Distributions have been a hot topic in the Drupal community for years.

From CiviCRM to OpenAtrium, successes such as Commerce Kickstart v2 and Drupal Commons 3, as well as trailblazers like Panopoly and Spark, distributions have shown us how far Drupal can go.

Let's take a deep and technical look at what is a distribution, how it is made, what are the tricky parts, and what are the best practices.

Draw upon the experience that Commerce Guys acquired developing Commerce Kickstart v2 (currently the most popular Drupal distribution), and use it to start your own distribution (for a client, for internal projects, or for eternal glory) or maybe just better understand and use existing distributions.

Topics covered:

• What is an installation profile and what is a distribution (and where does drush make fit in?).
• How the installation process is customized, and what the users' expectations and UX issues encountered are.
• How the Features module is used, what are its limitations, and how a distribution should structure its features.
• The problem of demo content.
• Redesigning the admin UX, and solving common pitfalls.
• Handling distribution updates from a maintainer's and from an end user's perspective.
• The basic functionality expected from a distribution, and the best of breed solutions (modules, themes) used by respected distributions.
• Problems around community management, contributing to other projects, providing support, sustainability.
• How Drupal 8 is changing things, and where we must go from there.