Acquia.com Blog

Drupal Gardens adds content access control, image tools, bulk operations, and more!

Chris Brookins — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:57:50 +0000

This is the 21st in our series of Drupal Gardens 'What's New' posts, and we think this one is especially worth celebrating. Need to restrict valuable content on your site to only privileged users? Want to crop, rotate or resize uploaded images in your posts? Wish you could click to perform bulk delete or other operations on lists of users, content or media? Long for better control over how comments are displayed on your site? With this release, we've got you covered.

A lot went into making these features simple, but powerful. For content access control, we started with the powerful Taxonomy Access Control module, and worked with maintainer Jess (xjm) to make it easier to assign access permissions with an alternative user interface. In addition, we created the TAC Redirect 403 module that allows custom upsell pages for different categories of restricted content. For cropping, rotating and resizing image media we created the Media: image editing module. For bulk operations we added the Views Bulk Operations module and worked with maintainer Bojan Živanović (bojanz) to simplify the UI. For comment customization, we created the Comment Goodness module. As usual, the patches and modules developed for these features were donated back to drupal.org so the entire community can benefit. We hope you find them useful!

The Drupal Gardens service was updated on Jan. 30th with the following new features and enhancements:

Crop, rotate, and resize images in the WYSIWYG editor
Content editors can use the WYSIWYG editor to rotate, crop, and scale images on the fly. To learn more, see Crop, rotate, and scale embedded images.
Customize how comments are displayed
Now you can sort comments per content type and customize commenting labels. For a YouTube-like comment experience, you can sort comments by ‘Newer first’ which also moves the comment form to the top of the comment stream. To learn more, see Customizing comments and sorting.
Eliminate repetitive site administration tasks with bulk operations
For Basic subscription plans or higher, save time and eliminate repetitive administrative tasks by extending your views with Views Bulk Operations. With this feature you can select multiple items in a view (e.g. content, users, media, etc) and click to bulk delete, bulk publish, and more. To learn more, see Applying bulk actions to view items
Restrict access to your site's content to privileged users.
For Professional subscription plans or higher, Drupal Gardens provides fine-grained access control to your site’s content using Taxonomy-based access control. With this feature, you can define access control rules describing which users (by role) can view, edit, or delete content. Then you can apply these access control rules to any content you want. Optionally, you can allow some users to see a teaser of the content, but then redirect them to another web page when they try to view the full version of content in order to upsell them or provide information about how they can get access to your premium content. To learn more, see Restricting access to site content.
For a complete list of what's new, including updates to Drupal modules and bug fixes, see the release notes.

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acquia drupal planet

drupalgardens

Drupal Gardens adds content access control, image tools, bulk operations, and more!

Chris Brookins — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:25:29 +0000

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What's New

Ensure internal adoption with end-user training

heather — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:01:07 +0000

This week we'll learn about the importance of end-user training. In February, I'll write about modules you can use to customize the editor user experience in Drupal, and some news about initiatives in Drupal to improve the content administrator experience.

Say you’ve built or purchased a flexible, extensible application with Drupal. Because Drupal is highly malleable, it’s likely a wholly unique custom system. A downside is that this leaves end users at a loss in terms of self-teaching. They may be inclined to simply search for “Drupal” tutorials, yielding an array of irrelevant information.

There's no doubt that Drupal 7 has greatly improved user experience, yet once you begin to customize it with new content types with multiple fields and custom workflows, it becomes another application altogether. You may hope if a site is well designed, that all of your end users will be able to use it instantly. However, if a "one day course about Twitter" exists for an application with one simple text field, then a reasonably robust Drupal site certainly can benefit from some end user training.

