drupaldev88

[drupaldev88]

Tips on using Drupal for non-developers

You don’t have to be a programmer to use Drupal, but you need to commit to studying it to be able to use it proficiently.

The flexibility and power of the system mean there are many moving parts to wrap your head around, but once you do you’ll find you can achieve almost anything.

If you consider yourself less techie, here are some of the practical things you need to remember when creating a website using Drupal.

[drupaldev88]

On board meetings, scrums, podcasts and Drupal global training day 2014

There is always a first time but not quite the same as having Manuela Hutter grace your Drupal community event. So without further ado, here's the chat between Jam McGuire and Manuela Hutter.

First Camp, First Patch! Thank you, Manuela Hutter!

Thank you for contributing! I think this is some kind of proof of the appeal of the Drupal project and welcoming nature of our community: Manuela Hutter came to Drupal Camp Vienna – her first Drupal Community event – and was already working on a patch at the sprints on day three, mentored by the inimitable Ruben Teijeiro.

Note: I apologise for some audio issues in this recording.

Q: What are you going to tell people about how things work in the Drupal project?

A: The perception of the community as being very friendly and nice. It's really easy to be drawn into the movement here. Otherwise I wouldn't be here, I'd think 'I'm a n00b. What am I doing here?' If it wasn't for the community and the people saying, 'Yeah! Come on!' ... I think I feel more confident about being a site builder for this project and more confident of actually pulling this off. The first thing you always hear is about the steep learning curve, but now it feels alright.

More on Manuela Hutter here.

Consultancy Scrum

In this episode, Addi is joined by Todd Nienkerk of Four Kitchens and Brian Skowron from Lullabot to discuss "consultancy scrum."

We start off by briefly explaining what scrum and agile are, and then dive into the lessons learned about using this methodology in a client/vendor relationship, versus a completely internal product team.

We discuss the benefits and challenges, and how Four Kitchens and Lullabot have been approaching this with their clients.

Entity Views Attach: Use Views Almost Anywhere

Entity Views Attach (EVA) is a wonderfully useful Drupal module which makes Views more powerful.

EVA allows you to automatically attach any view to content, comments or terms.

We're going to show you 2 examples of EVA in use.

Drupal Development

Drupal is a popular CMS framework which gives you the power to easily add or edit pages and content on your website yourself.

Our development team has experience with large and small Drupal projects, and can create custom themes and modules as needed.

We can create virtually any functionality your site needs...

Dates for 2014 Global Training Day

Great news! The official dates for 2014 Global Training Days have been selected:

Friday, February 28 (or Saturday, March 1) Friday, May 30 (or Saturday, May 31) Friday, August 29 (or Saturday, August 30) Friday, November 14 (or Saturday, November 15)

Join the Drupal Association's global initiative to bring Drupal to the masses! With the goal to educate more people on the Drupal Project, Global Training Days was established in 2012. One day each quarter, training companies around the world offer one of two curriculums. The two curriculums are "Intro to Drupal," a full day training and "What is Drupal?" a half day workshop.

We have found some ways to make the program even better in 2014. So what are you waiting for? Mark down the dates and start the planning. Get yourself involved in spreading Drupal love to those who have not known what it's like yet. (via Choc Chip Digital)

[drupaldev88]

Ready... Get Set...Drupal!

History are pillars to the foundation of anything borne, that's what I always say. And I remember that phrase exactly hearing Drupal's story from Larry Garfield and Kris Vanderwater. Although you think you know what it's about, you'll never really know until you find out.

Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 1

In August 2013, I spoke with Larry Garfield and Kris Vanderwater in a 90+ minute live Hangout on Air about the origins, details, and implications of the big architectural changes coming in Drupal 8.Today's video and audio podcasts are the first set of "curated" excerpts from that long conversation. We cover Larry and Kris's Drupal backgrounds, early Drupal memories, compare Drupal 4 to Drupal 7 and 8, some pragmatic reasons to choose Drupal, and how to get your head around the Symfony2 framework.

"Thank You" == Community

When Larry found something in Drupal 4.6 that needed fixing, like "good open source citizens" do, he submitted his very first Drupal core patch. 

He explains, "This is something Drupal does very well...

Drupal 8 Wins: Avoiding the Dead Hook Blues, Part 2

In today's conversation, Larry Garfield, Kris Vanderwater, and I go over the Go PHP 5 project as the first seeds of cooperation between different PHP projects, how the Symfony2 framework became part of Drupal 8, why we aren't building Drupal 8 on Symfony full-stack, CMI, abstraction in Drupal, and the future of Features in Drupal 8.

In August 2013, I spoke with Larry Garfield and Kris Vanderwater in a 90+ minute live Hangout on Air about the origins, details, and implications of the big architectural changes coming in Drupal 8. Today's video and audio podcasts are the second set of "curated" excerpts from that long conversation.

In part one, we covered Larry and Kris's Drupal backgrounds...

Drupal 7.26 and 6.30 released

Drupal 7.26 and Drupal 6.30, maintenance releases which contain fixes for security vulnerabilities, are now available for download. See the Drupal 7.26 and Drupal 6.30 release notes for further information.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features or non-security-related bug fixes in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement. More information on the Drupal 6.x release series can be found in the Drupal 6.0 release announcement.

Download Drupal 7.26 and Drupal 6.30 here.

Drupal 7.25 released

Drupal 7.25, a maintenance release with numerous bug fixes (no security fixes) is now available for download. See the Drupal 7.25 release notes for a full listing.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 7 sites is recommended. There are no major new features in this release. For more information about the Drupal 7.x release series, consult the Drupal 7.0 release announcement.

