CCK

CCK has probably been the most important module in Drupal 6, so important actually that it became a part of Drupal 7 core. It basically allows you to add fields to nodes and create custom content types that way. Field types can go from simple text fields to embedded video, so possibilities are endless.

You can download CCK Drupal module here.

Views

When you build custom content types, you need to have flexible ways of presenting their data, right? That’s where Views module comes in. Views basically allows you to generate queries and presentation of your data with just a few clicks of the mouse. Say for example you have many articles on your page. You want just the list of headlines and small description of the 10 latest articles on the front page, list of thumbnails of logged in user’s favorite articles in the sidebar and just the long list of headlines in the archive. And you want it all done automatically. All those lists are just different examples of Views, that can be implemented really easily.

You can download Views Drupal module here.

Panels

Drupal has many themes, and all those themes can be further customized to allow you flexibility in look and feel of your site. Panels take customization possibilities to another level. They allow you to build specialized layouts and content panes with just drag and drop. Combine them with Views, and you can build widget-like panels, custom sidebars and menus and many more.

You can download Panels Drupal module here.

Token + PathAuto

If you’ve made lot of custom content, presented it with Views and made it all look nice with Panels, now it’s time to make some SEO work. Tokens, combined with PathAuto, allow you to build custom URLs for your pages, making your site more optimized for search engines, and more logical for site users. URL content and format are limited just by your imagination, as these two modules allow you to combine content fields, dates, numbers, taxonomy terms any way you want.

You can download Token Drupal module here and PathAuto here.

Wysiwyg

Making content is much easier when you can format it as you write it, while not bothering with html tags. Wysiwyg allows you to choose and enable any client-editor you want, be it html, pseudo or Flash based.

You can download Wysiwyg Drupal module here.

Image, Date, Email Field

CCK module gives you the possibility of adding different fields to your content types. You probably want to add more then just text and number fields, and that’s where these three (and many other, more specialized) modules come in. They bring a lot of functionality beyond just adding fields to content, and all that puts them into “must have Drupal modules” category.

You can download these Drupal modules from their locations: Image, Date and Email Field.

Content Profile

If you want to introduce social networking elements into your website, you need to allow your users to present themselves better. This module treats user profiles as nodes (content in Drupal), and allows you to customize them with all the options and modules as other content types. It opens up possibilities for profiles ranging from simple “Name and Surname” to full Facebook like pages.

You can download Content Profile Drupal module here.

Ubercart

Ubercart is “the” module if you need e-commerce functionality for your site. It is a huge module, with so many options, themes and it’s own modules, that it can be treated as a separate system. It is a powerful application that can rival any open source e-commerce platform on the web.

You can download Ubercart Drupal module here.

Google Analytics

Website visits are the most important mirror of our users satisfaction, and although we can insert the Google Analytics code by ourselves in our Drupal theme, this module provides us with more options than we could think of and therefore is highly recommendable to use, and that is why we have it here in our list of “Must have Drupal modules”.

If you want to find out more about Google Analytics module or download it – you can find it here.

With these 9 must have Drupal modules you have the ability to build vast range of sites, but the journey does not stop there. There are thousands of modules for finer tuning and special needs of your website. Feel free to delve into them and experience the full power of Drupal.

This option is currently part of ZendX library and it is called ajaxLink. What it does is help you to easily create menu for your website and then fetch content of each page with AJAX.

Let’s imagine that we have assembled a layout, controllers and actions to give us a desired content and it looks like this:

<ul id="nav">
	<!-- place for our AJAX links -->
</ul>
<div id="content"></div>

Now we can fill in the ul with our AJAX links to create a page that will load via AJAX request. To create AJAX link – use following code:

	echo $this->ajaxLink("Ajax Link Text",
		"ajax-content-url.php",
		array('update' => '#container')
	);

This way – with not a single line of JavaScript written by us – we have created a menu that is able to fetch a page content for us and place it inside desired container. We have achieved to have a smooth loading website with virtually no effort at all, but we still didn’t make it look nice as we might be able to add effects on events like “beforeSend” and “complete”. These events can have jQuery effects applied to our contents container.

To show you how to do this – I have prepared a small example for you:

	echo $this->ajaxLink("Ajax Link Text",
		"ajax-content-url.php",
		array(
			'update' => '#container',
			'beforeSend' => 'fadeout',
			'complete' => 'fadeinfast'
		)
	);

With these effects applied – we have achieved good look and feel for our visitors and have reduced number of requests towards server and therefore made our website load faster.

Where to go from here?

If you have not included the ZendX library in your web application and are not sure about how to do it, visit our article how-to article: How to include ZendX in Zend Framework project.

ZendX – jQuery: First steps

To start using a ZendX, first we must:

• download a current Zend Framework from: http://framework.zend.com/download/latest;
• extract it and search for ZendX in folder library;
• copy the whole ZendX folder to your projects library so that you get library/ZendX;

ZendX – jQuery: Bootstrap

Now that we have set ZendX library into our project – we should initialize it on Bootstrap in method _initViewHelpers. This is how we can do it:

protected function _initViewHelpers()
{
	$view = new Zend_View();
	$viewRenderer = new Zend_Controller_Action_Helper_ViewRenderer();
 
	$view->addHelperPath('ZendX/JQuery/View/Helper/', 'ZendX_JQuery_View_Helper');
	$viewRenderer->setView($view);
	Zend_Controller_Action_HelperBroker::addHelper($viewRenderer);
}

ZendX – jQuery: The layout

This however – is not enough to start using jQuery. We should add a few more lines to site layout script. I prefer putting it to a bottom of my layout as it is good practice to set your JavaScript after HTML and before tag. To include jQuery and jQuery UI (versions 1.5.1 and 1.8.11) – we should use following lines:

echo $this->jQuery()
	->setVersion('1.5.1')
	->setUiVersion('1.8.11')
	->enable()
	->uiEnable();

By default, the jQuery library is loaded from the Google Ajax Library Content Distribution Network. I must say that this should not worry you as I have recently lost internet connection and realized that these libraries were cached in browser so I just continued my development without having change links to JS.

ZendX – jQuery: Finishing touches

We have included jQuery and jQuery UI, but we didn’t setup the CSS for jQuery UI. I believe it is best to style your own theme on jQuery UI website and download it so it can fit your websites style. To customize/make your theme visit: theme roller.

This should be the all you need to start using ZendX with jQuery in your Zend Framework project.

I was personally using Gmail to write my answer and then copied it to Basecamp, but I don’t have to use it anymore. There is the new Google Chrome extension that does that long missing autosave function. You can check it out on following link: Basecamp Chrome Autosave extension and I would suggest you to install it before you get frustrated one more time.

Basecamp autosave Chrome extension

Cheers!

During the last few years, Magento has quickly established itself as one of the leading ecommerce platforms on the Web. It’s open source architecture and adaptability have made it  an excellent choice for full range of users,  starting from small shops to large enterprise clients.  There is a huge community of programmers behind it, and number of extensions and plugins for it is  growing constantly.  Although Magento  is very powerful it is not without it’s drawbacks. One of main issues people have regarding Magento is it’s speed, as it tends to be pretty slow if no optimizations are made.

One of the ways to give your Magento installation a speed boost is installing The Alternative PHP Cache (APC), a free and open opcode cache for PHP on your server.  Although the actual speed gain may vary, in most of the cases it provides instant speed up for both back end and front end. Let us delve into the installation process itself.

First, you need to install pcre package, as it is required for APC installation. Execute these commands from SSH shell:

cd ~
yum install pcre-devel

Next, we get the needed files from pecl.php.net server, and prepare them for installation:

cd ~
mkdir setups
cd setups
wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.1.5.tgz
tar -xvf APC-3.1.5.tgz
cd APC-3.1.5
phpize
./configure –enable-apc –enable-apc-mmap –with-apxs –with-php config=/usr/local/bin/php-config
make

Files are now ready for install, and we do it by executing a simple command:

make install

Now we need to enable APC in php.ini. Open your php.ini file and add these lines:

apc.enabled = 1
apc.shm_segments = 1
apc.shm_size = 64
apc.max_file_size = 10M
apc.stat=1

Now you should restart your Apache server, and then enable APC caching in Magento. You do this by adding this piece of code under <global> tag in app/etc/local.xml file of your Magento installation:

<cache>
<backend>apc</backend>
<prefix>alphanumeric</prefix>
</cache>

Congratulations, you have successfully installed and configured APC on your Magento store! You should see almost immediate boost in speed and responsiveness of the site. One thing that you should note is that APC and Zend Optimizer don’t work well together, so if you have Zend Optimizer installed, turn it off by commenting out it’s configuration lines in php.ini.

Bear in mind that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Magento speed optimization. There are many more methods and tweaks that can be implemented, and I hope I will be writing about them soon.

In Firefox – YSlow requires the Firebug plugin, but Chrome version stands on its own. You can get the new beta version of YSlow for Chrome from Google Chrome Extension website.

Once installed, YSlow for Chrome will work like on Firefox. Only this time, you’ll see one difference – instead of being added to the bottom of the page as a frame, YSlow for Chrome floats in its own window, which makes it easier to compare YSlow data from multiple websites.

New extensions for Chrome keep popping out every day making this browser more competitive then ever.

Checkout these websites that offer inspiration on web, and enjoy them!

Web inspiration #1: Designmoo

Designmoo is a community of designers who think it’s best to share our design resources. That means they love to share fonts, brushes, textures, icons, illustrations, and more with anyone that might find them useful.

Their goal is to build a great network of designers and community resources and provide a centralized location for finding great-looking free design resources.

Designmoo

Web inspiration #2: Creattica

Creattica is a gallery of great design and inspirational imagery. Anyone can submit their work for consideration and voting on items is open to one and all. The best work is accepted and featured in the gallery which receives thousands of visitors every day.

Creattica

Web inspiration #3: 365psd

365psd is a project to give these designs a second chance. Jonno Riekwel felt it was time for a change. “Why not give these (forgotten) files a new life by giving them away, for free?” So he started on a journey to release an unused .psd design everyday, for at least a year.

There are hundreds of .psd’s ready to be downloaded and used in your next project.

365psd

Web inspiration #4: Design Kindle

Design Kindle love how helpful the web design community is and want to return the favor by offering premium quality web design files absolutely free. No required membership, no hidden fees, just web design resources ready to be downloaded. All files are royalty-free and are created exclusively for Design Kindle viewers, which means you won’t find our resources available anywhere else. Last but not least, you can use any of our downloads in your personal or commercial projects! You’re not obligated to link back, but it would be nice if you did.

Design Kindle

Web inspiration #5: Dribbble

Dribbble is show and tell for creatives. Designers, developers and other creatives share shots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on.

Dribbble

Web inspiration #6: Forrst

Forrst is a community of passionate developers and designers focused on helping themselves and others get better at their craft, providing thoughtful critiques, and sharing their knowledge to build better applications and websites.

Forrst

Web inspiration #7: Logo Pond

Logo Pond is a website, a place to fish for ideas, brand and identity showcase. Rich with awesome work of tallented people.

Logo Pond

The soldier’s initial probes for mines revealed nothing, but this was merely lucky. He was led to a false conclusion—with disastrous results.

As developers, we also work in minefields. There are hundreds of traps just waiting to catch us each day. Remembering the soldier’s tale, we should be wary of drawing false conclusions. We should avoid programming by coincidence—relying on luck and accidental successes—in favor of programming deliberately.

How to Program by Coincidence

Suppose Fred is given a programming assignment. Fred types in some code, tries it, and it seems to work. Fred types in some more code, tries it, and it still seems to work. After several weeks of coding this way, the program suddenly stops working, and after hours of trying to fix it, he still doesn’t know why. Fred may well spend a significant amount of time chasing this piece of code around without ever being able to fix it. No matter what he does, it just doesn’t ever seem to work right.

Fred doesn’t know why the code is failing because he didn’t know why it worked in the first place. It seemed to work, given the limited “testing” that Fred did, but that was just a coincidence. Buoyed by false confidence, Fred charged ahead into oblivion. Now, most intelligent people may know someone like Fred, but we know better. We don’t rely on coincidences—do we?

Sometimes we might. Sometimes it can be pretty easy to confuse a happy coincidence with a purposeful plan. Let’s look at a few examples.

Accidents of Implementation

Accidents of implementation are things that happen simply because that’s the way the code is currently written. You end up relying on undocumented error or boundary conditions.

Suppose you call a routine with bad data. The routine responds in a particular way, and you code based on that response. But the author didn’t intend for the routine to work that way—it was never even considered. When the routine gets “fixed”, your code may break. In the most extreme case, the routine you called may not even be designed to do what you want, but it seems to work okay. Calling things in the wrong order, or in the wrong context, is a related problem.

    paint(g);
    invalidate();
    validate();
    revalidate();
    repaint();
    paintImmediately(r);

Here it looks like Fred is desperately trying to get something out on the screen. But these routines were never designed to be called this way; although they seem to work, that’s really just a coincidence.

To add insult to injury, when the component finally does get drawn, Fred won’t try to go back and take out the spurious calls. “It works now, better leave well enough alone…”

It’s easy to be fooled by this line of thought. Why should you take the risk of messing with something that’s working? Well, we can think of several reasons:

• It may not really be working—it might just look like it is.
• The boundary condition you rely on may be just an accident. In different circumstances (a different screen resolution, perhaps), it might behave differently.
• Undocumented behavior may change with the next release of the library.
• Additional and unnecessary calls make your code slower.
• Additional calls also increase the risk of introducing new bugs of their own.

For code you write that others will call, the basic principles of good modularization and of hiding implementation behind small, well-documented interfaces can all help. A well-specified contract can help eliminate misunderstandings.

For routines you call, rely only on documented behavior. If you can’t, for whatever reason, then document your assumption well.

Accidents of Context

You can have “accidents of context” as well. Suppose you are writing a utility module. Just because you are currently coding for a GUI environment, does the module have to rely on a GUI being present? Are you relying on English-speaking users? Literate users? What else are you relying on that isn’t guaranteed?

Implicit Assumptions

Coincidences can mislead at all levels—from generating requirements through to testing. Testing is particularly fraught with false causalities and coincidental outcomes. It’s easy to assume that X causes Y, but as we said – don’t assume it, prove it.

At all levels, people operate with many assumptions in mind—but these assumptions are rarely documented and are often in conflict between different developers. Assumptions that aren’t based on well-established facts are the bane of all projects.

Don’t Program by Coincidence

Don’t Program by Coincidence

We want to spend less time churning out code, catch and fix errors as early in the development cycle as possible, and create fewer errors to begin with. It helps if we can program deliberately:

• Always be aware of what you are doing. Fred let things get slowly out of hand, until he ended up boiled, like the frog in Stone Soup and Boiled Frogs.
• Don’t code blindfolded. Attempting to build an application you don’t fully understand, or to use a technology you aren’t familiar with, is an invitation to be misled by coincidences.
• Proceed from a plan, whether that plan is in your head, on the back of a cocktail napkin, or on a wall-sized printout from a CASE tool.
• Rely only on reliable things. Don’t depend on accidents or assumptions. If you can’t tell the difference in particular circumstances, assume the worst.
• Document your assumptions. Design by Contract, page 101, can help clarify your assumptions in your own mind, as well as help communicate them to others.
• Don’t just test your code, but test your assumptions as well. Don’t guess; actually try it. Write an assertion to test your assumptions (see Assertive Programming, page 113). If your assertion is right, you have improved the documentation in your code. If you discover your assumption is wrong, then count yourself lucky.
• Prioritize your effort. Spend time on the important aspects; more than likely, these are the hard parts. If you don’t have fundamentals or infrastructure correct, brilliant bells and whistles will be irrelevant.
• Don’t be a slave to history. Don’t let existing code dictate future code. All code can be replaced if it is no longer appropriate. Even within one program, don’t let what you’ve already done constrain what you do next—be ready to refactor. This decision may impact the project schedule. The assumption is that the impact will be less than the cost of not making the change.

So next time something seems to work, but you don’t know why, make sure it isn’t just a coincidence.

Source

Source of this blog post is excelent book that inspired me in many ways. This book is called The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master, and I reccoment you to buy it.

How to write a blog post

1. Generalized observation about the topic isn’t enough to write a great blog post. Your approach to writing a blog post should be serious as you are writing an essay. Every work should be based on arguments and answer the main questions (see point 2.). When you think about writing bear this on your mind: your work should prove something – one or few closely related thesis, based on offered evidence and your reasoning. Finding evidence usually requests reading the sources a couple of times.
2. Your first effort should be to formulate exact question(s) that you are going to answer. Next are forming an opinion based on your source research and writing provisional thesis. Don’t attach yourself to this thesis, they should only be your starting points. Review them and try to find all possible anti-thesis as well as your likely answers to them.
3. Why is it important to have this provisional thesis?
   There are many ways you can present your arguments, but only one is the right one: from first to the last sentence your arguments must be presented clearly, organised and convincingly. You must agree with me that process of forming an opinion is everything but organised, clear and convincing.
4. All successful methods of writing a great blog post (or any other work) consist of the following:
   • start with writing even before you think you are ready. While you are still in process of thinking don’t rely only on your memory, it might happen to you that some really cool ideas just disappear. Write down everything interesting that came across your mind or what you find in reference. That will help you not only to have everything about the topic in one place but also in reviewing the topic itself.
   • don’t try to write your post right away, you know, from beginning to an end “in one breath”, but write down things that seem interesting to you and about what you are forming an opinion. Even if you don’t know how everything will fit in the end, write it down.
   • don’t get lost in your writing freedom. Have always on your mind that your goal is to answer the given topic as best as you can, and focus your thoughts on reviling the topic
   • avoid writing the whole work from beginning to an end, and then correcting sentence by sentence, instead of that, try to write it in several parts. Don’t be afraid to delete one whole part or add one during your creation process. Give yourself enough time to think about every part of the blog post even if you don’t make any real changes on the post for a couple of days.
   • in the end, when you have quite completed and well organized draft of your thesis, check your sentences. Their content and sequence should be obvious and easy-to-understand to readers. They must be able to follow your thoughts smoothly and easily. There are two more important aspects in sentence revision:
     - punctuality and ability of words you used in your work and
     - economical – succinctly, but clearly presented opinions.

You’re ready to make your great (not good) blog post. Start right now!

I hope you’ll find them useful!

Top freelance job website 1: Smashing Jobs

One of top web design/development magazines has its Job board. Here you can find quality advertisers, and good projects for your next freelance job.

Smashing Jobs

Top freelance job website 2: oDesk

oDesk is the marketplace for online work teams, with the best business model for both employers and contractors. Our unique approach guarantees to employers that an hour billed is an hour worked, while guaranteeing to contractors that an hour worked is an hour paid.

This win-win approach attracts more work to oDesk than to any other online work marketplace. Each month, thousands of companies of all sizes post jobs on oDesk, representing more than $65,000,000. At the same time, hundreds of thousands of top-notch professionals, including web developers, software programmers, graphic designers, writers, customer service representatives and virtual assistants, offer their services through oDesk.

With an average job size of $5,000, oDesk is the best place to find meaningful work and top-flight talent. More than doubling in size each year since 2004, oDesk is where companies are building their entire organizations online and is the primary source of income for thousands of contractors. oDesk is truly changing how the world works.

oDesk

Top freelance job website 3: Freelance Switch

FreelanceSwitch is a community of expert freelancers from around the world.

Freelancing is largely about finding work, that’s why FreelanceSwitch has a large part of the site dedicated to doing just that. Join FreelanceSwitch subscription and you’ll get access to apply for jobs on the Freelance Job Board as well as listings in our Freelancer Directory.

Freelance Switch

Top freelance job website 4: Authentic Jobs

Authentic Jobs is a targeted destination for web & creative professionals, and the companies seeking to hire them.

Since 2005, qualified candidates have been applying for great opportunities at Apple, Backcountry.com, Comcast, Electronic Arts, ESPN, Estee Lauder, Facebook, Fluidesign, frog design, Garmin, HBO, HP, HUGE, Magnani Caruso Dutton, Meetup.com, The Motley Fool, MSNBC.com, Phinney Bischoff, Skype, Sony BMG, Turner Sports Interactive, and many other companies large and small.

Authentic Jobs

Top freelance job website 5: All Dev Jobs

AllDevJobs is a job board for designers and developers seeking the best positions at top companies around the world. They strive to provide only the top jobs in development to the most targeted group of creative and technical professionals they possibly can.

All Dev Jobs

Top freelance job website 6: Krop

Krop is a Job Board and career resource website for creative professionals. Whether you’re looking for job, or hunting top-notch talent, Krop’s simple and powerful tools are geared towards connecting the worlds brightest minds with the best companies.

Krop

How to choose website?

Visit all of them, see their terms and conditions, check out opportunity each one of them gives you, and go for your next freelance job!