Twitter on hold: Blog a trickle ...

Deal!

— Dries Buytaert (@Dries) August 25, 2021

 

Feels good already ... 

Thanks for following and visiting ... 

Still available at  h2cmng AT yahoo.co.uk 

Take care 

Peter J.

 

Dries! I promise ...

... if you get your blogging mojo back I will pick up Drupal and put this blog (and twitter) in much more than semi-stasis.

Clearly, my Drupal use may not be as profound, but after a decade I have quite a requirement (some might describe it as 'stonking'), but this merely demonstrates the seductive nature of 'ideas'. How easy it is to appear clever, to have thoughts - compared to action.

As I've been told and blogged before: I need to do something instead of blogging and twitter.

So yes, there's an irony here for me, but good luck and thanks for the (much-needed) prompt!

c/o Dries Buytaert:

Wanted: a new blogging routine

My Moon Mission? "The Stack"

individual

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

group

I choose  ... [still] to try . 4.6 . . . 8.7.5 and c o u n t i n g . WAMP Windows Apache MySQL PHP Command Line Interface [VirtualBox, Vagrant ...] PHPMyAdmin  JQuery git HTML5 CSS Drupal APIs Themes & Modules*^ Create Custom T&Ms #? . to journey ... to explore ... to learn ...	Saturn V Reference Dimensions: http://heroicrelics.org
The Drupal slogan is: "Come for the software, stay for the community."	The Stack

*What are the requirements of your project?
^What themes and modules are available 'out of the box'?

^#If the themes and modules you require are not available you can create your own.

The idea of using Drupal (or other CMS) is to use the software to do the 'heavy lifting'.


Image source:
http://heroicrelics.org/info/saturn-v/saturn-v-general.html

Talk @PHPNW Manchester 2nd April 7pm

Responding to a couple of tweets by @phpnw, I am now (happily) tasked with giving a talk on Tuesday evening:

Concepts, Spaces and Thresholds and why they matter

57 Thomas Street

Northern Quarter

Manchester

M4 1NA

Within the Drupal community and online I've heard frequent mention of imposter syndrome as reflected here. I'm no 'programmer', as much as I might wish and after stepping in to help with a quick editorial I'm also conscious of the risks of self-plagiarism - repeating myself yet again.

On Tuesday I'm pulling together threshold concepts, conceptual spaces and #h2cm in that order. I still believe there is a very worthy project here. Even if only having a sense that all the jig-saw pieces are present even if not quite 'correct'?

Recognising the expertise and professionalism of the audience I'm trying to make it relevant with an exercise too. I'm very grateful for the faith of the organisers as I fill a gap of sorts.

Thank goodness the talk is not a day earlier- which might be quite apt in respect of the 'new' site.

With changes in my full-time work status there will be more time.

Always good to see an excuse bite the dust...

A new Paradigm? No just Paragraphs...

While I have not had the practical reason to apply it (to my shame) I have known of 'maintenance mode' for donkey's y-ears. I have been listening. As tweeted earlier this week, I've been trying to remove Webform so I can update / replace it. I'm avoiding core 'experimental' modules in an attempt to avoid future problems. I'd managed to remove webform bootstrap, but trying to delete from the usual Drupal interface did not work. I checked the tables and those for webform were empty. Impatience set-in and I removed the folder within modules. That was the big mistake. For a time there, I could not access the localhost site on my laptop. I thought it had gone...

I had a MySQL backup and imported this while a CTRL 'Z' restored the folder. This did the trick. I have the HTML source for the archive pages as files too.

At several Drupal events Paragraphs has been presented as very useful site building module. With four 'basic pages' whatever follows will benefit from and no-doubt demand more thought about content types. Checking out some videos Paragraphs really does seem to fit the bill when allied with field group.

I'm looking forward to the local Drupal meetup in Manchester this Tuesday.

The Scope of Nursing::And other things

individual
|
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES
humanistic ---------------------------------------  mechanistic
SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL
|
group

"Scope Resolution Operator (::) 

The Scope Resolution Operator (also called Paamayim Nekudotayim) or in simpler terms, the double colon, is a token that allows access to static, constant, and overridden properties or methods of a class.

When referencing these items from outside the class definition, use the name of the class.

As of PHP 5.3.0, it's possible to reference the class using a variable. The variable's value can not be a keyword (e.g. self, parent and static). 

