Drupal

I generally find that in the process of migrating a website to a new system or framework, importing and moving data is the most fraught, frustrating and troublesome part of the process. If you're moving content from a vanilla installation to another vanilla installation you might be in luck, but really, what are the chances of that?

<a href="https://www.packtpub.com/news/new-drupal-mini-books" target="_blank">Part of Packt publishing's new _Mini Drupal series_</a>

Webform is a module that has equal parts lovers and haters... On one hand it makes creating complex forms with no technical knowledge extremely easy. On the other a lot of it's functionality is handled in a 'non-Drupal' way, although this has got somewhat better recently.

<span style="line-height: 1.538em;">In this sessions we look at utilising a variety of Drupal modules, tools and techniques to create standalone campaigns for your non-profits (or company&#39;s) site. These could be sub sites, micro-sites or pages with a different look and feel.

A CRM (Contact Relationship Manager or Constituent Relationship Manager depending on your sector) is a fantastic way to take your Drupal installation further and streamline your business practises.

I&#39;ll be delivering the new improved version 2 of my &#39;<a href="/presentation/extending-drupal-crm">Extending Drupal with a CRM</a>&#39; talk at <a href="https://www.meetup.com/drupalmelbourne/events/97620592/comments/143010552/" target="_blank">Drupal Melbourne&#39;s inaugural meetup for 2013 on the 8th Jan</a>. It will be new and improved with a tour through integrating external commercial CRMs with Drupal, Drupal native CRM tools and more pictures of cats.

Take your Drupal sites offline with HTML 5 AppCache and turn it into a webapp, perhaps with something like PhoneGap.

A few weeks back I needed to create an ability for certain products in Ubercart to be available for 'price on application', there were a few modules floating around that pertained to do this, but none seemed to work in Drupal 7, so I racked my brain on how to accomplish this as simply as possible and came up with something quite tidy...

<p class="p1">Drupal has a plethora of ways to power your mobile apps and websites, including:<ol class="ol1"><li class="li1">Responsive design</li><li class="li1">Offline storage</li><li class="li1">Integration with frameworks such as PhoneGap and Titanium Appcelerator</li><li class="li1">Utilising services to feed apps data</li><li class="li1">And much more</li></ol><p class="p1">This session will touch upon these various options, looking at when they are relevant, their complexity, their advantages and disadvantages, arming you with a toolbox for the next time a client asks for a mobile site or app.

Over the past year I've been slowly building a list of gotchas, mistaken assumptions and potential slip ups that have hit projects I've been involved with several times, or seemed so blindingly obvious after the moment that they just had to be documented. This is one of the many articles I have that may grow over time as I discover more useful tidbits.

Three presentations tonight, followed by usual natters at the lovely Last Jar afterwards.

An event that can be as specific as an event for the use of Drupal within government demonstrates a growing interest in Drupal (and maybe openness generally) within government and its great that such an event can attract nearly 150 people.

Drupal for Education and elearning by James G Robertson and Bill Fitzgerald

<b>Drupal 8 won't kill your kittens - Lee Rowland</b><br />There have been a lot of discussions around changes in the Drupal core team and that many old names are leaving for a variety of reasons, however there have been many new people coming on board and any community should be able to move on from it's originators. I'm currently going through the same process myself right now with Green Renters and it can be a difficult but worthwhile process. This was a  great oversight of what is new in D8, watch presentation<br />Remember Lee's final words… _"We will accept any help"_<br /><a href="https://previousnext.com.au/blog/drupal-8-wont-kill-your-kittens" target="_blank">See the presentation here</a>

I am excited to be the track chair for site building at DrupalSouth in Wellington next year and it&#39;s time to get your session proposals in!

A great session tonight with two case studies from local Drupal shops...

