One Drupal to rule them all | Acquia

One Drupal to rule them all | Acquia: "The New York Stock Exchange is launching 30 sites on Drupal. Turner Broadcasting is migrating 80 sites to Drupal. A large consumer pharmaceuticals company might end up with over 3000 Drupal sites. Why? Because Drupal gives their IT team an agile platform to deliver new sites quickly with the breadth of capabilities to meet their needs, but broad enough in scope to serve as a web platform too."

- This was in a recent blog post by Dries on Acquia.com.

My Notes -
I've been following several Drupal job forums and feeds, and I must say the amount of activity over the past few months seems just awesome! What Dries says in his post is proof that Drupal is growing and CIO's are getting "smarter". Wish I knew some...just kidding...but not really. :)

As an example of it's growth, I'm aware that one local college has decided to "Go Drupal" with their current websites and backlog of work. They have many requests for internal websites, and there are some that will be ported to Drupal. "Go Drupal" - defined as that point in time when an organization decides that moving forward they will commit to Drupal and all new work will use Drupal. That's my definition...just made it. :)

The Eastern Iowa Drupal group recently started meeting in August and the excitement that has been seen in the group is so great to have and gets me more pumped to be working on such a great platform.

I have yet to find anyone in Cedar Rapids using Drupal, except for me of course. In Iowa City, there are 2 businesses and the University of Iowa that are using Drupal. It is growing, and it is worth it to take a look!!!

Mix and Match Theme

I downloaded the Mix and Match theme real quick to try out and wow!!!!  I really like it.

It uses Fusion as a base theme and to get all the bells and whistles, make sure you install Skinr.

1) There are some default color schemes you can pick from
2) Enable rounded corners for blocks, including the radius (3px, 7px, or 11px)
3) Overall, very easy to configure. Lots of options.  Nice look.

Customizing the user profile layout | drupal.org

Customizing the user profile layout | drupal.org: "Customizing the user profile layout"

Great article on customizing the user profile. Also lots of snippets on the bottom of the page.

Ubuntu

I need the experience...I need to learn.  I've been a long time user of Windows, just because that's the easiest.  It's what has always been there at both home and work.

But now I'm trying Ubuntu at home.  And I must say it is becoming addictive and fun.  Yes there is a learning curve for us newbies, but I think I like it.  There ae some things that are very easy to do, others take some trial and error.  Everything is much faster (so far) from what I've seen.  I'm trying to get better at the command shell, but my typing is not the best.

Faster?
- Open a file to edit. yes
- Run a command that's not recognized? A "try this" will be given, including how to get the files needed to run the command.  I tried using drush and it wasn't recognized.  Ubuntu told me how to get it.  One command later and I'm running drush.  No need to surf, download, and install.  If the package is out there, you can start using it very quickly.

Drush Make on Windows

Here is a compilation of information (from posts I've found), that when combined got me drush make to work on my windows box.  Windows 7 has some issues with permissions, but I'm looking into that.

Needed to run:

• DRUPAL-6--2 branch of Drush Make - I'm using the version from 6/14/2010.
• GnuWin32 packages - I used GetGnuWin32 ( http://getgnuwin32.sourceforge.net/) for this large feat. :)
• Slash and Tar Patch - thanks to ribbles (http://drupal.org/node/625948#comment-2993878) plus Tar patch thanks to this post http://drupal.org/node/818192

1. Once GnuWin32 is installed, rename the copy of tar.exe to something else (tar-old.exe). Tar.exe is old and doesn't do the required things for drush_make.  There's more info on tar.exe on the GnuWin32 site (http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/gtar.htm)
2. Copy bsdtar.exe to tar.exe
3. run the drush make command: drush -v -d make standard.make Test

Here is the standard.make (example):

; This file was auto-generated by drush_make

core = 6.x

projects[] = "drupal"

; Modules

projects[] = "admin_menu"

projects[] = "dhtml_menu"

projects[] = "porterstemmer"

projects[] = "token"

Drush ckeditor-download

This is a nice command for downloading the CKEditor libraries into the sites/all/libraries folder and I have used this many times in the past, but just realized that when running on a new machine that it didn't work.

