A world without features - how to save time when managing your exportables

For the 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.

Some Drupal developers learn to deal with the anger, but it's not the only way.

At my business, Jeneration Web Development, I build and maintain Drupal websites without using Features. (GASP!) I can still export lots of things into code. I can still package everything up neatly. I can 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 more importantly, saves us all our sanity.

In this session I'll explain why I chose to operate all my Drupal properties this way. I'll also share my time-saving strategy that's been crafted over the past 7 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.