Drupalcon 2008 Szeged, Hungary

I'm writing this from the Attila József Study and Information Centre here in the beautiful city of Szeged, southern Hungary - the venue for Drupalcon. The main sessions ended yesterday and today it's the code and documentation sprint.

There are a lot of heads buzzing and fingers itching to put new found pearls of Drupal wisdom into practice. The sense of 'community' here is amazing and as many people have said it's been an awesome experience (and a totally +ve distraction) for me.

All the main and birds of a feather sessions I've attended have been excellent in getting me to the point were I must make my fingers drupy from coding. I really need to get to publish a Drupal site and get some feedback about what people want to see, hear and think about. The suggestion of a 'beta' site is a great idea put to me this week.

The Drupal community also has an eye on the semantic web and several sessions have focussed on this essential trend. There are some modules here that could really support the learning and other objectives for Hodges' model:

• hierarchical select
• taxonomy manager

In addition to a talk on hierarchical select, yesterday there was an equally cool presentation on The Neologism Project:

Neologism is a simple web-based RDF Schema vocabulary editor and publishing system. Use it to create RDF classes and properties, which are needed to publish data on the Semantic Web.

So many challenges, much to think about and most of all much to do.

Many, many thanks to Dan, James and Mikelis for your help and support this past week - and the NW England Drupal crew.

Well I have to say it:

Drupal and this community of people absolutely Rock!

Now to check some documentation and listen in to code sprint.
Image sources: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/University_of_Szeged

Drupal update and Drupalcon August Szeged

A piece of paper and a pencil. That's a great place to start. ...

I haven't said much about the 'new' website recently. Perhaps that is because I don't want Drupal CMS to look like it is somehow lacking. On the contrary Drupal is still exactly where the sweet spot can be found. It's possible to create a website very quickly using Drupal, the delay lies entirely with me and my penchant for learning by distraction and doing so on a part-time basis.

So in terms of news where are things up to? Well, I've explored Drupal 4.7, 5 and now 6.2. This constant need to update/upgrade or not is a challenge in itself. Drupal 6 is still lacking some key bits and pieces, but as a virginal Drupe I can afford to look to Drupal 6 and even anticipate version 7.

Regular readers here know I've ported over some of the static pages from the 'old' site:

• Brian's original notes I & II
• My initial introduction to Hodges' model and the site

On the old site I never got to grips with CSS (style sheets) so part of the problem at present is that I'm playing catch-up. In addition Drupal provides some core themes that give your web site a particular look and feel straight out of the box so to speak. There are many other themes to choose from; once Drupal is installed just simply download and enable. You can also roll your own. The same applies to modules which as the name suggests are a means to extend and enhance Drupal's functionality. As mentioned ages ago I fell in love with the Denver theme, but this isn't available for version 6 as yet. Trying Salamander I have arrived at Framework which is one of a group of base themes suited for use as a foundation for theme development.

So I'm learning Drupal and CSS with the addition of jQuery - a javascript library. The static pages have a forum (just two questions), several users and a book outline for company and are styled using drop capitals on the opening section paragraphs, discrete striping for tables and a specific treatment for quotations. Reading the Pro Drupal book on the form API and creating an example, I'd actually been wondering how to put two forms side x side. Reading a CSS book it suggested that if possible reduce the number of DIVs used on a web page. What to do...? Reading the Pro Drupal themes chapter (again) I realised what an idiot I am. It is that simple: use DIVs and float them this way or that. So I must give this try and the Content Construction Kit, Views, Panels and the more generic Drupal property of regions.

I'm still really itching to get back to Ruby & Rails and the benefits of immersing yourself in something like Scotland on Rails are quite obvious.

So I'm going to see if - funds permitting - I can get to Drupalcon 2008 in Szeged this August. There may be a group of us from Manchester heading that way. Any sponsors welcome and much appreciated!