Drupal

This script is useful for keeping a database within reach of an 'svn up' anywhere it needs to be deployed (e.g., dev and staging sites). In addition to creating a database dump, it also svn commits the database. I use it in conjuction with this provisioning / install script, but it can be used on its own.

How to
The script should go in non-public, secure directory, which is somewhere below the site doc root. I haven't tried running it with permissions less than sudo, though it may be possible. Invoke by doing:

sh path/to/dump_and_checkin.sh

It has logging and verbose output for confirmation of it's operations on the command line.

Future possiblities includes doing something like this to cut down on the size of the diffs committed, but since haven't gotten a chance to test that in a prodcution environment, am sticking with with plain-and-simple in order to guarantee integrity of the SQL file.

Very soon 1,399 of your best friends will be converging on Washington DC to talk about all things Drupal, web, business, yada yada yada. What could be more fun than that?! Well, for some people, believe it or not, the thought of so many people or the thought of having to do anything particularly social with people that they don't already know, is a bit overwhelming/unappealing. Under normal circumstances I fall into this category. Starting a couple years ago at my first big Drupal function, however, I made a deliberate decision to try to overcome this tendency. As it turns out that was one of the best decisions I've ever made in my life. The effects which have followed "forcing" myself to go say hi to more people than I normally would back then are still with me to this very day.

Hopefully anyone reading this won't confuse what I'm saying as an endorsement to run up to everyone they've ever wanted to meet and harrass them - if you're already a social butterfly - you probably don't need to force yourself to be more social - that would just be obnoxious ;-). But by all means if you're hanging around somewhere - don't hesitate for a second to say hi to whomever is around you. ("So what do you do with Drupal?" is always a nice starting point)

Couple more tips:

After realizing how much cool stuff there is to see by following the #drupal hash at Twitter, I grabbed the RSS feed from that page and put it in my new favorite app for OS X, EventBox. Horror of horrors, it displayed horribly (double titles/content)...

...so on to Yahoo Pipes, and in short time I hacked up a cleaned up version of the #drupal results feed that displays nicely. Enjoy!

On Wednesay night the Sac DUG met for the second time at Hoppy Brewing Company and beat it's 2 year old attendance record in the process. It was a great meeting, which was attended by Drupal users of every stripe - there was even folks who showed up to evaluate Drupal for use in their companyl (a highly recommended way to check out Drupal, btw!).