Drupal.geek.nz: Bevan on Drupal, Usability, Web, Open Source, Tech...

Drupal Downunder 2012 is 2 months away, Session proposals close Monday

Bevan — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 22:21:26 +0000

Drupal Downunder 2012 is just 2 months away and session proposals close this Monday!

The second Drupal Downunder will be Australasia's biggest Drupal event ever, with Dries Buytaert returning for his second DrupalDownunder, and other keynotes from Dimitri Gaskin and Gian Wild.

And tonnes of other great content, tutorials and sessions by other Drupalistas from Australia, New Zealand and beyond.

A New Way to Migrate WordPress Content Into Drupal

Bevan — Tue, 17 May 2011 16:19:08 +0000

The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) is an organization that seeks out and tests innovations in journalism to find the best solutions for use in the real world.

Help Wanted; QLDfloods.org Drupal 7 Multiple-server Configuration & Infrastructure

Bevan — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:50:40 +0000

There is currently severe flooding in Queensland Australia. An area twice the size of Texas is underwater. Entire homes are completely inundated. Bridges and cars have been washed away like toys. In Brisbane, airports are closed and the CBD has been closed down. There are at least 15 dead and more than 60 still missing.

QLDfloods.org is a Drupal 7 website set up by several members of the Australian Drupal community to provide information, track missing persons, find resources and people that need them (like beds), track damage and provide support. It was mentioned four times on CNN on Wednesday and multiple times on Australian national media.

The site builders are seeking help with Drupal 7 multiple-server configuration & infrastructure. Do you have expertise to help? Join #Drupal-AU on IRC, speak up in g.d.o/australia or contact Ryan Cross directly.

Celebrating 2010 & the Achievements of the Drupal Association

Bevan — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:54:15 +0000

2010 has been a big year for the Drupal Association. Early in the year new members were brought on and the Board of Directors saw some changes. But most noteworthy is what the Drupal Association did for the Drupal community;

Drupal.org Redesign Completion

Drupal.org has a new look and feel. If you have not seen it (have you been under a rock!?) go check out Drupal.org right now!

It took a few years and many iterations and volunteers, and even that was not enough. This year the Drupal Association came to the party with funding to finish the job. Contracts went to tender and were won by Neil Drumm, Achieve Internet and 3281d Consulting.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the Drupal.org redesign for all your hard work and effort to pull this off. And especially thank you to the Drupal Association for funding the last several miles that could not be covered by volunteers alone.

Drupal.org will never be the same again! Find out what is next for Drupal.org.

DrupalCon San Francisco

Photo by Kathleen Murtagh

How could we ever forget? DrupalCon San Francisco, was epic. By all measures, it was the largest and most spectacular Drupal event yet.

The Drupal Association bootstrapped the funding and locked in critical contracts in order to secure the venue and other services. Many of the DrupalCon San Francisco committee members also serve the Drupal Association. The Drupal Association managed all the finances for the event and coordinated the local team and service providers with the rest of the Drupal community.

And that is just the beginning of what the Drupal Association did to make DrupalCon San Francisco a reality!

Git Migration

Sam Boyer. Photo by Fox

The Drupal Association recognized the urgency to update Drupal.org's version control system (currently CVS).

Drupal has an active, amazingly awesome and amiable community. One of the reasons for this, is that Drupal.org is our home. It has everything Drupal developers need, all in one place. However the last couple of years has seen a trend for contributions to be distributed elsewhere.

The Drupal Association realised that if Drupal.org did not offer modern version control and code-distribution tools, then Drupal.org would cease to be a central repository for contributed Drupal code. And that would ultimately be damaging to the community and the project.

So earlier this year, the Drupal Association hired Sam Boyer to work on detailed planning and foundation work in preparation for the migration of Drupal's gigantic CVS repository, including about 9000 contributed themes modules and other projects, to Git.

This work is underway and is making good progress, but has some way to go yet. Sam is leading the effort but the success of the project is highly dependent on volunteer effort too. You can get involved on g.d.o.

Dries Buytaert in Brisbane for DrupalDownunder

Bevan — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 21:52:38 +0000

DrupalDownunder is just 2 months away and is expected to be a sell-out event, with Dries Buytaert (the Drupal project lead and founder) presenting a keynote and attending.

The keynote speakers are:

Dries Buytaert, Drupal project founder and lead
New Zealand's own Josh Waihi
Josh Koenig
Allie Micka

Designing the Web for today's devices

Bevan — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:01:35 +0000

NZ is Free of Software Patents!

