. What keywords will get us ranked highest in search?

None of that matters. Not unless you are making a connection with what is at the other end of your content. People.

Each presentation I attended at Confab made that point within the wealth of knowledge shared that, at the center of all the planning, and wireframing, and building, is the need of a person. All the strategizing, and designing, and production, is all done with the intention of building a relationship with a person by helping to meet their needs. Where I think Paul Adams’ views on social design come into play, as many of us know about content strategy, is that investing in content is a long-term strategy that will take many, light-touch interactions with people over time before a relationship is really established.

Let’s get a little bit more practical with this concept. Here are some tips I pulled from different sessions I attended at Confab that will help you develop a content strategy centered around building relationships with people:

Content Modelling by Rachel Lovinger

Content modelling is essentially the process by which we as define content types, their attributes (fields, assets, metadata), and the relationships between types of content. It is foundational to any content strategy.

People are now engaging with brands across multiple platforms, on many different devices, often times all at once. As an example, a person attending an your event is reading information about your organization on their mobile phone, while they are following people’s tweets about the event on their laptop or tablet. One interaction, three touch points.

To address the needs of our users wanting content across various platforms and channels, we need to model content for portability.

Some recommendations that came out of this session all content strategists should keep in mind:

Think of your content separate from presentation. The root of this concept is in the content chunking versus blobbing debate. Most content management systems are designed with a Title field and a Body field where the content editor designs their content. That is dangerous because editors shouldn’t have to, and often are not good at, content design. By focusing on content structure over presentation, we can more granularly model our content with all the fields that need to be presented, allowing content editors to focus on entering content that needs to be served without having to do formating.

Content should be adaptive, not responsive. A related concept is adaptive content. The general idea is that content can, and probably should, look differently depending on how and where it is served. That ultimately is a design issue, not a content issue. When modelling content, we need to think of content types as having granular attributes (i.e. if a press release has an intro and a body, then have separate fields for each). Editors should focus on creating content, and designers focus on how it is presented on various platforms. As content strategist, we need to ensure our content is structured in a way that allows an editor to easily publish a piece of content in it’s entirety, and designers can then present content chunks, or collections of content attributes, in different ways on different platforms.  

Content models should be CMS agnostic. Technology should not inform your editorial strategy, your editorial strategy should define what content management system you use. Develop content models that map to the content needs of your audience and editors, then select the technology solution that will best support those.

Content Strategy for a Customer Journey by Kevin NIchols

Customer/user engagement happens across multiple channels and multiple platforms. Customers expect that they will have the same experience with a brand no matter where they interact with you - your website, via a mobile app, etc. Designing a consistent experience for a consumer regardless of channel or platform , referred to as omni-channel retailing, is driven by content and can be adopted by all industries.

The key to this strategy is personalization. Understanding who your user is, their needs, and where and how they meet those needs is critical to determining what content to serve along the user journey. If you know that Ann is a mother in Chicago that likes to cook casserole for her children, you can serve her a coupon on her mobile phone when she visits the recipe section of your mobile app or website.

There are many different ways to personalize your content strategy. You can build a recommendation engine into your website that serves a user content based on their defined interests. You can inform how you segment content on social media, email marketing, or direct mail based on your understanding of user personas. The approach you take should be specific to your organization, but remember the key is to focus on meeting the user need at every touchpoint in your user journey.

Well This IS Interesting by Melissa Rach

People need interests to live. We are “information foragers” - we seek information the same way we seek food. The more we learn, the more information we seek.

Content is about feeding people’s natural desire for information that is interesting to them. Our goal is to find the intersection between a person’s interest and our desire for them to take some type of action.

While interests are many things to us as humans, they are most importantly social. We build relationships through shared interests. The same thing goes for people building relationships with people as with people building relationships with brands. To establishing a relationship with a person, we need to produce content that aligns with both of our interests.

Our interests are enticed by emotion. Whether content is goal-, entertainment-, or action-oriented, we choose to engage with a brand based on how a piece of content makes us feel. Write copy that will evoke a desired emotion in your reader - joy, anger, intrigue. If you can evoke an emotional reaction from the reader, the greater the likelihood they will remember and be interested in your content in the future.

