A Newbie To Drupal

Mashup

2009-01-01T21:45:00.000-08:00

Mashups are an exciting genre of interactive Web applications that draw upon content retrieved from external data sources to create entirely new and innovative services.

They are likely separated by both network and organizational boundaries: API/content providers, the mashup site, and the client's Web browser.

From enterprise mashups to proof-of-concept hacks, developers and would be developers are leveraging the power of mashups to provide information in new and compelling ways. Mashups are still a relatively new phenomena, and as this new type of online application evolves it will become increasingly more important to ensure that your mashup adheres to a variety of best practices.

A mashup Web site is characterized by the way in which it spreads roots across the Web, drawing upon content and functionality retrieved from data sources that lay outside of its organizational boundaries.

Mapping Mashup

Google Maps, Microsoft (Virtual Earth), Yahoo (Yahoo Maps), and AOL (MapQuest)

The mashup Web application genre is still in its infancy.

Developers create mashups using public interfaces, screen scraping, APIs, Web feeds (e.g. RSS or Atom), and JavaScript.

Convert a HTML Template into a drupal 6 theme

2008-12-26T01:25:00.000-08:00

To design a powerful drupal website you require knowledge of PHP and SQL, and the rest could be a simple task, which tell Drupal to load its dynamic content in those spots.
Apart from pre-made themes which comes with Drupal core, this method I found in drupal therepy was very simple and easy for new drupalers to pick it up as a starting point.
This how-to will introduce you to power different themes of drupal websites without knowing any coding languages. A great exercise for non-Drupal designers.
This exercise uses Drupal's core default theme called Garland or zen. Now paste into the correct places in the HTML template you choose from any of a free CSS/HTML templates.
Step 1: Move the HTML template into my sites/all/themes directory.
Step 2: Create a .info file that will tell Drupal information about this new theme with name, description,core, and engine
i.e simply create a new text file in the directory and call it xyz.info and insert the details cited above.
Now the new theme will register on the admin/build/themes page.
Step 3:Enable the theme and will get the HTML of the theme displayed on Drupal pages.
Step 4: Change or copy the original index.html file into a file called page.tpl.php.
Step 4: Similarly change default.css file to style.css so it matches the naming convention Drupal likes for CCS files.
Step 5: From now it's a simple copy/paste marathon to replace the HTML elements of the css theme selected by you with the Drupal theme elements found in Garland.
Step 6: Replace and insert the title and slogan code of your theme with corresponding codes with the garland/zen theme's header tags.
Step 7: Look inside the theme template selected by you and find the div called content and its enclosed divs.
Step 8: Replace the contents with Garland's code for rendering the main content area called center.
Step 9: Swap the contents with Garland's code.
Step 10: Carry over all the xyz.tpl.php template files from Garland/Zen.
The rest is CSS work to tweak your styles to match more closely those of the original and themeing the nodes, blocks or comments to get closer to the design.
Could proceed with the same method for drupal 5 too, no need for a .info file in D5.
Read more at http://drupal.org/node/313510

Looking ahead to the Drupal of 2016: The world's Most Powerful Website Operating System

2008-11-13T03:45:00.000-08:00

I am a huge fan, user, and a supporter of drupal, Like to explore more and often imagine about how drupal would be taken to the next level and expand its reach. I found a good write up which was quiet very interesting.
A gist from "A Brief Overview of the Future of Drupal" by Nick Lewis

Drupal is evolving to the internet like a biological creature, and our current enviroment is rewarding applications that move us closer in the Website OS direction.
The Web 0S is what all of this web 2.0 hype has been about.

10 years ago, it was the era of pets.com. Most of america used AOL!!
2006? An internet where every 15 year old had a myspace blog.
Look at del.icio.us, imagine del.icio.us in 1996?
Wikis, blogs, tags, RSS -- the way these technologies are beginning to converge.