Prepare for the end-user at design time: Recommended modules and techniques

End-user experience is ideally taken into account at design time, yet too often site maintainers and content editors are not well-considered in the equation. Who is managing your site? Are they the same people managing the build of the project? If the site developers speak to or observe typical end-users, simple improvements can be found and implemented quickly. As well, there are several modules to help make content administration better if installed and configured properly. Here are some suggestions:

Provide safe sandboxes to allow staff to learn, experiment and test content types as they learn.
Make custom internal landing pages with Views and custom menus to help staff complete their important tasks.
Use images in content editing screens to explain the final output of a node/add form.
Export Views as modules allowing clients to edit or customize Views safely with a roll back option.
Improve content moderation and workflows with tools such as Workbench Moderation or a content Scheduler.
Add a simple Save Draft button to the content creation form.
Help content and site managers deal with problem users with Flag and custom Views.
Test either Administration menu, or Admin menu which might offer better controls than the default toolbar for your users.

Aidan Foster of Foster Interactive has a great presentation about Simplifying end-user experience, check it out for more ideas.

Leveraging the power of Drupal through Site Builder training

In certain situations, clients may need staff members with site-builder level abilities. Site building knowledge can allow staff to alter the layout of page layouts or to change the fields displayed in a content listing. Often, this indicates a shift in how the company manages development by putting some power in the hands of trusted managers who do not need to refer simple development tasks to an internal (IT) development team. In fact, to really leverage the full power of Drupal (and experience some related cost saving), they may well need full Drupal Site Builder training.

Adoption is key to success

To realize the full power of Drupal, cultural adoption becomes as important as teaching technical procedures. Staff transitioning from a previous system may bring unique cultural challenges to the switch to Drupal. In some ways the design of the project can make the transition smoother using some suggestions mentioned above. However, even for the simplest of implementations, a training program that provides clear guidance and explains the benefits of the new system can make or break the new project.

Taking into account staff turnover and incremental site changes, training should be done with an eye towards on-going delivery. This can be made easier by starting with solid documentation and supplementary self-paced training materials accessible by end-users.

How we can help with end-user training to ensure the success of your project

For many web development agencies, packaging sites and applications with useful end user documentation may require time consuming preparation of materials (think "screenshotting"). Rushing this process may result in inadequate details provided about the site for staff. End user training needs to clearly match the real goals of end-users and the overall usage of the site. It's really a bespoke service.

Acquia offers customizable end-user training packages to ensure project success post-delivery. We base these training packages on selections of tutorials for typical site administration procedures from our Content administration in Drupal course. We combine it with our tested Drupal curriculum to provide training adapted for your needs.

For example, tutorials may be selected depending on what permissions are available to each user role. We can deliver a tailored resource customized with the your site's terminology and screenshots; as well as adding documentation of any additional procedures not covered in the standard set of tools.

Courses can be delivered on-site (in person training), or as online training (live or asyncronous). Clients are left with a set of useful end-user training manuals and other resources.
To find out more, please see our Customized end user training and Content administration in Drupal course.

In February, I'll write about the modules you can use to improve the content manager experience, what we can learn from other systems, along with some good news about initiatives in Drupal to improve the content administration.

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.net Web Design and Development Survey 2012 – have your say!

Nikki Tyson — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 18:58:49 +0000

The team at .net magazine have launched their web design survey this week.

For those of you who don’t know, .net magazine is a valuable resource for those serious about web design and development on both sides of the Atlantic. Every few years they run a comprehensive industry survey.

This year, Acquia is proud to sponsor the 2012 edition of the survey, which aims to build a detailed and thorough profile of the web design industry, its members and key trends on an international basis.

Most importantly and in the spirit of openness (and open source), the data will be available to the community to download via the .net website once the results have been collated*.

Topics include trends in CMS, web app frameworks and tool adoption as well as confidence in the industry, skills and salaries.

Don’t forget to have your say and take part in shaping the future of our industry.

You have until March 20 to participate!

Participate today!

*Don't worry, any data that's made available will be aggregated, non-personal and anonymous.