Some things to keep in mind when writing copy or designing content:

• Make sure you know the topic you are talking about and can provide helpful information

• Focus on meeting the needs of the content consumer - it is all about them

• Produce content that fills the gaps between what the user needs and what you have to offer them

• Encourage people to have a conversation with you

The Poetry of SEO by Mike King

Search engine optimization for years was a very prescriptive process circa 2000-2008. You optimized pages with metadata - meta titles, meta descriptions, and meta keywords - that helped search engines better understand what content was on a page. You made sure your pages were marked up in a way that allowed search engines to understand the structure of your page. Then  you worked on building cross links between your website and more reputable website. Voila! High ranking website.

Since the proliferation of social media, the game has changed. Major search engines now take into account social interaction with content and content consumed by your social graph in determining what to display to you in search results. People are spending more time on social media websites and discovering more content in their newsfeed than ever before. While keywords are still critical to search placement, the new driver of content discovery is social media.

Keyword optimization within content and meta titles is still important, but not as important as writing copy for people. You should write content with an eye towards getting people to share it with their friends.  Meta descriptions that appear in search results should connect with a reader, just like a tweet or an ad.

Social media can also be one of your best research tools because it shows you what people actually think and say about topics and brands. Use Facebook ad data and Google Adwords keyword tool to get demographic information about people who are searching for and talking about specific topics and use that data when building personas and your keyword strategy.

Did you attend Confab? What were some of the insights you gleamed from various sessions?

First, some background. My name is Aaron Winborn, and I am a developer for Drupal, which is an open source content management system, used to make web sites. I also the father of two young girls, who bring much joy into my life, and married to a beautiful woman. You may have heard of her, her name is Wonder Woman.

Just over two years ago, I was diagnosed with ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. In short, that means that my mind will increasingly become trapped in my body as the motor neurons continue to die, and the muscles atrophy and waste away, until my diaphragm dies, bringing me with it.

My hands and arms are already completely paralyzed, and I'm confined to a power wheelchair. My diaphragm strength is largely diminished, and I am using breathing assistance 24/7, and I am at imminent risk for respiratory failure.

Even if I am fortunate enough to survive another year, which is only likely if I opt for a tracheostomy, my chances of surviving much longer become increasingly unlikely, as pneumonia becomes a specter haunting the late stages of ALS. There is no cure for this awful disease. My family gets to take care of all my needs and wipe the drool off my face, until I die, and leave them to pick up the pieces.

But yes, there is a silver lining to this all, such as it is. Kim Suozzi made a similar plea to the Internet a year ago today, and came up with the brilliant idea of freezing her body in the hopes of a distant advanced technology being able to revive her someday. Her body now rests at liquid nitrogen temperatures. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/uvaqe/today_is_my_23rd_birthd...

I approached the organization responsible for raising the funds to help her out, the Society for Venturism, last November, and they agreed to take on my case as well. http://venturist.info/aaron-winborn-charity.html

But I am actually telling you all this in order to come up with a sort of reverse bucket list.

I've had a full life, with no regrets. I've done some travel, have lived in some cool places, like the Netherlands and London. I've made lots of good friends, and continue to do so. I've contributed to my debt to society, working hard throughout my life, as a teacher, a waiter, an open source software developer. I've worked with a few interesting characters, like Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and even lived in a Buddhist monastery before I met the woman of my dreams.

But I'm not ready to hang up my jacket quite yet.

When I was ten, I came up with three things that I wanted to be when I grew up: a teacher, a writer, and an astronaut. I've been two of the things, which is not bad. As an aside, I once told that to some people, and was asked, "Oh, what did you write?" To which I replied, "I didn't say I've written anything."

Joking aside, I'm looking for some grandiose ideas of things to do after I've died, and have hopefully been revived. And by that, I mean the sky's the limit. Don't worry about whether something seems technically feasible. This is your opportunity to think big. Like, go skinny dipping in the methane oceans of Neptune.

I want to do so much more with my life, but it's not in the cards this go around. I've become a spectator in life, living vicariously through my daughters, and relegated to typing with my eyes at fifteen words per minute on a good day.

But I'm not complaining. I awaken each morning as I always have, excited to take on the day. This is just a way to do some more brainstorming, to come up with a list of things to do during the next century, should we be so fortunate.

Stay strong,

Aaron

PS This question was originally banned from the Internet at http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1g7h69/anything_awesome_i_sho...

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Before doing any changes to your web site, the first thing to figure out are your goals. As a web development shop, we focus on building web sites that create measurable value for our customers, aligned with their goals.

