A day of website work

<p>I just spent the last few hours working on websites, including this one. My task list was long: Upgrade my drupal site from 4.6.x to 5.7. I am glad to say that this is DONE! Though i still have some more work to do to clean up some collation issue that messed up my thesis. I also had to migrate from the domain gregoryheller.com/home to gregoryheller.com due to my multi site set up it seems i could not figure out the proper htaccess rewrite settings, so I did what I so often do: hacked it with the tools i know how to use: Drupal!</p> <p>I created a view with the url "home" and another with "home/node" both take an argument so any requests coming in from old links out there should get passed through properly and people should get to the content they are looking for.</p> <p>The other big project was to get my dad online. Fred Heller is now online! <a href="http://fredericheller.com">FredericHeller.com</a> is also a drupal site, and also using the Garland theme (had trouble finding anything else that was easy to set up and looked good without having to modify much). I also set my dad up on Facebook and LinkedIn. You can find him through his site if you are looking.</p> <p>Back to me and mysite: I hope to get this site cleaned up a little bit more in the coming weeks, and start blogging a little bit over here again. I still blog over at <a href="http://civicactions.com" title="CivicActions Gregory Heller">CivicActions.com</a> of...

Module Monday: Create Content Block

Today’s Module Monday is a quick one. I can’t believe that for so long so many people have lived with the “node/add” page or the “Create Content” menu items as the primary way to add a new node to a Drupal site — I can’t believe I put up with this for so long! Well, last November I was working on a project and we ran up against this “problem”, it was particularly acute due to the use of Organic Groups. Of course you could use the default menus, but if the site has many content types, then you may have an ungainly menu block to deal with, otherwise you might have to go to the node/add page. Well this is where Create Content Block comes in. Doug Green put together this little module which solves the problem I describe above in a very elegant manner. When you add and enable the module you get a nice little block with a drop down menu that shows only the content types the current user has access to create. Create Content Blog is also Organic Groups aware while not relying on OG. If your site is using OG, and the user is on an organic group node, selecting a content type from the create content block will enable the user to create a new node WITHIN the current group. At admin/build/block you can set the title of the Create Content Block and the button. So check out Create Content Block, try it out on your next...

DrupalCon Boston 2008 Notes from Communication Cooperation Collaboration

I want to thank all the folks who participated in the session “Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration: Can Drupal Shops Work Together”, based on the conversation during the session, and subsequently during the remainder of the conference that answer is, “Yes, we can, and we must.” What follows are notes from the session which thanks to Robin Barre for taking notes. I have taken my best shot at redacting and organizing them. Panelists Gregory Heller, CivicActions Robert Douglass, Acquia Bill O’Connor – AchieveInternet Eric Gunderson ofDevelopment Seed Michael Haggerty Trellon Laura Scott, Ping Vision Others participating from the audience including Josh Koenig of Chapter Three, Barry Jaspan of Acquia and others. Communication: the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information Cooperation: To work or act together toward a common end or purpose. (Making Drupal the best open source CMS in the world) Collaboration: To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort. (Specific modules, business process, or projects) Communication Strategies Conferences Email Lists d.o and g.d.o Conference Calls One on One Calls and meetings Blogging about work and module development Podcasts and screencasts Benefits Builds trust, Builds community Challenges Takes time, Costs money, Clients take precedence Goals for Drupal Shops Don’t let code die in client projects Don’t duplicate module development Determine points of overlap on projects, modules and requirements Specific Challenges we are all facing: image handling events feed aggregation PERFORMANCE Performance and Scalability Sharing Knowledge Metrics and Bench Marking Detailed Implementation Plans and strategies Strategies to Improve Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration Create back channel: direct communication among interested parties, email, phone call, im do research on existing modules or...

See You at DrupalCon and My Session “Communication, Cooperation, Collaboration”

On Sunday night I fly out to Boston for DrupalCon. Four full days of sessions and meeting sand social events, I get a little overwhelmed just thinking about it. Which is why I am taking a moment right now to post a blog about my session on Monday at 1:30pm, “Communication, Collaboration, Cooperation: Can Drupal Shops Work Together“. Though it is billed as a panel, I envision it as more of an open discussion amongst representatives from some of the leading Drupal Development Shops. I have invited about a dozen Drupal Professions and most have confirmed that they will attend. I am hopeful that we can tackle some interesting issues related to the business of building websites with Drupal while supporting the Drupal Community and the Drupal Project. I’ll be sure to take notes and post them as soon as possible after the session. I look forward to meeting so many new people at DrupalCon (800 people registered!) and seeing lots of familiar faces. For those who really want to know, I am on Twitter and will update based on which sessions and events I am headed to. I will also be helping to present the Non Profit Industry Networking Event along with Eric Gundersen of Development Seed on Monday...