WordPress comes with a comments system but many WP sites replace it with something else.
Why? Other comments systems can provide more features and more flexibility. Sites find that visitors prefer these alternative systems and that they help to encourage people to comment and become part of the site's community. This tutorial will show you how to set up perhaps the most popular alternative comment system which is from Disqus.com.
Are you looking for a good excuse to get out of the office and head somewhere beautiful? DrupalCon Denver is coming up in March. It's going to be one full week of Drupal with sessions, business events, training and probably some ski trips too.
We're delighted to have been one of the first six training sessions announced for DrupalCon Denver.
This will be our third DrupalCon training in a row after both DrupalCon Chicago and DrupalCon London in 2011.
Find out more at http://denver2012.drupal.org and check out our training called the Absolute Beginners Guide to Drupal.
The WordPress Dashboard is a good tool, but it can be improved. If you are tired of scrolling pages, drilling down through menus and searching for little used features, you could increase your efficiency and decrease your frustration with a few plugins.
It doesn't seem like much of a bother to the infrequent user, but if you have a lot to do, you become aware of every extra click, extra menu, and every extra few seconds of wait time. They all add up. We're going to show you some plugins you can use to make your life easier.
Drupal 7 did get a new toolbar and overlay to make it easier to use. However, many people prefer to use the Administration Menu module. This might be because they are familiar with it (because it was also very popular in Drupal 6), and it might because it is actually easier to use than the default toolbar.
The normal Drupal 7 toolbar can require several clicks to get to parts of the admin area. As a result, many developers find the Administration Menu module to be a great help because they can jump to any administrative task much more quickly.
An IDE is a wonderful tool for coders. IDE stands for Integrated development environment. It's an environment on your computer that has your web server and all possible editing tools in one place.
In this tutorial we'll introduce you to CodeLobster, an IDE with plugins to support Joomla, Drupal and WordPress development.
Web designers need to create beautiful designs. That's obvious. But, with many different platforms and screen sizes in use, they now also need beautiful designs that are also easy to scale and modify. Grid systems are one solution They are an attempt by designers to create work that is both beautiful and practical.
Various grid systems now form the basis of almost all new Joomla, WordPress and Drupal templates and themes. In this tutorial, we'll give you an introduction to grids so that you can work with those designs more effectively. At the end, we have links to tutorials on two popular grid systems for Joomla, WordPress and Drupal.
Theming Drupal is not a straightforward task, but people are trying to make it easier. One way to do that is by creating a theme framework that provides many of the basic features that designers need: a grid system, cross-browser compatibility, base CSS classes and more..
In this tutorial, we're going to use the Omega base theme. It is the theme used by major Drupal shops such as Acquia.com and Palantir.net.
Code can be dangerous. The right code in the right place brings your site to life, but there are many places where it can be a huge security risk.
Inside your content, code can be dangerous. If you allow people to use PHP, Javascript, iframes or other code inside content, you greatly increase the chances of a malicious script being used.
This video was taken at DrupalCamp Indianapolis this November. Rod from OSTraining gave a talk called "The Absolute Beginners Guide to Drupal".
The talk was aimed squarely at people who were brand new to Drupal. About 60 people came and enjoyed the introduction, which was a condensed version of our full-day Beginner training.
This short tutorial will show you how to find out which Drupal version your site is using.
We'll cover both Drupal 6 and 7 as there is a small difference between the two when it comes to finding your version number.
2011 is drawing to an end and I hope it's been a great year for you.
Here's a quick round-up of where our staff have been in November and where we hope to meet you in December (in short: Ohio, Lousiana, Florida, Washington, New York, Atlanta and Boston).
Matt is the Director of Technology for examiner.com
Matt is on the organization committee for DrupalCon Denver – Collaborative Publishing for Every Device – and looking after the volunteers. (He’s looking – so contact him)
Matt has been involved with Drupal since 4.6.
If you're really interested in project management and open source, check out UpStream, a WordPress project management plugin.
When Matt started with Drupal – he had some programming background – but was “different” – He was nurtured by the community – sometimes harsh… sometimes bizarre… but certainly part of it… Embrace new people when they join – celebrate the differences – its worth it when we try. (well said)
Matt’s strength is project management… and examiner.com has had some big shifts in project management over the past 2 years.
Part 1 – Some moments in the history of project management
until 2700BC – project management was by necessity. The pyramids etc saw periods of productivity and rest.
1st Century BC – Marcus Vitruvius Pollio -
17th Century – Christopher Wren – rebuilt all the churches after London burned
18-19th Century – Thomas Telford – bridges -
to this point – we didn’t know what our dependencies were – or planning for materials / labour.
Then came Henry Gantt – 1861-1919 – “Father of planning and Control Techniques” – his methodology identified dependencies and tracking time.
The process of project management we use today comes from the military – CPM and PERT – highly accurate inventory and timing…
Part 2: 3 Software Methodologies
1. “Cowboy” – great for unpredictable projects / fast / requires a lot of trust – and can lead to missed expectations and miss-communications. – Highly informal – focuses on stakeholders
When time is crunched – (they had 7 months instead of 18 to get the job done)
“You have to trust me – but it will work in the end”.
2. “Waterfall” – after the project was done the examiner wanted a lot more planning and predictability. Highly formalized, focuses on requirements, inflexible, planning is frontloaded. Waterfall doesn’t work very well with Drupal projects – and there’s really no such thing as “waterfall” – there will ALWAYS be changes.
The development team got shut out of the planning – they were just handed requirements. At the end of the day – there was a lot of hacking going on just to meet the requirements. Which made waterfall very unappealing.
3. “Agile” – weave, move, flexible.
- defined timeboxes
- iterative approach
- incremental
- collaborative
- rapid and flexible – responsive to change
- self organizing
Whatever the approach – we NEED project management for successful outcomes.
At this point – Matt put four great testimonials from people who talk about project management.
Funny stuff – clients can be completely unreasonable… and developers speak a different language… Whatever craziness occurs during a project – it comes back to management and communication. Both the dev. and the client need to be accountable for the time spent.
Lack of planning, communication, process, focus, and difference in culture make for nightmares for us our partners.
Our job is to bring calm to the chaos. We are the cat herders… we don’t just herd developers, themers, we herd clients, owners… and they all speak different languages. Communication is the key. We keep the team from being distracted by shiny things
“Just add this one little bobble… ” Surely it can’t take that long… but its way more than that (he’s so right on this). The PM has to shelter people from all the crud. Strong communication is the key.
Manhole covers are heavy so they can’t be picked up – and they’re round because its the only shape that won’t fall into the hole. This is the role of PM.
The Agile Approach:
Matt has a ton of people that he’s responsible for. They are spread out all over place (distributed team)
Product Group – owns the backlog, personas etc…
Project Management Group – scrum masters, protects the dev team from others and making mistakes
Examiner’s Timebox Timeline:
60 days- business requirements
40 days – user stories, wireframes, comps
20 days – Beginning of Current Development cycle
So they do 20 day sprints – and they overlap…
Matt spent some time going through their Development Calendar
Daily Scrums – what did you do in the last 24 hours, what are you doing today – what are the blocks in your way
Communication: -
IRC / Skype
Google Docs
and a bunch of tools
This process creates a faster, better, more awesome development team.
(Originally posted for DrupalCampAustin – updated 12/3/11 from DrupalcampOhio)
Today’s keynote is with Angie Byron (@webchick) – “The Drupal Community – Where are we going and how to get involved?”
(Sidenote: they scheduled the keynotes for right after lunch – a great idea for getting the max number of people there…)
This is a getting started guide for people who want to optimize their WordPress sites for search engines. WordPress SEO by Yoast is one of the most popular of all WordPress SEO plugins, having been downloaded over 670,000 times since it's launch early in 2011.
You can also click here to read our review of another highly popular SEO plugin called All-in-One SEO Pack.
In this tutorial we're going to introduce you to the WordPress SEO plugin and also show you how to choose settings that will work successfully.
The SEO Checklist for Drupal is a very useful module to help with your SEO efforts.
The SEO Checklist module doesn't perform any SEO functions, but it will guide you through the process of optimizing your site and it will recommend best-of-breed modules. After installation the checklist will take you through a list of recommended changes made by the experts at Volacci.
This custom post type tutorial is a follow-up to our earlier article showing how to create custom post types for WordPress.
Let's imagine that you're now empowered by knowledge and have gone wild, creating lots of new custom post types. They work wonderfully, but by default they don't show on your homepage. So, how do you get these custom post types to show on the front page of your blog with the normal post types?
There are a couple ways to do this, neither very difficult. Trying them both will give you practice editing functions.php and The Loop, both at a very beginning cut-and-paste-coder level.