Some common goals:

• Help me close more sales from people who I send to my web site (brochure/information)
• Bring me new customers (online marketing, SEO)
• Help me manage sales leads (CRM)
• Increase sales (e-commerce)

How you should revamp your site completely depends upon which of those goals (or whatever other goals you may have) are most important for your business at the current time.

Drupal PlanetGoalsData Visualization

This is an extension of the Commandbar module to provide additional powerful search of various entities and other useful commands. Current functionality includes:

1. Search users by username, UID or email by starting the search with an '@' symbol.
2. Clear the cache by using '>cc'. Also includes playful example for another command '>encourage'. Other modules can add additional commands.

If you would like to add additional utilities to Powerbar, please let me know and I'd be happy to add you as a maintainer.

The new Twitter 1.1 API kicked in recently, which meant a new cycle of maintenance for anyone consuming their data programmatically. My own Feeds + Views demo site streams #drupal, using Feeds and complementary modules.

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This is a simple module that allow to add a PayPal and/or a Bitcoin button as blocks.
It requires that you have a paypal/bitcoin account to work.

• Install the module as usual
• Go to Structure -> Block
• Click configure the block
• Follow the help text to generate a script from the developer section of both Bitcoin and Paypal websites.
• Copy the generated script and paste it in the block textarea
• Save and move the block in a region you want the button will be displayed

Your done!

I need to deeply test this module. It's crucial that the script inside the text area is not a security issue.

This module adds LDAP support to Open Atrium 2.

Dependencies:

• #2017201: Rules actions to update OG group mappings - This module utilizes this new LDAP functionality to add and remove OA Groups from the LDAP settings.

This series outlines our project process through the lens of our development of the new 4SiteStudios.com. In this post, we will discuss our process for architecting a content management solution for a client.

In the technical plan, we take the content plan, wireframes, and our documentation from the discovery phase, and begin to make decisions about how we're going to actually implement the site in Drupal. What content types do we need? What contrib modules do we need to install? Do all of those modules play nicely together? What custom modules do we need to write? What views do we need to build? How do we know when a feature is done, and how do we test to make sure?

The first thing we do is break all the main functionality of the site down into user stories. These are simple statements that describe tasks that different types of users should be able to perform. For example, "A visitor to the site can see a list of upcoming events," or "An authenticated user can register for an event." These are intentionally kept simple, so that we keep the focus on the problem we're trying to solve, rather than the way we're planning to solve it.

Next, we write a description for each user story. Descriptions are still simple and user-focused, but they go into a bit more detail. If the story is that the user should be able to fill out a form, the description tells us what form fields the user should see on the screen, and what she should see after she submits the form. These descriptions help guide us as we're designing solutions, but they also tell our developers (and more importantly, our QA testers) what "done" means. Occasionally as we're writing descriptions we'll discover additional use cases that weren't captured in the original wireframes, and we'll update the wireframes to match.

Finally, we briefly describe the solution we're proposing for each user story. Do we need to create a new content type? Build a view? Install a module? The solutions usually start fairly simply in the technical plan, but once we import the stories into our project tracking system, Pivotal Tracker, we'll start adding much more detail, including acceptance criteria and QA testing instructions. For any particular story, we usually write these detailed specs during the sprint before we actually start development on that story.

For the new 4SiteStudios.com site, most of our stories are pretty straightforward. We probably could have even built the site in Wordpress, but why would we want to do that? :) And since we're building the new site on top of our install profile, 4Site Hub, a lot of user stories (particularly stories for content editors and administrators) were already addressed in the tech plan for that project. As we go through the development phase, we'll test the 4Site Hub stories too, to make sure we haven't introduced any regressions.

The second tab of the technical plan outlines all of the content types we'll need on the site. We already started this work in the content plan, but the tech plan goes into much more detail. We capture all of the fields we need, the field type for each, whether it's required, and how it will be displayed. If the content type is based on one in 4Site Hub, we describe how we'll capture the changes—will we create a feature override, or just build a new feature? The third tab captures similar information for our taxonomy vocabularies. The final tab captures all of the modules, features, and third-party libraries we'll need for the project. For Hub-based projects, we always look for features and modules that are part of the standard installation that can be disabled.

Now that we have a plan for how we're going to proceed, we're ready to spin up a development environment and start building!

If you want to get a look at the tech plan for our new website, look below.

Technology Plan for new 4SiteStudios.com from 4sitestudios