Mike Martin and Bill Shaouy from IBM Global Services will be summarizing their experiences in creating the DC Comics Zuda web site. Zuda is a new branch of DC Comics, whose online presence enables aspiring comic authors to compete to win a publishing contract with DC Comics. The Zuda site was developed in Drupal.

Mike and Bill will describe the business factors motivating DC Comics to create its Zuda branch and Zuda web site. Given the site's requirements, a number of technologies were considered for its implementation, including Ruby on Rails and Joomla, before Drupal emerged as the technology of choice. Mike and Bill will discuss the factors that led to that decision.

The site will be demoed, showcasing Drupal functionality and the use of embedded Flash and AJAX.

Technical factors will also be discussed, including the following:
- CCK vs. a custom content type for comic image sets
- Should comic content be stored on a separate media server
- Additional modules employed
- Performance and scalability concerns in the face of large spikes of traffic

This talk is for a mixed audience. The first part of the talk is for a non-technical audience, the latter is not.

The second part of the meeting will be devoted to an open floor discussion about the role Drupal Atlanta can play in cultivating more Drupal consulting resources within the Atlanta metro.

Many thanks to and Mike Schinkel, for last month's excellent demo of PhpED from NuSphere, and his work on getting the ADUG group a great group discount!

The location and time are the same: 7-9pm, 5 Seasons restaurant in Alpharetta, GA., on Old Milton Parkway, about one mile east of GA 400 off of exit 10.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&time=&date=&ttype=&q=%223...

Come out and join us on the 3rd Tuesday of each month, as we explore Drupal.