August 2008 Meeting: Remembering the User: Tricks for Making Drupal Easier

Aw, shucks, I'm not going to be around then--that's a topic I actually know stuff about! :-P

Hello,

If you're not at DrupalCon Szeged, or perhaps like me feel upset because you're not able to attend what sounds like a truly awesome Drupal Camp Victoria, then grab a Drupal fix tomorrow at the Vancouver Drupal Group meet-up. Actually, even if you are attending these fine events, please do come along.

While I can't promise that the short presentation I'll be giving will be anywhere near Szeged or Victora standard (I'll try though!), I can promise you beer: Delicious, cold*, frothy beer**. I'm going to try and source some Hungarian ale, but If I can't find any I'll grab some domestic and write 'Brewed in Hungary' on the can with a sharpie to make it a little more authentic.

In my presentation I will be covering:

> How to go about themeing the Content Authoring
> How to go about themeing the User profile page

as a couple of ways to tweak the Drupal experience for your users. As Dale has mentioned above, please do bring along your suggestions, thoughts, ideas and share them out.

Cheers,

Olly

* Beer may be room temperature or warmer
** While stocks last, some restrictions apply, see Rick Astley for details.

Man did you guys have to pick a day AND a time that clashed with the Flash group? DOH

Oh well I'll get to meet most of you at Victoria anyway. See you guys then!

Have I got bad news for you, we're almost always the last Thursday of the month :-(

We almost always try to record the meetings though, and sometimes even succeed!

I wish I could make this one as it would be my first (and seems right up my alley) but I can't. Any chance that someone will make a video of it and post it somewhere?

I'll definitely be making my admin pages a little nicer and the idea of a screen cast in addition to a README is great.

There was a great Q&A session after the main presentation.

On the subject of VPS (Virtual Private Server) hosting, I recently switched from shared to VPS myself and did quite a bit of research beforehand.

One of the best sources I found was this blog post and a few other posts on the authors site (I thought he was from opera but I see now they do their own community thing).

The first question to answer is whether you're in need of managed hosting. Managed hosting is where the hosting provider takes care of all the server updates and will install things for you at your request. With unmanaged hosting you ssh into the server and hack away.

I actually went with a host (unmanaged) not on the above list, http://vpsville.ca, because I wanted my data in Canada and they had an offer for 25% off the life of the plan.

I'll note that http://vpslink.com (#5 on the above list) is great if you just need a small server for a SVN repository or for DNS, with plans starting at $8/month.

If anyone has any questions let me know.

Great presentation last night, Olly!

Here's the links I promised to post:
(Disguised) Drupal Debug Day Video: http://blip.tv/file/469380
Blog Post w/Document Link: Disguised Drupalist Debug Day - Raincity has excellent guide on how you can help Drupal

Thanks for coming along and listening to my presentation. I had fun and hope that it was interesting and useful. Very much appreciated that so many came and attended on a wet and miserable night in October August.

I will post the slides up, but will likely tinker with them a little beforehand as I'm not happy with some of the verbiage I used and want to make them a little more clear to people who read them without my simultaneous explanation.

Cheers,

Olly

Thanks for the great presentation Olly. You addressed ways to theme parts of Drupal that are often overlooked, and saved me a bunch of time. Looking forward to the slides.

I mentioned a good managed VPS host that I've used: servint.net. Full WHM/cpanel, really good support. They really let focus on the development, without having to worry at all about running a server.

That was really helpful stuff, Olly!

I'm actually going to look at implementing some of your suggestions on theming forms before I leave my current gig.

The video is available at http://blip.tv/file/1218398.

Hello.
Slides are up on slideshare - available here. I had to take out the images unfortunately as it wasn't playing nice, but the rest is there.
Thanks.
Olly.

Dear All,

I would just like to say that 6:30pm - 7.04pm on Thursday August 28, 2008 was the most beautiful day of my life.

Since attending I have noticed that my life has improved greatly. I find myself eager to get up in the morning and make the most of the new skills that I've learned. I find the sun shines a little brighter and colleagues and customers have mentioned that I am now markedly more attractive and successful than I was before. Traffic lights never seem to turn red on me and since the presentation I haven't been hit by bird mess on my way to work, not even once. I attribute this phenomenon fully to "Remembering the User: Tricks for Making Drupal Easier".

To explain the seminar to those who didn't attend is a little bit like explaining Woodstock to those who didn't make it or the Moon Landing to those who couldn't stay up late. You simply had to be there. It was a coming together of ideas and for my money this was better than DrupalCon Szeged or Drupal Camp Victoria.

The presentation began with a bang - Walker sent his ideas sent out into the crowd like white doves at a peace rally. He was the ring master - working the audience with his informative, engaging and titillating conversation. As he pinged ideas out - the audience joined in like disciples to a messiah. They offered ideas and he guided those ideas into something greater than the sum of their parts.

I watched in wonder as he kept building on his pyramid of ideas until he had enfranchised all the attendees with the knowledge to build better applications going forward and to make the user feel like the are the only person in the whole wide world.

For those who missed out, I pity you. I am now empowered by my knowledge. I have expertise that you do not hold. I will conquer you and you shall fall at my feet. I have the grasp of the myriad of the little tips that make a user feel warm and special. I now have the confidence to go forward and fulfil my potential.

Thank you everyone for this beautiful shared experience. Let's build on this to make the BC computer community the most innovative and advanced computer programmers in the world.

Yours faithfully

Dr Lawrence Bariga, PHD.

PS I am crying as I type these final few words. I love you.

Those of you interested in Olly's screen cast tip might find this interesting/useful: How I Create Video Tutorials from the I'd Rather Be Writing blog.