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DrupalCon Seattle 2019: A world without features - save time by managing exportables

For so many years, the Features module has been all the rage. It's been all the rage in the best possible way -- it's become a standard many people and organizations can't do without. But it's also become all the rage in the literal sense of the word: Rage: violent, uncontrollable anger. Many Drupal developers learn to deal with the anger, but that's not the only way. At my business, Jeneration Web Development, I build and maintain Drupal websites without using Features (GASP!) I still export lots of things into code. I still package everything up neatly. I still deploy these exportables along with my other code changes. But I do it in a way that leaves my Drupal sites more preformant, saves me and my developers time, saves my clients money, and most importantly, saves us all our sanity. In this session I'll explain why I chose to operate all my Drupal projects this way. I'll also share my time-saving strategy that's been carefully crafted over the past 9 years of Drupal 7 development. Code samples will be provided! At the end of this session attendees will have learned an alternate way of managing Drupal's exportables like image styles, views, and panels, without using the features module. Attendees should have a basic understanding of how to create simple Drupal 7 modules.

April 8, 2019