In 2016, drupal will no longer be classified as a CMS. It would be the traditional desktop operating system, call it a "website operating system" similar to osX, or Windows.

Here's the basic relationships

Drupal OS | Windows XP

module = application

core include = system folder

nodes = generic documents

menus = abstractions of applications and directories (start menus in Windows, dashboards in Mac OS)

logs = n/a -- the desktop operating system isn't social.t

themes = themesconfigurations = configurations

What People Will Be Using Drupal for in 2016

1. Managing and Composing Email

2. Storing, sharing, and organizing camera phone photos

3. Integration of mobile devices, the web, and their computers.

4. Managing their virtual identity (a good virtual identity will quickly become a pre-requisite for success)

5. Composing, storing, editing, and sharing "documents".... Who needs a mywriting.doc file when they can just publish it, or publish it for a few people, or put it away until its ready? There is no need for any text.doc in 2016.

6. Coordinating their social life -- with the integration of mobile devices, and the already emerging crazy mobile businesses like Dodge Ball, it seems that we can't even imagine the role mobile is soon going to play in our lives. We hope drupal takes the carrot that is tangling in front of it, and begins the process of becoming the most popular mobile-to-web content management tool.

6. Drupal sites are also going to begin talking to each other. Imagine a publication has 20 writers, and 3 editors, linking the Web OS's of all of them together via the website's 2016 version of the publication.module, each user has their own workspace, and ownership of drafts. When they are ready to submit, they do so with one button from their web OS.

7. Who knows -- maybe games.... who knows though, Who really knows, Several key concepts and technologies that will affect the path of Drupal have not been invented yet.
DRUPAL ROCKS!!! isn't it?

Chennai Drupal Meet Growing, YES we grow and favor others grow.

2008-11-09T20:28:00.000-08:00

http://groups.drupal.org/node/16429

It was a meetup of people using Drupal in Chennai. A nOOb to the chennai drupal meet and to drupal, I enjoyed as well got some excellent help, tips from more advanced users. I don't have much experience with websites beyond simple CSS and HTML. But I want to go further with drupal. Any way I could learn, I will work for it, I just need to be directed. I have learnt enough to set up a basic web site. Someone of my skills could easily do that.

What I have learned in the workplace is a worthwhile process. A workplace generates a lot of on the job knowledge and becomes dependent on our ability to understand.

I wanted to go from Drupal beginner to Drupal Ace. Learning together with my fellow gurus in chennai drupal meet moving beyond the basics, I realize this is new stuff. It has more technical jargons. It appears I have to do a lot of learning and researching.

To me drupal is a mature, open-source, PHP-based content management framework that is used worldwide on thousands of web and intranet sites. A tonne of new features are now available. I feel Drupal is a bit developer oriented and more difficult for newbie's. It was making the first impression full of surprises with flexibility, scalability, active user community, and managing large sites.

Among other reasons, I would suggest a workshop for the beginners or even completely non-technical administrator of a Drupal site, like the one we had, an inhouse training for our fellow staffs, to nondrupalers who would then shift to drupal. I suggest somebody to teach it in a simplified way. The other way around I'm looking for something more for Drupal beginners who has installed Drupal, and wonders where to go from there.

Would like to stay informed on all things Drupal and learn more about drupal?

Migrate from blogger to drupal

2008-11-04T20:41:00.000-08:00

Continual to my earlier post I tried to migrate from blogspot blog to drupal.
I googled and found not many results except http://www.eglug.org/node/1654 which actually helped me.
I am not a PHP or SQL savvy. Still I explored it for long to understand and do the actual happenings.
I tried to summarize those procedures in a step by step easy to follow how to tutorials.

