civicactions - drupal
Migrating your website to Drupal
So you've got a website using another CMS and you want to switch to Drupal? Well with the new Migrate and Table Wizard modules the whole migration process is now relatively painless!
Using Chaos Tools module to create exportables
Recently I created a patch for the migrate module so you can export content sets, paste them into your module and have them automatically imported. This works in much the same way as Views handles default views in code, with the version in the database overriding the version in code. Using the Chaos Tools (ctools) module it was, relatively, easy to add this functionality. Here are the steps involved if you want to add it to your own module.
Serialized Objects
It sounds pretty obvious. My php warning to you is:
if you serialize a php object, be sure that when you unserialize the object, that the php file which defines the object is loaded in memory.in complex projects, the ifs-and-whys are often buried deep in the code. The specifics of my saga involve Drupal and panels.
NZ Software Patents; Meeting With Lianne Dalziel, Commerce Committee Chairperson & Labour MP
Today I had a long and very positive meeting about software patents and the NZ Patents Bill with Commerce Committee chairperson, Labour party's Lianne Dalziel, as well as Drupal-peers Dave Lane and Jonathan Hunt. Dalziel, Christchurch East MP, was well-informed about the Patents Bill, the Ministry of Economic Development's Patent Review and the insufficient attention paid to software patents (thanks to our emails and exchange of documents beforehand). She was not so well-informed about software patents and the harm that they cause – as would be expected given the complexity and obscurity of these issues for those who do not work in the software development.
Drupalcon Paris, featuring Velib--the best public transport system in the world...
Paris public transport has always been stellar, with an tight network of subway (métro) stations, commuter rail (RER/SNCF), and buses that can can get you within spitting distance of anywhere in the city, quickly and economically. But the implementation of the Velib bike-sharing program two years ago put Paris public transport a whole other level, by any measure--ecological, economic, public health, noise pollution, etc.
There are over 10,000 Velibs parked at over 1000 parking spots across the city. For a euro or day, or 5 euros a week, or 29 euros a year, you get an unlimited number of rentals lasting 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is enough to get you from Drupalcon to almost anywhere downtown. Need 45 minutes to bike somewhere? No problem, just find a Velib parking lot (they are rarely more than 200m away), park the bike you're riding, and pick up a new one. You could daisy chain your rides all day if you wanted to...
Apture: Making your drupal websites a power publishing platform
Drupal is a very powerful publishing and blogging platform, combining its power with apture you can convert it into a POWER publishing/blogging platform.
Apture can:
- Add Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Maps, pictures, music, twitter and more from 50+ sources of multimedia content to your website in one click.
- Upload and Link your own content including images, PowerPoint, PDF, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets on your web pages.
- Keep visitors on your site, instead of sending them away.
Here is an example how apture can solve most complex publishing workflows where you need pdfs, docs, videos, refs etc. all on one page!!:
Apture is already been adopted by many big publishers like:The New York Times , Washingtonpost.com, BBC news, Reuters etc.
To combine the power of apture and drupal - apture has released a new drupal module: http://drupal.org/project/apture This module adds a button on node-edit form to add apture rich media content.
One drawbackYou need to have an apture account to add apture rich multimedia content on your website but talking with apture's CEO Tristan Harris he mentioned soon they will a way to do this automatically.
You can test Apture with drupal at http://apture.sumitk.net/ . You need to register an account before adding new content or you can use username/password = demo/demo to login.
Example of apture enabled pages:
DrupalCon Paris 2009 Video
DrupalCon Paris 2009 is two and a half months away and I'm excited. My wife Marcia is coming with me, we've got our tickets, rented our flat across from Jardin Du Luxembourg, and will be there for two weeks! Vote on youtube DrupalCon for this video, and help John Albin with free admission, at 195-eu, a sweet deal.
hook_form_alter and _node_form, BEWARE!
Caveat Emptor. This is a Drupal 5.x case, but I think the warning also applies to 6.x.
Drush screencast tutorial 2: Using the drush dl and info commands
This screencast dives deep into the Drush "dl" and "info" commands, which can be used to look-up, download and extract the recommended version (or specific versions) of modules, themes, install profiles and translations.
UPDATED: Can't Add CSS, JS, RSS Icon Or Set Title Or Messages In Preprocess Page?
UPDATE: Due to recent changes to our website the code snippet (the valuable part of this blog post) got accidentally lost. If you read this already, please come back to see the sample code. Thanks!
Often you want to add CSS files, scripts, feed icons or even set Drupal's page title from the theme layer. The most obvious place to call Drupal's functions for these tasks is probably in a page preprocess function. However calling the following Drupal API functions from a theme or module's NAME_preprocess_page() function often doesn't work;
Drupal Update Handlers with increased memory_limit
I'm doing a lot with update handlers these days. This is where I put almost all of the configuration changes for a release. Putting configuration changes in update handlers has the huge advantage of (a) source controlling these changes, and (b) allowing you to qa them. I strongly recommend this practice.
Most configuration changes are very easy to make in code. Often all you need to do is call variable_set. Sometimes, you have to write some SQL to directly change a table value.
SignOn.org.nz, By Greenpeace NZ
Earlier this year Jenn, Owen and I worked on a proposal for Greenpeace NZ. CivicActions didn't win the contract, but the website has just launched.
SignOn.org.nz – a Drupal site – was implemented by Catalyst IT, a FLOSS software shop in Wellington New Zealand which employs Josh "fiasco" Waihi, Drupal 7 PostgreSQL maintainer and NZ IT Rockstar 2009 winner and Brenda "shiny" Wallace, Drupal contributor.
Catalyst has done an excellent job and the campaign was featured in NZ's national Sunday newspaper a couple of weeks ago.
They've got many Kiwi celebrities on for the campaign, some which are known internationally too; Most notably Lucy Lawless (Xena Warrior Princess) and Keisha Castle Hughes (From Whale Rider and award-winning other films).
Mail to OG
Email gateways to CMSs have lots of great uses. From automating content creation from various sources, to allowing people out in the field to easily post from non-web enabled devices, or to just lowering the bar for getting content onto your site, email can be make content creation that much easier.
Drush 2.0 released - Screencast 1: Installing Drush and getting started
After a long period of development the Drush team (myself, and the multi-talented rockstars Moshe Weitzman and Adrian Rossouw) have finally released Drush 2.0.
This is a milestone in many ways - the core of Drush has been completely rewritten (some parts of it twice over!) since the last stable release. This core can now (among other things) connect to multiple major Drupal versions, work reliably (we hope!) on a wide range of command line environments - but is also a powerful platform that allows commands to specify dependencies, to work at different levels of the Drupal bootstrap, call other commands (including on remote servers over secure SSH connections) and provide responses in both machine readable formats and nicely laid out human readable formats. There are also many improvements in the set of commands that come with Drush, both adding new functionality as well as making the existing functionality more intuitive to use.
Over the next few days, I will be uploading a series of short screencasts, covering how to get started, going through the various commands in some detail, and perhaps getting into some detail about how to write your own commands.
Here is the first in the series. Please add any questions in the comments, and I will try and address them (either in the next video, or in the issue queue).
Voting for DrupalCon Paris Sessions has Begun!
Nearly four years ago (and 12 weeks - according to my Drupal.org account) I first came to know Drupal and the brilliant community that maintains it. Soon after, I attended my first DrupalCon "conference" in Amsterdam (October 2005) which I fondly recall though a somewhat smokey haze... At that time, DrupalCon participants didn't number more than 30 or so people in a dark room, hacking away at emerging Drupal 4.6 in all its glory!
Since those early days, the depth and breadth of the Drupal community has blossomed beyond my wildest notions. Now it's commonplace to expect at least 800 attendees to fly around the world to the bi-yearly DrupalCon conference - and even see 200 at a local meetup such as San Francisco DrupalCamp last weekend!
This September the Drupal community returns to Europe and descends on Paris! I personally haven't attended the last couple DrupalCon events in Brussels or Washington DC and I'm finding myself re-inspired to connect with the community.
In my appreciation of the magic we build together, I just proposed a fun session/panel called How to Eat 15 Drupal Sites in 90 Minutes. This panel will be a presentation of some of the best Drupal sites the entire community has ever produced - in one wickedly fast session using a speed-geeking presentation format.
I'm looking forward to seeing you in Paris - and I hope you'll take a minute to vote for the session and/or consider nominating your own site for the deck!
See (and vote for) the rest of the Drupal Sessions too!
Accessibility For Humans; Usability Of Websites For Screen Reader Users
I recently read a fascinating survey of 1000 blind and visually impaired internet users. It's a long article but is largely graphs and data tables – so is easily consumed. If you want the short version, check out the comments and conclusion.
The most surprising parts for me were;
- Websites that auto-play music (MySpace most notably) are extremely difficult because the sound makes it hard for the user to listen to screen readers. Further, the flash music player is usually inaccessible for screen reader users, so the music can not be stopped and the page is completely unusable.
WebEnabled Launches Rapid Development Platform Including Drupal Provisioning
WebEnabled is a Free and Open Source (FOSS) hosted platform that "makes it easy for teams to focus on building awesome web applications." Provisioning applications from their library is fast. Bevan reported getting a Drupal 7 instance up and running in a few minutes. The service offers full SSH, SCP and SFTP access. You can also manage your code revisions and collaborate with others using SVN.
Fields on taxonomy terms
Still some work to do, but here's proof:
What makes it even better is this is less than an hour or so of work. About 30 minutes a couple of months ago to get the patch started, then I sat down tonight to see how much was left to do (expecting lots of slogging it out), and within another 30 minutes there's the field fully functional.
SF Bay Area Drupal Camp 2009
Drupal camp San Francisco (a.k.a BADCamp) is coming this weekend. It will be a single Saturday event at the SFSU downtown campus at 5th and Market. The event will be hosted by the Information Management Systems Association, iMSA, http://imsa.sfsu.edu.
Registration for DrupalCamp SF is free but you need to confirm it by registering an account at http://badcamp.net/user/register before coming.
This DrupalCamp will include whole day introduction to drupal tutorial (9 AM to 5 PM) for beginners. Also many advanced and intermediate sessions will go through out the day.
The event is located above the Westfield mall on the 5th Floor in the SFSU downtown campus.
You can join for drupal community fun!! OR knowledge!!