Paamayim Nekudotayim would, at first, seem like a strange choice for naming a double-colon. However, while writing the Zend Engine 0.5 (which powers PHP 3), that's what the Zend team decided to call it. It actually does mean double-colon - in Hebrew!"

Source: http://php.net/manual/en/language.oop5.paamayim-nekudotayim.php 

Scope of Nursing: (Interpersonal, Sciences, Sociology, Political & Spiritual)  actions, procedures, responsibility, accountability, governance, whistle-blowing, transparency, competency, candour, quality, safety....

Self-care?

Spot image: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~cpinciroli/extra/h-414/one_spot.png

October beckons - update PHP, Drupal and Public Health

October looks to be a busy month, at least the first half.

It's the PHPNW Conference next weekend and I'm pleased that they were able to use some copy I provided for their blog. The 2010 conf was very good and 2012 is looking a real treat.

Before then, this Wednesday evening it's the monthly NW Drupal User Group meeting also in Manchester. They are continuing the Back to Basics sessions. Since last month I've not had much time to explore and use DrupalPro. I will do before Wednesday, after the excellent input I was provided with last month it's over to me now.

Another event - and one needing a presentation is the -

Institute of Public Health: Open Conference 2012

Thursday, 11^th October 2012 at The King's Hall, Belfast. After visiting Dublin last November for the first time I'm really looking forward to this brief first trip to Northern Ireland too.

On the blog front I've deleted a service that was slowing things down. I've also reduced the total number of posts on display.

A fellow delegate and a full-time academic at the IPONS conference in Leeds earlier this month suggested that I blog less and write more. Things will go quieter here - year on year...

More to follow - for the time being!

DrupalCamp North West November 24-25 Manchester

If your are based in the North West of England, or can travel to Manchester there are plans for a DrupalCamp in November 24-25th at Media City Salford.

You can sign up for news - ...

For the next few months the North West Drupal User Group are having 'back to basics' sessions (Madlab, Manchester 1st Weds in the month). I'm really grateful to Phil who sorted VirtualBox and DrupalPro on my Macbook last Wednesday. I've been struggling with MAMP since Drupalcon in Munich, asking too much of the conference wifi and paying the price with 'MySQL server gone away' and PDO errors. DrupalPro is quite something behold.

Thanks to the NW gang, friends old and new. Before DrupalCamp there is also PHPNW 2012 to enjoy next month.

Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web

I'll start May hopefully in tune with plans towards the month's end and attending Conceptual Spaces at Work.

The SCIENCES domain page has included Markup Languages (ML) for a great many years.

In the early versions of the h2cm website there were just two 'resource' pages. When the ongoing four page format arrived then markup languages had a place.

Looking at the programme for next month's Conceptual Spaces at Work the first session listed includes this reference:

Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.

Abstract—CSML is a semantic markup language created for the publishing and sharing of conceptual spaces, which are geometric structures that represent semantics at the conceptual level. CSML can be used to describe semantics that are not captured well by the ontology languages commonly used in the Semantic Web. Measurement of the semantic similarity of concepts as well as the combination of concepts without shared properties are common human cognitive tasks. However, these operations present sources of difficulty for tools reliant upon set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning on symbolic ontologies. In contrast, these operations can be modeled naturally using conceptual spaces. This paper describes the design decisions behind CSML, introduces the key component elements of a CSML document, and presents examples of its usage.

This is an excellent source. CSML is a really significant development for me as Adams and Raubal highlight on the first page:

The computational foundation of the Semantic Web is the formal representation of concepts and their relationships using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) variants [5], [6]. These families of languages allow one to describe semantic relationships between concepts and ontologies, which can be queried using a first-order logic reasoner. An underlying assumption to these methods is the realist approach to semantics, which states that the meanings of concepts are in the real world. That is, there is a direct mapping between language terms and the world but there is no consideration of how individuals understand concepts differently. In contrast, cognitive semantics states that the meanings of terms are cognitive structures in people’s minds. This approach is of central importance for the Semantic Web, because web services interface with human users.

This isn't excellent or significant in the sense that the emergence of CSML demonstrates h2cm as a conceptual space.

Far from it.

