Planet Drupal

The addition of preprocessor functions to Drupal 6 makes customizing template variables straightforward and clean (bravo to everyone who made this happen!). Have you ever wondered where the variables come from? It's actually helpful knowing, even if you're a themer with basic PHP knowledge.

Some reasons why:

Views 2 provides a well structured theming environment allowing presentation control for each element of your view. And in my humble opinion, it rocks!

Those with no past experience with Views 1 will find Views 2 uses standard PHPTemplate theming techniques. All of your experience theming Drupal can be used with Views.

Thanks to the organizing skills of Ariane on this coming Sunday December 14th the Vancouver League of Drupaliers, Vancouver's Drupal user group, is holding a code sprint for Fearless City. Fearless City is non-profit community arts project designed to give a voice to the disadvantages in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES).

If you'd like to help out we'd love to have you!

Check here for details: http://groups.drupal.org/node/17237

Also check out Dave's post, Fearlesss City and Vancouver Drupal Geeks Code Sprint for Festive Good!, and the Drupal Camp Vancouver post, Code Sprint Does Good!.

Simon Vreeswijk of North Studio presents Drupal SEO and Internet Marketing at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008. In this session Simon discusses optimizing and tailoring your Drupal site to rock the search engines, including things to avoid, things to do, and general SEO tips.

DCVic08: Drupal SEO

Nedjo Rogers presents Introduction to Module Development at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008. In this session Nedjo gives the basics of writing a module and some techniques to jump-start development.

DCVic08: Introduction to Module Development

The video can also be viewed directly: DCVic08 Introduction to Module Development at blip.tv

For a summary of Drupal Camp Victoria check out: Drupal Camp Victoria 2008.

Drupal Camp Victoria seems long past but it was only six week ago we descended on North Studio for some Drupal geekery and general fun. Ever the video nut, I caught a handful of sessions on camera. In this session, Indispensable Modules, Rene Hache of North Studio gives an excellent run down of the Drupal modules North Studio finds, well, indispensable. He also provided presentation notes: Modules We Can't Live Without.

DCVic08: Indispensable Modules

The video can also be viewed directly: DCVic08: Indispensable Modules at blip.tv

The October meeting of Vancouver Drupalers took a different direction this month, featuring a decidedly non-Drupal topic: Flex. Flex is a open-source tool set for creating Adobe Flash applications. Love it or hate it, there's no question Flash powers much of the web's rich media. And Drupal is no stranger to Flash applications with sites like The Zimmer Twins using it for creating an interesting and compelling user experience.

Presenting on PHP and Flex was Duane Nickull, Senior Technical Evangelist from Adobe. Duane is no stranger to the Drupal community. Some may remember his interview of Dries at Foo Camp, and Duane's former boss is Jeff Whatcott, now at Aquia. Duane's talk focuses mostly on Flex applications, with a bit of discussion around communicating with external applications.

Duane Nickull: PHP & Flex

Drupal Camp Victoria (#DCVic) at North Studio was a joy. A great part of this joy was the freedom from having nothing what-so-ever to do with its organization! But it was more than that.

Last Folks Standing at Drupal Camp Victoria 2008
Photo by nicky Tu

Local Drupalers Amir and Ryan Dempsey stepped up and organized our very own Vancouver Drupal-mobile rental van. Although the van was squishy the company was great. The trip from Vancouver to and from Victoria passed quickly. During our ferry ride over I teamed up with Dave O. from Raincity and videoed Dave doing what he does best.

Oliver (Olly) Walker shared four techniques he uses for making Drupal easier for his customers at the August 28th meeting of the Vancouver League of Drupalers. Olly, better known as baronmunchowsen on GDO, is a web developer who specializes in websites for small businesses. He's promised to post presentation slides and we were fortunate enough to catch him on tape. The video is available below or at blip.tv as Remembering the User - 4 Drupal Enhancements.

Update Sep 4/08: Slides are now available at Slideshare: Vancouver League of Drupallers - Remembering the User (August 2008)

In April 2008 the Vancouver League of Drupalers featured a presentation on email newsletters by Monique Trottier of Boxcar Marketing titled: Email Newsletters: WTF?, and an overview of the Simplenews module by yours truly.

The video of Monique's presentation turned out well and can be viewed with complete show notes at Email Newsletters: WTF? (6 Mistakes to Avoid), or by watching the embedded video below. It's filled with practical information and a must-see for anyone serious about using newsletters.

My presentation didn't video so well, so here's the recreated notes:

Overview

Simplenews is a module that adds newsletters to Drupal. It has the following major features: