drupal

Heres some code attached I wrote last year but havent published it on drupal.org just yet, it's my python background server for drupal actions, or put simply "Asynchronous python daemon for Drupal interaction"

Just perfect for managing actions that require long, cpu or filesystem intensive operations such as encrypting, building a file, or even interfacing with other hardware/usb/bluetooth etc etc

A simple but effective drupal newsletter module

Simplenews scheduler sends a newsletter as a re-occurring item based on a schedule.

Simplenews scheduler does so by creating a new "edition" (rendered copy) of a node at the time that it required to be sent again, the original newsletter is never sent but all editions are according to a pre-defined schedule, this is triggered via hook_cron

Heres a handy script I wrote this morning, how do you easily see the differences between your mytheme_function override template.php entries and the original theme_function in the sites/all/modules, modules/, includes/ ?

It's bash to the rescue.

This script builds an index file of known themed functions, extracts your existing declared function and the theme_function from the original and your template file then uses 'diff' to show the difference in side-by-side format! awesome

One thing that will definately improve in Drupal 6.x and onwards is the performance relating to database queries, It is not uncommon for a site which has the usual formula of a few views generated blocks, translation module and a couple of other miscellaneous views entries to suddenly push your site into the 200 to 600 database queries just to generate *one page*.

Fortunately Drupal is continously improving with its caching methods and data abastraction models so it doesnt always have to hit the DB for something simple, or get it to return multiple items in one hit, but i digress.

Just finished a fair upgrade of Drupal's import typepad (MT etc) module, you will need my patch from this page and apply it to existing module when you download it.

Fixes
• Basic CCK integration
• Correct comment ordering
• Correct node ordering
• Correct node threading, updated to proper drupal setup
• Update comment statistics

So it's been a good few years since I've felt the soft caress of a good breakpoint conditional debugger environment, last time I had really got my hands dirty was either in VisualStudio 6 or Watcom 10.

Heres a nice piece of undocumented functionality, took a few minutes of running thru the drupal Calendar views module source to figure it out. If you have a views calendar, maybe as a block, your view has the "block" type enabled and all is working great, except the dates in the calendar link to "/calendar".

Ok a quick social-networking primer for the newbs.

Social networking is something the internet implements all too easy, incidently websites are great at fostering communities, there are several excellent content-management frameworks for easily constructing this kinda of cooking pot for this to happen in.

I think that more generalised communities on the web such as myspace will fall off in popularity a little bit as they are at the high-peak of the "shiny interesting new" curve as my niche-focused and internet savvy patrons jump on board to join social networks that are of benefit to them.

Just setup drupal 5.0-beta1 on a devel virtualhost http://drupal5.dgtlmoon.com/ take a look it is very swish, the installer took just seconds to install, no clunking around with database snapshots.
The menu redesign and layout is excellent very intuitive.
Codebase feels pretty quick too, forms are looking great.
Yes, dgtlmoon does host drupal 4.x and 5.0 just ask!

Something obvious struck me today while going over a few ideas with a client for refactoring their current site (which is largely a collection of static html pages), this organisation maintains their public interface via this website, the company itself is an NGO and benefits a certain east-timorese cause