pingVision blogs

Pregnancy.org Relaunches in Drupal 6

2008-11-13T16:32:45-06:00

This morning pingVision relaunched Pregnancy.org in Drupal 6. The site was wholly designed and developed by pingVision and included several interesting integrations including some custom tools.

The site allows site members to track their progress within the four primary tracks--"Getting Pregnant", "Pregnancy", "Labor and Delivery", and "Baby and Beyond".

Some of the things we did include:

Development of a Basal Body Temperature Tool to help keep track of fertility cycles. The tool collects data (such as temperature and how you are feeling) and then uses the Google Chart API to generate a visual of when the most likely ovulation times will occur.
Creation of a Pregnancy Calendar that follows your pregnancy every day to show you what is happening.
Inclusion of a Fetal Development Tool that gives a visual representation and facts about where the fetus is in development.
Integration of live chat and community forums in vBulletin.
A sizeable import of users and articles from the old and inflexible PHPNuke site.

The site includes ad serving from multiple ad services such as DoubleClick Dart, PriceGrabber, and IntelliTXT.

This project will spawn a new contributed module (by pingVision's Ben Jeavons) called PDS (a generic tool for storing data for blocks) and possibly several others. We'll be blogging more in upcoming days.

Tips using Eclipse and Drupal, at Wednesday's Meet-Up at pingVision

2008-11-10T17:49:06-06:00

This Wednesday's Denver/Boulder Drupal Users' Group Meet-Up will have, among other things, a presentation by Al Steffen on working on Drupal using Eclipse, the open source integrated development environment that makes coding -- and specifically coding for Drupal -- so much easier.

Also, Matt Tucker will continue our ad hoc series on things to do with Views by giving a little overview of Draggable Views, which is a module that pretty much does what you'd expect: drag-and-drop ordering of nodes in Views.

But that's just part of the meet-up. As always, the agenda is open.

Have a question?

Launched a website?

Created a cool new Drupal module?

Share it with fellow Drupal aficionados!

Meet-and-greet-and-Za start at 6:30pm, right here in our main meeting room. (Map below.) Presentations start around 7. All are welcome, from experts to the merely curious!

Node Bodies, Teasers, and hook_nodeapi('presave')

2008-11-05T18:16:43-06:00

Here's something interesting to keep in mind the next time you're getting fancy with your nodes during the hook_nodeapi presave step: Don't forget your teaser.

I was having trouble with a Drupal 6 website I've been working on, where it seemed almost as if the body was duplicating part of itself (or sometimes all of itself) on the edit - it looked fine when you were viewing the node, but editing it caused things to duplicate within the body field. I tried the usual suspects for fixing - I searched for nodeapi calls inside of the custom modules we'd written to find the culprit, and then even just started turning off modules, and the theme, one by one, hoping to find the culprit that way.

Eventually I just tried using sql to modify the teaser in node_revisions, and when this modification showed up in the edit form, I started doing a search in the code for 'teaser .' - and I found it in node.pages.inc's node_body_field:

function node_body_field(&$node, $label, $word_count) {
  // Check if we need to restore the teaser at the beginning of the body.
  $include = !isset($node->teaser) || ($node->teaser == substr($node->body, 0, strlen($node->teaser)));

... $form['body'] = array( '#type' => 'textarea', '#title' => check_plain($label), '#default_value' => $include ? $node->body : ($node->teaser . $node->body), '#rows' => 20, '#required' => ($word_count > 0), ); ?>

The problem is that the edit form for nodes compares the teaser with the start of the body data. If they don't match, then it prepends the teaser to the body data - which is normally used for when the person writing the node splits the teaser/body into two parts.

However, I was changing the body in hook_nodeapi('presave'), which turns out to be after the node teaser was created. The fix was as simple as adding $node->teaser = node_teaser($node->body); to the end of the presave code.

pingVision wins W3 Award for Popular Science

2008-10-31T11:13:41-05:00

pingVision has won a W3 Award in the Magazine category for the website for Popular Science, PopSci.com. The W³ Awards honors creative excellence on the web, and recognizes the creative and marketing professionals behind award winning sites, marketing programs, and video work created for the web.

This is the third award pingVision has won for the PopSci website, having won a Gold Horizon Award in the Magazine/News category earlier this year and the Best Drupal Showcase award at DrupalCon Boston 2008.

