DrupalCampLA 2010 Announced!

Registration is now open for DrupalCamp LA 2010. Mark your calendars for Saturday & Sunday, August 7-8th, 2010. Attendance is free. The camp will be taking place in the same great venue from last year - UC Irvine in the city of Irvine, California. The campus has housing available if you wish to rent rooms to stay overnight.

Add and Track Any Link With Google Analytics

This post is a follow-up to the "Use Google Analytics Instead of the Statistics Module" post. If you want to use Google Analytics for all of your site statistics, you may need to add links that the google_analytics module can't handle.

Use Google Analytics Instead of the Statistics Module

I recently created a module that uses the Google Analytics API to capture the top ten nodes of various content types by day, week, and all time. This is a great option for any site that needs to use caching, and can’t use the Statistics module.

Advanced Drupal Theming using Panels Part 1: Embracing Panels style plugins and writing your own.

I generally would style individual page elements like menus, blocks, views, and other content by using their own class names or IDs. That would mean if I wanted a consistent style to be applied to many of these elements I would have to override template files just to add a consistent class attribute, or have multi-line selectors in my css which would make it incredibly difficult to organize.

Change the execution order of $(document).ready()

If you use jQuery in development, you've almost definitely used $(document).ready(). $(document).ready() is a wonderful function that lets you run Javascript code as the page is ready to handle it. But one potentially frustrating aspect of it is that functions are executed in the same order they're passed in, and jQuery doesn't let you choose which functions run first.

Usually, this is fine, but every once in a while, you really want your function to run before another function. For example, if your page is running jCarousel or Google Maps, or any other library that changes the markup of your page, you might want to do some processing before they get a chance. With the traditional $(document).ready(), you'd be out of luck.

The hidden menu paths in Devel you may not know about

Devel is a supremely useful module for Drupal development, but if you've never enabled the Development menu block, there are some useful links you might be missing out on. Here are some features of Devel that you might not know about:

Execute PHP
Path: devel/php
Provides a text area for entering PHP code into. Any output (print, print_r, var_dump) is shown in a drupal_set_message.

PHP Info
Path: devel/phpinfo
Get PHP configuration info from the server your site is running on.

View Theme Registry
Path: devel/theme/registry
Get down deep with the theme info your Drupal site knows about. Great for expert themers.

The youngest DrupalCampLA Volunteer

Check out the video of the youngest DrupalCampLA volunteer, on the schedule page of the DrupalCampLA website:

http://2009.drupalcampla.com/schedule

sbhosting.com Podcast about Drupal.

I recently had the opportunity of being interviewed by Glenn Bennett of Small Business Hosting. The Small Business Hosting Show is a podcast that informs small business owners about the Internet. They give the inside scoop on what to do and how to do it. You can get more information about Small Business Hosting at http://sbhosting.com.

Audio Recording

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Drush: The hidden gem of Drupal.

The difference between a “normal user” and a “power user” in computer speak is that power users learn to accomplish the same tasks normal users do on a computer, but in a much more efficient manner. For example, learning the short-cut keys on the keyboard for copy and paste (⌘C, ⌘V) can substantially improve your efficiency, as opposed to using your mouse to complete the same task. Essentially, the more you can free yourself from using the mouse on your computer, the quicker you become at completing the same tasks, making you much more efficient. How we can be much more efficient with Drupal? Are there ways we can use shortcuts to complete some of the mundane point and click tasks we do everyday with Drupal? The answer to both those questions is Drush, the DRUpal SHell.

Adding Functions to jQuery

jQuery comes with a lot of functionality right out of the box, and even more in the form of plugins, but sometimes you run into situations where the function you want doesn't exist. Or maybe you just want to create a shortcut for a set of functions you use often. Maybe you even want to write your own jQuery plugin, but you aren't sure where to begin.