Hudson: The butler for your cron jobs, too
For years, I used cron (sometimes anacron) without asking questions. The method was simple enough, and every project requiring cron-related capabilities documented the setup.

There is a much better way, and it involves Hudson. I introduced “Hudson for cron” as a sidebar at the Drupal Scalability and Performance Workshop a few weeks ago. To my surprise, several of the attendees remarked on their feedback questionnaires that it was one of the most valuable things they picked up that day. So, I’ve decided to write this up for everyone.

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In the past few month, since Drupalcon Paris, I was busy upgrading Organic groups (a.k.a OG) to Drupal7. I'd like to give a quick overview of what has been done, what needs to be done, and the changes that came with the upgrade.

The first noticeable thing is that like Ubecart became Commerce, Organic groups has changed its name to Group. The second thing you will notice, is that Group is a complete rewrite of OG! Why was it done? OG is a great module, and it has been around for a long time. Long enough to be very popular and feature rich, but on the same time, concepts and implementations that were right in earlier Drupal versions became outdated. Using Drupal 7 new features - especially field API - were too hard to resist.

Here are the Group's main concepts, by importance:

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Just out is an iPhone app by Semper that helps parents with children find locations of interest. A Drupal-powered server provides the data backend.

If you have not participated in core development then please do not write ill informed, baseless derisive blog posts and especially not to the Drupal Planet. Critique is good, baseless bashing just makes those who actually do the work feel depressed, angry and sad. I now abstain from reading the development list, the forums could we please keep at least the Planet a place which a developer can read without wanting to hit something? kthxbye

My quasi-annual venting of spleen on core changes in the latest release of Drupal.

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This evening I was trying to make a custom RSS feed using Views, that would replace the node body (in <description>) with a CCK field. For other types of output, this involves making a preprocessor for the Views row, or using hook_nodeapi to modify the node content, but RSS feeds don't seem to allow any of that flexibility.
Hook_nodeapi has an 'rss item' op, but I could only get it to add elements, not replace existing ones. The 'alter' op was triggered, but changes I made to the content with it didn't follow through. The only one that seemed to work was 'view', which is klugy, and incomplete, because fields added through CCK's display/rss settings are put on afterward.
Anyway, this is the best I could figure out -- if anyone knows a better way, I'd love to hear it.

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As many of you may have heard, Ning recently eliminated its free networks and laid off 40% of its staff. Currently, Ning supports exporting users; for those of you interested in migrating your community members from Ning into Drupal, you have two well developed options at your disposal:

• User Import: http://drupal.org/project/user_import
• Feeds: http://drupal.org/project/feeds

If Ning ever opened up their APIs to allow content export, then importing the content would be equally straightforward. Both the Feeds module and the Node Import module would get the job done.

Another option for data import is a combination of the Table Wizard and the Migrate module.

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There seems to be growing interest in CiviCRM in Seattle. People want to know more about what it is, how it works and how they can harness the power for their clients or their own organizations.

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Our development of Brightcove module is steadily progressing and I thought it would be useful to explain a bit about our development processes. For version control we use Git on all of our internal projects, so for Brightcove we decided to utilize this same tool with just a small change - using github.com instead our own private repositories.

Why Git?

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It’s taken a while to build, but it’s finally ready – a global translation glossary for each client.

Many words can be translated in different ways and it’s important that everything we translate come out the same.

The solution is a glossary.

A glossary helps produce consistent translations, as it shows how phrases were translated before.

Website owners and developers can create entries for important phrases. These entries can include the translation and serve as guidelines for the translators, or remain untranslated, so that translators can suggest the right translation.

As translators work, they too can add glossary entries. These entries will help translate the rest of the project consistently and also serve as reference for other translators who work on the project.

Now it's ready for website translation projects

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I frequently use a 3rd party designer to help with the tedious task of going from PSD to final theme. If you haven't realized it yet, but alot of designers have problems setting up a local MAMP install w/ drupal in which to fuck with css. To deal with this without giving the designer any command-line access, my shop uses what we call CZI on all drupal installs. This stands for CSS Injector, Zen theme, IMCE, and allows a designer to upload images and apply css rules to a development site they have been given permissions for on the theme, Zen, that provides all the classes and ids anyone would need.

