Drupal
Adding a YouTube Button to FCKeditor in Drupal
This is a reference article for adding a YouTube button for automatic video uploads in Drupal with FCKeditor. Basically, there are a few small issues that I ran into when setting up the plugin, but the process is simple and quick. If you want to give embedded video support through the WYSIWYG editor, without having your users cut and paste the embed code through the source directly, then this method may be of interest.
1. Install and configure FCKeditor in your Drupal installation.
2. Download the YouTube Plugin for FCKeditor at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/youtubepluginfo/
3. First Change – the documentation for the plugin says to upload it into the:
fckeditor/editor/plugins folder
Disregard this and upload it into the upper level folder of the Drupal FCKeditor module. The path should be:
sites/all/modules/fckeditor/plugins/youtube
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Acquia Drupal Released with Partnership Opportunities for Developers
The Acquia Drupal distribution was released last week along with a new theme called Acquia Marina. After spending the last week working with both designing a new site for a client, I would summarize the situation by saying there are really only “two clicks” worth of difference between Drupal 6.x and Acquia Drupal. Those two clicks enable or disable two modules known as “Acquia Agent” and “Acquia Site Information”. Installing the site, you see the Acquia logo rather than the familiar Drupal “drop” avatar through the first stages of the process, and then the profile defaults to a set-up with the two Acquia modules enabled. The modules encourage you to register your site with Acquia for tech support and automatic update information. Turning these modules off defaults the site to a standard D6 install with around 20 extra modules already included. This can save some time in configuring a new site, as you don’t have to search, download, and upload again the 3rd party module files. Otherwise, there isn’t anything particularly dramatic or unexpected in this new release.
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Memetracker Module Released for Drupal
One of the most powerful and innovative modules to be developed for Drupal this year is Memetracker. Written by Kyle Mathews in the Google Summer of Code 2008, Memetracker intelligently filters content on a website to synthesize the most popular and important topics and conversations into memes. Similar to the way Google News and TechMeme operate, Memetracker can work with RSS and Atom feeds to track issues, current events, and internet “buzz” across numerous channels simultaneously. The module is a “smart aggregator” that can analyze the actual text of RSS feeds and group posts with related content into categories that can be displayed on a website. The Memetracker module uses click tracking to rank the popularity of sources over time and sorts the display automatically based on these results. There is a public demo for Memetracker available online.
Kyle Mathews’ blog contains some great insights on developing social communities with Drupal, and working with Web 2.0 technologies. For example, he writes:
In researching ways that online communities help participants find the most interesting content/conversations, I’ve found three patterns which help.
1. First is the small-world pattern. Via Organic Groups, you split conversations by topic. Members congregate around only the groups they are interested in.
2. Second is the Twitter pattern. Using buddylist or user relationships, members follow friends or people who’s ideas they find interesting.
3. The third pattern is for members to read the most interesting memes as they are somehow determined by the community (this is where my module will help out)…My proposal then is to write a memetracker module that will fulfill the same role as Techmeme does to the tech community for any community for which it is installed. My module will intelligently filter and group community generated content to display to the community in real time the most interesting conversations and memes as they emerge.
Using CVS to Upgrade a Drupal Site
If you have many Drupal sites under development, it may become quite difficult dealing with the frequent security upgrades that are released. Learning to use CVS commands can simplify this process considerably. CVS or Concurrent Versions System is a predecessor to Subversion.
As Collins-Sussman wrote in Version Control with Subversion:
“In the world of open source software, the Concurrent Version System (CVS) has long been the tool of choice for version control. And rightly so. CVS itself is free software, and its non-restrictive modus operandi and support for networked operation – which allow dozens of geographically dispersed programmers to share their work – fits the collaborative nature of the open-source world very well. CVS and its semi-chaotic development model have become cornerstones of open-source.”
The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems
As a web designer working online since Netscape 1.0 building sites for clients, the biggest change I’ve seen in thirteen years in the industry is the advent of the Open Source Content Management System as the preferred platform for development. Nothing is more illustrative of the change between first generation web standards and the web 2.0 evolution than the CMS trend. Providing a great base for social networking, including blogs, forums, wikis, image galleries, comment logs, ecommerce, voting, bookmarking, tags, and innumerable other extensions along with traditional web publishing methods, the CMS is the preferred platform for most web designers building sites today. Open Source has led to the establishment of huge, user-powered development communities that are dynamically changing and constantly upgrading, offering free software, themes, and modules for building professional web sites. The ubiquity of the shared hosting LAMP – Cpanel – Fantastico set up has popularized the CMS far beyond even the developer/design community.
The top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems:
1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla
4. Media Wiki
5. Liferay
6. TYPO3
7. Moodle
8. Dolphin
9. Pligg
10. Movable Type
Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus
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Acquia Gets Ready for Release of Carbon – Commercially Supported Drupal
Acquia - Value-added software products and services for the Drupal
One project that is generating a lot of buzz throughout the Drupal development community is the upcoming release of “Carbon”. Carbon is the first “commercially supported” release of Drupal from Acquia, a start-up company launched by Drupal founder Dries Buytaert. According to the Acquia website, “The Carbon distribution will include the Drupal 6 core release and essential extension modules for rapidly assembling compelling social publishing sites and applications.” The main goal of Carbon will be to provide a professional support network for Drupal to further its penetration into the corporate environment. But what new features will it include, how will it be priced, and what effect will it have on the Open Source development community? These questions remain unanswered though Carbon is slated for release, possibly within the month.
Drupal & Corporate Web Development:
Drupal already has a strong presence in corporate website development, particularly is the music industry. The list of top clients using Drupal for their websites includes:
- SonyBMG
- Warner Brothers Records
- New York Observer
- Forbes
- The Onion
- Harvard University
- Amnesty International
Boris Mann, who works with Bryght and Raincity Studios providing Drupal web design and dedicated hosting solutions, makes the point that this success has come even as no businesses are currently marketing Drupal to top level corporations. He writes, “Acquia, with its funding, business model, and approach, will be/is focused on delivering to the Global Fortune 1000 / Fortune 10000 enterprise customer … most of whom have never heard of Drupal at the CxO level.” Acquia will be offering certifications to developers who want to offer industry standards or benchmarks to their clients as a proof their skills in order to attract a higher salary. In addition to this, they will be providing full technical support for the CMS to clients who purchase the Carbon license.
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