On the Trail Blog Archives

Book Review: Drupal 5 Themes

Submitted by mike.monan on 9 April, 2008 - 12:53

The first thing new Drupal developers ask me is, "How do I make my new Drupal site look different from the rest?" Drupal 5 Themes by Ric Shreves is the first book dedicated entirely to theming Drupal. This topic certainly deserves its own book and I'm glad we now have it. (On the down side Drupal 6 is already released and Drupal 7 is in the works.)

Somehow I’ve been able to avoid advanced theming by using sub-contractors or taking themes from the Drupal Theme Garden. But I realize that designers and programmers cannot go it alone. In order to build the most interactive sites, we need to reach across the gap and learn a bit about each other’s craft. Enter Drupal 5 Themes.

Monday Module Mashup - Organic Groups Panels

Submitted by mike.monan on 9 April, 2008 - 11:02

Organic Groups Panels (ogp) is a new Drupal module that I think will become a phenomenon. Thanks to everyone who created this module (and its dependents)! It comes just in time for a project I'm working on now. Sweet!

Organic Groups (og) can solve so many complex group development models. I love it, but it always deserved a bit of custom coding to improve the user interface. Organic Groups Panels, released and distributed with OG, makes it so that I can turn that custom coding into Views and Panels that are OG aware. What this means is more functionality passed to the Group owners (privileged users) while reducing programming efforts.

Here is a screencast of this new functionality deployed on Groups.Drupal.org by Josh Koenig.
And here is a look at what I have done with the A2Drupal group page.

I'm really trying to contribute code back to the Drupal community but I can't keep up with this pace of development. Approximately one new module a day, one great module a month and a few ground breaking modules like OGP in the last year.

mike.monan's blog

Ann Arbor Drupal 1 Year Anniversary

Submitted by steve.colson on 2 April, 2008 - 14:31

A2Drupal

Thanks to everyone who came out for the Ann Arbor Drupal Users Group (A2 Drupal) 1 year anniversary party on 3/31. Switchback sponsored the event by providing tasty snacks and delicious home brew from our own Mike Hofmockel.