Drupal News

Trellon seems to be facing more and more projects where our customers need to make a decision on which content management system to use for their web properties. We work with open source technologies and have vast Drupal expertise so we can assist with the decision to use Drupal as the underlying content management system for Web properties vs. a proprietary program. Here we will lay out the pros and cons of each so that you, the reader will have a better understanding of the optimal direction for your firm. The good news is that Drupal and other open source content management systems are being considered in more and more enterprise (think large) installations due to the fact that their value is so high. Open source content management systems like Drupal, Joomla and Mambo, all offer significant functionality with no software costs or licensing fees.

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Hotel Harrington - located just seven blocks from DrupalCon DC - has a great deal on hotel rooms. You can get a single room for $109 a night, or a room for two (two twin beds) for $135 a night. Other types of rooms are also available at great prices. There are only 40 rooms still available in the hotel, so book yours fast!

This is a great price for a hotel room located in downtown Washington, DC, and it's just a short walk to the conference and to many restaurants, bars, shops, and tourist hang outs. Hotels can get quite expensive, so I recommend booking now. I'll post other deals as I find them too, so follow us here or on twitter if you miss this deal.

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Drupal 6 supports translation of content with the core Content Translation module. So you can create a page in English, then translate the page to Dutch.

But what if you attach a file to the English page? It does not show up on your Dutch translation. And what if you are using CCK and FileField? That's the case that I want to cover in this article.

First, I installed Drupal 6.6, enabled the Locale module, and added the Dutch translation (for the proper way of installing translations, see Addison Berry's screencast, Installing Drupal with a Translation).

I installed CCK 6.x-2.1 and enabled the Content module and some others (Node Reference, Number, Text, Option Widgets).

I installed the 6.x3.x-dev snapshot of FileField (it's better to use an actual release but I saw some bug fixes going into the module and figured I'd test it). I enabled FileField module.

I enabled the core Content Translation module.

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Drupal 6 supports translation of content with the core Content Translation module. So you can create a page in English, then translate the page to Dutch.

But what if you attach a file to the English page? It does not show up on your Dutch translation. And what if you are using CCK and FileField? That's the case that I want to cover in this article.

First, I installed Drupal 6.6, enabled the Locale module, and added the Dutch translation (for the proper way of installing translations, see Addison Berry's screencast, Installing Drupal with a Translation).

I installed CCK 6.x-2.1 and enabled the Content module and some others (Node Reference, Number, Text, Option Widgets).

I installed the 6.x3.x-dev snapshot of FileField (it's better to use an actual release but I saw some bug fixes going into the module and figured I'd test it). I enabled FileField module.

I enabled the core Content Translation module.

Then I installed i18n 6.x-1.0-BETA6, which is the latest release of the Internationalization Module. I enabled the Internationalization and Synchronize Translations modules.

I needed a CCK content type to test with so I created one:

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On Friday, December 5 at 11am Pacific (California) time, join Lullabots Jeff Eaton and James Walker for an O'Reilly webcast: Everything You Wanted to Know about Drupal but were Afraid to Ask. The content of this webcast is mainly geared toward people who are new to Drupal and want to find out what all the fuss is about.

They require registration ahead of time, and already 460+ people registered in the first 24 hours. (!) So if it sounds interesting to you and you can make it, head over to http://oreilly.com/go/drupal.

(PS: Yes, we're sure it's Friday, December 5, even though it says Wednesday a couple times on that page. :))

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Like any businesses, we receive numerous magazines from all sorts of places. We have a little table full of magazines that don't get much attention. (Frankly, most of them are too techy for me to read during my spare time...) Yesterday, Kris was walking by this table and saw something that made him whip his head around and look twice. "I swear I saw Druplicon..." he murmured. 

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Look what's on the cover of the November 17, 2008 issue of Information Week! Drupal is mentioned several times throughout their series on open source.

In most every Drupal installation, there are a few (if not more) modules you inevitably end up installing and using.

Two of these are likely CCK and Views*. Then, all the other, shall we say, essential modules you end up hearing about, and installing as well.

So, your next question may be, “What’s the fastest way to get started with Drupal?”. If you know CVS then that may be a good way to go (it’s the method I use). If you don’t, then…

Why not get going quickly by trusting in some of the minds behind Drupal itself? Acquia Drupal is the “commercialized” version of Drupal. Although there is a free version too! It comes with a pre-installed collection of modules which all pretty much fall within the essential category. I just wonder why they didn’t include Global Redirect if they’re including Pathauto.

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Just as I completed my MsC last year at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME), I've been asked to go give context and advice on the possibility of using Drupal with people at the Central European University in Budapest. They were looking at content management systems such as Plone and Drupal and were trying to scope their work and the possibilities they have for converting to an Open Source system. I gave them details on Drupal: some of the key components available, high profile sites using the system, support options they have, the rate of progress within the community, and they were impressed.

I almost forgot about this before they got back to me recently saying that they choose Drupal and would like to publicize their job offer for an in-house Drupal consultant, who could help migrate their data, bootstrap their work and educate other team members on Drupal. Now that Drupal 6 is shining brighter with CCK and Views out in full force, there is no question they are planning to use Drupal 6.

