Drupal

While working on a project for a client that was a perfect fit for the file_entity module, I came across an issue I didn't care for. Implementing hook_file_presave, the file_entity module assigns the file type based upon the first part of the mime type. This is a good thing technically, but my client's needs had to trump that. Instead they wanted two file types; image and files.

Drupal is about impossible to learn and configure!!!!

How many times do we hear that? It is by far the most common complaint that plagues Drupal.

Take a common task like creating a simple blog. If you go the Wordpress route, you simply upload it to your server and fill out a couple of quick input boxes. Next thing you know you are writing your first post with such ease that Grandma can do it.

Dries has a very interesting post up asking how we can make Drupal more competitive with the enterprise level CMS systems out there like SiteCore, Vignette and SDL Tridion.

While working on updating my client support system to Drupal 7, I encountered an interesting problem. In the page to view tickets, I have a pager query running, utilizing the new Drupal database layer. The only problem was my pager wasn't showing. I started poking around and found a view in a block that has a mini-pager. That was causing my pages theme_pager to return the wrong element. There was one of two fixes I could take for this.

With a little over a week to go before the big release of Drupal 7, I have decided it is time to update this site to the latest version of the best CMS out there.

The next version of the Netbeans IDE once again breaks the Drupal plugin. It was just a simple matter of rebuilding the plugin against the latest module dependencies to once again get it working. You can download it in the file attachments section below.

UPDATE 2/11/10:

The latest update in Netbeans 7 beta once again broke the plugin. I have rebuilt it again against the new dependencies. Download the file below and you should be fine.

Take my love of web development, Drupal and politics. Now mix them into a story that I can't pass up. Today The Nation magazine, the oldest weekly published magazine in the U.S. has switched over to Drupal to power their web site. In a post the magazine did about the switch, they explain not only the power of Drupal, but also the power behind open source software:

The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University has just released a comprehensive report on the differences between the two sides of the political blogosphere and the approaches and technologies they embrace. The entire report is worth a read (58 page PDF), but this graph sums it up very nicely:

I have decided to release a module I am working on to integrate Drupal with the ActBlue Democratic fundraising site. The module is in it’s early stages of development, but given the upcoming elections in the U.S., I figured it would be best to get what I can out now.

This module will import fundraising pages and entities from your ActBlue account into Drupal and create nodes for them. It will also synchronize those entities via the cron job, so you do need cron up and running on your Drupal site in order to keep everything up to date.

Trying to get the upcoming 6.9 version of Netbeans to install the Drupal plugin? Well look no further. I finally was able to rebuild the plugin against the 6.9 version of Netbeans and it's available right here.