Bevan — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:53:31 +0000

We did it! NZ is (very nearly almost) free of software patents!

"We recommend amending clause 15 to include computer programs among inventions that may not be patented. We received many submissions concerning the patentability of computer programs. Under the Patents Act 1953 computer programs can be patented in New Zealand provided they produce a commercially useful effect. Open source, or free, software has grown in popularity since the 1980s. Protecting software by patenting it is inconsistent with the open source model, and its proponents oppose it. A number of submitters argued that there is no “inventive step” in software development, as “new” software invariably builds on existing software. They felt that computer software should be excluded from patent protection as software patents can stifle innovation and competition, and can be granted for trivial or existing techniques. In general we accept this position.

— Commerce Committee's recommendation on the Patents Bill, Part 2, Patentable inventions (Emphasis mine)

Starting at Palantir

Bevan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:16:25 +0000

Today is a new beginning. Today is my first day at Palantir.net. I am now a "Palantiri"! (That's Palantiri-speak for someone who works at Palantir.net. ;)

jQuery.dashboard() in CiviCRM 3.1

Bevan — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:15:33 +0000

In January 2009 I wrote and released jQuery.dashboard() plugin, which extends jQuery to quickly and easily create dashboard UIs like iGoogle. A handful of people have using it for a while, but in December 2009, it was announced that CiviCRM 3.1 would include a dashboard feature utilising jQuery.dashboard() plugin! CiviCRM 3.1 was released late January 2010. (So this blog post is a little late!)

tpl.phps are not templates, Wednesday 11am, room 212, DrupalCon San Francisco

Bevan — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 05:01:03 +0000

I scheduled the "tpl.phps are not real templates" session and discussion as a BoF session on Wednesday at 11am in room 212 at DrupalCon San Francisco.

From my original post;

tpl.phps are not templates

Bevan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 09:11:47 +0000

Drupal's template files (*.tpl.php) are not really templates. This is what my DrupalCon core developer summit submission is about. The slides briefly explain why tpl.phps are not real templates, what real templates are, why this is a problem for the Drupal project and community, and mentions some possible solutions to the problem. It also provides some basic guidelines as a starting point for tpl.php standards, should that be pursued.

New roles at NowPublic and the Drupal Association

Bevan — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 08:57:41 +0000

The new year (this post is a little late!) has brought me new opportunities and some new roles;

As of 21 December 2009, I am a front end Drupal software engineer at NowPublic Technologies Inc, aka NowPublic.com (Clarity Digital Group and Examiner.com).
As of 3 March 2010, I am a permanent member on the staff of the Drupal Association.

jQuery for Designers & Themers at DrupalCon San Francisco

Bevan — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:38:09 +0000

jQuery for Designers and Themers is a fun interactive session at DrupalCon San francisco on getting started with jQuery. It is targeted at designers and themers but is suitable for anyone with a decent understanding of HTML and CSS — no programming experience is necessary. It doesn't include any PHP, and only basic programming concepts are introduced.

The session is early on Tuesday 20 April in room 307 (Commerce guys) at DrupalCon SF at 8:30am.

URGENT: Fight for your rights!

Bevan — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:16:53 +0000

NZ government is negotiating a trade act that will impact your civil liberties. And they are doing it behind our backs — in secret!

"ACTA is a controversial international treaty that impacts digital rights and is being negotiated in secret meetings. ACTA is proposed as a plurilateral trade agreement for establishing international standards on intellectual property rights enforcement. It is being negotiated between the US, Canada, Japan, the European Union, South Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Australia and New Zealand. Unfortunately, the negotiations have extended beyond trade and physical counterfeiting to potentially cover non-commercial infringement of copyright material by ordinary citizens and issues of digital rights management." — PublicACTA.org.nz

As well as the violating our democratic principles, and the deceitful name of the treaty, ACTA aims to bring back the "draconian" (to quote prime minister John Keys) S92a laws we fought hard against last year with the NZ Internet Blackout.

The PublicACTA event last Saturday produced "The Wellington Declaration". You can and should read the declaration and sign it by Tuesday morning NZ time.

Sign the Wellington Declaration Now!

DrupalSouth Wellington A Success

Bevan — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 07:47:08 +0000

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 was a booming success! And that would be an understatement. 100 Drupallers from NZ, Australia, North America and Europe came together for 2 Wellington-wet days in a brewery and couldn't stop talking about Drupal!

DrupalCon: jQuery for Designers & Themers

Bevan — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:06:19 +0000

jQuery for Designers and Themers is a fun interactive session on getting started with jQuery. It is targeted at designers and themers but is suitable for anyone with a decent understanding of HTML and CSS — no programming experience is necessary. It doesn't include any PHP, and only basic programming concepts are introduced.