Step 1: Settings->Publishing (switch to FTP)-> ftp server information (refer blogger help).(i)FTP server
(ii)blogURL
(iii)FTP Path
(iv) Blog file name: index.html
(v)feed filename: atom.xml
FTP username and password
Save settings
Step 2: Settings->formating
(i)show: 999 or 499
(ii)deta header formate: day,month date,yyy
(iii)timestamp format: mm/dd/yyyy HH:MM:SS AM
(iv)time zone
(v)language
(vi)encoding: universal(unicode UTF_8)
(vii) enable float alignment: No
Save settings
Step 3: Settings->archiving
(i)archive frequency: Noarchive
(ii)enable post pages: yes
Save settings
Step 4 : Save your Template to Classic template.
Template -> Edit HTML-> (under ,body) paste the following code:
$nid = 100;

$iid = '<$BlogItemNumber$>';
$nid++;

$node=array();

$node['title']=<<<$BlogItemTitle$>
ENDOFSTRING;

if (trim($node['title']) == "") $node['title'] = "title";

$node['body']=<<<$BlogItemBody$>
ENDOFSTRING;
$node['date']=strtotime('<$BlogItemDateTime$>');
$node['number']='<$BlogItemNumber$>';
$node['permalink']='<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>';

echo "INSERT INTO node (nid, type, title, uid, created, changed, comment, promote, teaser, body, revisions, format)
VALUES(".$nid.", 'story', '".addslashes($node['title'])."', 1, ".$node['date'].", ".$node['date'].", 2, 1, '', '".addslashes($node['body'])."', '', 3);\n\n";

$comment=array();
$comment['number']='<$BlogCommentNumber$>';
$comment['body']=<<<$BlogCommentBody$>
ENDOFSTRING;
$comment['author']=<<<$BlogCommentAuthor$>
ENDOFSTRING;
$comment['date']=strtotime('<$BlogCommentDateTime$>');

echo "insert into comments (nid, subject, comment, hostname, timestamp, thread, name) values(".$nid.", 'comment', '".addslashes($comment['body'])."', '127.0.0.1', '".$comment['date']."', '1/', '".addslashes($comment['author'])."');\n\n";

?>
Save the template and publish the index page.

Install and Configure Drupal.
Copy the following code in page.tpl.

$query = db_rewrite_sql('SELECT n.nid, n.body FROM {node} n');
$result = db_query($query);

while ($node = db_fetch_array($result)) {

$teaser= node_teaser($node['body'], 1);

$insert_query= db_rewrite_sql('UPDATE {node} n set n.teaser ="'.db_escape_string($teaser).'" where n.nid='.$node['nid']);
db_query($insert_query);

echo $node['nid']."\n";

}
?>
Copy the following code in node.php.

$query = db_rewrite_sql('SELECT n.nid, n.body FROM {node} n WHERE nid > 1');
$result = db_query($query);

while ($node = db_fetch_array($result)) {

db_query("insert into node_comment_statistics (nid) values(".$node['nid'].")");

_comment_update_node_statistics($node['nid']);

echo $node['nid']."\n";

}
?>

This method has been successfully tested on my local drupal. To be done on real drupal site.

I am a newbie with no Drupal experience at all.

2008-11-03T02:10:00.000-08:00

I post ideas in blogger for commenting by others and to maintain my vocabulary. I would love to learn how to formulate my intentions in a more productive manner. It all means to me of personal knowledge gathering, a place for research, to build and share knowledge.This Practice offers me a new time perspective from which to consider learning and changing. I am enthusiastic about living a healthy life and blogging helps me about which is a better choice.

I have been doing some research on the different products available. What is Drupal? What can I do with it? And what is a Content Management System (CMS)? I found answer for these questions, at least on a most basic level, by building a website in minutes using Drupal.

To choose drupal the main reason is the ease of building a site and, more importantly, maintaining a site. Drupal seemed to be a good balance to me than other CMS. You have modules to extend the feature set. Drupal is written in PHP and MySQL. There are many themes to extend the look of your Drupal site. The code is clean and lite. And search engines love a properly set up Drupal site.

Though I am not new to blogs I tried to migrate from blogger to drupal because drupal provides to gain greater control over my blog and how it appears to visitors.