Kalle Virta discussed on a very hot topic — integrating Drupal with Apache SOLR.

Janne Kalliola presented our experiences in growing and managing Drupal based organisations.

Ben Goodyear discussed the basic and advanced features of Drupal templating system.

If you are interested in any of these topics or would like to know more about Drupal in general, please get in touch.

Tarkempi ohjelma löytyy seminaarin sivuilta.

Alla vielä pari kuvaa tilaisuudesta.

Juha Jauhiainen (Union) ja Piia Lehesmaa (Finndomo) puhuvat sivuston suunnittelusta.

Jani Tarvainen (Exove) kertoo sivuston toteutuksesta.

Mikäli haluat ladata seminaarin kalvot PDF-tiedostona, täytä ystävällisesti alla oleva lyhyt kysely. Vastausten lähettämisen jälkeen lomakkeen alapuolelle tulee linkki PDF-tiedostoon.

Nimi *
Yritys *
Yhteystiedot *
Sivustoprojektin tarve *	Välitön Tänä vuonna Myöhemmin
Kiinnostuksen kohteet
Arvosana seminaarista	Kiitettävä Hyvä Tyydyttävä Välttävä Huono En osallistunut
Palaute
Osa pakollisista kentistä on tyhjiä.
Tietoja ei voitu lähettää. Yritä myöhemmin uudelleen.
Kiitos tiedoista.
Lataa seminaarin kalvot tästä linkistä.

Pakolliset kentät on merkitty tähdellä.

Seminaarikalvot voi katsoa myös tästä:

Tule kuulemaan ja keskustelemaan sivustojen toteutusprojekteista.

Seminaarin tarkempi ohjelma ja ilmoittautumislomake löytyvät seminaarin esittelysivulta. Seminaari järjestetään perinteiseen tapaan Exoven toimitiloissa HTC Pintassa, Tammasaarenkatu 3, Helsinki. Seminaariin täytyy ilmoittautua ja se on maksuton.

Exoven aiempien seminaarien ohjelmat, kuvat ja esitysmateriaali löytyy myös blogistamme: web-sovellusseminaari, 12.2.2009 ja julkaisujärjestelmäseminaari, 16.6.2009.

Below you’ll find the formal announcement:

Exove has played a central role in Golfgamebook.com concept and visual design, and technical implementation onto Linux, Apache, PHP and MySQL technology platform.

The site concept and layout was designed by Union together with Exove and Free Drop Innovations. The emphasis was on bringing the social features of golf, typically discussed mainly in the clubhouses or privately, to larger audience in the Internet. These features were supported by a number of typical social media features fit to the golf environment – such as online friends, discussions, and sharing golf game results.

The service was built on ExoveIgniter, a framework based on CodeIgniter offering a versatile set of social media features. The system was built in a modular fashion that allows easy extensibility and fast upgrades. Based on the concept and visual designs, Exove implemented the required HTML code and integrated it into the system as Smarty templates.

The most important features of the system are live connections to scorecard appliances, including also an iPhone client developed by Qvik, full features social media services, integrations to key external services, and fluid user experience with strong branding.

The implementation project delivered a turnkey solution for the client in a multi-vendor environment.

The co-founders of Free Drop Innovations Kalle Väinölä and Mikko Manerus describe the result of the development project as follows: “GameBook is unique within golf’s marketplace as the only product that provides real-time electronic scoring for individuals as well as golf clubs. The scope and timetable of required server side development and web-services were extremely challenging, so we knew we have to pick the right partner in order to reach our ambitious goals. Exove did not only succeed in execution, but they also acted as a true partner throughout the project.”

Mikko Rantanen, CEO of Free Drop Innovations, continues: “We set the standard for our web presence and on-line community very high as we knew that in international golf marketplace only the best products and services prevail. The end result speaks for itself and further distances GameBook from its competition. We are in particular extremely proud of our web-based community, the GameBook Clubhouse. It provides players opportunity to connect with one another through a sophisticated and innovative community platform.”

If you are a golfer, please check www.golfgamebook.com and register. The best game just got better.

There are a lot of typical features in web applications, such as registration, signing in and out, viewing your details, and so on. On the admin side, one needs to be able to list, add, modify, and remove items — whatever they might be — and to manage users, see log files, etc. If we drill one more level down, there is a need for a common set of library functionalities, such as image manipulation, friend and group management, session handling, and protection against SQL injections and XSS / XSRF attacks.

If you are coding all components mentioned above, you are either in framework business or doing something wrong. There is no need to invent the wheel again. Instead, you should be focusing your energy on selecting the correct wheel for your needs.

There is a plethora of different web application frameworks in the market. Some of the publishing systems, such as Drupal or Joomla! provide their own application frameworks within the CMS. The selection is not easy, because approaches to the challenges of web application development are different, and sometimes even not directly comparable.