If you want to see this session at DrupalCon San Francisco ~~you'll need to vote on it here~~ it is at 8:30am on Tuesday 20 April in room 307 (Commerce guys) at DrupalCon SF.

How Was DrupalSouth's Internet so Awesome!?

Bevan — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 00:29:50 +0000

DrupalSouth — a 100-person technical conference — had awesome internet. This is how we did it.

DrupalSouth might well be the first Drupal conference with internet that didn't suck. For the first time, I didn't hear anyone complain about connectivity or speed. Everyone had internet access! If I didn't hear about any issues you were having, or if you had any complaints or problems, please let us know in the comments.

Egressive pulled most of this together. Egressive provides both Linux and Drupal services and know a lot of people in the industry. In particular, Rob Fraser's technical networking know-how and contacts at Effusion, IOPEN, Unleash and elsewhere are what made this possible.

Thanks Rob, and thanks Egressive!
IOPEN and members of the Effusion group built a robust scalable wireless network for Kiwi PyCon 2009, just a few months earlier. DrupalSouth's wireless requirements were very similar to PyCon's. DrupalSouth was a little smaller in number of attendees. One difference was that the network data analysis and the Wireless Weather Report (see below) generating were not done on-site but 400 km away in Christchurch using a small real-time data stream from DrupalSouth. Also, Brian Chatterton of IOPEN made a few minor configuration enhancements, renamed the the networks in honour of Drupal's founder and changed the passwords.

Brian Chatterton really understands networking. Technical conferences have such demanding wifi and networking requirements that can not be tested under load ahead of time. And usually they fail. Brian's experience and knowledge has been twice-proven by Kiwi PyCon and DrupalSouth's great wifi.

Thanks Brian!
R2 installed the purple VSDL cable and connection from the DrupalSouth network hub, out the window, up to the roof of Mac's Brewery, across the roof, up the wall of the NZ Stock Exchange building, through a window of TradeMe's offices, and into a spare wall-mounted network port nearby; which was re-patched directly into Citylink's fibre network in TradeMe's server and patch room.

Richard Naylor of R2 is very respected and well known in Wellington when it comes to internet connectivity. As a City Council employee in the 90s he founded the project that later became Citylink. He now runs a private consultancy with his son, specializing in video streaming, and live video recording and hosting online. R2 did the video recording and streaming for Linux.conf.au Wellington.

Richard and his network of industry and business contacts made this possible; he provided a missing link between the wifi LAN and Citylink's high-speed fibre network, temporarily extending it to the venue.

Thanks Richard!
Citylink's high speed city fibre optic network in Wellington connects hundreds of businesses, buildings and data centres city-wide with fast low-latency network speeds. Karen Lindsay-Kerr at Citylink was kind enough to arrange a sponsored VLAN from TradeMe's data centre to Unleash's point of presence across town. That's fibre all the way!

Thanks Karen and thanks Citylink!
Unleash, the last point in the hardware chain, provided a high speed connection to the Internet. They generously sponsored 100Gb of data, a 20Mb symmetrical link, and a whole block of 256 IP addresses. (Unfortunately we couldn't assign the public IP addresses to devices due to time constraints.)

Unleash is an ISP based in Christchurch with four data centres across New Zealand, and nationwide network coverage with fibre, wireless and ADSL2+. They provide virtual and dedicated hosting, co-location and high-speed Internet services.

Thanks Unleash!

The last component is a software layer: IOPEN created a network traffic monitoring tool that collects data about the network and monitors load and resource usage. A "wireless weather report". This is useful to fix any issues if they arise (which they didn't!) and analyse network traffic to make improvements to network configuration for next time. They also made the data from tool available to users connected to the DrupalSouth network. Here is a screenshot:

Most of the companies and individuals mentioned here donated their time and services. You can see all of DrupalSouth sponsors on the sponsor page.

Thanks everyone!

Registrations open for DrupalSouth Wellington, the NZ Drupal event

Bevan — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:32:54 +0000

DrupalSouth registrations opened a couple of days ago and there are already almost 30 registered attendees! Capacity is limited to 100 and it is expected to sell out, so get in quick!

Registration costs just $67.50 NZD including GST ($60 for non-NZ businesses) and includes lunch, coffee and tea on both days – not to mention access to a great line up of speakers and sessions on awesome topics. Here is the full announcement;

DrupalSouth Wellington 2010 is the New Zealand Drupal event. It will be NZ's largest ever gathering of Drupal developers, designers, contributers and business folk. DrupalSouth Wellington will be on Saturday and Sunday 23-24 January — just after Linux.conf.au Wellington.

