What topic(s) would you like to see covered in the January Meetup?
public
group: Austin
studley181 - Fri, 2007-11-30 16:57
CCK/Views Overview
50% (3 votes)
Introduction to Panels
17% (1 vote)
Migrating to Drupal 6
17% (1 vote)
Advanced Theming 2 - Lets talk subtemplates
17% (1 vote)
Total votes: 6
module development
I definitely would like to learn more about views. Specifically I would like to understand what a wildcard is, or a wildcard sub and how they are used. I think having a section on drupal apis and module development at every meeting would be good. After all, the more people that can learn to write drupal modules the better this cms is going to be.
wildcards are used in
wildcards are used in arguments to let you substitute a string that means "dont filter based on this criteria". Arguments in views are like dynamic filters that can be specified via the URL (or more rarely programatically in the view). Sometimes you dont want to filter on the first argument but do want to on the proceeding one. in this case you use a wildcard.
I think I follow
Thanks for explaining that. I think I'm following you mostly. So are you saying that a wildcard is a string that when passed in a particular position in the url overrides the argument filters set for the view? If so, how would this be useful? Is there anyway you could describe a real world application for this feature?
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Sure. say you create a view
Sure. say you create a view for your front page that shows node teasers. Next you add an argument an argument for groupID and use the argument handling code to assign the argument to the present oranic group (og_get_context()) when the view is loaded. Now you assign that view to the group home page too. Now you add an RSS Feed argument to the end of your arguments because soemtimes you'll want it as a feed. Well if you want the rss feed of all of the nodes without filtering on the group you'll want to have a wildcard.
There are dozens of other uses. Most make it possible to reuse a view for many purposes instead fo many views which helps with caching, load times, etc. Please see below or ask for more info.
http://drupal.org/node/54455
Cool Thank you for that explanation
That makes sense now.
Web design, Drupal theming, and logo design:
http://www.translationdesigns.com
My personal blog with my music and lots of interesting videos and articles:
http://www.waitingforthestorm.com
January Meetup
At the last meetup we tentatively agreed to have another meetup in the middle of January, most likely January 16. Jonathon and I would be happy to host another meetup, but if somebody else would like to step up and volunteer that would be good as well.
At the last meetup Jonathon and I each presented an informal presentation. It'd be great if other people could present topics at this meeting. If you have an idea for a topic you'd like to present, let us know and Jonathon can update the poll to add that choice. Also, if there's a topic already up that you'd like to present, please feel free to let us know. I believe Matt in particular said that he had a lot of experience with Views, which I would be really interested in hearing about.
Aaron, I agree that discussion of the drupal api and module development would be useful. I thought that migrating to drupal 6 would be a good opportunity to discuss some of these issues. If you have any other specific ideas, I'd be interested in hearing them so we can add them to the poll. Actually, if anybody has used a lot of javascript, jquery, or ajax with Drupal I'd be interested in hearing more about it. I did some work with it this week and it seems like a very useful technology that has not made it into "mainstream" Drupal development yet. If nobody else has a lot of experience, and other people are interested in seeing some simple javascript/jquery/ajax integration in Drupal, I could probably throw something together.
Thanks,
Sam
Drupal Theming Design / Hike
Personally, I am most interested in learning more about theming. I would be interested in subtemplates, but I would probably be most interested (just to put this out there for some time in the future) in advanced theming in terms of beautiful DESIGN. I'd love to see a presentation sometime where someone took a basic stripped down hunchback or zen or foundation theme and turned it into a stunning design in under an hour (perhaps with the help of a few pre-made image files), giving tips along the way about some of ways to make Drupal look really sharp.
Among the other topics, I don't know much about Panels, and I can't even find sample sites to look at, so that would be interesting to me. Definitely, some basic tips of things to remember in moving to Drupal 6 would be helpful (perhaps just a very brief presentation on this would sufficee). Personally, I am not very interested in Views, not because I don't find it useful; quite to the contrary, it is one of the most useful modules to me, but I have never had a problem using its simple functions, and I am not particularly in need or even advanced enough in my Drupal understanding to desire the advanced functions of Views.
Quite separately, I am wondering (since we are not meeting in December) if anyone else would be interested in a (drupal associated) hike or something of the sort this month, as it can be good to get to know people outside of the conference room too.
I definitely want to see Views/CCK in action!
Thanks!
By the way, if the audience wants a lot of heavy duty coding, I might have to excuse myself early since I'm not a developer. :)
I can always learn a little bit here and there, but I know my limits and I don't intend on becoming a developer. So when a presenter chooses to cover a specific module, it would be nice if he/she could go with a general overview first so folks like me who have a difficult time grasping code can still learn a few things, and then get into the heavy duty coding. :)
I do want to say that ALL the presenters I've seen at Drupal meetups have done a great job of getting a feel for what the audience skill level with Drupal and coding in general is. Keep up the great work!
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
coding etc...
How do think we should approach the different types of presentations and the various skill levels of the attendees? Do you you think we should present the easy admin type presentations in the beginning and then move on to more advanced topics later in the evening so that those who aren't interested can leave? I personally would be bored stiff without the advanced stuff but I can understand how it can come across as pure gibberish if you haven't been studying the material.
Heres a format that might work for the meetings if others were interested:
We could divide each meetup into three parts, each part lasting about 40 minutes.
I don't know if presenters could fit their material into 40 minutes. If not then perhaps this format wouldn't be workable.
I would be happy to give presentations about theming and administration. I can show people how to start from a Fireworks, Illustrator, or Photoshop image, slice it up and write the css for the theme. There are a lot of cool tricks to learn here. I also have a firm understanding of the php template system and I can show people how to set up custom layouts for blocks, node content types, and user profiles. Drupal theming is very intimidating at first until you get down concepts of php templates.
Web design, Drupal theming, and logo design:
http://www.translationdesigns.com
My personal blog with my music and lots of interesting videos and articles:
http://www.waitingforthestorm.com
Good idea
I think this is a good idea to divide it and a pretty good suggested structure. It does seem like basic administration, theming, and more advanced code development and "under the hood drupal" are the three main areas, and Aaron's idea would be a good balance. 40 minutes might be tight for some presentations, but perhaps the overall meeting could be two and a half hours or so, since advanced drupalers might arrive late and beginning drupalers might leave early. Aaron, I'd love to see you slice up a photoshop or illustrator document and turn it into a template, as well as to see you demonstrate custom templates for blocks, node types, and profiles and share tips about them. Profiles, in particular, would be great.
Excellent suggestions!
Hey Aaron,
Wow, thank you for the well-thought-out suggestions! I agree with sambtaylor that "I think this is a good idea to divide it and a pretty good suggested structure."
On the one hand, I don't want to get presenters too locked in to a specific format because I'm basically thankful for their time and anything they have to share. Some meetups (like the excellent SEO presentation Ben from SpryDev gave back in October at his office) won't necessarily go into deep coding aspects and are more of a general overview (e.g. SEO) that people find interesting. In those cases, I think it's perfectly fine to not have a specific format since it's more of a general presentation.
But on the other hand when detailed coding is going to be covered and to make the meetups more effective for all skill levels, I do think your ideas are quite valid. Your proposed format gives folks a stronger incentive to attend, IMO, because of the structure and expectation that anyone attending - beginner, intermediate, or advanced - will walk away having learned something. And I think your ideas give the presenter a certain framework to work with which allows a more easily constructed presentation since expectations have been set on the format and proficiency level for each of the segments. The presenter knows there is an expectation in which he/she adheres to your Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 format.
As for fitting a presentation into 40 minutes, yes, I know it can be done. We start the clock and 40 minutes later, the presenter is done! LOL. More for some, less for others, but 40 minutes is a good target to aim for. Whoever is presenting (whether it's 1 person or 2 or more people) just needs to keep that in mind, and someone in the audience can act as timekeeper and say, "You've got 10 minutes left...you've got 1 minute left...time's up."
What do others think?
Walt Esquivel, MBA; MA; President, Wellness Corps; Captain, USMC (Veteran)
$50 Hosting Discount Helps Projects Needing Financing
Meetup organization
I like the idea of dividing the meetup into different sections, but we need to leave plenty of time for questions and answers. So if somebody presents a topic for 40 minutes, we should probably also have 20 minutes for q/a. At the last meetup we had a general discussion for 30 minutes to an hour after the presentations were over, and I thought this was really helpful.
If we want to discuss three topics then we should make the meeting longer. At the last meetup we covered two basic topics and we were still busy for three hours. That being said, I wouldn't mind having the meeting last longer, especially if it was organized in such a way that people could pick and choose topics. We could also break out of the office and have general discussion at a local restaurant.
Thanks,
Sam
I love the idea of section
I love the idea of section breaks in the meeting. I would say a general session for about 15-20 min then do break outs on various subjects.
This will allow for discussion at different levels in the meeting.
-J
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It definitely seems to me
It definitely seems to me that the time frame for such meetings would get stretched a little if we try this format. The biggest obstacle would be the restrictions on the building that we use. If the owners don't mind a bunch of half mad drupalites hijacking their space then I'm down for longer meetings.
Web design, Drupal theming, and logo design:
http://www.translationdesigns.com
My personal blog with my music and lots of interesting videos and articles:
http://www.waitingforthestorm.com
Javascript/Jquery
I am interested in learning some fun stuff with Javascript and Jquery. This web 2.0 stuff like in google calendars is really neat. I also like the idea of digging deeper into views - maybe throwing a little php into the views to make interesting things happen. Also, I'd like to know how to implement a wiki in Drupal.
thanks
Selwyn