Developer help

During the Drupal Dojo Birds-of-a-Feather meeting at DrupalCon Boston we discussed two seperate items that I believe are interconnected: figuring out how to get more video lessons into the Dojo and doing a better job of attracting more potential teachers and students to the site. To address the first of these issues, I committed myself to doing outreach to individuals and companies who are creating video-based instructional materials to try and get them to submit their work to the Dojo. After that session I started to look around the series of tubes known as the "internet" and I found quite a few videos. But, what I also noticed was that a good percentage of those videos already are being shared with the Drupal community, but through drupal.org/videocasts rather than the Dojo, which oddly doesn't seem to appear on the videocast pages at all. This brought to mind something that I've heard Josh and others talk about, the idea that we should consider moving the dojo to something more aligned with Drupal.org itself, and I have to say that the more I think about it, the more sense it makes to me.

So, my question is this: does it make sense to consolidate our collective efforts in one location that is better connected with d.o. itself? Something like video.drupal.org, or possibly as a subsection of a tutorials section of the site (which is where the videocasts now sit), which could be called something like tutorials.drupal.org.

A client has asked me to build them a sort of 'inventory system', and I would like to build it using Drupal rather than writing a custom solution for it. However, there are a few things I would like to get some dojo feedback on.

These are all tasks I could do if writing the site from scratch. However, I want to do it in 'the Drupal Way' and take advantage of as much of the existing Drupal infrastructure as possible, so I would appreciate any advice on ways to best do this in Drupal.

Structure

The first challenge is in the structure.

I have a feature requirement I am trying to work out for a new site I am building for a client. However, I am not sure how to proceed with this feature, and would like some advice. I've tried posting in the regular drupal forums, and asking in the various IRC chats, but have not been able to raise any suggestions, so now I turn to you!

I'm part of a tech startup who is basing our website off of Drupal 5.

We have a small team of developers who work on building the site simultaneously. We use subversion for code management. In previous (non drupal) environments , working together was easy: all the functionality, content, roles, etc were hard coded right into our code and template files.

Code Cleanup with Coder module: This is a 9 minute video that shows me doing a little code cleanup on pathauto module using the cool Coder module. This is a great tool for pointing out secure text and coding standards issues in your code. This is also an easy way to get involved with rolling patches for modules that you use.

OK, starting to feel like I'm spamming everyone. This is a really short, 6 minute, video that shows you how to use command line to checkout a copy of Drupal's HEAD version to your localhost. Assumes you have a local webserver set up and db created already.

http://drupal.org/node/133304

Hey folks, I've got another video out, Applying Patches to Drupal Core - there is .mp4 and .mov and a torrent for the .mp4. This one is just as quick and dirty as the last one - it is 12 minutes. It shows you how to use the command line to apply, test and reverse patches for Drupal core. This is a great way to be part of core development even if you know nothing about code. The developers are writing the patches but they need many eyes to test them and see if they really work in a wide variety of use cases.

Hey all, I created a little video on how to roll patches the other night when I had an easy patch to do. It is not the best quality since I didn't really plan it out ahead of time but folks new to patching may find it helpful. I also wanted to show you don't have to be patching "code" but that you can also do patches for documentation. It has been added to the Patches section of the Handbook since you really should read the patch documentation and not just watch the vid. ;)

Note: we have now set up a book at docs.drupaldojo.org to work on this. Please refer to this comment for more info.

Summer of Code is just around the corner, and that means an influx of new Drupal developers. These are typically folks that already know PHP, but have little to no experience with Drupal itself, nor its API.

If you are new to CVS and Drupal, and if you prefer to use command line/bash(as me) instead of GUI based CVS programs. Then this guide is for you! For windows users, download greggles great lesson on CVS.
This guide is really quick & dirty. But I like it this way. So I hope you will as well:)

There are basically 5 stages:

1. Download drupal HEAD
2. Edit file
3. Test your patch on your local webserver
4. Create a patch
5. And apply the patch to drupal.org using your webserver