Last call for DrupalSouth sponsors

Bevan — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 18:55:45 +0000

It is not too late to sponsor DrupalSouth. BUT, there is room for only a few more sponsors and sponsorship closes this Friday 27 November. So if you want to sponsor contact us now!

All sponsors get

Logo and link to company profile on sponsors page
Detailed company profile on the website
Entire team profile on the website
Swag in the attendee pack
1 free registration

Platinum sponsors get

Config To Code Module Is Like Features For Drupal 5

Bevan — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 08:34:27 +0000

Config to Code module for Drupal 5 makes it easy to deploy new views and panels and to version-control changes to existing ones with a source code repository like subversion. It makes it quick and easy to move configured views and panels in the database to code, then safely delete the configured views from the database and finally, expose the views and panels in code back to their respective modules. It is extensible for other types of configurations that can be stored both in database and code.

Read on for the demo screencast.

Interview With Bevan Rudge For Lullabot Drupal Voices

Bevan — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 08:02:59 +0000

Kent Bye interviewed me (Bevan Rudge) in early September at DrupalCon Paris about Drupal in New Zealand, CivicActions and some recent projects. Yesterday Lullabot released the podcast as Lullabot Drupal Voices 75.

DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organizers Invite You to Participate

Bevan — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:17:46 +0000

We are excited to announce the DrupalCon Asia-Pacific Organisers group. DCAPO intends to lay foundations that will facilitate international Drupal Conferences (DrupalCons) in the Asia-Pacific region.

Conservation Strategy Fund Uses Drupal

Bevan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:06:39 +0000

Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) recently launched their new Drupal website and the HydroCalculator Tool, both by CivicActions. CSF's mission is to teach environmental organizations around the world to use economics and strategic analysis to conserve nature. Their new website empowers them to do this with multi-lingual features, news streams and feeds, listings that can be filtered by continent, region, country or theme, t

Hook_world_alter() T-shirt Design

Bevan — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:11:17 +0000

This hook_world_alter() T-shirt idea was something Trevor Twining came up with way back at DrupalCon DC. I got a single T-shirt made for DrupalCon Paris. A number of people said they wanted one – though since I'm not interested in the business of making T-shirts, I thought I

I am seeking Drupal development contract work

Bevan — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:08:23 +0000

Contributing to Drupal at DrupalCon Boston March 2008. Photo by Steve Krueger.

I am currently available for Drupal development contract work.

I am interested in contracts or projects of any width, height or length. I am especially interested in projects that (roughly in order);

are socially conscious
have other talented and experienced Drupal developers to work and grow with
compensate at reasonable-to-good rates

DrupalSouth Wellington NZ January 2010

Bevan — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 11:22:42 +0000

Following in the success of DrupalSouth Christchurch November 2008, DrupalSouth Wellington January 2010 is in it's planning stages.

Best Photos From DrupalCon Paris 2009

Bevan — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 21:57:31 +0000

If you don't want to browse the 2500+ photos from DrupalCon Paris on Flickr, but still want to see some photos, try these sets for the highlights instead;

Sample Code For JQuery For Designers And Themers, DrupalCon Paris 2009

Bevan — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:45:19 +0000

I was extremely pleased with my DrupalCon Paris session on jQuery for Designers and Themers. It was a great success – my best session yet.

You can see the slides at tinyurl.com/jQuery-Designers and download the sample theme code from drupal.org/project/jq4dat.

I made a couple of references to blog posts and work I've done with jQuery during the session:

I wrote a jQuery dashboard plugin that uses jQuery UI's Sortable library to make an iGoogle-like dashboard with an example server-side implementation.
Calling drupal_get_js() and drupal_get_css() from page preprocess functions creates an unnecessary performance hit. This blog post discusses a technique that allows javascript and CSS to be added in the page preprocess function without needing to call drupal_get_js() and drupal_get_css().

CivicActions In Paris!

Bevan — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 15:27:54 +0000

CivicActions is in Paris, and we are running some great sessions at DrupalCon Paris 2009;

We won't be at the job fair this year, but please hunt us down at the conference (we'll be wearing CivicActions t-shirts) if you're looking for work or want to join a first-class international and virtual team of world-changing Drupal developers. You can also contact us through the website for more info or if you want to make sure you don't miss us.

NZ Government Loves Drupal

Bevan — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 01:48:11 +0000

The New Zealand Government loves Drupal: