drupal

Sometimes, particularly when using a custom Drupal module, you may need to a apply what's called a 'patch'. A patch is simply a text file with a set of instructions saying which lines of code within a module need to be changed, added or deleted to get the module to function better or more accurately.…read more

It's been a long time since I wrote a field report (I'm really going to try to be more attentive to this). There are a lot of projects that I'm currently working on. I'm trying to do a a complete redesign of my organization's website, in order to integrate a lot of project management and accounting stuff into a centralized location, since my organization's staff is a little far-flung. …read more

My big project of the spring went public today. It's called the California Inclusionary Housing Policy Database, and we introduced it like this: …read more

Wondering what fellow VISTA Jessica McCoy and I have been collaborating on since September? Check out the launch of a new online project, StoriesForChange.net, sponsored by both of our host organizations! …read more

As part of the website redesign, we're adding new sections for user generated content.  We needed to keep this content separate from the rest of the site, so that any user could edit the user sections, but not the rest of the site.  For basic content types, this is simply a matter of defining a new content type based on the standard drupal "node", and then assigning the correct permissions to that new type.  But what if you want to do something similar to a more advanced content-type such as a book?  One could extend the book module to support a similar derived content feature (best solution).  But that can take a fair amount of time, and with no guarantee of changes being accepted upstream, you face the possibility of either running outdated module code, or having to reapply your edits for every update.  A quicker, and much simpler method, especially for those with little programming experience, is to make a few, essentially cosmetic changes to the book module.  These changes consist primarily of changed the names of the tables the module stores its data in, and the internal name that drupal uses to identify the module and its components.  And while your modifying, you can easily alter the human-readable names and descriptions.  And its all as easy as Find & Replace.   …read more

Working with Ross on a massive website redesign.  This redesign is brought on partially from complaints of website users about the disparate nature of the content, and the difficulty in finding relevant information on the site.  A recent hard drive failure on our web host's server which resulted in some loss of content was also a contributing factor.  We hope to have something up next week.  The site will actually be broken into multiple sites to allow for better organization.  Drupal will power two of the sites--the CUWiN main site, and a second specifically for the local network.  Two additional sites will be created using wiki software.  One will be a private wiki to document the organizations infrastructure and to store other private documents.  The second will be a wiki for the developers.  It will focus on bug tracking, software documentation, etc.  I'm considering using Ikiwiki (www.ikiwiki.info) for this, as it is simple, and integrates with the code repository.  Hopefully this will make it easier developers to incorporate the wiki (and documentation) into their work flow. …read more

CiviCRM is actually a suite of tools based on the Drupal content management system. A bit tricky to set up (at first), but once configured and running it is VERY powerful. It allows NPOs to coordinate their efforts quite well and collects has good set of tools for this. Some key things it attends to is: Volunteer coordination …read more

On the first week with DANEnet, and now I'm relearning everything I once knew about HTML and then some!  I'm also going to be administrating some sites using Drupal, so if anyone here uses Drupal and would be a good resource, it would be great if I could throw questions at you if I needed it!  And I have my meeting for food stamps on February 7th!  Also, to clarify, is there NO CTC conference this year?  And what are the exact dates of the NTEN conference in DC?  Let me know, thanks!

I've been a little disappointed with Drupal's Subscription module I installed a few months back. It was clunky and not very intuitive. So, this afternoon I whipped up a small module that should send you an email every time someone comments on your blog. Actually, I whipped it up twice since a wayward asterisk ended up nuking the first version along with the entire modules directory of the website; thank goodness for backups. …read more

i'm not sure if i have talked with anyone about this, but two weeks ago (i cannot believe how much time has gone by already) i went to an drupal extreme makeover.  basically, i was feed for two days and taught the ins and outs of drupal. well, i was taught as much as you can learn in a crash course.  i was also able to  work one-on-one with a drupal expert to start the revision of our extremely outdated helping-sf. it was an amazing experience (& free for our organization too!)  in the past two weeks, however, i have had about zero time to work on the website.  this drives me crazy.  currently, i am teaching class, helping in the technology center, doing general tech support for the office (meaning about 20 phone calls a day) and being a lead interviewer for my new boss (what?!?).  i feel as though there is no time to actually work on the projects that i feel i was hired for.  my job title would be more accurately stated as "master troubleshooter".    …read more