Here and for h2cm CSML is obviously an essential tool to examine, understand and possibly extend. Anyone for PHP and XML (Drupal)? Reading the paper, it's clear that even thinking of applying CSML to Hodges' model demands answers to difficult and yet fascinating questions that involve nursing (theory, practice and values), informatics, philosophy and some maths too.

Image source:
http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/conceptual_spaces_wordl.png

Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp 22 - 23 June 2012

I have booked a holiday for Friday 22 June because as their website announces -

Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp is happening!

Venue: St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

I'm hoping to meet people from other Drupal events and specifically from Drupalcamp Cambridge. Although Drupal is far from a dedicated educational platform - either for authoring materials and managing learners / learning - there are many contributed modules that can be adapted and extended.

One of the three papers mentioned last week will be published by an online journal in June. News of the other two must wait, one is an end-of-year prospect. Although an abstract and preparation for the ICN Congress (if accepted!) is a non trivial undertaking, further writing must fit in with future web developments. This Drupalcamp will help bring several threads together.

Nursing ideas somewhere between Drupal & Ruby

It's been a busy week:

• getting ready for the Scottish Ruby Conference [SRC] three fascinating days 7 - 9 April.
• checking with the client of the Drupal site, confirming that the following CSS3 adornments are not required: coloured lettering : 3D text : and others. KISS - OK!

SRC started with the charity day a day long tutorial from Chad Fowler author of The Passionate Programmer and Keavy McMinn. They delivered too - indeed it's all great! The venue - The Royal College of Physicians is quite amazing, full of history in its architecture and the portraits of esteemed members. Whether or not I attend a session in there today I must visit the library. The charity day covered:

• Blocks and bindings
• The Ruby object model
• Meta-programming
• Hooks, callbacks, and reflection.

When it came to the exercises I let the experts do their thing and followed the solutions. I missed last year's Ruby bash so it's good to be back.

Swapping to Ruby while tinkering with Drupal is not a help and yet there is overlap. GIT is the must-do within both communities. PHPNW's meeting on Wednesday on OOP with Lorna Mitchell highlighted some common aspects. I'm probably getting a lot of this (as in 'all' plain) wrong but Lorna's mention of $this and static methods sent me on a reverie. ...

Abstract classes are apparently incomplete and $this is not available to them. Suddenly I'm thinking well that's different. In nursing our abstractions on nursing care are complete - in the idealised sense. It's the concrete / practical (dynamic) delivery that sadly falls short.

PHPNW - the conference in October, a Saturday event in prospect and being here in Edinburgh reminds me I have this itch. Dave Hoover's keynote spoke about his career and finding his technical groove from a therapeutic role as a psychologist.

One thing I do know: from the books he mentioned I ain't got 10,000 hours. That's why I am trying to leverage Drupal and in Ruby - the Rails framework. There's an IDE I have just learned of JetBrain's Ruby Mine.

(Despite that) I'm reading Martin Fowler's book on Domain Specific Languages. Not because I'm going to write one (or like rashes), but because I'm totally intrigued and wondering about a research question. What question(s) can I ask that I might also be able to answer (or not)?

method_missing, meta programming and DSLs are still here in Edinburgh. No longer the latest and greatest (Jim Weirich suggested that was c.2006), but then neither are models of nursing. ;-)

In his book, Fowler identifies 'illustrative programming'. Spreadsheets are the key example and quite remarkable in how they are used and the niche they occupy from a programming, DSL, and an everyday tool perspective.

Hodges' model is a spreadsheet; or a decision table of sorts. Basically, does the patient have a problem in each of the care domains? Fowler writes:

The key benefits of a DSL - greater productivity and communications with domain experts - really kick in when you are using an alternative computational model. Domain experts often think about their problems in a nonimperative way, such as via a decision table. An Adaptive Model allows you allows you capture their way of thinking more directly in a program and the DSL allows you to communicate that representation more clearly to them (and yourself). p.116.

I'm really taking liberties with definitions. My domain experts might actually be student nurses.

I know book titles are intended to sell, but I look at the title of Chad Fowler's book above and wonder about the Compassionate Care Programmer and what alternative computational models may be needed to achieve that?

Fowler, M. (2010) Domain Specific Languages: Addison-Wesley Signature Series, Addison-Wesley Professional.

Drupal musings 17: PHPNW 2010, HTML5, DrupalCamp Edinburgh

PHPNW 2010 on the w/e 9th - 10th October was well worth attending. Sessions for me after the keynote included:

Let your toolchain set you free

Debugging – Rules and Tools

The curious case of php|architect

Designing HTTP URLs and REST Interfaces

All the sessions where very informative, but the latter proved the most interesting. I noticed REST interfaces kept coming up at the Ruby conferences in '08 and '09 and also in reading about Ajax. So David Zuelke's session was very interesting both with his critique of how REST is applied (twitter) and his humour. I look f/w to the videos appearing.

A dinner date with friends meant I had to leave early and so I missed the prize draw. The past week started with a smile when Emma Parker, PHPNW10 Events Team emailed to say I'd won a book in the prize draw. Last Thursday the book arrived:

Pro HTML5 Programming

Magic! Thanks to the conference team and Apress.


I have just learned about DrupalCamp Edinburgh on the 30th and have registered.

Drupal musings 5: Jump start for a new blog / site

Last month I had a great offer from the Drupal North West UK user group members at Manchester's - MadLab.

The proposal is using a central Manchester venue with wifi for a day engage some volunteers and create a new version of this blog in Drupal. This has woken me up! Putting a request out MDDA - Manchester Digital Development Agency have kindly offered to help out in terms of the venue.

At this months meeting I explained where things are up to and it was clear I still had some sorting to do.

As Chris and the others asked: What can Drupal do that Blogger cannot deliver?

Recently Blogger have extended their template design and functionality. So, now I should be able to find a new (and clean) template and re-introduce comments. In 2006 when I started the blog there were problems with spam.

So... it looks best to leave the blog as a going concern and focus on a new site for Hodges' model and the specific content and functionality requirements there.

I have my ticket for Drupalcon Copenhagen, for me this is 3rd time lucky, last chance saloon. This would be great timing and with the darkening nights too. ...

A phantom outline (currently an example of the 'living-dead') has been known for a while:

• Archive
• Case Studies (content types)
• Glossary
• Introduction - beginners guide to the health career model
• ...

If in one day a group of Drupalers can help me jump start this project that would be - awesome! First though I have to get an idea of numbers and a poll to gauge which day is the best for people - looking ahead to October - November. Before then I have some work to do...

Drupal musings 4: Modules and the nursing masquerade

Periodically I go through the list of available modules for Drupal both the current version and that in development - at present that is versions 6 and 7.

Reading the descriptions and reflecting on a module's functionality it is surprising where they can take you. Some of the modules stand out, prompting thoughts of potential applications. This is not just a case of descriptions fulfilling their role. Some of them shout out just by virtue of their name.

'Organic groups' will change to 'Group' in Drupal 7. If there is one thing about groups in nursing they are organic - whether that's disciplinary groups, groups held by nurses. Groups are a basic part of the structure and content of Hodges' model, and so it may be well worth factoring in the Group module from the outset.

As I read about the Masquerade module:

The masquerade module is designed as a tool for site designers and site administrators. It allows a user with the right permissions to switch users. While masquerading, a field is set on the $user object, and a menu item appears allowing the user to switch back. Watchdog entries are made any time a user masquerades or stops masquerading.

I thought of the tribes and camps within nursing and health care in general. Have we moved on? Well OK, let's see how holistic, integrated, multidisciplinary nursing is these days: picture then the nurse in medicine, surgical, operating theatre acting as a mental health nurse, learning disability nurse and vice versa?

Can we spot the imposter? One suspects (surely) that given a technical case study, care scenario then the game would be up very quickly. As to basic nursing care situations, there might be an interesting party there?

Original image source: http://www.mchooksinc.com/catalog/index.php

Drupal musings 3: PHP, Textmate, h2cm and Forms

Happy International Nurses' Day!


For quite a few months I have not connected the MacBook to the external monitor. I did so last night using:

• MAMP (server software)
• Textmate (an editor Mac only)
• prompted by reading - Robin Nixon's, Learning PHP, MySQL & Javascript, O'Reilly.

(Experienced programmers may at this point want to go review some political party broadcasts - coalition news as there's a lot more happening there.)

I typed in a PHP file, purposefully trying Textmate's 'Bundles' > 'HTML' > options to mix some PHP and HTML.

