DrupalEasy Podcast 09: Content Type Police

The fine folks at Icebar Orlando (dot com) invited us to do our podcast from their "Fire Lounge" - who are we to turn down an invite from Orlando's coolest bar (bad pun, I can't help myself)? We had a great discussion about the number of content types on Drupal sites, our (equal) love for designers, and a bunch of other Drupal news from the last 2 weeks.

DrupalEasy podcast at Icebar Orlando

Ryan, Andrew, and Mike recording the DrupalEasy podcast at Icebar Orlando.

5 Stories

  • Leisa from the Drupal 7 User Experience project recently asked Drupal developers what is the average number of content types in use for sites they develop . Prior to the recording of the podcast, I went ahead and averaged out the 77 responses. The result was 8.14 content types per site. In a related article, Nick Lewis (our new hero) says anything more than 11 is a symptom of "content type madness". He offers some great suggestions on how you can check for symptoms.
  • Is Drupal winning another a webware award a big deal or just old news?
  • Does the Drupal community overlook designers when it comes to giving credit? Matt Farina's blog post seems to think so, but we don't agree with everything he says. We love designers (probably because they have a skill we can't learn from a book), but there's a lot of non-developers working in the Drupal community who don't get the credit they deserve (documentation authors, perhaps!?)
  • DrupalCon(s) news: DrupalCon Paris registration is now open (195EUR, about $279). There's a movement afoot to have DrupalCon 2010 (North America) in San Francisco.
  • Ryan talks about a recent Chris Messina presentation: The Open, Social Web. The presentation is about how Web 2.0 is just getting starting and it's all driven by open source standards.

Picks of the Week - every podcast we each pick a module, theme, or other Drupal-related "thing" that we'd like to spread the word about.

  • Mike - Node Redirect by James R Glasgow (jrglasgow) - provides the ability for a node to redirect to another URL.
  • Andrew - Webform by Nathan Haug (quicksketch)- allows site admins to create HTML forms for site users without writing any code.
  • Ryan reviews a book - The Starfish and the Spider by Rod Beckstrom and Ori Brafman - the book is about the power of leaderless organizations.

Site of the Week - every podcast we collectively pick a (usually new) Drupal site to be highlighted and discussed. This week we picked two quick ones:

If you'd like your site highlighted, please submit it here: http://DrupalEasy.com/siteoftheweek

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If you'd like to leave us a voicemail, call 321-441-3964. Please keep in mind that we might play your voicemail during one of our future podcasts. Feel free to call in with suggestions, rants, questions, or medicinal advice for Andrew. If you'd rather just send us an email, please use our contact page at http://DrupalEasy.com/contact

Comments

Thanks for the interesting podcast, it's useful to point out content type madness.

The sound levels on the show could do with some work though, I have to keep one hand on the volume control for when you change speakers, one person is loud, one is quiet & the other is somewhere in the middle. It means I can't listen on my iPod or in a car without babysitting the levels. Normalizing the particularly quiet speaker and some compression may help even it all out.

Good job otherwise.

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Sun, 06/07/2009 - 11:03

Are you referring to podcast 09 or prior episodes? The reason I ask is this is the first episode that we've used levelator for normalization and compression and I'm looking for feedback on it. Overall I thought it did a good job with the exception of the background noise.

Disclamer: We currently use a 2 mic setup when we're on location so somebody is going to be quiet :(

I think it was earlier podcasts, I just opened up the podcast 2 and I think the levels are probably worst on this one. Podcast 8 also has some level differences too.

I understand it is difficult to produce perfect audio, so don't worry about it. Do you post mix the two tracks, or record both mics into one steam?

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Sat, 06/13/2009 - 16:45

Usually two tracks. For Skype podcasts one track is me and the second is everybody else. For this live one it was Mike and Myself on one and Ryan on the second but due to bandwidth it had to be downmixed to one trac pre-editing (I hate when I forget to grab a copy if I'm not actually doing the recording).

I thought the sound was good enough on this podcast.

Being a professional musician I would strongly recommend the use of compressors, if possible multi band like tc finalizer, to master the mix before broadcasting. It would make everybody satisfied.

I'm also the author of an audio book myself called Helena and the Orchestra of the World of Mist. I've been spending an awful lot of time mastering it because the soundtrack was very rich.

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Sun, 07/05/2009 - 03:50

May 29, 2009