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Drupal Video: Admin Tricks with MODULE FILTER & VERTICAL TABS

Posted on September 3, 2010 - 18:58 by Doug Vann
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You have to agree that Drupal admin screens can be pretty gnarly to interact with. If you want a better looking Modules listing page and if you want a tidier node add and node edit form... Then read on and watch the video at the end.

OK. I Pride myself on being HIPP and knowing about the newest modules and the coolest modules. I can not explain how I missed the MODULE FILTER module.

Viewing useful information from Drupal's report system

Posted on August 27, 2010 - 08:50 by Doug Vann
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If you've never used it before, then you haven't been enjoying the realtime data available from Drupal's built-in report system. Users of the Admin_Menu can simply mouseover the REPORTS section and see a list of reports that you can view. Personally I use it frequently and find it to be rather handy. In this video I cover a few of the things I do with it as well as cover a few contributed modules that add to the functionality.

Video: Using the POPUPS API in Drupal6

Posted on August 19, 2010 - 15:05 by Doug Vann
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Have you ever wanted to add the dazzle of POPUPS to your site? Maybe you have used lightbox for the POPUP effect on images, but how do you simply add popups to other elements or pages or forms?

One of our faithful Drupal Video Blog watchers asked for an explanation of the POPUPS API module which can be downloaded at http://drupal.org/project/popups and does a very good job of explaining itself. But this video will get you through it even quicker!

Here's what I did:

CMSQuickStart Helping Out with the Drupal Dojo

Posted on August 6, 2010 - 15:22 by Doug Vann
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Here at CMSQuickStart we know that Drupal didn't magically appear under our pillow one night after we left a thumbdrive under the pillow. We appreciate the fact that countless hours of dedicated contributions have occurred, are occurring and continue to occur. We subscribe to the philosophy that the shops that benefit from Drupal need to add value to the project by giving back to the community. The Drupal Dojo is just that opportunity.

Share your Drupal Screenshots with JING

Posted on July 16, 2010 - 14:19 by Doug Vann
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Drupal is awesome and you already know that. There no limit to the number of tools available out there that can improve your productivity and make you look good. In this video I'm looking at JING a product from TechSmith. You may know them as the same people who brought you Camtasia which is what I use for all the videos I make.

Why use JING?

Pages, Menus, and Blocks in Drupal7

Posted on July 1, 2010 - 18:25 by Doug Vann
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In this video we take a look at creating a few pages and creating Menu-Links, formerly Menu-Items, and then nesting those Menu-Links. We also explore the 2 different ways of viewing the Main-Menu, formerly Primary-Links. 

It's rather amazing how much has changed in Drupal7. If you're familiar with Drupal6 then you'll quickly notice that more features have been added You may even notice that there are a great many smallish contrib modules that have grown wings and flown over to Drupal7 core. In some cases they have added functionality that is tightly woven into Drupal core.

Using the Admin Role Module to share access to your Drupal Site

Posted on June 23, 2010 - 01:17 by Doug Vann
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One of the essential functionalities of Drupal which attracts a lot of people to the project is it's ability to configure user's ROLES and PERMISSION with astounding granularity and security. That works very well when you want to have a variety of users with very specific ROLES and PERMISSIONS, but there was a time when this didn't work so well when you wanted to give someone else the same admin rights that you, the site owner, have.

Backing up your Drupal site with the Demo Module

Posted on June 10, 2010 - 10:56 by Doug Vann
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I probably don't have to tell you how important it is to keep your Drupal site backed up. However, if you don't know some of the methods that are commonly used to accomplish the task, chances are that you are not backing up your site.

In this VIDEO I show how to take SNAPSHOTS of your website's database with the DEMO module. I also discuss how to copy your website's FILES so that you can use them if you need to do a total restore of your site.

Here's What We Did:

Drupal 6 Attachment Display in VIEWS

Posted on June 1, 2010 - 00:40 by Doug Vann
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Out of the box, VIEWS in Drupal 6 offers FOUR displays; PAGE, BLOCK, FEED and ATTACHMENT. Of the four the latter is the least used and least understood. So that's exactly what we'll tackle here!

First, I'll quickly review the three that you probably know.

  • PAGE
    •  User enters a PATH and the output of the VIEW is viewable at that URL.
  • BLOCK
    •  A BLOCK is created when the view is saved. Going to the Blocks Admin section shows that the newly created BLOCK is disabled and needs to be assigned to a region.
  • FEED
    •  Custom XML FEEDS can be created to supply users and robots with FEEDS that are tagged with specific taxonomy OR event details for events that are upconing, etc.

And here's what we did with the ATTACHMENT display.
I already had a page display created earlier which simply showed the 10 most recent blog posts and only showed specific fields. 

We then selected ATTACHMENT from the Drop Down Selector of Displays and then selected CREATE DISPLAY. 
At this point we made some configuration changes, most notably changing from Fields to Nodes, and from 10 to 1 with an offset of one to avoid duplicate results.
After this we had to configure the attachment settings. We observed that the POSITION setting was set to BEFORE and that the ATTACH TO setting was set to NONE. We changes the NONE to PAGE so that the ATTACHMENT display would attach to the PAGE display and appear BEFORE it.

The preview bore witness to our success BUT we visited the actual page to see it in its glory.

Enjoy the video and PLEASE give us feedback on the topics we're delivering. We've enjoyed great feedback so far and would love to hear from YOU! :-)

Process of Installing and Enabling Modules in Drupal 7 - A Major Improvement

Posted on May 11, 2010 - 19:51 by Doug Vann
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Installing Modules just became a whole lot easier in Drupal 7!

In this video we're going to show off the new and amazing feature in Drupal 7 that allows you to simply paste in the address of your favorite contributed Drupal modules and then let Drupal do the tedious work of downloading and installing it. Alternately you can point the interface to a local archive file and upload it from there.

Previously you had to go to Drupal.org and download the compressed file to your computer THEN unpack the file THEN use Command Line Linux OR an FTP program to get the folder and all of its content up to the server. If you were successful at this process then you would see your newly added module appear in the list of modules on your admin/build/modules page.

But now!

Drupal 7 comes with a nifty installer feature. It not only works for modules but for themes as well. In fact it's not just for contributed modules and themes. You can keep archive files of custom modules or themes and use the same interface to install those as well. Many of you, like me, are saying, "Yah, this is great but what took so long!?" Indeed WordPress and Joomla have been doing this for quite a while. I don't have a good answer for this question. I'm just happy its there and offer major thanks to everyone that put in the time and effort to get it done!

To follow along with this example all you need is a Drupal 7 install and nothing more.

  1. You simply click on the MODULES button on the admin navigation.
  2. Select the INSTALL NEW MODULE option.
  3. Navigate to the Modules directory via the provided link. Select the module you desire and find the Drupal7 version.
  4. Right click [or CMD-Click] the DOWNLOAD link and COPY the url of the link.
  5. Go back to the Drupal 7 Module Installation screen and PASTE the url into the field asking for a url.
  6. Submit the page and enjoy your new module.

Actually you need to hit the list button and look for the module then ENABLE it via the check box next to your new module. It is also possible that the module you downloaded may have some DEPENDENCIES meaning that the module requires OTHER modules to be in place first. These will be very clearly indicated if that is the case.