The file does not do a lot, but like creating, reading and writing a file it's a start. All this effort does is display four text box input fields (Chapter 11 Form Handling) with submit buttons. Previously I have mirrored the laptop screen to the external 24" Acer, that appears to be the default. ;-) Tinkering with the display options and turning off mirroring I found that I could pick up the Textmate window and move it to the big screen on my right. Meanwhile on the laptop I could preview the output in the browser. Apple's 'Spaces' is a related facility to master.

Not only that, but suitably editing the PHP file in Textmate resulted in updates on the browser (Refresh after change. Delay 0.40 s.) To me - that's Magic!

On the Drupal front - despite the title of this post - there's not much to report. The news is brief and yet kind of major in that I've bought my ticket for Drupalcon in Copenhagen. I am really gutted that this year I did not get to the Scottish Ruby Conference in March, after '08 and '09. At least getting to grips with Textmate will also help with Ruby (and Rails) too.

OK, back to Textmate to try the other PHP input types: text area, check boxes, hidden fields, select and labels.

Nursing Variables and Constant Values

From the ancient days of BBC BASIC I am today still trying to pick up some PHP to help me grasp Drupal (and Ruby).

In declaring variables - a key element of computer programs - I thought about the following both as a VARIABLE -

$nursing_care = "variable"

- and as a CONSTANT.

Which made me wonder: when do we want nursing to be a 'variable' and when a 'constant'?

The answer is of course obvious.

Nursing care must be a VARIABLE when it reflects the care plans and objectives that relate to a person - a unique individual.

Alternately, what must be declared as CONSTANT are -

safety, values and good-high quality nursing care.

You may wish to consider what other aspects of nursing and your practice are either variable or constant in nature?

Book: "Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6" - review

David Mercer's Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, and Community Websites introduced me to Drupal 4.7. When I learned of a new Mercer title from Packt I offered to review Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6. If you are impatient and read only the first and/or last para of things then to cut to the chase - if you are new to Drupal and content management systems you need this book. So, go and buy it now!

I've been learning Drupal on-and-off (as spare time allows) since last summer. Reading this latest Mercerian effort I've undoubtedly benefited from reading the Drupal 4.7 text. The 4.7 title definitely got me up and running as a Drupal novice, so this formula and style is familiar to me. There are some physical changes: the paper on this latest offering (my copy at least) has better contrast. I could not find the exact font details, but the print size is larger and so there are fewer words per line which naturally helps readability. Consequently, the 4.7 book's 267 pages translates to 362 pages as measured to the last page of the index.

As a Drupal newbie myself I've struggled due to:

• The whole client-server set-up and creating a database driven community.
• Drupal's likeness to an iceberg:
• what you can see - themes, modules, users, forums
• what you can't see the MySQL, PHP, CSS, server, template and other files...
• Oh yes, and the things that are on the water-line - blocks, menus, 'nodes and content'
• Drupal files and folder structure
• The location of core Drupal elements vs contributed elements (and your content)
• Security, access and permissions
• managing users
• Upgrading and configuration
• Drupal is very much a work-in-progress
• Customisation - themes, styles, being 'original' - extending Drupal.

The first fifty pages provide an introduction to Drupal, how it all started with its creator Dries Buytaert; plus installing server software and Drupal itself. Several pictures of the Drupal website highlight this as a pivotal resource with its forums and great sense of community. Mercer had me wondering that you may not be pushing the envelope if you don't need help at some stage.

On page 32 'The Drupal Environment' a sentence states that readers '... might well prefer to dive straight in and make modifications to your Drupal site.' This seems a bit premature to me, as six pages later we are concerned with obtaining and installing Drupal. As this is my first book review the adopted convention is a stolen sentence or two from Packt's summary of the book, with my thoughts:

Chapter 1 introduces you to the world of Drupal and looks at where Drupal comes from, where it’s going, and what it can offer you. - The Drupal community is an invaluable resource and in addition to reading and struggling I've attended a user group, were everyone has something to offer and there is much enthusiasm and skills on tap. So Mercer highlights the web and forums as a source of support and might possibly have made more (even without specific details) of the number of local Drupal user groups and events. Nonetheless, this thorough introduction is capped off with an explanation about Drupal's status as an open source project and the licence. This more than anything explains Drupal's dynamic credentials. Guidance is provided here on building a website - including 'phone a friend' - and don't forget paper and pencil for planning and developing ideas.

