Archive for the 'Drupal' Category

ineation – Drupal en français

Very cool:  Inéation, a slick, in-depth blog dedicated to Drupal, entirely in French.  W00t to the francais crew.  Courtesy of DrupalCon Paris 2009 co-conspirator Alexandre Eisenchteter.

Drupal 5 to 6 (and clearing the cache in Drupal 5)

It’s been almost a year – kay, 10 months – since Drupal 6 came out.  I’m just now spending a bit of time upgrading a personal site, and there are at least 4 core modules for my site that are not available for Dr6.  And my guess is that they will not be available.  So now I have to figure out how to upgrade my functionality:

  • Media handling – mostly locally-hosted audio files
  • Media display – displaying a playable file that is related to the main node (the CCK Node Reference field will only display a link, and node a playable file – in Dr5, at least).

So, as is with many Drupal sites, a simple upgrade is now turning into a re-architecting.  This is hapening all around me with sites we are working on, and sites others are working on.  And we’re halfway (?) to Drupal 7 already.  So the other thing that is happening all around me is that developers are saying if they have a Dr5 site, they will wait until Dr7 to cme out before upgrading.  But now I’m a little worried – I want to add a couple of things to my site, but if I do, I want to make sure they are minimally in good shape for Dr6, so that they will live on in Dr7….

Clearing cache in Drupal 5:  On a side note, while I was cleaning up my personal site, I came across this simple cheat to clear the cache (very helpful if you, for example, change the location of your logo and favicon files, etc).  As mentioned in the notes, I removed the Drupal goto because it was causing an infinite loop.

Apache not starting on MAMP

One of those nights where I wanted to spend an hour working on a site – you know, really quick-like – and I ended up spending 3 (count’em – three…) hours f@cking with my MAMP server.

I’ve got several folders of sites on my local computer, and I switched from one I had been working on recently to another new folder of a site I had just downloaded.  And in my MAMP dashboard, MySQL was working fine, but Apache would not start.

Three hours later and lots of testing, let’s just skip to the answer – the enclosing folder (not the actual html docs folder I was pointing to in the MAMP prefs, but the enclosing folder) had an accented character in the folder name.  Yes, like the accent over the “e” in frusté, for example…  (Or perhaps more to the point, emmerdé)

This may be obvious to the Linux heads, but to a Mac user like myself, it took hours of narrowing down the problem. Add to that the fact that MAMP/Apache would not reset even after you changed the folder it looked at until you actually restarted MAMP (i.e. using the MAMP button to cycle the servers did not help).

Sigh.  Now I’m where I wanted to be… oh, 3 hours ago?

Max allowed packet problem with MAMP

Holy crud – that took a while to figure out.  I was trying to work locally on a project, and kept running into the “max_allowed_packets” error when importing the database (I was using PHPMyAdmin, but this comes up elsewhere too).  I knew that the default was 1M, but I had a hard time figuring out where to change this number.

It took me a while and a lot of attempts at difference solutions to find the answer – presented to me in a forum.  The key is to replicate the original MySQL conf file (which MAMP apparently removes) with a larger max.

Quoted below (from “weotch”) in case the link ever rots, but here is the original:

“Ok, I think I found my answer. I copied
/Applications/MAMP/Library/share/mysql/my-small.cnf to
/Applications/MAMP/db/mysql/my.cnf (notice that I renamed it). Then I
tweaked the settings I needed to in it and restarted MAMP. Golden!”

Special mobile session of the SF Drupal Users Group

This one is close to my heart – a special SF Drupal Users Group next Monday focusing on mobile integration with Drupal sites.

Please join us on Monday, Nov 10th at PariSoMa for a special mobile-focused San Francisco Drupal Users Group meeting.

Mark Burdett will give an overview of a project he is working on that integrates mobile functionality with a Drupal site:

  • Register by phone
  • Post by phone
  • SMS alerts (covering the basics)

Maurice Carron will then give us a showcase of another site he has worked on with similar and additional functionality:

  • Content delivery (incl MMS)
  • Compatible device source transcoding
  • Wap theming

As usual, beer and sodas for the first dozen or folks.

SFDUG – Mobile integration on Drupal sites

Monday, Nov 10
6-8pm
PariSoMa
1436 Howard St, at 10th

Drupal’N'Go – Case Study

DrupalNGo

Last weekend, my company’s Paris office helped run “Drupal’N'Go”, a BarCamp/WineCamp style Drupal barn-raising.  The idea was to select a worthy nonprofit organization, and build an entire webiste for them.

How did it turn out?  DrupalFrance community member jlndrr posted this feedback (in English, French version here).

Technorati Tags: , ,

SF-DUG August 2008

Chris Brying of Gravitek Labs gave a presentation about the Patterns module.  The Patterms module enables you to develop scripts in easy-to-read XML-style language to automate site configuration steps.  Any form that you can submit on a Drupal site can be scripted via Patterns.

Note:  The audio volume changes considerably during the screencast.  I was recording on an iPod, and had to move the iPod any time a person asked a question.  Also, the video abruptly ends – but towards the end of the Q&A session.

af83 is hiring Drupal developers!

af83.com is an open-source web development company headquartered in Paris. We build music and digital artist communities and are expanding into the green lifestyle movement. Our clients are some of the largest media companies in Europe, including French mobile service provider SFR, and Universal Music Europe.

We are currently expanding our San Francisco office to serve US and international clients, and are looking for web developers experienced with Drupal. Our SF office is located in a gorgeous SoMa loft (PariSoMa) and anchors a coworking community as well as hosting tech (and wine) events.

You DO NOT need to speak French for this position.
You DO need to speak Drupal.

Qualifications:

  • Experienced with PHP and MySQL
  • Experienced with Drupal, including developing or customizing modules
  • Someone who can work well alone, but also with a team

Skills preferred – in one or more of these areas:

  • Implementation of page mock-ups in standards-compliant CSS/ xHTML
  • Javascript / jQuery / Prototype
  • Flash / Flex
  • Alternate CMS’s (Joomla, Typo3, etc)
  • Website development project management

Your specific skill set can be matched up with others among the AF83 team. You will be working with a local and international team on several concurrent projects.

Salary DOE • Benefits included • Flexible schedule

To apply or for further information, please send an email to Greg Beuthin on the contact page.
In the email, please:

  • Point us to 2-3 websites you have been instrumental in developing (at least one in Drupal).
  • Indicate what part of these sites you were responsible for (basic build, customization, theming, etc).
  • Tell us of a challenge you faced when building the site, and how you resolved it.

Technorati Tags: , ,

Drupal’N'Go

DrupalNGo

DrupalNGo

Ah, makes me proud. The French Drupal community (of which my current employer AF83 is a core supporter) is taking the WineCamp style models, and going to host a DrupalCamp with the specific goal to barn-raise a Drupal website for one lucky French NGO. It’s called, in a smart blend of pun and brand, Drupal’N'Go.

(There is discussion whether this is specific to NGOs, or French non-profits in general. Regardless of specific designation, I think the idea is to pick an organization that supports a broader social good instead of a local sports org, which could also be a nonprofit).

A few of the breadcrumbs that led here:

Technorati Tags: , , ,

SF-DUG June 2008

This is a screencast of always entertaining and informative Matt Cheney’s demo of Swish-E Indexer, at the San Francisco Drupal User’s Group hosted in June at PariSoMa. Swish-E plug-ins allow users to search within the contents of certain pages; Swish-E itself provides smart rankings of these searches. More info in the demo.
This video was originally shared on blip.tv by consultinggoat with a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.

Next Page »