chrisfree.me

Use hook_views_query_alter to handle special sort cases

chris — Sun, 19 Dec 2010 22:39:05 +0000

This week I ran into a problem I’d never run into before with a view. I needed to specify some custom sorting that the Views UI simply doesn’t have options for. Luckily, views provides a hook for just this situation.

Use Alfred to Search Drupal API Documentation

chris — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 21:00:19 +0000

Quick tip on how I use Alfred to search Drupal API Documentation right from my desktop. Saves me tons of time and I love a solution that keeps my hands off of my mouse.

Create a Drupal Photo Gallery Using Flickr, CCK & Views, Take Two

chris — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:11:39 +0000

Back in February, I wrote a quick tutorial on how you can leverage Views, CCK and the Flickr module to create a photo gallery in Drupal. It is by far the most popular post on this humble site of mine (garnering about 36% of my traffic). Long story short, the Flickr module was updated (for the better) and the tutorial was outdated. The technique I described in the original tutorial was no longer correct. So, people following it (trusing that I knew what I was talking about) couldn’t replicate the results. This post is long overdue but I hope it helps clear things up on how to get the same results with the new Flickr module.

Disable Comments by Default

chris — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 20:14:59 +0000

A quick post here. Often times I find myself building sites that have a blog and thus use the Comment module that ships with Drupal. That all works great. The problem is, later when I’m building out other content types, say Photo Galleries, I more often than not wish to disable comments on those node types. No problem, right? Just disable comments and get on with it. Well no – it’s not all right with me. I think comments should be disabled by default or at the very least, the Comments fieldset should be expanded by default so that you’re reminded to turn them off. Unfortunately, neither of these things are true on Drupal 6.

Drupal 101: 10 Tips for Drupal Beginners

chris — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 20:33:18 +0000

You often hear people say that the learning curve for Drupal is steep. They aren’t kidding – it is. I remember when I first started Drupaling, I had so many questions: How do I do this? How do I change that? What are Views? How the hell do I get images into my content? How do I theme? The Drupal documentation and community has come a long way in the few years since then, but even still, diving in to Drupal can be a bit daunting. In an effort to help remedy this, I’ve thrown together some quick-tips to steer all you beginners in the right direction.

Create a Drupal Photo Gallery Using Flickr, CCK & Views

chris — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 03:30:50 +0000

STOP! This tutorial is outdated. An updated tutorial has been posted here.
Save yourself the confusion and head over there!

There’s an almost infinite number of ways to create a photo gallery with Drupal. I’ve tried many different approaches but never really been all that happy with the results. I’ve finally found a solution worth sharing/repeating. Here’s what we’ll be creating using Views, CCK and the Flickr module.

Drupal 101: How to Add Custom jQuery

chris — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 00:56:22 +0000

Full disclaimer here: I love jQuery – I use it all the time. jQuery has made my life as a designer/developer so much better. I use is it on all of my sites – which means I use it within Drupal. When I first got started developing sites with Drupal a few years ago, I remember thinking, “How the hell do I add my own JavaScript?!”. Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot since then.

There are a number of different ways to include jQuery plugins or one-off scripts into your sites/pages. Here’s an overview of some of the ways to do it. The solution you use will likely depend on your workflow or comfort working within the Drupal theme system.

Override the Drupal Contact Form

chris — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:31:45 +0000

Last week a client of ours at CHROMATIC requested an addition to the default contact form that ships with Drupal. Essentially, they just wanted to add a required “Phone Number” text field to the form. Additionally, they wanted this value to be sent along with the email that the contact module sends. One solution would have been to ditch the contact.module and just whip up a new page using the WebForm module. The other solution is to override both the form/email using the following hooks respectively in our own module: