Drupaldelphia Recap

Drupaldelphia 2011 has come and gone, and a couple weeks ago a few members of our development team had the chance to soak up a bunch of info, make some great connections, and even put back a couple drinks with other members of the Philly dev scene. There were tons of great workshops, panels, and discussions, but one particularly stood out to our staff.

Jody Hamilton spoke about about the enormous amount of website "lemons" out there and various ways to tell if your site or project is a lemon. Although she was talking specifically about Drupal many of her points can be applied to just about any site/CMS. We took tons of notes, but here are some of the high points gathered by our team:

How Do You Know You’ve Got a Lemon?
A small change is always a big deal - Small changes should be just that - small. If changing a truly minor aspect of your site causes big problems elsewhere, you may have a lemon on your hands.
It’s just cheaper to rebuild it from scratch - The average business website should last you around five years, but will need to be updated to keep current with new developments. If you find that it’s always cheaper to scrap it and start over than to iterate, that’s not good.
Few benefits of Drupal (or any CMS) are being leveraged - The entire purpose of a content management system is to make the administration and updating of your website easier. If that isn’t the case, and you aren’t putting the feature set to use, you aren’t getting the most out of your site.

Why Are There So Many Lemons?
Immaturity and Lack of Experts - There are some incredibly talented people in the web development field, but specific platforms are still young. It may take time to find a team that is the right fit for your project.
Hobbyists, Credentials, and Ease-of-Use - The flip side of having an easy to use platform like Drupal is that there are going to be plenty of folks who tell you they can “do it”. Some of them are right. Most of them aren’t. Is it really worth staking the reputation of your company on saving a few dollars to go with an armchair developer? As Jody put it, it can be very easy to “click your way into a complete disaster.”
Rush Jobs and Foolish Architecture - Like any other technical project, there’s a right way and a wrong way to do things, and doing it right often takes time. Be realistic with your timelines and respect the process of your developer.

How to Make a Lemon
Subcontracting - Thinking of outsourcing that work out to an “expert” developer to save on cost? Don’t. How will you know you’re getting the best work?
“Hiring” Internal IT to do the job - You wouldn’t hire a roofer to fix your car, replace your transmission, would you? Besides, if you don’t think these guys have enough on their plate already just ask them.
Too many cooks, too few chefs - There’s an art to proper web development, just like creating dishes. It takes training and practice, and not everyone is cut out for it.
Buy only on price - Expert web development isn’t a commodity, don’t treat it as such.
Ignoring expert advice - When your developer speaks, listen! You hired them for their expertise, so let them use it.

How to Avoid a Lemon
Hire experts - If you absolutely have to have your site built on a certain platform make sure the company you select has experience in working with said platform, or at least the language that it is built upon.
Quality Assurance and Peer Review - Make sure the company you choose to go with has a good quality control/assurance system in place. They should be reviewing their work throughout the build process, not just at the end.
Ticketing and source control - You should never have to call or send an email for support needs. A proper support system operates using a ticketing system because it allows everything to be contained within a single source. The company should also be using some form of version control with the project. This keeps a record of every change made to the code throughout it’s lifespan. If something happens to go wrong with the most recent version of the code, you’re able to roll back to a previous working version with no problem.

Drupaldelphia was full of great info and great people, and it’s growing every year. It’s always great to see the Philly development community coming together. We’re already looking forward to next year’s event; in the mean time check out some of our other event recaps and let us know what you think.