After my shop, the designer, and the client are satisfied, CSS Injector and it's external files become a weight and need to be removed. Below I detail the process of using Zenophile (http://drupal.org/project/zenophile) to create a zen subtheme in which to wrap up all your CSS Injector files:

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DrupalCamp Colorado has just been announced through the launch of one of the sharpest camp websites we've seen. The event will take place on June 26-27, 2010 in Denver, CO - home to some stellar Drupal companies and contributors. We're excited to sponsor the event and bring an e-commerce focus to it for a second year in a row.

DrupalCamp Colorado is a two day learning event with sessions proposed by community members in one of four tracks: Business, Development, Community, and Design. Accepted sessions will appeal to Drupal users of all skill levels, so newbies and advanced developers alike should benefit from the topics covered. Drupal camps are also great opportunities to rub shoulders with the people writing the modules you're using on a day to day basis.

Our vision is for Drupal to be the #1 open source e-commerce platform in the world, so we'll spend our time at the camp demoing and discussing Drupal Commerce and how people can begin contributing and developing for it even now.

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I recently led a live DrupalDojo webinar on the Aegir hosting system.

The session was designed in lieu of potentially presenting a future series of Aegir-related dojo sessions that progress in terms of topic complexity (i.e beginner through to expert).

For this reason, the session was largely an introduction to the system and how to use it, with some 'under the hood' peeks where possible for those users who are comfortable with the terminology and process already.

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When Webchick announced that Drupal was moving to Git at Drupalcon 2010, our office erupted in pleasure at the news. Lots of great Drupalists are already using Git and there's even an unofficial Github branch of Drupal for your branching and stashing pleasure Github mirror.

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Monday, May 10 at 7:00 pm at Stetson's in Washington, DC

The next Washington, DC Drupal meetup - happening this Monday, May 10 - will focus on open data, with the recent launch of Data.WorldBank.org on Drupal. Data.WorldBank.org is part of a huge open data initiative that the World Bank is undertaking to open up its massive database of worldwide human development indicators and make this data accessible online.

At the meetup, we'll hear from the team behind the project at the World Bank and from some of the developers who worked on it:

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Interest in Drupal the Card Game is massive, why we've offered to mail decks to those who didn't attend DrupalCon SF.

The McGill University Health Centre (MUHC), is one of the most comprehensive university health centres in North America. It includes a network of five major hospitals and is both a patient and research-oriented organization.

Part of improving communication towards the Drupal community, is writing about is done within the DA.
Here three posts that you may have missed:

• Jacob Redding hired as interim General Manager
• Drupalcon SF Drupal Association Retreat Report
• 5 paid contracts available to help complete the Drupal.org redesign and CVS to Git migration

Thanks to the people working on those.

Listen online:  http://www.lullabot.com/sites/lullabot.com/files/audio/DrupalVoices097.mp3

Sam Boyer (aka sdboyer) talks about the Drupal.org transition from CVS to Git. Sam talks about the different phases of the migration, and how using a distributed version control system like Git will change and improve the collaborative workflow of Drupal development

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Last October, Drupal made a big splash when it was chosen for the redesign of WhiteHouse.gov. Though it was far from the first or last government site in Drupal, for some (especially in this country), it put Drupal on the map in the government space. Since the White House site launched, Drupal has been chosen by the British government, the King of Belgium, Queen Rania of Jordon, the Jamaican Prime Minister, the City of Athens, and other government entities. Why has Drupal become so popular in this area? Here are four reasons why.

Easy to Post Current Information

On most government websites, the ability to post current information regarding an event, issue or crisis is imperative. In some cases there may be important information that cannot wait for an IT person to have the time to post it to the website. The CMS aspect of the Drupal platform is a huge selling point for many government agencies, because it means that practically anyone within their organization can post content to their website without delay.

Secure

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