Download Drupal 7.25 here.

So let me just use a cliché – what are you waiting for? Download these upgrades now and get to work on those sites. Sayonara!

(via Acquia)

[drupaldev88]

Looking ahead to 2014

Welcome to 2014! How did you spend the holidays? Pardon my small talk, I'm going to cut it right here so I can already give you a list of really cool articles to start off your year.

Entrepreneurs, not the government, will save Europe's economy

If Steve Jobs was adopted by a Belgian family rather than an American family, it's extremely possible he may have ended up working in a bank instead of co-founding Apple. Why? Because starting a company and growing it is hard no matter where you are, but the difficulty is magnified in Europe, where people are divided by geography, regulation, language and cultural prejudice.

Some of the most promising entrepreneurs move to Europe...

Drupal in Layman’s Terms

Five simple words that spark enthusiasm and excitement — and sheer panic — in the minds of those responsible for pulling off that feat. What seems like a no-brainer to those who have never built a website can easily turn into a Herculean labor — fraught with delays, deadlines, cost overruns, headaches, and compromises on the capabilities that were once envisioned through rose-colored glasses.

Drupal makes sense..

Testing the Intended BlueCheese Public Repo

With the help of Lewis Nyman, Melissa Anderson, and Tatiana, we are continuing the work we started last month to make the BlueCheese theme more open to enable the community to contribute more easily.

Lewis has now separated out the trademarked and copyrighted elements from the BlueCheese theme. Our plan is to keep these elements in a private repository, but make the rest of the theme available to people working on Drupal.org improvements.

Changes and improvements have been made...

Drupal is Turning 13 – Join the Party!

Congratulations Drupal community. You are now raising a teenager!

On this January 15th, it will be 13 years to the day that Drupal 1.0.0 was released. We all know about the big success stories of large, global organizations using Drupal to do good and do well. There are also the lesser-known stories about school children learning a valuable skill or community members spontaneously joining together to help people in need.

Join the party to celebrate our 13th year!

We're turning 13 and just like any new teenager, we should remind ourselves that there's a whole new world ahead of us. I feel in my gut that this year is business boom year and we are on the receiving end of this so get your gears high and ready! Indeed, it's a Happy New Year! (via Drupal Association)

Image Source. 

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Job openings and opportunities within the Drupal community

If you are aspiring to get on deck among high ranking Drupal developers, this could be it! I'm posting job openings according to the Drupal Association and if you are interested to fill in these openings, by all means, jump on it.

We're Hiring: Drupal.org Developer

We're well on our way to starting 2014 with some amazing staff focused on improving Drupal.org for our community. In addition to Drumm, Tatiana, and Rudy Grigar, we are looking to add a developer to staff. So if you love Drupal as much as we do, and you want to help make Drupal.org a better home for the community, then we want to make you part of our growing team of folks dedicated to doing just that. Check out the details:

Overview

The Drupal Association seeks a highly-motivated and fastidious team player to help build and support the home of one of the most dynamic open source projects on the planet. The Developer will support Drupal contributors by enhancing and creating the tools that developers use and help grow the Drupal project by developing and updating functionality that attracts new end users to Drupal. The Drupal.org Developer will work with a smart and talented team of volunteers and staff to achieve these goals.

Know more about the opening for a Drupal.org developer here.

Wanted: Content Writer/Editor

Are you are a master of the written word - able to capture the power of technology and spirit of community through website copy, blogs, newsletters and social media? Then you should apply to be the Association’s Content Writer and Editor. 

With the mission to foster our community and grow Drupal’s adoption, The Association aims to be a communication nexus, streamlining content into the marketplace to raise Drupal’s profile as well as providing our community with educational content that accelerates learning, acknowledges community contributions, and promotes The Association’s news and programs.

To achieve this goal, we are hiring a Content Writer and Editor.

Interested to apply for the Content Writer/Editor job? Click here.

Reward Offered: We're Hiring a CTO

As we announced back in the beginning of November, the Drupal Association is looking for a CTO to work with the community to increase the velocity with which we can make changes on Drupal.org. Since the announcement, the search committee (including myself, board members, and advisory board members), has spoken to some really great candidates, and those conversations are continuing. However, we want to make sure that we find all the great candidates we should be talking with.

To that end, we're offering a recruiting reward - $1,000 to the person who first recommends the CTO candidate we end up hiring. So, if you know someone with the technical chops and the people skills to help guide Drupal.org into the future, share their information! All you need to do is fill out the application form.

Proceed to the application form here.

Not a developer but wondering if you fit into Drupal?

This is your opportunity to know what Drupal is all about and how your business or your organisation can benefit by jumping into the fastest growing open source community! Drupal South 2014 is open to entrepreneurs, bloggers or just curious professionals who want to know what Drupal is all about. Check out the details here.

If you've been wanting to do so much more and take part in the crucial processes that the community is involved in, this is as close as you can get. So send in your information and make sure to impress!

[drupaldev88]

Drupal upgrades

2013 is drawing to a close and there are so many things to look back to and be proud and many others to look forward to and be excited. Upgrading your Drupal site will be inevitable at some point, so here are some things you may want to look into before you lay out your plans for the coming year.

Upgrading Drupalize.Me

Part of the Drupalize.Me team, Addison Berry, Joe Shindelar, Kyle Hofmeyer, and Joe Fender, gets on today's episode to talk about our new site launch, and the long road it took for us to get here.

