My only gripe with Drupal

I recently worked on a huge online project and was torn between using Joomla or Drupal. The project itself was very complex, requiring custom fields for content and profile information. I started off by developing the site in Drupal, which was very easy from a content point of view using CCK etc. But here's the problem. The presentation of that data was my challenge. This I believe is Drupal's weakness. Ultimately I chose Joomla because I could achieve the same thing using the SOBI extension for a certain content type I was creating. Presenting data in Joomla is so much easier too. But Joomla also has a weakness and it all has to do with sub-categories. You can't create any.

Drupal's Views module, while it might appear to be easy to use for experienced people out there, for the majority of people, it is not. The presentation of content needs to be easier. Even the block system is difficult for most. If only that could be sorted out, there would be more people using it. I am not saying that Drupal is wack, far from it, but it needs to be easier, especially from a layout / theming / presentation point of view.

The State of Drupal

The founder of Drupal talks about the state of Drupal.

Win a bunch of stuff worth $400

Okay so here I go again promoting another contest. I don't do this for fun, but because I'm remaining optimistic that I will win something here and hopefully you will too. Anyway, in this particular contest (by ConchoLakeAZ.com and ConchoValleyCC.com) you can win some of the following items:

1. www.FedoraProperties.com– iPod Shuffle, 1 GB, your choice of color (value $55 includes shipping)
2. www.ConchoLakeAZ.com– one ConchoLakeAZ.com Log Hat (value $20)
3. www.ConchoLakeAZ.com – one 150 x 130 advertising space on www.ConchoNews.info , ad runs from July to December 2008 (value: $60)
4. www.ConchoValley.CC– 500 EntreCard credits
5. www.DailyBlogTips.com– two winners for the ebook “Killer Domains” (value: $17 each)
6. www.ConchoLionsClub.com – two winners for a 150 x 130 advertising space on their website, ad to run from July to December 2008 (value: $60 each)
7. www.PawsArtPics.wordpress.com – Original artwork by Mimi (value: $40)
8. www.ABookBloggersDiary.blogspot.com – a copy of the book “Staked” by J. F. Lewis (value: $14)

For details on how to enter this contest head on over to the following url:
http://blog.concholakeaz.com/?p=231

Things to do while sitting in Johannesburg traffic

One of the things you cannot escape that often is the terrible traffic here in Johannesburg. 702 and Highveld is starting to get a bit boring now. Yes it does have it's uses (the news, traffic) but that is as far as it goes. You can always catch up at the office by going online and checking out IOL and News24.

Anyway, so an alternative would be to listen to podcasts. So this is basically what I do, I go to some of my favourite podcast sites, download them, burn them on cd and then listen to them in my car. It's actually more interesting because with podcasts you can generally choose topics that interest you.

So what I am finding now is that when it's time to go to work, or go home, I am no longer depressed, but looking forward to the trip because here is something I can enjoy. So I have many podcasts I enjoy but one in particular is Lullabot. If you are a Drupal freak, then you will really enjoy it. You can find their podcasts here:
http://www.lullabot.com/podcast

For those with a basic understanding of Drupal I recommend you start with this particular one:
http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/podcast-50-drupal-tips-and-tricks

Regards

More on the Views modules for Drupal

A presentation discussing CCK, Views and Panels:

http://2bits.com/sites/2bits.com/files/building-drupal-sites-using-cck-views-and-panels.pdf

Using Views in Drupal 6:
http://tarnaeluin.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/using-views-in-drupal-6/

Views 2 for Drupal 6:
http://www.collectivemind.net/content/first-impressions-views-2-drupal-6

Open Source Talk at Google

Talks about Drupal & Joomla. Very interesting video:

Drupal Views for idiots

Drupal Views is a module which can be obtained from here: http://drupal.org/project/views). I must be honest and say that this one of the more difficult modules to master. However the benefits to learning this far outweigh the pain that is associated with it. Basically Drupal Views can be explained as per the modules' page:

The views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists of content (nodes) are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted. This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes.

You would need this if:
You like the default front page view, but you find you want to sort it differently. You like the default taxonomy/term view, but you find you want to sort it differently; for example, alphabetically. You use /tracker, but you want to restrict it to posts of a certain type. You like the idea of the 'article' module, but it doesn't display articles the way you like. You want a way to display a block with the 5 most recent posts of some particular type. You want to provide 'unread forum posts'. You want a monthly archive similar to the typical Movable Type/Wordpress archives that displays a link to the in the form of "Month, YYYY (X)" where X is the number of posts that month, and displays them in a block. The links lead to a simple list of posts for that month.

Here are two good tutorials on Views:





More info here:

http://drupal.org/node/59157

and lastly, a very good tutorial about Views and CCK (we'll deal with CCK in the next post):

http://learn.awakenedvoice.com/2007/07/30/drupal-cck-and-views-tutorial/