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Security Training at DrupalCon Denver

eludwig — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 13:48:59 +0000

Erich and Greg Talk Training

As we get ready for DrupalCon Denver in March, we want to introduce you to our trainers, and give you a sense of what will be covered in our training courses. First up, we have Security: Process, Code & Hands-On Training with Greggles (aka Greg Knaddison, Drupal Security Team Lead & Acquia's Director of Security Services).

In the video above, check out Greg and Erich Ludwig (Director, Learning Services @ Acquia) as they chat about security training, Denver restaurant recommendations, and other fun things!

As an added extra bonus preview, Greggles will be conducting free Webinars on Wednesday, February 1 at 9 am ET and 1 pm ET. Click the times to sign up for those webinars.

If you'd like to attend the course at DrupalCon, sign up here, and do so soon to ensure you get a spot in this class (and get the early bird discount - Drupalcon ticket prices are going up on February 21st!).

See you in Denver.

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Proprietary CMS - know when to fold 'em

scottdavis — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:17:26 +0000

The road to implementing successful enterprise solutions presents many challenges, precisely because they're designed to address complex business needs. Having worked with various applications over the last 20 years, I've seen five immutable laws at work:

1) Vendors suck you dry. Partners make you succeed.

Any vendor who charges a license fee only does so for one reason: to keep you from leaving. It's an ante designed to keep you hooked as they slowly reveal their true cards (from a deck that is undoubtedly stacked). Interest in your success is secondary. Their primary goal is to win all of your chips.

When no license fee exists, this provides a fundamental shift in the relationship. Technology partners such as Acquia are instead required to excel in treating you as a customer: to put your interests first at all times, to ensure your continual success, and to prove our worth repeatedly in order to justify an annual subscription.

2) Any technology can be utilized poorly. Proper assessment is key.

Numerous angles exist to any software's operation. As part of determining fit, we've all been trained to engage in a series of exercises including:

RFI -> RFP -> POC

to narrow a field of software options by probing around the edges of each application with increasing depth. Even at this stage, you are beholden to any proprietary software vendor to give you accurate responses. Open source products such as Drupal enable another option to assess fit:

DOWNLOAD

Want to see things up-and-running in your environment? Want to test various use cases as defined in your requirements document? Want to inspect the underlying code to validate adherence to standards? Download it. Install it. Test it. Read it. The best way to ensure proper fit is full transparency - an option not available from any closed source vendor.

3) One dimensional depth only makes you flat. Scale spherically to outpace the rest.

Why limit your success to 200 people in Copenhagen or Boston, when you can take advantage of a truly global community in excess of the 600,000 people actively contributing to Drupal?

Whether extending functionality, writing documentation, or providing implementation expertise - the diverse range of specialties available under open source far outpace any single proprietary technology’s. Coupled with the ability in Drupal to quickly assemble vs code, and you can scale spherically to achieve a more competitive TTM and TCO.

4) Roadmaps stunt your growth. Innovate at the pace you require.

False dichotomies on roadmaps abound. The issue is not how soon a single vendor can provide something new for you. The issue is that you need a partner who will support your changes at the pace your business dictates (and not theirs).

Open source allows anyone to add capabilities as they’re needed, giving you full control vs waiting on a vendor roadmap. Case in point: during the last 3 years, the number of modules for Drupal has expanded from 5,000 to over 12,000 available today.

5) Reactive support is no longer sufficient. Today's needs are more comprehensive.

Each install of any application will be configured and customized to varying levels, and at some point - every one will break. When this occurs, proprietary vendors will only assist with issues in their own code. The reality is that many pieces are involved, easily extending beyond that boundary. This archaic view of "support" is not only insufficient, it's irresponsible.

Acquia stands behind every Drupal install: from its core, to contributed modules, to any extensions. We remain focused on your success at all times with both proactive and reactive elements to our support model.

And our approach is firmly validated by both our phenomenal growth, as well as our consistent renewal rates. All of which are achieved without any ante.

As for the rest of the CMS field who do, “you got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em”.