We talk about the reasons we decided to upgrade the site, and share some of the big changes we made, and the biggest issues we've faced getting the job done. Listen to the podcast on 'upgrading from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7' here.

RokSmart - Responsive Multi-Purpose Drupal Theme

The RokSmart Template is one of the best light and feature rich responsive template for Drupal. It is so easy to develop and control of Drupal templates for you and your website.

RokSmart will make your experience of creating website much smoother than ever before. This Template ready for use Industries, School, hospital, corporative, travel, fashion, jewellery and any business.

More on RokSmart here. Don't forget to rate if you will.

4 Social Sharing Modules for Drupal

If you don't give your site visitors an opportunity to share your webpages, you're missing out on an opportunity for others to hear about your great content.

Drupal has several modules that allow you to add Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and other social buttons.

Continue reading on 'Social Sharing Modules for Drupal' here.

Caffeinated Drupal

A high-performance website is like a great cup of coffee: Both are heavenly when conditions are optimal, but there are small things that can quickly turn them from an enjoyable experience into something that leaves a very bitter aftertaste. With the right tools and preparation, it's possible to create a website (or cup of joe) that can be dependable (like that first sip of coffee in the morning), fast to respond (like a quick shot of espresso), and scalable for many visitors (like that fancy cappuccino machine at Williams Sonoma, the one you casually mention to all your friends as your birthday approaches).

This is the first in a series of columns on the subject of “Caffeinated Drupal,” where I'll cover Drupal performance issues, always being sure to relate the topic to my favorite beverage.

Let's get started, shall we? Grab a steaming cup of java (or iced, if you prefer) and we’ll set out to learn about Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) and how they can give a huge speed boost to your website, with minimal configuration. Not sure which coffee to choose today? I recommend a lovely Ethiopian Sidamo served as a cappuccino — nothing like that powerful fruit flavor with undertones of bittersweet chocolate — topped with a dab of perfectly-foamed milk.

Read about CDNs here.

Upgrading your Drupal website

The internet is a tricky thing. You need to constantly update yourself on the latest changes and technology being introduced.

Sometimes, having a Drupal-based website is good, but it isn't enough as you need to keep your business afoot with the industry. The best way to go about this at times is to get an expert on board to help you manage your site and help you upgrade it.

Learn more on upgrading your Drupal site here.

If you're anything like me, you probably have mapped out your design upgrade in your head. I say you keep that on hold as the holidays may bring in more brilliant ideas. Have a great week!

(via OS Training)

[drupaldev88]

Drupal positions and things you can do to help out

If you feel that you can do more and would like to get more involved, there are a couple of positions available in Drupal Association that you can look into. Otherwise, you can get involved in some other way like sponsoring a meet!

We're Hiring: Drupal Association CTO

The Drupal Association, with the help of a Search Committee comprised of Board and Advisory Board members, is beginning a search for a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) for Drupal.org (not the Drupal software project). The CTO will fill a critical role for the both the Association and the community, working at the strategic level with the Drupal.org Working Groups to build a roadmap for Drupal.org, create and manage processes critical to the success of the site (including security and disaster recovery), and ensure that Drupal.org roadmaps are met. A CTO role ensures that Drupal.org has the technical and strategic oversight needed to drive improvements and innovations. Specifically we want to ensure that we have the best platform for developers, community involvement, and critical revenue-generating opportunities.

The CTO is the first of several hires we will make over the course of the next few months to significantly increase our ability to improve the experience of Drupal.org for our many constituents. More specific details about the hiring plan will be available when the Association's 2014 Leadership Plan and Budget are approved by the board (hopefully at next week's board meeting), but these hires will include more development and devops bandwidth, among other things. In short, this is a really exciting time to work on Drupal.org!

We're asking for your help to find the right person for this role. We're looking for someone with strong product management skills, a community player who can work with our broad base of remarkable volunteers, and the experience to guide and manage our development, infrastructure and operations teams. Please review and share the Drupal Association CTO Job Description.

For details on Drupal Association CTO job position, go here.

Help Wanted: Community Coordinator

As you may have read, the Drupal Association is making several more hires over the coming months. And, this time we are hiring the Community Coordinator who has a singular focus - foster and support the community to help it thrive and do great things.

Specifically, the Community Coordinator will build and run programs that help community organizers grow and support their local communities. And, s/he will establish great relationships with these community organizers, provide superior customer service, and uncover new ways that the Drupal Association can support them. Community programs managed by this position include Drupal Association webinars, improving communications with Drupal group organizers, expanding Global Training Days, coordinating more Community Summits, and more!

The Drupal Association seeks someone who is inspired by how our diverse, creative, and caring community members move mountains, and is motivated to help them succeed in their quest.

Want to know more about being a Community Coordinator? Check details here.

2014 DrupalCon Sponsorships Now Available

It’s that time of year when we turn our eye toward 2014 plans and budgets. Is sponsoring DrupalCon Austin or DrupalCon Amsterdam on your list?

DrupalCon Austin - June 2 - 6, 2014 DrupalCon Amsterdam - 29 September - 3 October, 2014

Sponsorships are now available

You can lock in your package now to get a great booth location and optimal branding visibility at both events. Sponsoring lets you connect directly with the thriving Drupal community to provide education about your products and services, find Drupal talent, get feedback on your modules, form partnerships, and share your Drupal love!

Click here for more on DrupalCon sponsorships.