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Last but not least, we're going to look at:

• Spam Control
• XML Sitemap to help with search engine optimization
• Setup Metatagging
• Human Readable (and search engine readable) URLs
• Fivestar rating on content
• ServiceLinks to allow for social bookmarking

Spam Control

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Earlier today I took the one and half hour train ride up to Philly to attend the first DrupalCamp for that fine city. I hope they have more! Big thanks to the organizers, Nathan and Alex. It was very well put together and the venue was great. There were about 100 people there and I got to catch up with some friends and meet lots of new faces. I was slated to do two sessions, Contributing to Drupal and then a doc sprint. I got into town a little bit late and was not on top of my game, fighting off the remnants of my flu bug. Jeff Miccolis of Development Seed kicked off the session until I got in the door and set up (thanks Jeff!) and then we ended up doing one good long session on contributing. There were lots of good questions and conversation. My slides are pretty spare, to be used more as points to talk about, but I did have handy URLs to get more information on topics, so I've uploaded a PDF of them here. Everyone should feel free to use these in their own presentations and modify them up. Anything that spreads the good word of Drupal is alright by me. ;-)

UPDATE: sorry to folks that couldn't download the slides. It should all be working now.

Just over a month ago, we announced that we opened up editing rights to much of the handbooks for all users on Drupal.org. Our one month trial period is over and the Documentation team has decided that overall it has been a success. We have seen many more edits and fixes in the handbook and, while we did see some limited mess to clean up, occurrences of vandalism (or playing around) were relatively uncommon. We feel, at this time, that open editing is a significant benefit to our handbooks. We have decided to leave open editing in place, with no further defined trial periods. Keep editing away!

In addition to helping out with fixing pages, we also need many eyes on the edits themselves. Anyone can review recent edits and check out the diffs. If you notice something awry about an edit, you can simply fix it by editing or, if you are a member of the documentation team, you can select the "revert" operation from the Revisions tab to undo the change.

This process did raise other discussions related to various improvements we could make to help track edits and thoughts about how the new page creation management, versus editing, could be improved. Feel free to join in those ongoing tasks and discussions. The next IRC meeting will be tomorrow, November 20 at 18:00 GMT (1 p.m. EST, 10 a.m. PST) and all are welcome. For more info on documentation activites and projects, check out our group.

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Doing a good wiki in Drupal 6 is surprisingly hard. My project to create a site with MediaWiki-like functionality for climate research at UC Berkeley took much longer than I thought it would, and the result was mediocre. Here are my notes evaluating different modules:

Modules I ended up using

• Talk (6.x-1.5)
  • Function: Move the comments into separate tab.
  • Configure: Enable in Content Type -> edit -> Workflow settings (which is odd, should be Comment settings).
• Diff (6.x-2.0)
  • Function: Show what changed between one revisions.

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When themeing your view in Drupal 6, you have the ability to override the default templates. Depending on the “Style” and the “Row Style” attributes that you assign your view, different options are available to you. If you choose a “Node” row style, you can take advantage of a special template suggestion.

You can create a .tpl file in your theme directory with the following naming scheme:
node-view-VIEWNAME.tpl.php

This template will be used to render each node in the view.
It works almost the same as node-NODE TYPE.tpl.php but only for the view that you have specified.

The Drupal markup filtering system is confusing for a couple of reasons:

• The terms “format” and “filter” are used inconsistently. For example, the main admin page is title “Input formats”, but the url is “admin/settings/filters”. The best I can do is: The markup filter system consists of multiple input formats which are ordered stacks of individual filters.
• The term “Input format” itself is misleading, because the filters work on output, not input.
• The “Input format” admin page is unhelpful and hard to navigate.

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OpenSourcery has long respected how our friends at NTEN -- the Nonprofit Technology Network -- help good organizations improve their understanding and use of technology, so you can understand why we're ecstatic to collaborate with them. Our first collective effort will help managers, CEOs, and community organizers get the most from Drupal. In what we hope becomes a long-standing effort, our developers will work with NTEN members to unwrap the many joys of open source applications.

Instead of repeating the webinar details here, I encourage readers to visit the event page on NTEN's website and let us know what you think. You can also learn the benefits of becoming a member of NTEN here.

OpenSourcery thanks Anna, Holly, and the rest of the NTEN team for making this webinar a reality. We look forward to working together.

Thank you for reading.

Drupal 6 has a few problems with large numbers of nodes.

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I recently suggested that the way we approach new development is the most important factor in determining the long term value of our work. But just how can developers using Drupal make the most of open source by ensuring that participating and contributing is an essential part of our daily workflow?

Here are some practical tips that come out of our experience at CivicActions and that can guide you in deciding how to approach new development to get the full benefit of open source. Read on as well for a discussion of patching vs. hacking vs. forking and of how to get attention for your patches.

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When developing in Drupal, should we hack something together that's specific to a site? Or should we instead take the time to do things "right" by improving existing modules or writing our own new modules to contribute to the community? When is one of these options better than the other? How do we decide?

It's a key set of questions. All but the most basic projects will require some level of new development. The way we approach this new development is probably the most important factor in determining the long term value of our work, both for us and for our clients.

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