The PopSci website was developed in Drupal 5, with custom functionality that resulted in some new contributed modules, and involved full migrations from Vignette (with a massive Oracle database) and TypePad. (Read our PopSci.com case study posted on Drupal.org and right here on the pingVision website.)

About the W3 Awards [pdf]:

The W³ is sanctioned and judged by the International Academy of the Visual Arts ... an invitation-only body consisting of top-tier professionals from a "Who's Who" of acclaimed media, interactive, advertising, and marketing firms. IAVA members include executives from organizations such as Alloy, Brandweek, Coach, Disney, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Estee Lauder, Fry Hammond Barr, HBO, Monster.com, MTV, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Victoria’s Secret, Wired, and Yahoo!....

In determining winners, entries are judged based on a standard of excellence as determined by the IAVA, according to the category entered.

We are very grateful that our work has received such recognition. Thank you, IAVA!

Drupal's Views module unleashes new power for website administrators

2008-10-27T17:37:29-05:00

After the initial official release of Views 2 nearly two weeks ago, we felt the need to give an official rundown of how we have incorporated some of its features into our production sites. There really are too many new features to discuss in one blog post, but I will try to cover a few new features for site administrators, developers, and themers.

What is Views?

If you're not familiar with Views already, it can be a bit challenging to explain. Views is the most actively used contributed module in the Drupal repository. On the most basic level, it is used to create lists of data. The majority of a website is built upon two concepts: the first being data, the second being presentation of this data. It is for this reason that views is a vital element of many sites.

Views gives you the option to filter the data outputted by a variety of options -- including but not limited to: node type, author, taxonomy term. It also allows you to sort by a variety of different options, including: post date, updated date, number of page views, etc. The list of data can be unformatted or outputted via a table, grid, list, river-of-news, etc.

Using Views, one can create countless lists of data such as:

River of news
Image gallery
User lists
Highest-rated content

And all this can be done without touching a bit of code.

A Greatly Improved User Interface

The most obvious change with the Views 2.0 is the user interface itself. What used to be thousands of pixels in height now fits before the first page fold in a completely revamped interface.

One of the most useful new features is the ability to create multiple displays within one view. Often, one needs to create a block, page, and feed of relatively the same data. Not only does Views 2 give you this functionality, but it also presents the controls in a unified interface that allows you to quickly change configuration settings between multiple displays.

For example, if you had a page and a block display both showing the most recent 5 blog entries posted to your site, you could simply change the ‘Default’ display to show the most recent 10 entries, and that setting would trickle down to all other displays. This functionality alone decreases the amount of time needed to create and update views drastically. (Of course, one can set a display to override the default display on a per-configuration setting basis.)

Not only has the interface for creating and editing views improved, but you can now create views which are more complex. To begin, no longer is Views node-centric - meaning that one can create lists of almost any data stored in the database, from users, to comments, files, revisions, and taxonomy terms. This opens up a whole new use for views, which, before, was reserved for custom queries.

Views as Attachments

Another new feature of Views is the ability to attach view display to another. By creating a display type of ‘Attachment,’ one has the option to amend or prepend one list of data with another.

For example, creating a gallery-type view which displays the most recent image enlarged with the description to the right, and the next six most recent images’ thumbnails below is entirely too easy with Views 2 and imagecache. Simply create a display which outputs two fields: the first being the image using a large imagecache preset, the second being the node body (or other description field). Then, create an attachment display, which displays a total of 6 nodes offset by 1 (to account for the first large image), and set the imagecache preset to be a smaller thumbnail. Then, simply select your attachment display to propend to your first display, add a bit of CSS to float the large image to the left and bingo, you have a single view that looks like this:
Sample images' source: commons.wikimedia.org

Relationships in Views, and Advanced Help

Another fantastic feature is the ability to define relationships in a view. A relationship allows you to expand the original query to include additional objects.

For example, if you are using a nodequeue to order your nodes, you might want to create a view which is sorted by order within the nodequeue. Simply add a relationship to the nodequeue within the views interface, and you will see a new sort option appear:

You will notice notice in the above screenshot that there are question-mark icons next to Relationships and Sort criteria. These were added via the Advanced Help module, which makes accessing help much easier. For a feature rich module such as views, this functionality is extremely helpful.

