CivicActions blogs

CiviCRM workshop in London

Alex Scott — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:19:02 +0000

The London CiviCRM event was short, 2 days, but packed with information. Bringing together both developers and advanced users it fused nicely the two sides of the fence.

We needed to install a version of 2.2 CiviCRM on our sandboxes in order to attend; well it was a breeze to do, perhaps down to the installer which handled the install – no need to even touch config files. So that was a great start.

CiviCRM Developer Camp

stella — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 09:14:09 +0000

This week I went to CiviCRM Developer Camp in London, UK. I must admit I've never used CiviCRM and downloaded and installed it for the first time the day before! The camp, which was un-conference in style, was held over two days, and over 20 people attended. It was meant to be a camp for experienced users, but given the varying degrees of knowledge of the people attending, I think it was less techy or advanced than originally intended.

Microsoft Tries To Defend NZ Government Contract Failure

Bevan Rudge — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 00:08:37 +0000

Kathryn Ryan of Radio NZ interviewed Don Christie, president of the NZ Open Source Society and Kevin Ackhurst, managing director of Microsoft NZ on Microsoft's failure to renew their multi-million dollar contract with the NZ government. The interviews and Kathryn's questions are intense and very interesting as Don Christie defends the government's choice to break out of a reliance on Microsoft's products, and Kevin Ackhurst tries to defend Microsoft's position, touting it as a success.

Highlights for me were Kevin Ackhursts rehearsed tape-recorder responses that avoid answering Kathryn's questions, and Kathryn's obvious frustration with his failure to state things as they are. It's clear that Microsoft wants to paint this as a success story, but is failing pretty badly.

I love Don Christie's "Microsoft software is like a virus..." which reminds me of Microsoft's "linux is a cancer" statements.

Drupalcon Paris, featuring Velib--the best public transport system in the world...

kev — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:21:03 +0000

Paris public transport has always been stellar, with an tight network of subway (métro) stations, commuter rail (RER/SNCF), and buses that can can get you within spitting distance of anywhere in the city, quickly and economically. But the implementation of the Velib bike-sharing program two years ago put Paris public transport a whole other level, by any measure--ecological, economic, public health, noise pollution, etc.

There are over 10,000 Velibs parked at over 1000 parking spots across the city. For a euro or day, or 5 euros a week, or 29 euros a year, you get an unlimited number of rentals lasting 30 minutes. Thirty minutes is enough to get you from Drupalcon to almost anywhere downtown. Need 45 minutes to bike somewhere? No problem, just find a Velib parking lot (they are rarely more than 200m away), park the bike you're riding, and pick up a new one. You could daisy chain your rides all day if you wanted to...

Three Symptoms of a Poorly Performing Website

RonAkanowicz — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:38:15 +0000

There are many reasons why employing a content strategist can help your website- from managing your content workflow to assessing your competitors content. But often times an organization feels just because there is content on the site that everything is okay. That may work for a while, until you start to see a measurable decline in its vital signs.

URGENT: Unlimited Software Patents In New Zealand. Act Now!

Bevan Rudge — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 05:21:27 +0000

NZ government is about to pass a new Patents Act. In the 8-year review, they seemingly forgot to consider the impacts of patents on computer software! Submissions on the bill are being accepted till 2 July, so we need to move fast. Make a submission now!

Apture: Making your drupal websites a power publishing platform

sumit — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:06:43 +0000

Drupal is a very powerful publishing and blogging platform, combining its power with apture you can convert it into a POWER publishing/blogging platform.

Apture can:

Add Wikipedia, YouTube, Google Maps, pictures, music, twitter and more from 50+ sources of multimedia content to your website in one click.
Upload and Link your own content including images, PowerPoint, PDF, Word documents, and Excel spreadsheets on your web pages.
Keep visitors on your site, instead of sending them away.

Here is an example how apture can solve most complex publishing workflows where you need pdfs, docs, videos, refs etc. all on one page!!:

Apture is already been adopted by many big publishers like:The New York Times , Washingtonpost.com, BBC news, Reuters etc.

To combine the power of apture and drupal - apture has released a new drupal module: http://drupal.org/project/apture This module adds a button on node-edit form to add apture rich media content.

One drawback

You need to have an apture account to add apture rich multimedia content on your website but talking with apture's CEO Tristan Harris he mentioned soon they will a way to do this automatically.

You can test Apture with drupal at http://apture.sumitk.net/ . You need to register an account before adding new content or you can use username/password = demo/demo to login.

Example of apture enabled pages:

AJAX-ifying Drupal Node Forms

stella — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 14:06:49 +0000

Recently, for the first time with Drupal 6, I needed to create a form where a variable number of fields could be added to it by simply clicking a 'Add more' button. I wanted to design a node form where users could create a custom compilation album of their favourite tracks. However the number of tracks would vary from album to album and so I wanted a way for users to be able to add more fields to the form without reloading the page. Now, yes I could have used CCK to build this custom content type, but I wanted to see how this could be done using Drupal's FAPI alone.

DrupalCon Paris 2009 Video

doug — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:43:29 +0000

DrupalCon Paris 2009 is two and a half months away and I'm excited. My wife Marcia is coming with me, we've got our tickets, rented our flat across from Jardin Du Luxembourg, and will be there for two weeks! Vote on ~~youtube~~ DrupalCon for this video, and help John Albin with free admission, at 195-eu, a sweet deal.

hook_form_alter and _node_form, BEWARE!

doug — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:23:26 +0000

Caveat Emptor. This is a Drupal 5.x case, but I think the warning also applies to 6.x.