Here is the error was getting after using verbose:

Executing: svn checkout                                [notice]

http://svn.fckeditor.net/CKEditor/releases/stable/

Duh! I needed Subversion installed.  Should have been one of the first steps since I use Subversion. But.........
What if some other drush command requires CVS or Git?  I don't think a developer should have to install every version system just to make sure it works.  Then again, installing Subversion is a piece of cake. :P

Zend PHP 5 Certification - ZCE - Zend.com

Zend PHP 5 Certification - ZCE - Zend.com: "Zend PHP Certification
Setting the Industry Standard for PHP Certifications
Sponsored by Zend and developed according to American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards, Zend Certification programs are designed to test a candidate’s level of knowledge in PHP or Zend Framework without prejudice to other technologies. The tests use a set of testing questions that reflect real-world scenarios, including knowledge in many areas ranging from basics to the more complex topics. The certification exam is executed for Zend by Pearson Vue."

I've been thinking about this for a short while. With a majority of my experience being Java, how do I convince someone that I can code in PHP. I'm not aware if there are Drupal certifications, but PHP might be a good start if that's where I want to head.

By convince, I mean that I can, but it's not really apparent. You have to either show some code samples or a certification.

| Drupal Gardens

Drupal Gardens Blog: "Drupal Gardens launches in private beta
Submitted by Dries on Wed, 01/27/2010 - 07:59
I have a pretty big update for you: we just launched Drupal Gardens into private beta. Since the first public Drupal Gardens demo at DrupalCon Paris, a lot of progress has been made. Today, we sent private beta invites to the first people that signed up to be beta testers, and if things go well, we'll send out a couple thousand more invitations over the next few weeks."

This is a pretty awesome website in my opinion. Yeah, it might hurt the little guy, but it'll also help too. Help more than hurt. When you get the name of Drupal out there more, people won't be requesting as many "websites" and they will be requesting more "Drupal websites". I build Drupal websites, but I don't have the resources to build the "Automated website builder in 15 minutes" functionality.

So yes, this will help me. There's still the local website customer. There's still the Entrepreneur websites I want to build.

Great job for Acquia and Dries!!!

Java.net

Java.net

Eh hemmmmm.......

Java.net is running Drupal. Fantastic! :)

Drupal Usage Statistics

Drupal Usage Statistics

Sweet usage statistics and graphs. Nice for anyone trying to decide on what CMS to use. For the CMS distribution, it shows Drupal is used in 41.5% of the cases.

Email Blacklist - Email Blacklist Lookup for an Individual IP Address

Email Blacklist - Email Blacklist Lookup for an Individual IP Address: "Are you on an Email Blacklist?

Enter your website's IP address in the box below and click on 'lookup' to use our email blacklist tool to check:
(NOTE: this must be the address that your email is sent from. If you are unsure of what address to enter, contact your server administrator.)"

Now this is a pretty neat tool. I had suspicions one of my sites was blacklisted since some emails were not being received. The IP was found blacklisted on one blacklist server, so now I'm working on getting it delisted.

ColorPicker.com : Quick Online Color Picker Tool

ColorPicker.com : Quick Online Color Picker Tool

Here's a cool tool. Point your clients here so they can start looking at possible website colors they would like.

Gallery Assist | drupal.org

Gallery Assist | drupal.org: "What does Gallery Assist?

The module 'Gallery Assist' provides a nodetype prepared with gallery functionality."

Interesting here. I was able to get this up and running very quickly.

Another website I have sues the following:

ImageAPI 1.6

ImageCache 2.0-beta10

Node Gallery 6.x-2.0-alpha10

Lightbox2 1.9

CCK 2.6

CCK ImageField 3.1

But when I tried to recreate it on a new website, I continued to have issues. Gallery Assist worked right away. I need to evaluate both a little more and also see why my original solution is having issues.

album photos | drupal.org

album photos | drupal.org: "'Album photos' is an image album module providing multi-user album features. The module development objective is to provide a comprehensive image album solution for Drupal"

This looks pretty cool. Looking forward to checking this out.

