web development and photography
stuff
This category is just for general stuff
candle and coffee jug
Aug 26th
IWMW2009
May 28th
The Institutional Web Management Workshop (IWMW 2009) will be held at the University of Essex from Tuesday 28th to Thursday 30th July 2009.
This is generally a great chance to catch up with what’s going on in the Higher Education web world. Oh and there’s great food and lots of booze too, not that I’m swayed by such things of course…
Pro Drupal Development 2nd Edition by John K. VanDyk
Apr 5th
If you want to get at all serious about taking Drupal beyond a simple installation, Pro Drupal Development is going to be a massive help to you. If you’re anything like me you’ll come back to it again and again for reference and to try out some new ideas.
It covers all kinds of development areas such as building your own modules, the form API, themes, and even best practices. All this kind of stuff can be found online, but it’s a big help to have it all clearly explained in one place. Sometimes you just need someone to guide you through the maze of options that Drupal offers.
Much of the book isn’t for the faint-hearted. You need a good working knowledge of PHP and some MySQL. Most books start you off nice and easy, but here the early chapters are very much a leap into the deep-end. There’s a certain amount of reliance on just accepting fairly esoteric Drupal stuff until it’s explained more clearly later in the book.
The book also comes with plenty of examples, which you can download for free from Apress. These really help you get your head around some of the trickier ideas (I found one or two of the examples didn’t work as described – but to be fair there are some errata by the author on the Apress site).
In summary – this book is an excellent buy if you want to take Drupal to the next level but don’t know where to start.
Using Drupal by Angela Byron
Apr 5th
Using Drupal is a great little book if you’re just starting out with Drupal, and want to know which modules could be useful for you. If you’re getting into true development stuff and want to play around with Drupal a bit more, the excellent Pro Drupal Development by John VanDyk would be a much better choice.
This book was written by members of the Lullabot team, who do Drupal consulting and development work. They really know their stuff, so you feel things they suggest in this book (like choosing module x over module y) are worth listening to.
The book itself guides you through typical scenarios you might want out of a Drupal website, like wikis, a shopping cart, workflow, multilingual sites, etc, etc. Each section has some useful tips and ideas, but doesn’t go into a massive amount of depth. So again, great if you’re just starting out and want a flavour of what’s possible.
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-05
Apr 5th
- Been for a lovely walk near Wye. Now sitting by a river drinking much-needed beer. #
Twitter Updates for 2009-04-01
Apr 1st
- Zend Framework SOAP aaaargh. Does generate a wsdl though which is helpful. Need food and booze. #
Twitter Updates for 2009-03-29
Mar 29th
- Been to the quarterhouse in Folkestone to see #robertmitchelltrio Frighteningly brilliant. #
- @robertmitchellm sublime. Thanks so much. in reply to robertmitchellm #
- heading out to the Quarterhouse in Folkestone in a bit. Robert Mitchell trio on tonight. #
Twitter Updates for 2009-03-26
Mar 26th
- @yeldon most useful if client is using Zend_Rest_Client. Looking at json stuff next. in reply to yeldon #
- playing with Zend_Rest_Server and other ZF web service classes #