Drupal South 2014 is also open to non developers

Are you using Drupal or interested in trying it out?

Drupal South 2014 will also hold a business day open to entrepreneurs, bloggers, organisations and people who want to know what Drupal is all about.

Drupal has made a wide impact as a web publishing platform, so aside from the tech side of things there are also broader sessions like Robert Wood of Glo Digital discussing how businesses and organisations can benefit from using Drupal as their CMS.

Know more about Drupal South 2014 for non-developers here.

Leveling up in your involvement is a natural thing for anything you're passionate with or interested in. If you feel that you can do it, by all means, step into it. Good luck with that. Cheers!

[drupaldev88]

Drupal themes and diversity

It's been an awfully busy week and I don't really have that much to say that the following blogs on my list haven't already said. It's all about themes and beautiful themes this week. So here you go!

Creatiz - Trendy beautifully Drupal theme

Creatiz is a Trendy, uniquely Beautiful Drupal theme suitable for any purpose Comes with everything you need!, It starts you with stunning designs right out of the box. Whether you need a Blog, Personal page, Landing page, One page, Event site, Portfolio showcase or Business site, Creatiz is here to save your time and Money $.$.

Creatiz was created with the latest techniques HTML5 & CSS3, Responsive design, Retina Ready, completely optimized for your touchable device.

Learn more about 'Creatiz' here.

5 Videos to Get Anyone Started with Drupal Themes

If you haven't worked with Drupal themes before, then you're in the right place.

These 5 videos average less than 5 minutes each and cover everything you need to get started with Drupal theming:

A General Introduction to Drupal themes.

How the Drupal theming system works.

Where to find themes.

How to install themes.

How to configure themes.

See the rest of the videos here.

DrupalPicchu 2014: Celebrating the Freedom and Cultural Diversity of the Drupal Community

Drupal has been growing rapidly in all corners of the world. The benefits of this global growth are:

Technical: many talented individuals can contribute to the Drupal project.

Organizational: a more balanced governance can foster a stronger community.

Financial: international partnerships can create attractive business opportunities.

Social: these opportunities can have a huge impact on people's lives everywhere.

In Latin America, in 2013 alone, over 2000 people participated in DrupalCamps.

See the list of Drupal Camps here.

Drupal Beginner: What is Drupal?

Finding a Drupal Development team to partner with you is best

Drupal is the best CMS to use if you see your business expanding over time. It allows you to edit and manage your website easily. What you need is a development team that has experience with large or small Drupal projects . The best Drupal teams are the ones that can create custom themes and modules as needed, because every website is unique and every single one has its own special needs.

Continue reading about 'finding a Drupal development team' here.

I think we've established that Drupal is the best CMS to consider for your website by now. But no matter how good the system is, you need the people with the right skills to do it. So put a lot of thought into the process before jumping on things. The best is always the right direction to invest on. (via Choc Chip Digital)

[drupaldev88]

Spreading the word about Drupal

Drupal South 2014 has finally released it's early bird rate, so if you're into Drupal or wanting to know what the fuss is all about and you're from Australia or New Zealand or somewhere that region, could be a great trip to make for you.

Drupal South 2014 in Wellington, New Zealand

We’re excited! Our region’s next annual Drupal conference is set for 14 - 16 February 2014 at Amora hotel in Wellington, New Zealand.

Developers, designers, Drupal evangelists, and users from Australia, New Zealand and the world will come together for three full days of exciting new sessions, training workshops, talks, code sprints and opportunities to connect with and learn from other Drupal enthusiasts.

Know more about Drupal South 2014 here.

Drupal South 2014 - "Unlikely Hero"

From February 14 to 16, 2014, Wellington New Zealand will host the South Pacific regional Drupal conference, called Drupal South this time around (last year it was DrupalCon Sydney, and before that, it was Drupal Down Under a couple of times).

Day 1 will have three tracks: a business day, sprints, and a training day. Days 2 and 3 will be filled with amazing sessions covering all aspects in and around Drupal the technology and Drupal the community.

Speakers from New Zealand and Australia will be joined by others from around the world, including some prominent Drupalist friends of mine like John Albin, Larry Garfield, Emma Jane Westby, and the one-and-only chx! I am looking forward to catching up with them and meeting a bunch of new friends there!

Know who the unlikely hero is here.

DrupalCon Keynotes: We Want to Hear From You!

What gets you up in the morning at DrupalCon? The smell of fresh brewed coffee filling the conference halls? First shift of booth duty?

Or is it the keynotes?

On Wednesday and Thursday morning, DrupalCons typically feature technology thought leaders like Jared Spool, Karen McGrane, and Jeremy Keith to kick off the conference that day.

Share your favorite 'DrupalCon Keynotes' here.

Optimizing Social Media

The Drupal, DrupalCon and Drupal Association social media channels now have well over 100,000 followers and those follower counts keep growing every day. Obviously, social media is an important way for people to get information about Drupal and the various happenings in the Drupal community.

It’s also clear that there could be more transparency around how social media work gets done, including:

1. Who writes the posts on the social media accounts?

2. Is there any strategy behind what is posted on the channels?

3. How do I request to have something mentioned on the Drupal social media properties?

Read more about 'Social Media and Drupal' here.

The community wouldn't have grown so much without the aid of Twitter, Facebook or might I say, Youtube? That's the thing, the internet just builds the bridges for us. So keep talkin' ya guys and keep spreading the love. We'd be double in number in no time at all!