OpenSaaS Brings New Freedom to the Cloud

Bryan House — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 14:11:13 +0000

The rise of SaaS, software delivered as a service, is having an enormously disruptive impact on the software industry. Forrester Research estimates that spending on SaaS technology will double by 2013, representing 16% of all software spend. Gartner Research estimates that SaaS software spend is growing at 18%, compounded annually, and will reach $23B by 2015.

At the same time, open source adoption in the enterprise is reaching a tipping point. According to Accenture, 77% of high performance organizations are piloting or committing to open source.

What is driving the rapid ascent of SaaS? Organizations large and small are looking to SaaS applications to reduce costs and simplify software application management. SaaS promises significant operation efficiencies, as IT organizations can offload the complex, expensive processes necessary to manage enterprise applications. Every application requires software and security updates, new capabilities to test and release, along with a web infrastructure to maintain for performance, security and reliability. SaaS provides organizations with a mechanism to reduce their spend on application management, costs that can consume the IT budget.

Many IT organizations spend as much as 70% of their budget on sustaining engineering, keeping their current application portfolio up and running. As a result, investments in new technologies that spur innovation are severely limited, creating a gulf between IT and business leaders focused on achieving company objectives. SaaS-delivered applications represents an opportunity for organizations to adjust their IT spend to better align with their core business strategies and increase technology investments in areas that are directly tied to the organization’s success.

One technology category that is at the forefront of innovation spending is open source technologies. In many application categories, including web content management, cloud, and big data, open source technologies are leading the way. The question, therefore, is can an organization take advantage of both of these trends – SaaS efficiencies and open source innovation – at the same time?

The answer is yes, with OpenSaaS.

OpenSaaS is SaaS with open source principles, and technology, at its core. Its SaaS applications built on open source technologies, enabling organizations to tap into the innovation that results from the collective efforts of thousands of developers actively contributing to an open source project. OpenSaaS provides a ready-to-use, fully functional environment to pilot new projects, test-drive new applications or launch large-scale initiatives. And because it’s delivered as a service, organizations can take advantage of the potential cost savings and operational efficiencies inherent with SaaS applications.

At the same time, there is no vendor or platform lock-in. Application requirements evolve, pilots become full-scale projects and what made sense to run in a multi-tenant SaaS environment at one time may now require a more bespoke solution. This is where the true power of OpenSaaS kicks in. When you want to leave an OpenSaaS environment, you export a copy of your application – code, database, and design – and move it to wherever you want.

OpenSaaS is about freedom, as in speech — or, as they say in French, “libre.” It means the option to leave has to be more valuable than actually leaving: Services have to deliver tangible value and exceed customer expectations. If it doesn’t, customers will (rightly) fly the coop.

For high-performance organizations focused on innovation, OpenSaaS is the best of both worlds. Take advantage of market defining open source technologies on an enterprise scale, while capturing the benefits of SaaS application delivery – simplified application management, reduced IT complexity and lower total cost of ownership. OpenSaaS means that buyers can obtain business value from the software delivered as a cloud service, while retaining the control they would get from running software themselves – but without investing in the hardware, resources and overhead that comes with managing the application directly. OpenSaaS eliminates the tradeoff between application control and SaaS, giving IT organizations unprecedented freedom to chose the application deployment model that best meets their needs, for both today and tomorrow.

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Adding SOPA blackout to a Drupal Gardens

Jacob Singh — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:55:53 +0000

The content in this post is solely the opinion of me (Jacob) and does not necessarily reflect the opinons of my employer (Acquia) or anyone else - living, dead, living-dead or otherwise transcendentally meditating.

If you want to blackout your site in protest of SOPA/PIPA, here's what you gotta do:

(hat tip to http://www.zachstronaut.com for the blackout page).

Important: Keep the url mysite.drupalgardens.com/admin/content handy.

Once you follow these instructions, your site will go dark (if it is January 18th 2012). If you want to get it back, you will need to delete the block later.

