drupal

Drupal Stuff

Below is items tagged as having to do with Drupal.

I first started using Drupal in late 2005 when I organized the bikegeeks and have been using it ever since.

I am the author of a Drupal Script Library that I think provides very good administration tools for large collections of Drupal sites.

I am also a co-founder of Chicago Drupal Authority, a commercial Drupal site development and hosting company.

Using firefox spell check in ckeditor, fckeditor

I'm always having to look this up on drupal.org, so I thought I'd just put it here once and for all.

(FWIW, you can read about it here: http://drupal.org/node/764100 among other places.)

To enable the firefox spell check when using the fckeditor module, add these lines to the file .../sites/<site name>/modules/contrib/fckeditor/fckeditor.config.js (path assumes you built the site and checked out the module with the drupalGitDeploy.sh script, part of my Drupal Script Library):

FCKConfig.FirefoxSpellChecker = true ;
FCKConfig.BrowserContextMenu = true ;

I always add it to the very bottom of the file so as not to confuse the update process as this is a diff to a file under git control.

For the ckeditor module, it's much the same. Add these lines to the file .../sites/<site name>/modules/contrib/ckeditor/ckeditor.config.js:

config.disableNativeSpellChecker = false;
config.browserContextMenuOnCtrl = true;

Drupal Tempalte Installations

This post describes the work I have done to create "template sites".  Template sites are Drupal installations created and maintained with initial setup done to speed the creation of a new site.  The template sites can be duplicated onto a new domain and database loaded with a single simple script.

Converting the Drupal Script Library to Git usage.

The conversion of the Drupal project to Git took me somewhat by surprise.  I have recently found some time to upgrade my Drupal script library. Before the upgrade, this library used CVS to install Drupal and contributed modules and to query the status of installed components. Now that CVS usage is no longer supported, I had to modify the relevant scripts to check-out and update Drupal core and contributed modules via Git instead.

While I can completely understand the migration to Git from a developer standpoint.  Drupal is developed in a distributed manner and a distributed SCM system makes perfect sense.  Managing patches from many developers is a lot of work -- and being burdened with a crufty system like CVS just creates more work.  HOWEVER, Git is less than optimal to use as the basis for a pure Drupal implementor's role.  Because Git downloads the entire repository history on a clone, the size of an installed site skyrockets, taking longer to install and back-up.  This can be worked-around by using a zipfile based installation, but then one looses the ability to stay up-to-date to a branch.

Back to the modifications made to the Drupal Script Library...  The biggest changes are:

Image uploading/attaching with FCKEditor

Often with the sites I've built, I have to explain over and over again how to attach an image using the FCKEditor (or CKEditor)/IMCE combination that has become part of my standard template install.

This is a mini-tutorial on how to attach an image.  If I sent you to read this and you still have questions, just let me know!

To upload an image:

  1. click the image icon icon in the editor toolbar.  
  2. In the resulting pop-up, click the 'Browse Server' button. 
  3. In THAT pop-up, you can click the 'Upload' button at the top of the page. 
  4. A file chooser dialog will appear, click 'Browse...' to find the image file you want to upload.
  5. Click the 'Upload' button and the image will upload

This process will create various-sized thumbnails you can reference.  Those thumbnails will have prefixes added to the file name to differentiate them.

 

Free Drupal Themes wrap-up

I'm writing this page mainly as a way to not have to type it all in any more.  I do/have-done a fair number of free websites for various groups and causes.  I've done some paid sites as well.  Often I find myself walking someone thru what a theme is and how I can bust them out a simple site quick if they choose to use a free theme.  The rest of this page is that discussion. 

This page discusses a Drupal website, specifically the visual design (or template) of the site.  This is known as the "theme" in Drupal speak.

Drupal is a "Content Management System" -- a system that allows people to modify the website by using the website.  Generally, a user will log in and then add and update pages, and update the operation of the site.  Drupal makes this fairly easy.  Drupal has a modular design which is used by many community contributions that have been created for the Drupal system.  These contributions provide with enormous power to make a high-functioning website.

A Drupal website be broken down into three things: 

Drupal Script Library Presentation

At the CDMUG meeting on Thursday, April 29th, 2010, I gave a presentation on my Drupal Script Library.

The introduction for the event was:

the latest script: drupalUpdate.sh

I recently added the script drupalUpdate.sh to my Drupal Script Library.  This script will update a site completely from the command line.  It calls drupalCVSDeploy.sh to update the site then calls the drush update command to update the database.

Goodby drupalManageFCKEditor.sh, hello drupalManageLibraries.sh

Today I renamed the drupalManageFCKEditor.sh script to drupalManageLibraries.sh.

drupalManageFCKEditor.sh was a script I had written to help with the installation and maintenance of the FCKEditor library that is required to make the Drupal fckeditor module work.  It allowed downloading the latest version of the file and looking inside the installed directory for modifications to the original files.

Using drush with the Drupal Script Library, revisited

This is a follow-up to my last post on integrating Drush with my Drupal Scripts Library.

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