(via Choc Chip Digital)

[drupaldev88]

Drupal South 2014 in Wellington, New Zealand

We’re excited! Our region’s next annual Drupal conference is set for 14 - 16 February 2014 at Amora hotel in Wellington, New Zealand.

Developers, designers, Drupal evangelists, and users from Australia, New Zealand and the world will come together for three full days of exciting new sessions, training workshops, talks, code sprints and opportunities to connect with and learn from other Drupal enthusiasts.

Continue reading about 'Drupal South 2014' here.

[drupaldev88]

Drupal victories

Here's a list of the little victories Drupal association has had during the past couple of weeks. I hope that it will inspire everyone to keep at it and keep looking forward. There's more to Drupal to discover!

Drupal.org Drupal 7 upgrade going live, prospective launch date and downtime

After a month-long Community QA, we are getting ready to deploy Drupal.org D7 upgrade. During the last couple of weeks we were limiting the number of ‘to-do before launch’ issues to those that are absolutely essential. Currently our launch blocker list consists of the 12 open issues.

We took a look at the upcoming Drupal events to find a quiet week, which won’t interfere with major camps and sprints, and..

Launch date

If by Monday, 28 of October, launch blocker issue is down to 0, we plan to deploy the Drupal.org D7 upgrade on Thursday, 31 of October.

Read more on 'Drupal 7 upgrade prospective launch date' here.

DrupalCon Prague: It's a Wrap!

DrupalCon Prague turned out to be another great DrupalCon that had many memorable moments. Before the team turns its full attention to upcoming DrupalCons in Austin and Amsterdam, I wanted to take a moment to share with you some highlights from the conference. 

Attendance The show set a new European attendance record, surpassing Munich by a few hundred attendees! I’m happy to report that 1,830 Drupalers joined us in Prague!

Sessions The feedback is still coming in, and we’ll provide more specific information about that later. But just from an attendance standpoint, there was standing room only for several sessions each day.  That was even after having the venue max out the rooms with as many seats as they could hold.

Continue reading 'DrupalCon Prague': It's a Wrap here.

Results of the First First Friday D8 Sprint of October 4th

Last Friday was the first First Friday Sprint - also known as the D8 Contrib Sprint Initiative (CSI) as anounced at the opening ceremony of the Prague Con.

We have worked successfully in many of our projects and various parts of these modules now work in Drupal 8.

ShareMessage

Basic port such that the module in Drupal 8 can be detected and enabled. We then converted to the new form system in Drupal 8 for all settings and started to convert the ShareMessage entity to a D8 entity. This module is good way to explore the new D8 entity system.

Click here for more on 'Results of the First First Friday D8 Sprint of October 4th '.

Drupal.org D7 upgrade live!

If you are reading this announcement right now, then we did it! Drupal.org runs on Drupal 7! This was a big and complicated project, which took longer than we expected. But we are finally done!

What changed?

Our goal was a straight port to Drupal 7 without major changes to functionality or layout, but with greatly improved code under the hood. However some things did change, please see Drupal.org D7 F.A.Q. for details. Overall Drupal 7 gives us more flexibility to implement new features and there will be a boost in performance for some of the pages.

What’s next?

There probably will be some bugs. If you encounter something unusual, please check the Drupal.org D7 F.A.Q. first. It may be that the change was intentional. If you are sure that you found a bug, please use the D7 upgrade QA queue to report them. Continue reading 'Drupal.org D7 upgrade live!' here.

I don't know about you but I'm just all pumped up for the future of Drupal. It is here and and it now. So hurrah to all Drupal contributors, organizers and con partipants.  

[drupaldev88]

Drupal overturns all rules

A lot of people are more familiar with Wordpress. And while Drupal does have the benefits of of a bigger expansion, some find it hard to adjust to the system. That's fine, Drupal steps in and meets that need halfway.

How to Build a WordPress Blog in Drupal

There's a phrase commonly used by Drupal fans:

"If you want to build a blog, use WordPress. If you want to bulld WordPress, use Drupal."

We actually had a very simular question from one of our members. They wanted to know how to make Drupal look like WordPress.

Continue to the tutorial on 'how to build a Wordpress blog in Drupal here.

Need help in creating a Drupal blog that looks like Wordpress?

If you want to enjoy the benefits of a Drupal-based blog but wants it to look like Wordpress, a skilled web developer on board will make all the difference.

Our development team has experience with large and small Drupal projects, and can create custom themes and modules as needed.

Our team of experienced Drupal developers can help you with your next project, whatever the size, by providing a total start-to-finish service, updating your existing Drupal site, providing support or providing 'top up' development when your team needs extra help.

Click here to get to learn more.

How to Move from Wordpress to Drupal

Curious? Want to give Drupal a go and move from Wordpress to Drupal. Here's a tutorial video:

Always Developing on Production

Using Chef and Vagrant, we (Promet Source) were able to standardize the platform that developers use to make Drupal sites consistent with the target production platform that the Sysadmins manage.  In this sense, *our developers are always testing on production*

There is a great amount of interest in things that make managing platforms easy and consistent.  If we want to try and practice “DevOps”, we all need to be involved in what other teams are doing.  Using Chef and Vagrant, we (Promet Source) were able to standardize the platform that developers use to make Drupal sites consistent with the target production platform that the Sysadmins manage.  In this sense, *our developers are always testing on production* by creating a local virtual machine using the same platform configuration as the end product.  The operations part of the process relies heavily on Chef.  Chef is a configuration management tool that will control nearly every aspect of your platform configuration by code.  This is how all of our servers are created and automatically configured.  Doing so will allow you to keep all of your platforms consistent and easily manageable regardless of how many servers there are.  Any changes in configuration (e.g. increase php memory_limit) are changed via Chef and impact either one server, servers with a specific characteristic, or all servers.  Any tweak to Apache or PHP will be automatically updated across all machines to which those changes apply.  Any parameter that is changed manually will be changed back and prevent servers from continually "drifting" away from how they were initially created.  Not using configuration by code when managing multiple systems is just not tenable.

