Millwood Online blogs

VPS.NET Turnkey Linux Drupal

admin — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 19:22:25 +0000

VPS.NET is a new cloud hosting solution from uk2group. When I found out they offered Drupal via a Turnkey Linux, I thought I had to give it a try.

At VPS.NET you pay for nodes (a bit confusing with Drupal) each one costs £15 or $19, with the price going down the more you buy. A node is 0.4GHz dedicated CPU, 256MB RAM, 10GB storage, and 250GB bandwidth. The nodes can either be hosted in the UK or the US. A VPS (Virtual Private Server) can then be created from 1 to 18 60 nodes, this can be changed at anytime.

As shown in the image above I created a two node VPS with Turnkey linux, using the Drupal 6 on Ubuntu 8.04 template. After this page was submitted I was given the IP address and login for the server. When navigating to the IP address I got the Drupal installation screen, no need to setup Apache, PHP or MySQL. Turnkey also took care of telling Drupal the database details, which halved the Drupal installation screens.

It was literally 5 minutes from setting up the VPS, to logging into Drupal. Not only that Turnkey provides a load of modules, including CCK and Views.

This is by far the easiest server and Drupal installation I have done. For those not familiar with sys admin, servers, linux or Drupal this is a great service and I would really recommend it. Although personally I wouldn't use it, but that's just because I'm fussy and want to know what's making my server and Drupal install tick.

I am very interested in VPS.NET's other VPS templates, so will be playing with these over the next few days and will blog about them then, but initially they look really good.

VPS.NET also offer an API to manage the servers and node, I plan on making a Drupal module for this so you can manage your server from within your Drupal site.

For more screenshot have a look at my Flickr.
For more information on VPS.NET goto their site.
For more information on Turnkey Linux goto their site.

Drupalcamp UK & my sessions

timmillwood — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 15:50:07 +0000

This weekend saw the first Drupalcamp UK, which was held at the BBC offices in Manchester. Over the two days the BBC was taken over by around 80 Drupal geeks who attended 29 sessions split between two tracks. All of the session were held by UK based developers, apart from a few by Robert Douglass of Acquia who came over from Germany for the event.

To do my bit I held two sessions. The first was entitled 'My First Module' where I discuss what a module was, why you should write one, how to write one, and gave an example of a simple module using hook_block() and hook_menu(). The second was entitled 'Using CCK & Views' and gave a very broad overview of what the CCK and views modules are, what they can do, and why to use them.

You'll find attached to this post the slides (in pdf format) and the example module from the 'My Fist Module' session. For more information on all the hooks and functions used within the session goto http://api.drupal.org.

There were no slides or examples from the 'Using CCK & Views' session, but these are the most used Drupal modules so the documentation linked to from their project pages http://www.drupal.org/project/cck and http://www.drupal.org/project/views is very good. One question I was asked (and an example I couldn't get working ) was regarding Views relationships, there is a very good video on http://drewish.com/node/127 explaining this in an easy to understand way.

Overall I was very surprised with the turn out at Drupalcamp UK, and how much of an interest in Drupal there is in the UK. We also started discussing the idea of Drupalcon UK 2010, I think this is a great idea and will work to try and make this happen. If you are in the UK and interested in Drupal please make sure you head over to #drupaluk on IRC Freenode, if you're not sure what this means there is a Drupal IRC widget that will help, just login and start chatting.

Thanks to Dan Smith (Galooph), James Panton (mcjim) and everyone else for doing a great job setting up and running Drupalcamp UK.

Drupal book update

timmillwood — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 19:07:25 +0000

As mentioned in previous posts I am writing a Drupal book. I can officially announce the book will be entitled “Professional Drupal Module development”, it will be published by Wrox Press, who are a brand of Wiley, the book will fall into their Professional series.

When I first started working with Drupal the prospect of writing a module was a scary one. There were two Drupal books at the time, “Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress” by Robert Douglass et al, and “Pro Drupal Development” by John VanDyk and Matt Westgate. The first is great book, and was a great introduction to Drupal 5, but the second was a little scary. There are now many Drupal books covering many topics giving developers a wide range of ideas and views, Professional Drupal Module Development will give more ideas and another view to the ever growing Drupal community.

Professional Drupal module development will introduce the reader to the whole idea of Drupal modules, how they work, what they do, and how they’re constructed. The book will then work through the module development process chapter by chapter, easing the reader into the module development process.