When we selected our core set of tools (Drupal, WordPress, eZ Publish, and CodeIgniter), we looked at the following items:

• Easy of extensibility. How easy it is to extend the system using the API provided? Or do you need to take shortcuts and fight against the system when there is a need to make anything fancier?
• Availability of third party components. Can you rely on third parties to solve your problems completely or partially? What is the quality of these components? This resonates directly with the needs listed above.
• Separation of content and presentation. Is there a proper template system with easy enough syntax? Does the system enforce good policies for separation, or do components produce HTML directly?
• Performance. How long is the route to your code through the system? Does the system provide mechanisms to cache data in various levels? Some of the systems are notoriously bad in this area, and constant attention needs to paid to the performance throughout the project — others are lightning fast.
• Documentation. How well the system is documented? This can be a real killer, as reading code is way slower than reading through good documentation.
• Fit for the purpose. What is the problem that the system tries to solve? Is this your problem, too? Developing applications against the system is a constant uphill battle and not worth the money and the effort spent.

None of our systems are perfect. WordPress has issues with separation of content and presentation, and the performance is not optimal. However, it is an excellent tool for small and medium scale web sites. CodeIgniter is fast, but you need to implement a lot of functionality around it. There is a good number of third party components, though, and active development going on. Within Drupal, there is typically at least one module that solves similar problems you are working on — sometimes the approach is not valid, or the module is half-baked.

After selection of the systems, we have been steadily gaining knowledge of good modules and extensions that can improve the projects at hand by cutting development time and thus prices. Further, we have been implementing a commonly used functionalities, as mentioned in the beginning, into libraries and components that can be used in any project requiring such functionality. We do not believe in coding for possible future needs, so the components grow based on the needs of the project — and the next projects get more features from the same components. One just needs to keep the solutions generic enough so that they can b reused.

We have been able to use the components so that some projects have been able to implement a large set of functionality, such as group management, with only a few hundred lines of own code.

Haemme projektiassistenttia harjoittelupaikkaan. Mikäli sinulla on kiinnostusta oppia projektinhallintaa dynaamisessa ympäristössä, tutustu tarkemmin tehtävän kuvaukseen.

We are looking for a project assistant trainee. If you are interested in learning project management in a dynamic environment, take a closer look at the position description.

Haemme kasvavaan tiimiimme lisää osaajia ja nyt rekrytoimme PHP-kehittäjää haastaviin projekteihin, joita tehdään pääasiassa Drupalilla ja CodeIgniterilla. Lue tarkemmat speksit avoimet työpaikat -sivultamme ja laita hakemus tulemaan.

We are looking for a new members to our growing team, and now we are recruiting a PHP Developer for projects that are implemented on top of Drupal and CodeIgniter. Read the spec on our open positions page, and send an application.

Puhujina oli exovelaisten lisäksi Pia Koivu Kvalionilta ja Petteri Koponen Lifeline Venturesilta. Tarkempi ohjelma aiheineen ja kuvauksineen löytyy seminaarin omalta sivulta.

Alla muutama kuva tilaisuudesta.

Janne Kalliola (Exove) avasi tilaisuuden ja esitteli CodeIgniterin.

Pia Koivu (Kvalion) kertoi Hyvälääkäri.fi -palvelun liiketoiminnan kehittymisestä.

Kalle Virta (Exove) esitteli Drupalia web-palvelualustana.

Petteri Koponen (Lifeline Ventures) kertoi Jaikun kehittymisen ideasta exitiin.

Mikäli haluat ladata seminaarin kalvot PDF-tiedostona, täytä ystävällisesti alla oleva lyhyt kysely. Vastausten lähettämisen jälkeen lomakkeen alapuolelle tulee linkki PDF-tiedostoon.

Nimi *
Yritys *
Yhteystiedot *
Web-sovellusten tarve *	Välitön Tänä vuonna Myöhemmin
Kiinnostuksen kohteet
Arvosana seminaarista	Kiitettävä Hyvä Tyydyttävä Välttävä Huono En osallistunut
Palaute
Osa pakollisista kentistä on tyhjiä.
Tietoja ei voitu lähettää. Yritä myöhemmin uudelleen.
Kiitos tiedoista.
Lataa seminaarin kalvot tästä linkistä.

Pakolliset kentät on merkitty tähdellä.

Seminaarikalvot voi katsoa myös tästä:

We had the pleasure of working with the World Design Capital project team, and the skillful designers of Kokoro & Moi to design and implement a Drupal based site for the World Design Capital 2012 Helsinki.

Drupal was a perfect fit for such a site. Please visit www.wdc2012helsinki.fi for further information about the project.

Haemme kasvavaan joukkoomme testaajaa. Tehtävänäsi on osallistua laadunvarmistukseen koko projektin elinkaaren ajan, hallinnoida vaatimuksia, suunnitella testausta, testata järjestelmiä, tukea asiakkaitamme laadunvarmistukseen liittyen, ja kehittää yrityksemme laadunvarmistusta eteenpäin.

Tehtävä edellyttää kokemusta vaatimusten hallinnasta, laadunvarmistustyöstä, yleistä teknisten järjestelmien tuntemusta ja kykyä omaksua uusia järjestelmiä ja teknologioita nopeasti ja silti perinpohjaisesti.

Lue lisää avoimet työpaikat -sivultamme ja laita hakemus vetämään osoitteeseen jobs@exove.fi.