Easy Views Theming

Theming a 1.0 View used to be a daunting task. Figuring out which theme functions to override was often difficult and, simply put, was too complicated for beginning themers. Now, Views 2.0 uses a template-based theming system. All of the information as to which tpl files to create is accessible through the user interface under Base Settings > Theme > Information. Moving to a template-based system makes the life of a themer much brighter.

Although all of the discussed features are quite wonderful, the most useful addition to Views 2 is, undoubtedly Live Preview. No longer do you have to save your view, which tabs, and refresh. Instead, everything is handled on one screen, allowing you to work more efficiently.

Views + [other Drupal modules]

There are many contributed Drupal modules that integrate well with Views, making Views all the more powerful and useful.

For example, we are using Views to handle some complex workflows. With the combination of Workflow, Actions, Triggers, NodeQueue, and Views, one can create a feature-rich site that handles complex content creation workflows demanding moderation, approval, and promotion stages. Workflow integrates seamlessly with Views, allowing you to create lists of all nodes in a certain state. Integration of Workflow with Views also adds many other useful filters, sorts, and fields.

We have also used Views to create a custom search page with customizable sort options. It seems that almost every week we find a new use for Views that shortens our time spent on these types of tasks, allowing us to spend more time making sites even more functional than before.

A Valuable Drupal Toolset Created by a Most-Valuable Drupal Player

A special shout out from all of us at pingVision to Earl Miles (merlinofchaos) who was recently voted Drupal's MVP by Packt Publishing mainly for creating such a wonderful contribution to the Drupal community.

Drupal User Group Meet-Up this Wednesday at pingVision

2008-10-06T20:36:33-05:00

The regularly scheduled Drupal Meet-Up is happening this Wednesday, October 8th, starting at 6:30pm right here at pingVision.

The agenda is open this month, so bring your questions, your showcase sites, your hot new tip, and your questions. Connect with others who are into Drupal!

The first half-hour will be meet-and-greet, with pizza and beverages.

Whether new to Drupal or an expert, you are welcome!

The Internet Explorer 6 tax

2008-10-01T09:57:20-05:00

It's hard to believe that I wrote this more than three years ago:

What I find especially frustrating, though, is how Microsoft forces me to spend so much time pampering their software. Yes, I'm talking about Internet Explorer, the iconoclastic web browser that refuses to acknowledge web standards.

How much online productivity is lost trying to get websites to look and function properly on Internet Explorer?

That would be an interesting question to explore. Talk to just about any web designer, and they will tell you that, for every 100 hours they spend on design, 50-60 hours are dedicated to actual design, and the rest is devoted to creating xhtml and CSS hacks to get it to work on Internet Explorer.

This is just as true today.

It's getting to the point where we're thinking of adding IE6 compatibility as a separate line item on our proposals and agreements. After all, when you're spending 35-50% of your theming time just trying to get a cool new design to work on one rather archaic browser, it's no small matter.

It's a ≈40% tax on web theming.

How can we get out of this? Thanks to Microsoft market share and IT departments' resistance to upgrading, I fear we're not going to be able to say a final good-bye to IE6 anytime soon.

Sophia Locero points to the IE Death March and several other like minded efforts to build a collective movement to simply drop IE6 support, and asks:

So many parties are restless about the state of web browsing, and rather than wait for Microsoft to get its act together, they take it upon themselves to do something about it. It doesn’t really stop with the viral websites. Every few months or so you’ll find a blog post that details how the author has had it with IE (IE6 usually) and that he has resolved to drop support for the browser completely.

One must ask: are any of them making a significant difference in the market share of IE? Or IE6, specifically?

I don't think so. Here at pingVision, nearly every one of our clients requires IE6 compatibility for their web projects, and I don't think that's because they're unthinking or naive about browsers. The fact is that their audience -- and, quite often, their own organizations -- are locked into IE6 by their IT departments.

Will 37 Signals' dropping of IE6 support make a dent in their market? Perhaps not, since their audience is probably already heavily skewed towards Firefox anyway. But our B2B clients would likely see a huge drop-off in traffic if their sites did not support the IE6 that still permeates corporate desktops and workstations the world over.

