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Evaluating Drupal for the Enterprise Slide Deck

Published February 28, 2011

A few weeks ago I was invited to speak to a technology committee of a large organization that was considering standardizing their various web sites on Drupal. They requested a presentation and then some Q&A time - unfortunately, I didn't have any slides ready to go, so I had to scramble a bit. I decided to spend a couple of days (and evenings) creating a generic slidedeck that I could use for other potential clients as well as share with the rest of the Drupal community.

Florida DrupalCamp 2011 Tickets Now Available

Published January 21, 2011

Tickets for Florida DrupalCamp 2011, February 12-13 at Rollins College in Winter Park, are now available at the official site: FLDrupalCamp.org . This year's event promises to the be the largest Drupal event Florida has ever seen with more of what’s been growing crowds for the past few years - now at a bigger, more comfortable venue. Tickets are just $10 and include a t-shirt, and plenty of food and drinks.

Book Review: Drupal 7 by David Mercer

Published December 10, 2010

Packt Publishing keeps churning out Drupal-related books - by my count they've published nine this year alone! One of their latest efforts is Drupal 7 by David Mercer . It's a basic "intro to Drupal" book based on Drupal 7 geared towards readers new to the platform. There are a number of topics in the book that are a bit unique, starting with a nice discussion about the GPL and the rules governing its basic usage. It's not something that is seen very often in Drupal books, and it a great introduction to open-source licensing. There is also a short section on Open ID that provides the basics without trying to go into too much detail.

DrupalEasy Site Launch: RightServiceFL.org

Published December 9, 2010

The Right Service at the Right Time, the latest DrupalEasy launch, harnesses the function of several contributed and a few custom modules to create a one-stop online shop that connects struggling Orange County, Florida residents directly to the government and social services they need. The Orlando-based Orange County Library System (OCLS) which contracted with DrupalEasy to develop the site, is going all out to promote the program, and is getting great feedback already. With the launch of The Right Service at the Right Time, people across Central Florida can take advantage of the full range of resources available to them, all from their home computers or those provided in libraries throughout the county. Before the new site, those without Internet access would have to travel from one government office to the next to access assistance from the various agencies.

Book Review: Drupal 6 Panels Cookbook

Published December 3, 2010

It's pretty rare for me to read a Drupal book that I can't recommend to anyone. So rare, in fact, that this will be the first time I've done so while reviewing books for DrupalEasy. Before I go into details, I want to be clear about something: writing a technical book isn't easy. While I haven't written one myself (unless my Master's thesis counts), I have written my share of technical articles and I'm never surprised at how much longer it takes me than I originally imagined. This is mainly due to the difficulty to make my thoughts clear to a large group of people. Combine that with a topic as difficult as the Panels module and you've got quite a task ahead of you. While the idea behind panels is easy to grok, as the saying goes, the devil is in the details . Earl Miles ( merlinofchaos on drupal.org , and one of the very few to score "11" on CertifiedToRock.com ), the creator of panels, has stuffed every conceivable option and an unbelieveable amount of flexibility into the Panels suite of modules. As with many things in the Drupal community, this makes for something very powerful, but also something very time-consuming to fully understand and use - both in theory and practice.

Florida DrupalCamp 2011 Call For Sponsors

Published November 21, 2010

Florida DrupalCamp 2011 will be held February 12-13 in Winter Park, Florida on the campus of Rollins College. Sponsorship opportunities are now available to interested parties. The first day of the camp will be a 4-track learning experience and the 2nd day will feature a site building sprint where we build a complete Drupal site for a Florida non-profit organization. At last year's camp we sold out several weeks before the event at 175 people. For 2011, we've found a new venue and will be able to support over 300 participants.

Interview with Dorien Herremans, Author of "Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide"

Published November 5, 2010

Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide (2nd Edition) was published earlier this year by Sun Flare Ltd. . Dorien was kind enough to participate in an interview with DrupalEasy's Mike Anello. Dorien Herremans runs Sun Flare Ltd, an organisation that specializes in Drupal development and consulting. She is a MSc Commercial Engineer in Management Information Services from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. 1. Dorien, please tell us a little bit about your book. The Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide could be compared to a very long tutorial on how to set up a community site with Drupal 6. Or better yet, sequences of small tutorials, that are integrated. Some of the features that are implemented are profiles, photo galleries, video galleries, forum, walls, private messaging, etc. Throughout the entire book, the reader is guided by the example site drupalfun.com . The implementation of every feature is described in detail, along with example screenshots. In essence, this book takes you by the hand in setting up a full featured community website.

Taxonomy Term Pages on Steroids Using Panels and Views

Published October 27, 2010

Creating a well-organized, content-heavy website is difficult. Creating one that is also sustainable is even trickier. It's easy to keep adding features to a web site without considering how they fit into the overall plan until you get to the point where things start getting out-of-hand and site maintenance starts becoming a real issue (blame Drush for making it so darn easy to add new modules!)

DrupalEasy at Drupal Camp Connecticut

Published August 26, 2010

DrupalEasy is one of the sponsors of this Saturday's (August 28, 2010) first-ever Drupal Camp Connecticut , to be held at Yale University in New Haven. The camp sold out with about 175 attendees a few days ago, so if you don't have a ticket, you might be out-of-luck (you can always try begging). Mike Anello from DrupalEasy (born and raised in Connecticut!) will be presenting three sessions: Introduction to Theming with Fusion and Skinr Site Maintenance Basics Image Workflows