Want to continue reading 'Always developing on production'? Click here.

Drupal 8 UX research studies: how you can help improve Drupal?

Usability studies are one of the best ways to keep improving Drupal 8. We want to speak with people who create or edit content on the web to take part in a UX research study to help improve Drupal 8.

This study will help us learn how content creators move between admin and non-admin interfaces. Editing content is a key part of working with Drupal, so understanding this interaction is essential.

Want to sign up for Drupal 8 usability study? Go here.

1 Million Users on Drupal.org!

If you have been on Drupal.org today, you may have noticed something interesting near the bottom of the page. At some point during the past 24 hours, the millionth user joined Drupal.org!

It is tempting to overlook those statistics at the bottom of the page because our eyes tend to skip over what they see repeatedly. But it’s worth taking a moment to think about it. 228 countries. 181 languages. And counting.

As Dries pointed out in his keynote at Prague, more than 1,600 people have contributed to Drupal 8. That's nearly double the number of contributors for Drupal 7!

Read more on '1 Million users on Drupal.org” here.

In Drupal, every person who signs up is significant. He may be the next contributor or the next 'who's who' in our global organization. So here's to Drupal and to the next million users! (via Choc Chip Digital)

[drupaldev88]

Drupal it!

The very things that Drupal thrives on is being an open-sourced CMS and having a generous community of highly-skilled web developers who are always ready and willing jump in when help is needed.

Suffice to say, it's not the CMS that sets Drupal apart, but the people who make up the community.

How We Wrote the Best-Selling Drupal Book

We've been fortunate over the last couple of years to have great success with our CMS books.

Drupal 7 Explained launched in May and over the last few months it has become the best-selling Drupal book. 

That book was the follow-up to Joomla! Explained which has been the best-selling Joomla book for over 2 years now.

Read about 'Workflow' here.

Drupal and the Digital Agency - Give to Receive

Richard is the author of Getting Started with Drupal Commerce, a great resource for learning about Drupal Commerce, the powerful open source eCommerce toolkit. As he and Myles discuss in this interview, they believe deeply in doing business the open source way. Being experts in what they call "a niche within a niche" and sharing that knowledge and code–a possibility unique to open-source-based businesses–has helped build iKOS's reputation as a service provider and brought them more business as a result.

Richard explains that "giving all of our code away", eventually starts to pay off. Now other UK digital agencies come to iKOS, based on the integration work that iKOS has done with payment provider SagePay, for example. "That collaboration with other agencies, it's really interesting to me that they are our competitors, but [the journey has been] getting to the mindset that we're all working toward the same goal and that there's enough of a big pie out there. Giving back to the community has paid us back tenfold."

I put it to Myles that investing in code that is open for all to see and use helped iKOS's reputation and brought them more clients. He agrees, "Absolutely," but there seems to be more to it: "Honestly, that was kind of a byproduct. We were doing everything aligned with our business goals. Agencies always find it hard; we're chasing client work. But we started changing. If we were going to do this, we were going to do this right. We felt we had a coding standard and so many little byproducts have come out of this. We've had an incredible staff benefit." So one benefit came from exposing junior developers to the benefits of releasing early and learning from thousands of their peers in the drupal community. "Early on we'd have taken that. That would have been reason alone for us to keep contributing."

Read more on Richard Jones here.

Next steps for how Acquia plans to give back to Drupal 8

People wonder what we do at Acquia's Office of the CTO (OCTO). In order to provide some more transparency, I wanted to share how we plan to give back between today and the end of the year.

Drupal 8 beta 1

Now that we're forgoing an upgrade path for a migration path, we need to redefine the release criteria for 'beta 1'. We also need to track the issues that block beta in order to help escalate the most critical of the critical issues. We will work with the Drupal 8 core maintainers to define and communicate these criteria, and help with timely patch reviews and issue management for beta-blocking issues.

More on 'how Acquia will give back to Drupal 8' here.

Easy to Use, Flexible CMS

Drupal is a popular CMS framework which gives you the power to easily add or edit pages and content on your website yourself.

Our development team has experience with large and small Drupal projects, and can create custom themes and modules as needed.

Our team of experienced Drupal developers can help you with your next project, whatever the size, by providing a total start-to-finish service, updating your existing Drupal site, providing support or providing 'top up' development when your team needs extra help.

Need web developers who can build your website on Drupal? Go here.

If you're thinking of putting up a Drupal website and have no skills for it, it's best to find someone else who can. If you, however, are interested to learn it, jump in on the workshops and conferences Drupal communities have scheduled in your area and get right into it.

(via OSTraining)

[drupaldev88]

What is there to say about Drupal 8?

The launch of Drupal 8 towards the end of this year is being met with a mixture of anticipation and scepticism. Much to the disappointment of its core developers, many devs think there’s too much hype going on over something that doesn’t promise too much.

Drupal 8 won't kill your kittens - Part 1 of 4

Lee Rowlands felt that some of the noise going on around the Drupal 8 developer experience didn't touch on all the wins that we're getting from the changes in Drupal 8. He wrote a blog post and gave a presentation at the Melbourne users group outlining some of the many ways Drupal 8 will be a great experience for developers.

