May 2010
OA Book Manager
grayside — Sun, 05/02/2010 - 09:34
This module provides group administrators with a new notebook tab that leads them to a list of all group books alongside links to edit each book, or reorganize the hierarchy of pages beneath it.
OA Login Redirect
grayside — Mon, 05/03/2010 - 22:35
This feature identifies users that are members of a single group, and on login redirects them to the front page of that group.
This module requires the Rules module, PURL, and OG.
OpenAtrium Group Manager as Content Administrator
grayside — Wed, 05/05/2010 - 23:38
In Drupal, it only takes a couple hours (or perhaps a couple days) to build the concept of a site-wide content manager into your system. It gets mighty tricky to start parceling out administrative tasks for parts of the site.
With Organic Groups (the module behind OpenAtrium’s groups), the solution to this problem has always been messy. But with the advent of Spaces and Group Administrator configuration, it seems like OA and related sites are within shouting distance of giving Group Managers the power of Content Administration.
Feature Server: Not That Hard
grayside — Thu, 05/06/2010 - 22:27
It turns out that running your own Feature Server isn’t that complicated. Get a Drupal site. Install the fserver feature. It’s most exotic requirements are Filefield and Context, and context is just their to facilitate easy block placement of release information.
All the feature really does is provide a fancy XML Views style plugin, a couple content types with their CCK fields to specify things like version information, and some special file-handling magic to push files and tarballs around.
Feature Server Aggregator
grayside — Thu, 05/06/2010 - 22:44
This was supposed to be my next blog post, when I finished mulling it over. Then I saw @open_atrium twitter the exact words.
I’ve been wondering what good a Feature Server is if every individual server had to handle it’s own marketing if anyone was going to learn about it. Google is a bit hard to use with keywords like “Drupal Feature”.
Reset Drupal Password, the SQL Way
scribe — Fri, 05/21/2010 - 10:25
update users set pass=md5('NEWPASS') where uid = 1;
I constantly find myself needing to google up a page like this to figure out how to reset a password without troubling the website.
Here’s my own little note.
Renaming a Project
grayside — Sat, 05/22/2010 - 19:07
Often enough you create a project, get halfway through, and don’t like the namespace you’ve scattered throughout every file and function name. There are plenty of ways to use IDE’s and other tools to change that name, but I prefer the command line.
If it’s a Features project you want to rename, perhaps to make sure you have a more distinctive namespace, you can use the drush command Features Clone. Look for your duplicate (and renamed) feature in sites/default/modules/custom_features.
I’m hoping to find or create a more general solution, not everything you might want to rename is a Feature, after all. If you know of an existing solution please drop off a comment.
cat kit | summarize namespacing
grayside — Sat, 05/22/2010 - 22:03
I decided a few notes would help me grok the Kit Specification. I post them here in case someone else finds them useful.
Shortest Summary
Project Name and Feature Name should be the same. They should have a nice, unique namespace. The human readable version doesn’t need to show the prefix. Views and other individually exported pieces should be prefixed with the not-necessarily-unique part of the Feature name.
cat kit | specificity
grayside — Mon, 05/31/2010 - 22:52
When you read through Kit, one of the themes that keeps cropping up is the concept of specific relevance. How do you know when it is a good idea to include a given variable, permission, or other component in your Feature?
The answer boils down to this: Keep your Feature lean and mean. Include only what’s necessary for a good, mission-complete piece of functionality. The primary reason for this rule strikes me as the worthy goal of avoiding a horde of bloated, conflicting Features that will make an ill-configured wreckage of the sites that try to use them.
Behind the fold for further thoughts about what specificity means in a well-built Feature.