After looking at what a module is, the book will move on to cover a handful of functions and hooks per chapter, one or two mini module examples will be given for each collection of hooks to give a real world example of how it can be used.

Stay tuned for more information, updates will be posted here and on http://professionaldrupal.com/

Review: Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery - Matt Butcher

timmillwood — Sat, 30 May 2009 17:17:58 +0000

With this book Butcher has touched upon a great topic for the Drupal community, and the great thing I found when starting to read the book is not much JavaScript knowledge is needed. When reading the book I quickly scanned Chapter 1: Drupal and JavaScript and Chapter 2: Working with JavaScript in Drupal. The first chapter gives a good overview of coding languages used, Drupal and Javascript, the second gives a good overview of how Drupal can use JavaScript within a theme, and how the theming system works.

Chapter 3 was really interesting as it covered jQuery and how to create a really good script within your theme that will rotate through sticky posts using jQuery's fade functions. The first half of the chapter looks into what jQuery is, how it works and what is does. The second half is a case study of the "rotating sticky node teasers" script, and how to add this to your theme. The case study looks at each function one by one, then the major parts within that function making it easy to read and easy to understand.

Chapter 4: Drupal Behaviors looks into the Drupal.js library, another two case study is also included in this chapter explaining the use of Drupal Behaviors with jQuery. The first explains the creation of collapsing blocks and the second explains the creation of a simple text editor.

One of the great things about Drupal is how easy it is the translate, and one of the most used functions in module development is the t() function which allows the creation of translatable strings. Chapter 5: Lost in Translation covers the whole translation system from a JavaScript point of view and using the Drupal.t() function to create translatable strings in JavaScript. There is yet another case study allowing an easy way to explain and understand the topics covered.

Chapter 2 already covered Drupal theming, but Chapter 6: JavaScript Theming expands on that while also covering theming within JavaScript.

The buzz words around the internet in the last few years has been AJAX, Web Services and APIs, these are all covered by Chapter 7: AJAX and Drupal Web Services. Two case studies are used to help explain this a real world situation. Web clips with RSS and AJAX and Real-tim comment notification are two great little projects that many sites could make use of.

Chapter 8: Building a Module gives a good introduction to Drupal module development, and gives two module case studies which both use JavaScript. The book then finished with Chapter 9: Integrating and Extending which features three case studies, Auto completion and search, jQuery UI and writing a jQuery plug-in, these are a nice way to wrap up and add to all the information learnt in the book so far.

Overall the book is very good for those looking to add javascript to their Drupal site, all the information is explained in a way that makes it easy to read, understand and learn no matter the Drupal or developer experience. I can really see myself using this book a lot over the coming months.

Lack of blogging: New job and The Drupal Book

timmillwood — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:46:53 +0000

There has recently been a lack of blog posts, but this unfortunately is because there are more important things to do. Two weeks ago I started a new job, and I have also just signed a contract to write a Drupal book.

New job

Two weeks ago I started work for Mark Boulton Design as their Developer. The team currently consists of 3 designers, 1 project manager and me, the developer, with more staff joining soon. It's a fast moving, fast growing company with loads of great projects, many Drupal related, including Drupal itself. I'm currently still finding my feet but there are loads of exciting things to look forward to, it's great to come to work in the morning.

The Drupal book

Last month I had the crazy idea that I wanted to write a book, not really sure where it came from but I started looking into it and contacted a few friends, some who have written books themselves. I finally got in contact with a publisher who were looking for an author. As I worked on the idea I realized what I was letting myself in for but I've stuck with it, and just signed the contract. I don't want to let too much out until it is all confirmed and settled, but I can say it is about Drupal.

So that's why I haven't been blogging too much. I am so busy, it's great!

Review: Drupal 6 Themes - Ric Shreves

timmillwood — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 14:17:03 +0000

Earlier in the year I was asked by Packt Publishing if I would like to review some of their Drupal books on my blog, obviously I jumped at the offer and quickly e-mailed back a big fat "YES". A week or two ago a copy of "Drupal 6 Themes" by Ric Shreves landed on my door mat, since then I have been working my way through the book and compiling this review.

