DrupalCamp Ghent: Combell will hit the bull’s-eye!
When DrupalCamp holds its annual community meeting in Ghent, Combell has to sponsor the event. But what can you expect from the sessions that it will offer? And what about the fun factor?
DrupalCamp Ghent will feature a busy programme
On Friday 23 and Saturday 24 November 2018, Drupal community members will once again get together for their annual gathering at DrupalCamp. Two days full of inspiring presentations, in which developers will talk about their experiences and how they succeeded in solving the problems they encountered. After all, that is the great advantage of real communities like those of Drupal and PHP: their members like to share their knowledge with you, so that we can all continue to develop code together.
This year, the programme will again include a lot of activities. On Friday, there will be a keynote by Danielle Jacobs, General Manager of Beltug, Belgium's largest association of technology pioneers. The businesswoman will share her views on open-source communities such as that of Drupal. And on Saturday, it will be the turn of Preston So, Director Research & Innovation at Acquia, the company behind the Drupal open-source web content management platform. As you would expect, there will also be many captivating sessions that will provide you with useful tips on how to get the most out of Drupal.
Thijs will give a talk about the use of caching systems
One of these sessions will be delivered by Combell PHP tech evangelist Thijs Feryn. Over the years, Thijs has specialised in the use of caching tools that allow for faster display of dynamic websites. Content Management Systems and frameworks such as Drupal are indeed fantastic when convenience and flexibility are concerned. But they do have one major drawback: the content must constantly be extracted from a database before being included in the framework. And that is achieved at the expense of CPU and memory load.
So, the solution to this problem would be to store non-dynamic data in memory. The latest version of Drupal (Drupal 8) comes with several highly efficient out-of-the-box concepts for caching mechanisms. But that is not always enough, as incoming requests still need to be processed by the PHP runtime. And only external caching can fix this. In his presentation, Thijs will therefore explore all the caching possibilities of Drupal 8 and will also present the best practices to gain maximum speed. Cache-control headers, cookies, the reverse cache proxy (Varnish), Content Delivery Networks and a few other topics will also be discussed.
Dartboards at stake on the Combell stand
Aside from their informative sessions and presentations, DrupalCamps are also popular for their informal meetings. Or as is stated on the website of the event: “You come for the code, you stay for the community”. Various social activities are scheduled for this year, with which organisers intend to introduce participants to the hidden gems that can be found in Ghent. This should be quite interesting!
This year, being a Gold Sponsor, Combell again wants to contribute to that special bond and provide those who will visit their stand with an opportunity to have a bit of fun. And this will be done using darts, in order to make sure that our developers not only have a steady hand, but also a sharp eye. Each participant will be given 3 darts to try to achieve the highest possible score. And the three winners with the highest scores will have the honour of returning home with a professional dartboard that will help them improve their skills at home or at work.
"You come for the code, you stay for the community"
DrupalCamp in Ghent: a home game for Combell
Why does Combell care so much about the Drupal community? With our support, we aim to contribute to the further growth of the CMS. Drupal, which was created by Belgian developer Dries Buytaert, is in fact one of the content management systems that Combell installs for free for its customers who purchase a Combell hosting package. The further development of the CMS ultimately also benefits our customers. And our partners/developers can also acquire a great deal of knowledge through such initiatives.
Moreover, after previous gatherings in Leuven and Antwerp, this year's meeting will be organised in Ghent. And despite the fact that we have been growing quite rapidly in recent years, Combell is still very proud of having its roots firmly anchored in Ghent. So, we could definitely not miss this edition of the event in the city of Artevelde, where our head office is still located.
DrupalCamp will be held on 23 and 24 November in HoGent’s Schoonmeersen Campus. Check out the programme for Friday and Saturday and make sure to order your ticket!
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