Chapter 2 deals with how to get everything you need up and running on a development machine and also briefly looks at how all the requisite technologies gel together to produce a working Drupal site. ... - Going for a combined package, I tried ApacheTriad and XAMPP before settling on WAMP5 for the Apache server, MySQL and PHP5 software. The thing is don't give up. I installed-scratched Drupal a couple of times; my excuse - I'd give it some time ... and then leave it alone. ... Like many things in life, you need to devote and invest time on which to build your knowledge and skills (even a 10-15 minute session can help). This chapter is very informative whichever server approach you adopt. As the author advises - keep that admin password safe! Mercer's task here must be helped I believe by the Drupal 6 install process. Although not yet 'automatic' it has been greatly improved.

Chapter 3 sees us adding functionality to the newly created site. ... - At this point David Mercer had me wondering: I've heard that a lot of people try Drupal and other CMSs and give up. If there were CMS exit questionnaires what would they reveal? A DHTML menu module is used as a module example and needing to find this again it is there in the comprehensive index. Blocks and menus take some getting used to, well for me anyway. It is not necessarily that they are very complex - they are just cussed on 1st, 2nd, even 3rd acquaintance. If you forget to activate a block, a menu will not show. There are graphic handles for drag-and-drop operations within menus, which helped me to finally grasp things. Mercer's advice to check through the modules that are available for your version is well worth the effort. Yes, the number of modules can be overwhelming, but the diversity and scope provide a reason to forge on and there's more to follow.

Chapter 4 looks at the most general settings that all Drupal administrators need to contend with. ... - This chapter could be titled 'chicken or egg', since you need to understand the functionality of Drupal in order to commit to developing your site. There are a lot of options for site configuration and again it's good advice to take the time and check out the available settings, displayed here in pictures with descriptions. Try to appreciate early on the role of clean urls (and path aliases p.325); using two browser windows can help too.

Chapter 5 concerns itself with the topic of access control. ... - This chapter I will certainly be re-reading. It has prompted me to realise that for my new site a forum is vital. Although I've some static content to archive, this would be a waste of Drupal's power. Here roles are covered, with emphasis on planning and creating an access policy p.116. Throughout the book you are reminded about only giving users the permissions they need to perform task x, y or z and NO more. Mercer points out that what roles you have and what your site can 'deliver' overall is also dependent on administration. Are you a one-admin band or will you have some help? It is always difficult to anticipate the future, hence the need to plan an access foundation upon which you can build.

Chapter 6 gets to the heart of the matter by beginning the book's coverage on content. ... - This chapter sheds light blog entries, book pages, forum topics and pages with these content types just the beginning. The learning here is not just the 'what', but 'how' to administer content, plus distinguishing (or not) between nodes and content. When you are working on your site and styles remember the 'input format' section of this chapter - again really useful. I wondered why my drop capitals and table effects were not showing. It was just that some HTML tags were not allowed through the filter.

Throughout the book the work flow approach helps instill confidence by hand-holding step-by-step and yet also encouraging you to experiment alone. Another insight for me here is the wider potential of Drupal's RSS aggregator. You also realise how quick the publishing turn-around is these days, with the pictures of the feed aggregator dated 02/05/2008. p.166. I have in mind a collaborative book on Hodges' model, so the five pages devoted to the book content type proved essential reading. There are graphic handles for drag-and-drop operations within books, in addition to the menus as mentioned previously.

Chapter 7 gives you the edge when it comes to creating engaging and dynamic content. While this chapter doesn't require you to be an expert in HTML, PHP, and CSS it does introduce you to the basics and shows how, with a little knowledge, extremely powerful and professional content can be created. ... - There are some Drupal pearls here: taxonomy, the content construction kit (CCK) and HTML, PHP and content posting. There's even a brief intro to HTML. Time also for considered reading with descriptions of terms, vocabularies, thesauri and related Drupal elements. With some awareness of clinical terminologies and having read this and other Drupal sources perhaps I'm underestimating the power of Drupal?

The CCK section has me a little puzzled. My next task is to install CCK in Drupal 6.2 as Mercer suggests to see if it works. At the time of writing this review though the Drupal site states they are creating a preliminary, development version [of CCK] for D6 soon. As Mercer acknowledges the CCK is dependent on another module called Views, which is still not yet ready for version 6. In a way something like this is to be expected of a book that is first off the blocks. Mercer still sets the CCK up nicely though, as I'm tantalised by the possibilities, especially when combined with Views as I saw demonstrated at the NW England Drupal user group.