Drupal 6 Themes was published by Packt Publishing in September 2008, it was written by Ric Shreves who is a partner at the Drupal development company Water & Stone in Bali. Ric also wrote Drupal 5 themes for Packt Publishing, which I have not had the chance to read.

The book is split into nine chapters, which nicely lead the reader through the Drupal 6 theme development process. Chapter one (The Elements of a Drupal Theme) assumes you know what Drupal is, but starts form the basics in regards to theming. By exploring and discussing what a theme is, what a theme engine is, how to enable a theme, and what files make up a theme, Ric allows and the reader, no matter how advanced, to get a good overview of Drupal's theme system in a matter of pages.

Chapter two (Theme setup and configuration) follows on nicely from the last chapter, after the reader has learnt what a theme is and how it works, Ric then works through the process of downloading and installing the Zen theme. The theme configuration is then covered in a lot of detail, aspects such as the color module configuration, page elements, logo and shortcut icon settings. These are all covered from the perspective of a user or a site manager, and not from the perspective of a developer, who would be looking at how to incorporate these features in their theme. This chapter also covers other aspects of configuration that will effect the look of your site such as block and module management, blocks are looked at in slightly more details, covering the configuration of the access levels and visibility of the blocks.

Theme Engines where briefly covered in the first chapter, but Chapter three (Working with theme engines) greatly expands on this. Drupal's default, and most used theme engine, is PHPTemplate, which is where this chapter starts, and what most of the chapter covers. Ric covers the contents of a PHPTemplate theme in a lot of detail, with full code for each of the files within the Bluemarine theme. In a section headed "Alternative theme engines" covering just over two pages Ric discusses PHPTAL, Smarty and PHP XTemplate theme engines.

Now that the reader had a good idea of what a theme is, how to configure it, and run through of the code in an existing PHPTemplate based theme. Chapter 4 (Identifying templates, stylesheets, and themable functions) starts to look at code that the reader may want to use in their theme. The chapter works through most, if not all of the core modules listing all the stylesheets, themable functions and variables that could be used of overridden within your theme. This chapter is a great reference for new and existing theme developers.

Chapter 5 (Intercepts and overrides) starts by simply looking into how to override CSS attributes, but then expands upon the lists within Chapter 4 to explain how to override templates and themeable functions. It looks into what part the template.php file plays within a theme, how to add one and what to do with it. Template.php files can be very complex, but Ric managed to describe the how to do the overrides very well, but quite briefly.

Chapter 6 (Modifying an existing theme) is quite a long chapter but explains the process of making a sub theme from the Zen theme very well with all the code needed. For the more advanced Drupal developer, with little theming know how, this is where the book starts to get exciting, and by the end of the chapter you have your very own sub theme that you could submit back to the Drupal community.

Chapter 7 (Building a new theme) works in very much the same way as chapter 6, but without the Zen theme as a base, so there are few pages on planning your theme and setting up your files. All the code is given, but this can also be downloaded from Packt's web site. By half way through the chapter you will have your own PHPTemplate based theme, but the chapter carries on to look at a pure PHP theme, or one that doesn't use a template engine. Ric uses the Chameleon theme as an example and steps through the development process of a theme such as Chameleon.

Now that you have a Zen sub theme and a custom theme chapter 8 (dynamic theming) moves on to look at ideas such as admin themes, multiple page or section templates, dynamically theming page elements and working with template variables. This chapter is really great for the more advanced developer and expands on some of the ideas discussed earlier in the book. All of the techniques displayed within this chapter will allow the reader to make their theme change depending on the page being viewed, the user viewing it, what regions are being used and other dynamic variables.

Chapter 9 (Dealing with forms), the final chapter, is a very specific module looking into modifying the look of forms in many different Drupal-y ways. Starting by looking at how forms work in Drupal, the chapter moves on to look into modifying forms by using simple approaches such as CSS overrides, theme functions and custom modules.

The appendix includes a Drupal CSS Map, which maps out the CSS files for all core modules, all files for all core themes. Also included is a "Themer's Toolkit" section, looking into useful modules and firefox extensions.

In summary, Drupal 6 Themes by Ric Shreves is a great book for new Drupal theme developers, and the second half of the book provides a great resource for the more advanced developer too. My only complaint with the book is that it would be nice if a few of the screenshots where printed in colour, to give a clearer view.