Still, what we have here is a tax on productivity, and if Microsoft did one thing to help the online economy, it would simply EOL IE6 altogether. Right. Now.

Meanwhile, we'll consider adding the "Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 Tax" to our estimates as a line item for all clients to see.

Knight Drupal Initiative - Let's Build A Grant System!

2008-09-10T17:23:24-05:00

Traditionally, grant making has been practiced in an analog/paper-based manner. Grant forms are printed and the grantee applies for the grant by typing on the form. More recently, fill-able PDFs have allowed applicants to fill out forms on computer. However, filling out the form is only the very first part of the grant-making process.

Proprietary grant systems are expensive. They can be REALLY expensive and then have licensing fees. They price the small player right out of the market and tax the resources of the larger players leaving less money to distribute to grantees.

Less Money to distribute=Less Good in the target community.

Almost everybody, whether they notice it or not, is impacted and benefits from grants ranging from scholarships to clean water, from community revitalization to inoculations, from public health care to adoptions.

The solution? Create an open source grant-making system that provides organizations with a solid, powerful, and web-based alternative to commercial grant-making packages on the market today that costs nothing to leverage.

pingVision has assembled a Knight Drupal Initiative proposal that significantly impacts the non-profit grant-making world.

pingVision wants...

To create an easy-to-use, state of the art, open-source grant-making system using the Drupal Content Management system.
To allow for custom development of application forms.
To allow for custom theme development.
To provide management tools for grant applicants, grantees, panelists, and Grant-makers.

Grant-makers (from the smallest to the largest) will have, within reach, tools that will improve efficiency, reduce cost, and simplify application management. The code will be available to all for extension, improvement, and further development encouraging greater participation in designing systems that truly fit the needs of the community.

Who does this impact? Government, Schools, Private Non-profits, Organizations (both small and large) and anybody that interacts with them is affected.

This project answers a huge question for non-profits: How do I manage my grants process? Simple! With Drupal!

How can you participate? Head over to our proposal and leave feedback. The input will be appreciated.

Drupal User Group Meet-Up at pingVision on Wednesday, September 10

2008-09-08T17:09:09-05:00

Wednesday evening we will be hosting our monthly D/BUG meet-up here at pingVision.

As usual, the agenda is open. We have tentatively planned a presentation on using Views for presenting search results, and if there's interest in that, we'll go ahead with that.

As usual, we'll also have time for website showcases, if anyone wants to show off their latest, greatest creation, and problem solving for anyone stuck with a challenge.

And, as usual, we'll have pizza and drinks available.

Meet and greet starts at 6:30. Presentations start around 7. People new to Drupal are most welcome, too, so don't be shy! We'd love to have you!

If you're coming, please RSVP here, on the Groups.Drupal.org posting or on the Meet-Up page.

Sponsoring DrupalCon Szeged 2008 ... and a free pass available

2008-08-25T16:17:02-05:00

pingVision is delighted to support DrupalCon Szeged 2008 with sponsorship.

Although we are not sending anyone to Szeged, we support DrupalCon as a semi-annual event that helps cultivate and strengthen the Drupal community. There's nothing like putting hundreds of Drupal aficionados in the same room to generate some real excitement and learning. Not only that, any profit from the conference goes to benefit the Drupal Association (of whose General Assembly I am a member). (We're hoping there's a profit. As of last week, meeting the expenses was looking to be a near thing. We certainly want to do our bit to help avoid a deficit!)

We really wish we could be there. I think last month's DrupalCamp only whetted our appetites for more Drupal camaraderie. But it just wasn't in the cards.

Free pass available

As DrupalCon Szeged starts in just a few hours from now in Hungary, this comes as an extremely late announcement, but if there is somebody – a student, perhaps, or a Google Summer of Code participant – who would like to attend but simply cannot afford to buy admission, we do have a sponsored pass available. (Sorry, but for transportation/lodging/etc. you're on your own.)

If you are interested, please contact us right away and tell us about your interest and participation in Drupal.

DrupalCon * 2009

We are definitely looking forward to the announcement of the next DrupalCon to take place next year in North America. There are several very strong proposals that have been submitted, and the Drupal Association Board will be announcing the winning city during this week's DrupalCon. Where ever it is, we'll see you there!