Drupal blog in BrowSweat

I decided for my site BrowSweat.com to use the Drupal blog along with the Blog API. This allows me to publish to my blog with an external editor if I choose, and then upload it.
The blog works great and is something I plan on continuing to use.

The reason I started using it was to publish announcement or notifications to users regarding minor things. Major announcements will still be made through the Newsletter. For two reasons: 1) Half or more of the users signing up for an account, opted out of the newsletter; therefore, how could they get notifications. 2) It seemed like overkill to send out a newsletter for minor things, such as changes in the image layout or readability, but I want users to know the site is actively being worked on and it is growing.

The only issue I have had so far is the uploading of images through an external blog writer (using the blog API). The image is uploaded to an odd folder and then doesn't show up in the blog entry. I also seem to have a problem with tagging the entry externally. I plan on investigating these issues and seeing what it comes of it.

Next on the road...for BrowSweat.com subscription services using Ubercart.

For Sugar-Pine.com, banner block or rotating banner images.

Me Aliases

http://drupal.org/project/me
Awesome module and exactly what I was looking for to create a Quick Link in a block for the user to edit their profile.  Now editing the profile is 1 click and not 3.

Drupal User Group Meeting in Ames, IA

I FINALLY went to my first user group meeting!!! Of course I was late…I’m almost always late. The construction I ran into didn’t help with the 2 hour drive, but I’m glad I got there and back in one piece.

Tonight we discussed SEO and some of the various techniques and tools that you can use for your Drupal site. Some modules include:

Module	About
SEO Checklist	Not a module that adds anything which your users can see; it’s for Administrative purposes only because it’s a checklist of actions for SEO. Also holds the date of when the action is done.
XML Sitemap	Generates a sitemap.xml based on your content; Can submit sitemap to search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing)
Content Optimizer	Not sure on this one. Still at Release Candidate, but may be good to keep an eye on. This one looks at the content and suggests actions to take to optimize content based on a suggested search term.
Meta Tags (nodewords)	Displays form elements to add meta content (description, keywords) for a node.
Page Title	Allows changing of Page Title
???	Am I forgetting something? Let me think.

Also, check out the AdWords keywords tools. Cool to help you generate keywords for your site.

Nice to meet everyone at the Ames, IA Drupal User Group Meeting. Hope to see you all again soon!

Sites Updated with Themes

So I FINALLY did something that has been a long time coming.  I update my Drupal sites MyActivityPals.com and BrowSweat.com with better themes. 
MyActivityPals is still using a Zen subtheme, but I’ve learned enough about themes to update it so blocks are more distinct and the block title is a different color.

BrowSweat is using Picture Reloaded.  I like this theme and I will probably use it again.  It’s very easy to setup. :)

Launch of new site BrowSweat.com

I’ve launched BrowSweat.com and it is ready to start using.

Modules that I used in developing this include:

• CAPTCHA
  • reCAPTCHA – web service to use advanced CAPTCHA
• CCK
• Mailing/Contact Modules
  • Contact User Anon – (CAPTCHA enabled) Allows Anonymous users to contact registered users (as long as they provide an e-mail)
  • Mime Mail
  • SimpleNews – For newsletters
  • Tell A Friend
  • User Register Notify – Admin gets emailed when a new user registers
• Content Profile – profiles using CCK so users can add images to their “Portfolio”
• Imaging Modules
  • FileField
  • ImageCache
  • ImageField – combined with CCK and Content Profiles to give users a “Portfolio”.
    

There is also a custom theme based on Zen. This included implementing Printing the Description (or Title) Below the Image post so that Image Descriptions are displayed below the image.

CAPTCHA

I like this module quit a bit!  I like how easy it is to add CAPTCHA to a form through the administrative features.  Just make sure you have the checkbox “Add CAPTCHA administration links to forms” turned on.  It’s pretty sweet.

The one issue I can say about it is that there are times when even I can’t read what the CAPTCHA says.  I just do a refresh on it to get a new one…no problem.