If this review has inspired you to by the book, please use the link below.
http://www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-themes/book/mid/260309fum7fs

Ignite Cardiff Drupal talk

timmillwood — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:37:37 +0000

The evening of April 8th 2009 saw the second Ignite Cardiff event, which was organized by Cardiff Web Scene and Nocci. I had foolishly put my name forward to do a talk, and obviously did it about Drupal.

In the talk, which you can see below, I quickly ran through what Drupal is, and how to build a simple web site. I showed the making of a fictional jobs sites, http://jobs.timmillwood.com/.

The talk went fairly well with only minor hiccups, and it was great to get nice responses like "Thanks for the Drupal presentation. I'll give it ago any time soon. Good job!".

Drupal

View more presentations from timmillwood.

Streamline Drupal CVS checkout

timmillwood — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:38:12 +0000

Today I had the task of checking out Drupal core and a load of modules for a new site, but all those CVS commands made me think there must be an easier way. So I started looking into scripting the process. This is when I came across Patrick Corbett's blog post "Drupal CVS Checkout Shortcuts".

(This is all done on Mac OS X Leopard) I started by opening up terminal and running the command "vi ~/.profile" this opened up the vi text editor and created the file .profile in my home directory. I copied the code from Patrick's blog post, saved, closed and reopened terminal and ran "getmod cck" to test it worked. To my amazement it worked.

Now came the time to change the script to make it do what I wanted. I wanted to be able to specify a module version, and checkout Drupal core. So I set out to find the right commands and write up the functions. Below you will see my code. I added a version variable to getmod() and I added getdrupal() and updatedrupal() functions to take care of core checkouts.

One issue I came across was that I wanted Drupal core to checkout into the current directory rather than the default "drupal" directory, but the problem was I didn't know what the current directory would be. Thanks to @bobthecow for the idea of using the pwd command. I was able to set the current directory to a $FOLDER variable, cd back one directory then checkout Drupal core into the previous directory using the value stored in $FOLDER.

To summerise. Copy the code below into a file called ".profile" in your home directory. Then restart terminal. Use the following commands.
getdrupal <version-number eg 6-10>
updatedrupal <version-number eg 6-10>
getmod <module-name eg cck> <module-version-number eg 2-2>
updatemod <module-version-number eg 2-2>

Simple!

Me, Drupal 7 and it's competition

timmillwood — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 16:58:08 +0000

In a few weeks I will be starting work for Mark Boulton Design, who are currently working on the usability of Drupal. I will be working on many web development projects in Drupal and other frameworks, but hope I can get some input into Drupal's usability.

At Drupacon last week there was a lot of talk about the state of Drupal, the usability and where it is going. Drupal 7 is still in development, but already has some great new features and bug fixes, such as the new database layer and more of CCK in core.

To get an idea of what everyone else is doing I thought I would have a look at Wordpress and Joomla. These are Drupal's biggest competition, but they have a few good ideas that could be added to Drupal.

Joomla and Wordpress are both offered in .zip format, this format is widely used on Window systems and would be a lot more familiar for some users. Maybe Drupal should offer a .zip version?

When I first installed Wordpress I was faced with the screen below. At first it looked like a Safari error screen, but on closer inspection it was a Wordpress error screen just without any branding, which isn't really an error, just the first step of the installation. We'll have to make sure Drupal doesn't make this mistake.

One thing I did like about Wordpress is the dashboard (shown below). It allows a site admin to quickly and easily see many aspects of the site in blocks, these blocks can be moved around and positioned where the user wants them. The menu and structure are well laid out and easy to understand. This is just what Drupal needs.

Joomla also has a dashboard (shown below), but it's not quite as good as Wordpress's, but still some things Drupal could learn from.

Getting ready for Drupalcon

timmillwood — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 11:23:53 +0000

This week Drupal comes to Washington DC for Drupalcon DC 2009. My employer sent me out a few days early to attend some other meetings in the area so I have had a little time to see a bit of Washington.

There are loads of sites to see, but seeing as it was cold and snowy I headed for the museums which are all free. They are quite interesting but I wouldn't put them top on my "to see" list. If I get time later in the week I hope to see some of the main monuments such as the Lincoln memorial, the Capitol building and the White house.

I am looking for Wednesday now to see all the Drupal sessions and all my Drupal friends. Remember early registration starts on Tuesday.

See you there!

For more photos head over to my Flickr stream http://flickr.com/timmillwood