Navigate to Structure -> Blocks
Click on "Add Block"
In the "Body" use the dropdown to change from "Safe HTML" to "Full HTML" (the buttons will go away)
Make the block show by setting a region.
Copy the following and paste it into the body:

<script type="text/javascript">
    var a = new Date;
    if (18 == a.getDate() && 0 == a.getMonth() && 2012 == a.getFullYear()) {
        window.onload = function () {
            var cover = document.createElement('div');
            cover.style.position = 'fixed';
            cover.style.zIndex = 9999999;
            cover.style.width = window.innerWidth + 'px';
            cover.style.height = window.innerHeight + 'px';
            cover.style.top = 0;
            cover.style.backgroundColor = '#000';
            cover.innerHTML = '<iframe src="http://www.zachstronaut.com/lab/text-shadow-box/stop-sopa.html" width="100%" height="100%" frameBorder="0"></iframe>';
            document.body.appendChild(cover);
            window.onresize = function () {
                cover.style.width = window.innerWidth + 'px';
                cover.style.height = window.innerHeight + 'px';
            }
        }
    }
</script>

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mm_t:

Site building is for coders too.

heather — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:49:31 +0000

New to Drupal, but you're an experienced coder? Drop the API, and step away from the command line.

In one of our most popular webinars of 2011 about developing with Drupal, developer Camilla Jensen (naxoc) admitted that- even with her experience with J2EE and PHP development, much of her work on a typical Drupal project starts with *research*.

During the morning tea break at our last DrupalCon training in London, a student confided that he expected we'd have started with more "coding". In fact, our "Making the Switch" course started with quests to research various scenarios, and a discussion of the best solutions to the scenarios. As a side note, these scenarios come from our client RFPs, and represent the typical kinds of client requests you might come across. [Plug: we're teaching another "Making the switch" course for developers in DrupalCon Denver this year.]

However, this student said he expected we'd be working mostly in the command line- to show exactly where he could intercept and modify functionality. He gave the following example of a site he was developing in Drupal 6:

"I used the Staff List module, and it makes a list of staff... yet it displays the username for each person. Problem is, sometimes these are not that appropriate for a professional setting. I wanted to modify the Staff List module so I could add first names and last names to it.. I followed it through and it looked like the only place I could fix it was in the node module... but I knew that didn't sound right."

He asked had I heard of the staff list module, and well, I had to admit - no, I didn't know it. I was actually surprised it existed.

I pulled back for a second and told him about "Content profile". This is a solution to leverage the generic nodes and fields system in Drupal 6. It creates a separate record, a "profile" associated with a user account. To that, you can add fields... and before I finished the sentence, he said, "Oh" and he realized he could add "firstname" and "lastname" fields. And... of course, select these fields with Views, and show the professional staff list you want. [I should note, with Drupal 7, you can now add fields to users without Content profile, but you can get similar functionality with Profile2 to separate user profiles from accounts.]

Later, we did delve into Module development so he could have figured out where to alter that contributed module. More importantly he knew when to do code, and when to configure.

Best practices in Drupal development depend on a developer knowing the existing systems within Drupal, and leveraging them. Most of what you want to do can be done with the abstract tools such as fields, taxonomy, views; so that you can spend your time coding and developing the really tricky stuff for your own client's unique needs. Contributed modules may even be a basis for your own custom code, but it's also important to understand the main sub-systems of Drupal so you can evaluate the modules.

That's why site building skills are crucial for experienced developers who are new to Drupal. For many projects the Drupal offers sustainability in the fact that systems like fields or views allow non-coders to maintain and alter configuration. Thus allowing others on the team to understand how a site or service has been assembled.

There are a number of great learning resources out there, but we do hope you'll join our network of experienced partners for Drupal 7 in a Day and Site Building course this winter. We can also make a custom training package for you, contact us.

