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Feb 25 2013

Surrey Drupal Meetup: Mar. 14, 2013: Mapping in Drupal 7 with Open Layers

Posted by Katy | Categories:

Join us on March 14, 2013 at 6:30 pm for Mapping in Drupal 7 - Using OpenLayers

Our next meetup is Thursday, March 14, 2013. We are back to our regular meetup date.

We are excited to have a guest speaker, Renee Stephen of http://www.reneestephen.com/ at our next Drupal meetup. Renee will be presenting on:

- Create interesting, attractive location-based maps
- configure a map to use different layers or tilesets (even add your own!)

Feb 25 2013

How to setup multi-sites for Drupal 6 and Drupal 7

Posted by Katy | Categories:
Setting up a multi-site for Drupal can be beneficial in several ways. Multiple Drupal sites are sharing the same codebase. This makes updating Drupal modules simpler since you only need to do it once for all the sites in the multi-site installation. Each site has its own database, theme and unique modules. Here is a tutorial on how I set up a multi-site installation for Drupal 6. The procedure is much the same for Drupal 7. I’m using a managed VPS with LAMP stack, cPanel and WHM. (Web Hosting Manager) Also: CentOs 4.7/Apache 2.x/mySQL 5.0/PHP 5.2
 
Resource: http://drupal.org/node/348619
Feb 13 2013

Drushmake.me : Handy tool – Beware of errors

Posted by Katy | Categories:
I was excited to learn about this website, DrushMake.me. It generates a Drush Make file which is a script for Drush, the Drupal Shell. It allows Drupal developers to download and install Drupal core and contributed modules using command line.

I recently used DrushMake.me to generate a simple Drush make file to build a simple blog site. But it wouldn’t work due to the following errors:

1.    Error message: could not locate drupal version 7

Feb 13 2013

Surrey Drupal Meetup - Feb. 13, 2013: What’s New in Drupal 8?

Posted by Katy | Categories:
Our speaker tonight is not able to make it due to illness. We will be watching a video presentation on "What's New in Drupal 8" by Chris Weber of  TheNerdery.com. He gave this presentation to his Drupal User group. http://vimeo.com/40266383

While I was searching the Internet for a good video to show tonight, I did some research on the new features in Drupal 8. The following article outlines what I found. Credits: http://www.mediacurrent.com/blog/whats-new-drupal-8

Drupal 8 has been in development since March 2011 and is now in Feature Freeze. This means that no new features will be added to Drupal 8. Drupal 8 is planned to be released in Sept. 2013. Here is a brief description of the new changes in Drupal 8:

Theming Changes
-    Drupal 7 uses PHPTemplate to produce themes
-    Drupal 8 will be using the Twig framework theming engine
-    Twig will simplify theming by using better code. See Jen Lampton’s talk at DrupalCon Sydney –
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGIqu_Te0PA&feature=youtu.be)
-    Twig allows templates to be compiled down to PHP code which is stored in RAM for superior performance as it reduces disk access

Feb 12 2013

Drush Make is now working on Vagrant/DLAMP server on Windows 8

Posted by Katy | Categories:
I recently purchased a new Samsung laptop with Windows 8. The 16 GB SSD drive makes it quick to start up and the 8 GB of RAM makes all my software run smoothly. I haven't used many of the Apps; I click on a square and the familiar desktop appears.

I recently installed a Vagrant server using a chef script written by Jeff Eaton of Lullabot. It works great on my Windows 7 laptop. See my blog post: Installing Vagrant DLAMP server on Windows 7 PC

I installed the Vagrant/DLAMP server on my Windows 8 laptop last evening. I needed to do a Google search to find the Windows command line. (Press Windows button then R and type cmd). Windows 8 blocks even administrators from editing the hosts file. I did a search for Notepad and clicked 'Run as administrator' and I was able to edit the hosts file.

The Vagrant/DLAMP server comes with Drush installed. I used the command 'drush dl' to download Drupal 7.19. I installed Drupal and it works well.

I went to DrushMake.me and created a drush make file. I tried to run it on my new Vagrant/DLAMP server but it didn't work. I need help to troubleshoot this problem. Perhaps it's a path problem.

Update: Turns out the Drush make file generated by www.DrushMake.me had several errors in it. See upcoming blog post for the details. The Vagrant/DLAMP server including Drush make does work well on Windows 8 PCs.
Feb 11 2013

Part 2: Installing Vagrant DLAMP server on Windows 7 PC

Posted by Katy | Categories:
In Part 1, we installed Vagrant with only Ubuntu. See: Part 1: Gettng Started with Vagrant on Windows 7 PC

In this tutorial, we will be installing Vagrant along with a DLAMP stack. (Drupal/Linux/Apache/PHP/mySQL) You will need to have VirtualBox, Git and Putty installed.
 
Requirements:
A hard connection to the Internet
VirtualBox needs to be installed.
Git needs to be installed.
Putty needs to be installed. (putty-0.62-installer.exe)
Recommended: 8 GB RAM is recommended to run VirtualBox on Windows PCs
 
We will be using a chef script written by Jeff Eaton to download the base box, precise32, instead of using lucid32 like the example in Part 1.
 
Feb 11 2013

Part 1: Getting Started with Vagrant on Windows 7 and 8

Posted by Katy | Categories:
Before starting this tutorial, be sure to read this article: Introduction to Vagrant

In this tutorial, we will be installing Vagrant, a bare bones server with Ubuntu installed. Vagrant is a server that runs under VirtualBox. You will need to have VirtualBox installed. You will also need to have Putty installed in order to access your new Vagrant server via SSH. These instructions also apply to Windows 8.
 
Jan 28 2013

Introduction to Vagrant: Development environments made easy

Posted by Katy | Categories:
Vagrant is a flexible, reproducible server.

Using Vagrant, you can set up a complete LAMP server in about 30 minutes
-          If you are working with a team and you want to ensure that each team member has the exact same server configuration, you can use Vagrant.
-          If you are working on custom PHP or Drupal core patches and you want to make sure that the recurring error message is from a code error and not a server configuration error, you can use Vagrant.

Jan 14 2013

Top 100 web design blogs to follow in 2013 - Infographic

Posted by Katy | Categories:
We are honoured to have been chosen as one of the top 100 design blogs to follow in 2013. Enjoy the following infographic produced by couponaudit.com
Jan 10 2013

Surrey Drupal Meetup: Jan. 10, 2013: Optimizing Your Drupal Workflow

Posted by Katy | Categories:

Katy will be giving a presentation on Optimizing Your Drupal Workflow including lively group discussion.

This presentation is an overview of best practices and valuable tools to improve workflow for solo devs and small teams.

Are you having problems when trying to build Drupal websites?

  1. You installed a new module and the site broke
  2. Help! A team member overwrote my changes
  3. Client changed his mind (again!) and wants the version from last week
  4. What was I thinking when I did this?
  5. How to save time when cloning Drupal sites
Learn valuable tools and best practices for building Drupal websites more efficiently. Recommended tools include:
  • using command line shortcuts
  • Git version control for documented backups
  • Drush commands for automating Drupal site build/upgrade tasks
  • Using local development environment, staging server to test your sites

I will be posting my notes in a series of blog articles so stay tuned.

Please RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/surrey-drupal/events/96450112/