"I work all day on Drupal 7 sites. Drupal 8 is where I get to do the fun stuff. There are a lot of things in Drupal 8 that I couldn't wait for, dealing with shortcomings in Drupal 7 on a daily basis. 'I want it now' kind of stuff (I picture Lee having a tantrum at this point), in particular the plugin stuff, and the entity filed API changes. That was my motivation for that talk.

Read more on Lee Rowlands and his fellow core Drupal contributors, Tim Plunket and Daniel Wehner here.

A Gr8 New Logo

After a process of community input and a final choice by Dries, there is an official Drupal 8 logo! Dries unveiled the design during his keynote at DrupalCon Prague earlier today. The logo is done in a “flat” design and features an oblique number “8” inside a slightly forward-tilting drop accompanied by the Drupal wordmark.

The “8” shape can also be used independent of the wordmark. The design, created by the talented folks at Mogdesign, is a fine representation of the balance of forward-looking elements and established concepts embodied by Drupal 8. The logo usage guidelines will be on Drupal.org next week. In the meantime you can grab the files here.

More on ‘A Gr8 New Logo’ here.

Drupal 8 to launch in-place editing

Drupal 8 is planned for launch at the end of this year and one of the most exciting features is “in-place editing” which will make updating content much easier.

This is good news for less tech-savvy users such as bloggers, business owners and regular employees assigned to manage and update website content.

To review Drupal 8’s in-place editing feature, click here.

How to Uninstall a Drupal 7 Module

This tutorial will show you how to uninstall a module from your Drupal 7 site.

In this example, we're going to show you how to uninstall the Devel module. Devel is very useful for developing a site, but should be uninstalled before going live.

Click here to see steps in ‘uninstalling Drupal 7 modules’

Many people, devs included, tend to conclude on things that they have not tried yet. Just look at Chromebook 11; many who dismissed it as useless have not even seen one, yet they comment harshly against it.  (I haven’t tried it, so I have no comment on it) Personally, I look forward to fully experiencing Drupal 8. Who knows what good thing I’ll find?

(via Acquia)

[drupaldev88]

New whos in the Drupal Community

As the Drupal community keeps growing, so must we know who the point people are- old and new alike. Made a list of the the new who's who here.

JetBrains Becomes Drupal Association Technology Partner, Offers Free PhpStorm Licenses for Contributors

We are happy to announce today that JetBrains is supporting the Drupal Association and the Community in two new ways:                     

      1.  They have signed on as a Drupal Association Technology Partner.

      2.  The company is offering core contributors access to free licenses to its PhpStorm PHP IDE.

JetBrains has supported Open Source projects with PhpStorm licenses for quite awhile and the Association is thrilled to be able to offer the same to our community. For the Drupal project, JetBrains will offer 250 Free Open Source Licenses for PhpStorm to be distributed among Drupal 7/8 core, modules and themes contributors.

Learn more on what JetBrains is giving out Drupal 7/8 contributors here.

This is SUPPORTA! Meet the Acquia Client Advisory Team

Inside Acquia, the Client Advisory Team is something special. These are the people who are on the front lines, helping others succeed with Drupal 24 hours a day. They go above and beyond the call of duty for anyone who needs help and for other members of their team. In July, I spoke with five Acquia Client Advisors about their work and their team.

What a team! This is a group of technology experts who will fight (maybe literally?) for you and your Drupal site. They will celebrate your launch, your solved problems, and your successes possibly just as hard as you.

While editing the recordings I made for this podcast, I could feel a contagious excitement steeping into me. I think this is because what you hear is the sound of Drupalists talking about something they (and so many of us in the Drupal community) love to do and truly believe in: helping other people with Drupal. The fact that they get to do this for a living must be an incredible feeling.

Read more about SUPPORTA! here.

It's time to meet the candidates!

e've got a diverse slate of 13 candidates for the 2 At-Large board posisitons at the Drupal Association. Now's the time for you to find out what each candidate hope to acheive on the board, and what they can bring the Drupal Association. We have two ways for you to interact with the candidates and get your questions answered.

Learn about the candidates online

Check out the slate of candidates and read what they had to say about their background and interest in serving on the board. Each candidate page also features a Comments section where you can ask the candidates questions about their views.

We ask that you use the comments section to ask questions, not endorse candidates please.

Click here to know how to join the sessions.

Great big things are coming from these guys, it gets more exciting than ever. So a round of applause and a thank you to them who are willing to serve our community! Cheers!

[drupaldev88]

Drupal from other corners of the world

Drupal is global, but you would know that by now. And exciting new progress have been happening to where Drupal associations are at. Feast yourself on some updates from all around the world:

The Drupal Association Gets a New Address - In Europe

One of the most impressive things about the Drupal community is just how diverse it is. Wherever you go in the globe, you’re likely to find a group of folks at a coffee shop proudly sporting one of their many Drupal T-shirts. It’s the job of the Drupal Association to support this diverse community - no matter what you do with Drupal, or where you are in the world when you do it.

We recognize that the intention and the practice have been far apart at times here at the Association. In other words, we’ve wanted to provide more support for and representation of our global community than we’ve actually been able to accomplish. We’ve heard your requests for more inclusion and have taken a few steps forward in the last couple of years:

Community Cultivation Grants: Designed to foster new Drupal projects around the world, we budget $40,000 for these initiatives annually.