Chapter 8 gives you a run down of how attractive, functional interfaces are created in Drupal through the use of themes. ... - Time to get the hands dirty; first though as with the modules I've followed Mercer's advice and checked through the available themes. You could be excused for believing it is a waste of time poring over all the themes (although not that many are available for D6 as yet). On the other hand let physics work for you and (like me) you will gravitate towards a couple of themes. If bones are essential for structure, support and locomotion, then chapters 8 & 9 provide the meat of the book and Drupal.

Chapter 9 really adds the icing on the cake by looking at a host of more advanced topics. From dynamic and responsive content using JavaScript and native jQuery support to supporting opened and implementing actions and triggers, you learn to enhance your website and add that something special. ... - I blame Mercer 4.7 (plus some exciting demos) for prompting me to invest in a specific jQuery book. (The user group directed me to the seminal Drupal book - the 'Pro' title.) jQuery accounts for a brief but very effective five pages, that I hope to incorporate into my test site efforts very soon. Drupal 6 has seen a major emphasis on internationalization and localisation. This is very welcome functionality for me, that Mercer serves over about 15 pages. My new website must be global in reach, Drupal can deliver and Mercer shows the way. Translation files are still in the future for this Drupal student, but for languages, cacheing, throttling and performance I know where to go for help. OPENID could be a real scoop for user uptake and is covered in just over four pages and begs further investigation. The book is peppered throughout with urls and tips for more resources and reading.

Chapter 10 takes a pragmatic look at the type of tasks in which you will need to be proficient in order to successfully run and maintain a Drupal site. ... - Having backed up the database and run cron jobs manually, there is one major thing I've still to do and that is the non-trivial task of upgrading. The single appendix deals with deployment.

I've a lot yet to prove in terms of learning Drupal and demonstrating proficiency (a deployed website would help!). I'm convinced though that Mr Mercer is helping me move forward with this latest very instructive Drupal book. Significantly there is quite a team behind this title. I wholly endorse this summary from the Packt site:
Written in the same style as the original Drupal title, this book is a pragmatic look at the steps necessary to get a website up and running. Drawing on years of writing experience, David Mercer utilizes a friendly, engaging style that is both clear and concise – perfect for the Drupal newbie.

Good luck - I hope this review helps!

(Many thanks to Packt Publishing for the book copy and acknowledging their support of my blog: Welcome to the QUAD).

Drupal + Being and Time

I'm continuing to explore Drupal amid some reading, blocks, menus, content.... Searching for content to practice upon, I checked one of the old (1997-8) introductory pages - Brian's course notes - and found my closing sentences were utter drivel! [Well it was a surprise to me.]

Although the prospect of a winter through spring clean is daunting, it will also prove an exciting completely about-time refresh.

Drupal is forcing me to do things I should have done ages ago:

• Separate the content from styling;
• Separate the static (historic) content from dynamic;
• Review the graphics;
• Thinking about audience(s);
• - and related content and solutions (archive, computer aided learning, prototyping).

Don't panic about the colour scheme in the screen shot below, this one allows authorised users to alter the colour, font size and width (see the very top line). Accessibility is a must this time, plus printer friendly content. The flexibility is quite amazing. There are errors on the page illustrated, the theme is not compatible with the latest Drupal version; but it works. I've gone through my own introductory page and stripped out the FONTS, TABLES and other superfluous HTML tags. What is a real conundrum is the front page.... The A,B,C I mentioned before may come to the rescue as 'this site' will just feature static content at first. So all I need is a menu in the sidebar. Users won't need to register, which may require a multi site config to develop the open source collaborative book.

It's cool to find there is a version of jQuery in Drupal. With a bit of PHP code I can fade text onto the screen - like many other sites and one of many effects to learn (and use sensibly!). Keith's DOM scripting will also finally come in handy through the dark months. I can't wait for the next NW England Drupal meet, it seems ages since the Cornerhouse get together. I'd put the modules and themes in the default directory, oops - that's sorted now. Need to explore content creation, the theme files and templates (CSS!) and the CCK (content construction kit) and views modules. Aarrrgh! Must also dream and think, dream and think, dream:think ....



Have a great week!