Drupal 7 in a Day

Kawasaki, Gennai3, on Jan 19
Mohali, Srijan, on Jan 20 - Jan 21
Manalapan, Blink Reaction, on Jan 21
Washington, Fig Leaf, on Jan 23
San Diego, Doug Vann, on Jan 26
Leuven, dataflow, on Jan 27
Dallas, Tom McCracken, LevelTen, on Feb 1
New Albany, Buckeye Interactive, on Feb 3
Portland, OpenSourcery, on Feb 5
New York, Blink Reaction, on Feb 8
Washington, Fig Leaf, on Feb 13
Paris, Linalis, on Feb 21
Portland, OpenSourcery, on Feb 24
Burlington, Acquia, on Feb 24
Chicago, Duo Consulting Instructor Susan Rust, on Mar 1
Portland, OpenSourcery, on Mar 2
Chicago, Duo Consulting, on Mar 2
New York, Blink Reaction, on Mar 7
Genève, Linalis, on Mar 13
Washington, Fig Leaf, on Mar 19
San Francisco, OpenSourcery, on Mar 31

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Announcing the Launch of the King Center website and Digital Archive

demet — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 14:59:54 +0000

This post originally appeared on Palantir.net at http://palantir.net/blog/announcing-launch-king-center-website-and-digit...

There are few figures who have had as great an impact on the history of the last century as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. While every schoolchild is aware of the role he played in the American Civil Rights Movement, Dr. King’s efforts to improve society through non-violent social activism are less widely-known today.

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change is an organization founded by Coretta Scott King after her husband’s assassination in 1968. In addition to serving as a living memorial to Dr. King, the King Center also helps promote his philosophy of using nonviolent methods to address social problems and economic inequality.

Palantir.net is honored to have led the technical development of the new King Center website, which has its official launch today. Working in partnership with New York-based design firm C&G Partners, the new site is designed to help the King Center better connect with a new generation of people who have been inspired by Dr. King and are interested in learning more about him and his message.

Central to this effort is an all-new Digital Archive, which provides online access to thousands of historical documents relating to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement that have never before been available to the public.

Development of the new website and the Digital Archive was initiated and driven by JPMorgan Chase's Technology for Social Good group as part of the King Center Imaging Project. The goal of the Imaging Project is to enable people everywhere to learn firsthand from the wealth of knowledge stored in the King Center archives by preserving and sharing the vast majority of the estimated one million documents held by the Center, in addition to other collections relating to Dr. King.

The site is built in Drupal 7 and hosted on Acquia’s Managed Cloud platform. Assets for the online Digital Archive are stored using AT&T's Synaptic Storage as a Service, which is powered by EMC's Atmos technology. The Archive itself is managed using the open source Alfresco platform, which was customized and implemented by Micro Strategies, Inc.

With every project at Palantir, one of our goals is to help enable people to share information in new and exciting ways. The King Center’s new site not only does this, but it also provides access to information that few people have seen before. Whether it’s an early draft of the “I Have a Dream” speech or the handwritten notes from his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, we hope that material available on the King Center site will help engage and inspire people for years to come.

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The King Center

Drupal

Acquia Partner

Acquia.com Blog

Drupal Gardens adds content access control, image tools, bulk operations, and more!

Drupal Gardens adds content access control, image tools, bulk operations, and more!

Ensure internal adoption with end-user training

Prepare for the end-user at design time: Recommended modules and techniques

Leveraging the power of Drupal through Site Builder training

Adoption is key to success

How we can help with end-user training to ensure the success of your project

.net Web Design and Development Survey 2012 – have your say!

Security Training at DrupalCon Denver

Proprietary CMS - know when to fold 'em

OpenSaaS Brings New Freedom to the Cloud

Adding SOPA blackout to a Drupal Gardens

Site building is for coders too.

Drupal 7 in a Day

Learn Site building in Drupal 7

Announcing the Launch of the King Center website and Digital Archive