Global Training Days: We help coordinate new training opportunities on every continent (except Antarctica!) three times a year.

Community Summit at DrupalCon: Our first global community summit takes place at Prague and has session specifically addressing the Association’s relationship outside the US. I’ll be there all day on Monday, listening and learning.

Continue to read on 'Drupal Association's new address in Europe' here.

Drupal.org related activities in Prague

DrupalCon Prague is less than a week away! Here is a summary of Drupal.org-related activities waiting for you at the Con.

Drupal.org Working Groups

Almost all Working Group members will be present in Prague and the week will be pretty intense for them. There will be 3 public sessions, one for each Working Group. We call them "community conversations", the format is similar to core conversations, only we will be talking about Drupal.org.

Check out links on Drupal Prague itineraries here.

Introducing the Drupal Association Technology Partner Program!

This year, the Drupal Association has focused on better understanding our community so we can best serve all audiences. We so appreciate all of your input through the (many) surveys, interviews, DrupalCon BoFs, and other ways you shared your thoughts and ideas with us. We now have a nice list of new ways we can support you and are putting plans in place to deliver on them.

One consistent theme that came up during our research was the need for information about tools and third party software that can help Drupalers build even better sites. We even deployed a survey on this topic to make sure we understand the community’s educational needs.

The research showed that community members want to learn about a whole host of software tools from development, performance, project management, website optimization and more. As for third party software that integrates with Drupal, the community’s wish list would take this entire page, but the most requested include NoSQL, CRM, ERP, BI, BPM, email marketing services, and marketing automation. Naturally, the community already works with many of these tools and third party software, but there is a desire to understand them better and/or learn about new tools and software.

More on 'Drupal Association Technology Partner Program' here.

Drupal Association Board Retreat: 21 & 22 September

At the Drupal Association, now is the time when we are finalizing our plans and budgets for the following year, so the focus of our pre-DrupalCon Prague board retreat was how to set ourselves up to help our community succeed in 2014. On the table were a few things that we wanted to share and get your feeback about. 

DrupalCons

Selecting DrupalCon locations is tricky business - balancing a variety of community needs with affordable and accessible locations. We've written a little bit about it, but one other important aspect to picking a location is the sheer size of DrupalCon. As our community grows, and the Con grows with it, we have to find ever larger venues near even more hotels. In order to meet these varied needs, we're going to have to start plannign a lot further out.

The fact is that we've outgrown a lot of smaller cities, and in larger cities, we only fit into a couple of venues. So at this time, we're working on city selection for 2015, 2016 and 2017.  We conducted a survey earlier in the year to get ideas for new locations, are vetting them now, and will be sharing with the board in November. We'd love to share the results with you then, but we'd ruin the surprise!

Know more about the Drupal Association Board Retreat here.

When Drupal devs come together, you can be assured that something's brewing, about to brew, or being brewed. Sit back and wait, you'll hear new things soon!

(Image by: beta.robot, flickr.com/photos/beta-robot/5163841617/)

[drupaldev88]

Themes, Drush Search & Replace and location Dropdowns

How do you change a theme without having to overwrite every field on your site? The concept of The Angry Themer is to recommend, not only the best solutions, but the best options that will help you avoid theming problems.

Naked fields by the Angry Themer

One thing that can make any frontend hero angry is looking at the default output from node.tpl and the beloved $content variable with all of those nested [[code start]]<div>[[code end]] tags and classes all mashed up in one big pool of markup. This is okay for a quick prototype, but let's be honest: what we really want is lean-mean-hot-symantic-html5 along with the specific markup that will help make the perfect design and make the semantic accessibility-junkies happy.

We are going to rip two fields out of the $content variable, remove the div tag and wrappers, then apply some custom markup and place them specifically as desired for this node. All that without breaking anything!

Learn about 'psuedo markups and hook theme suggestions' here.

Drush Search & Replace

Have you needed to change all occurrences of a domain, filepath, or text string within your site? Normally this would involve a lot of planning and custom queries. Drush Search & Replace fixes that problem.

Warning! This is a very powerful drush extension. If used incorrectly it can actually destroy data integrity or cause data loss which can not be reverted. Please test on development environment, backup your site, and use at your own risk.

Check out 'Drush Search & Replace' here.

More on Drush commands in this video:

A Drupal Dropdown List of Countries, States, Cities

A Drupal member asked this question to gather information from among Drupal users and wanted to collect addresses: "I need to have a user select a state in a list. My next requirement is to populate a new list with all the counties for the selected state."

It's easy to imagine many more people wanting to do something similar, so in this tutorial we'll explain how it's done.

This tutorial could be used to show Continents and then Countries, Countries and the States, States and then Cities or any similar combination you need. We're going to use the Conditional Fields module.

Proceed to the tutorial for 'Drupal dropdown list of countries, states, and cities' here.

Drupal Development

Drupal is a popular CMS framework which gives you the power to easily add or edit pages and content on your website yourself.

Our development team has experience with large and small Drupal projects, and can create custom themes and modules as needed.

Our team of experienced Drupal developers can help you with your next project, whatever the size, by providing a total start-to-finish service, updating your existing Drupal site, providing support or providing 'top up' development when your team needs extra help. Want to know about this 'Drupal development team?' Click here.

There you go, I hope that the above links are helpful to you walk your way around Drupal. If things get a bit too complex to work out, no harm calling people who can help you. After all, when it comes to your websites, mediocre isn't an option.

Have a great weekend everyone!