<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">It&rsquo;s been a busy week and I haven&rsquo;t quite found the time for a daily blog, so instead, lets have a quick weekly round up&hellip;<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">On Monday I went to Mobile Mondays, <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/momomay-mobile-entrepreneur-and-startup-success-secrets-may-12-6pm-tickets-11398538335" target="_blank">a session on entrepreneurs and startups</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">. It was the usual slightly random feel that MoMoMelb often has. I found most of the speakers a little too forthright, telling you how good they all were rather than what they offered. Most interesting of the night was Brad Birchall of <a href="https://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=1&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=0CCwQFjAA&amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.seeracloud.com%2F&amp;ei=V_Z3U-_fJMLplAW-koCYBA&amp;usg=AFQjCNE2Y4i0sHPjfUFMf_8Z6358MTtGgw&amp;sig2=8L3j4nDBYSMJTkLYMUthcQ&amp;bvm=bv.66917471,d.dGI" target="_blank">Seera</a> (a competency framework for recruitment), but generally I couldn&rsquo;t quite figure what a lot of them actually did and why mobile was relevant.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Tuesday was Drupal Melbourne. Stuart Clarke gave a talk on <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/deciphered/building-on-a-commons-base-sustainable-distro-based-development" target="_blank">maintaining a Drupal distribution</a> which is worth a read if you do that sort of thing. Our main speaker of the night was a visitor from India, Anoop John, who I also met up with later in the week. His presentation on <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/zyxware/drupal-in-india" target="_blank">Drupal in India</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;was a fascinating insight into an emerging country in the Drupal ecosystem as well as the world generally. I was also given a present for my help with the meet ups over the past years, which was very nice. :)<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Wednesday was a <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/product-anonymous-may-14-mvp-tickets-10598537511" target="_blank">special session for the typically intimate Product Anonymous</a>, with a very large turnout, different venue and sponsorship. The subject was &lsquo;Minimum Viable Product&rsquo; (MVP) with speakers from Adioso, Seek, 99 Designs, Geoplex and hosted (admirably) by Jock Busuttil, Founder of Product People. It was a great session and I picked up some great advice that I will be applying to the Lean and Agile nonprofit project.<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">At a slight tangent, on Saturday I went to the <a href="https://prov.vic.gov.au/" target="_blank">Public Records of Victoria</a> (PROV) open day and feel it&rsquo;s worth mentioning here. I found it fascinating that we still have so many paper records, in fact just 1% of Victoria&rsquo;s records have been digitised. So my fears of losing all of our records and output due to a lack of a compatible reading device in the distant future are far from being realised. Amongst many other things, I also learnt that PROV is a world leader in electronic record management and has advised the world through the <a href="https://prov.vic.gov.au/government/vers" target="_blank">VERS</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;standard. Finally I learnt about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genealogical_Society_of_Utah" target="_blank">Genealogical Society of Utah</a><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">&nbsp;who are a branch of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and perform a massive amount of support&nbsp; for records offices all around the world through their FamilySearch brand.

As has been the pattern of many recent DrupalCons and Camps, DrupalCon Amsterdam 2014 was all about Drupal 8 and the changes that it's bringing to the platform and community.

I&#39;m always a bit behind with development trends, mainly because working for yourself or small businesses, you rarely have the luxury of spare time to experiment and tend to<span class="Apple-converted-space">&nbsp; stick with what you have to get the job done.

We have been hearing about Drupal 8 for quite a while now and it&rsquo;s sounding increasingly exciting and close. After DrupalCon Amsterdam I was keen to get my hands dirtier with Drupal 8 and try building a website with it.

I have just rolled it the first incarnation of <a href="https://theleantraveller.com/" target="_blank">The Lean Traveller</a>, with the first of the topics we will be covering, '<a href="https://theleantraveller.com/money" target="_blank">Money</a>'.

I love Drupal and end up undertaking most of my programming projects with it. I have been using it for so long that I find it far easier to push out projects with Drupal than with anything else, despite it's infamous learning curve.

I have just finished getting in place the basic structures behind the sites for my new projects and redeveloping my older sites accordingly.

Last week I spent time on creating some of the common elements that can be found across all of the Gregarious Mammal sites, this includes:<ul><li>Creative Commons notice</li><li>Mailing List</li><li>Financially contributing to projects</li><li>Git and version information</li></ul>

A few months ago I had a client requirement for PDF generation, in this case to generate certificates that could be viewed online or printed. I spent some time looking into the best Drupal options available and picked up some advice along the way on how best to accomplish these aims. After mentioning my results to several people, it seemed that PDF generation was a common requirement and now I have the same need again on a personal project, so it seemed a good case study to walk you through what I found.

Sorry for the lack of updates in a while. There have been two main reasons for this, other commitments kept me busy and I've been reworking a lot of the technology stack that powers Chip Shop. I'd like to tell you more about updates to the later.