Lullabot: Drupal Voices 159: John Albin Wilkins on Drupal 7 Theming
John Albin Wilkins (aka JohnAlbin) talks about some of the new extensions to the theming system that are new in Drupal 7 including render elements, hook_page_alter(), show, hide, theme_get_suggestions(), and improvements to theme_links(). He also talks about the theme administration page overhaul, how it's now a lot easier to create "mega-menus" dropdown panels when hovering over the primary navigation, as well as another presentation that Palantir gave on previewing Drupal 7.
John Albin Wilkins: A complete idiot’s guide to git-svn-migrate, 3 steps to batch convert Subversion to Git
If you read my previous post about converting Subversion repositories to git, you’ll know that to do a proper Subversion-to-Git transformation on a batch of repositories is going to take some time (what with all that command line typing). I had 142 legacy project Subversion repositories lying around I wanted converted to Git and, since I’m lazy, I pulled on my bash boots and wrote me a script to do the work!
With the git-svn-migrate scripts I wrote, you can batch convert all of your Subversion repositories in just 3 steps. And I’ve GPLed them and put them on GitHub if you’d like to collaborate and improve them; see the git-svn-migrate project page.
git-svn-migrate: a reverse glue factory
Matthew Saunders: Drupalcon CPH - Sharpen your Axe
Richard Jones of iKos gave a presentation on simplifying and streamlining the development of Drupal sites. His team observed that they were creating the same basic sites over and over again. To this end, rather than starting from scratch each and every time, the team created basic sites to start from and rapidly built out the basic site for a client in several weeks. This allows the client to start entering data early in the process - which means come theming time, you are working against real client data. This is a plus when you are trying to achieve the results your client is seeking. In the iKos model, design comes last and is somewhat subject to the functionality that has been developed.
iKos set the the goal to reduce Drupal development time by 80% - to radically reduced the repeated effort that the company engaged project after project. They created a model of a site "startpoint" that begins each new client effort.
Dale McGladdery: Creating and Updating Nodes Programmatically in Drupal 7
The steps for programmatically creating a node are:
- Create a PHP object representing the node data
- Save the object using the node_save() function
While the mechanics are simple, there is an important responsibility involved. The Drupal work flow does data validation before calling the node_save() function; node_save() does no validation. By calling node_save() directly your code takes the responsibility for providing valid data.
Drupal 7 ChangesA quick note for those of you familiar with Drupal 6. You'll notice two changes in Drupal 7:
Body Field Is No Longer Special
In Drupal 6 the body field was special. Specifically, it had a different data structure than other fields and it always existed, even if it wasn't used. With Drupal 7 the body field is a standard field provided by core and is truly optional.
Language
Language specification is required for the node and some fields.
Basic Node CreationThe following code assumes an unchanged Drupal 7 Standard installation and will create a Drupal 7 article node.
Drupal Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress: Drupal module of the day, Simplenews
Image by LollyKnit via Flickr
As stated in the Drupal website, Simplenews publishes and sends newsletters to lists of subscribers. It is one of my favorite modules, the reason being that it is quite easy to configure and very powerful once you use it. If your client needs a newsletter solution that integrates with Drupal, Simplenews might be the answer.
Appnovation Technologies: Nodequeue and Views Combination.
Sometimes it is really hard to show only the needed nodes in the needed order using views only.
Here are some examples when you need to give a Content Manager (CM) some control over the nodes that will be displayed by the view:
- you need to promote on the front page some content Item (for ex., some new Game) and want the CM to be able to change it through the UI any time he pleased
- you need to show the newest Games in the block (sorted by some date), but you need to give the CM ability to override this list and show a couple of Games of their choice at the top of the list (following by rest of the newest Games sorted by a date)
- you need to show a list of Items of some Type, but to make sure that some of the Items (from some "black list") will never be included into this list.
The Nodequeue and Views modules will be a very useful combination here.
Drupal Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress: Drupal
Download the Drupal code and install it to /var/www/drupal
All the prerequisite are the same as for OpenPublish. Please see these before you start, this includes creating a database.
Just a note, once you have the system up and running, you will probably remove the login box, the URL to allow you to logon and administer the site is
The admin page is http://x.x.x.x/drupal/?q=user
Navigate to /var/www/drupal/sites/default
mkdir files
chmod o+rw files
cp default.settings.php settings.php
chmod o+rw default.settings.php
chmod o+rw settings.php
http://x.x.x.x/drupal/setup
This will start the installation.
Once done you will have an empty web site. One useful tool to have is a Wysywig creator for you content, I am lead to believe that
Wysiwyg with TinyMCE is a good bet
Download from the respective sites.
Copy or move the
cp -R wysiwyg /var/www/drupal/modules/wysiwyg
