Due to a lack of agenda, the meetup tomorrow is cancelled. If you want to present in the new year, please let me know!
Sorry for the late notice, have a great week everyone!
Kevin
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Due to DrupalCamp there won't be an October meetup. So the next meetup is November 29th, 2010, 6:30pm at the Center for Social Innovation, suite 120, 215 Spadina Ave.
I'd like to continue showcasing some of the awesome talent in Toronto's Drupal community by featuring at least a couple of case studies each meetup. Did you just launch a wicked site and want to show it off? Get in touch and i'll put you on the agenda. I'll try to ensure a mix of beginner, intermediate, and advanced presentations / demos. Not just about development, we're always interested in issues like project management, theming, design, etc.
Stick this on your FB calendar at http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=169183359759857
and/or use the signup button here. If we get too big we might need to move this to a new location.
Comments
Oh man, so what do you guys
Oh man, so what do you guys think of organizing something like this:
http://growingventuresolutions.com/blog/fun-and-games-denver-drupal-meetup
Anyone else think this sounds like a quirky way to learn some new things and get to know others in the community a bit better?
That sounds like a lot of
That sounds like a lot of fun. Teams could be comprised of different skill levels which will certainly give newer users a chance to see how more experienced users build sites.
"I am a very model of a modern major general"
Definitely a cool idea.
Definitely a cool idea. We'll have to try it (or a variation) sometime.
I kinda went MIA on this
I kinda went MIA on this discussion, but glad people are open to it! I can help look into organizing it in the new year :)
Yeah, I like this idea! I'm
Yeah, I like this idea! I'm involved with a song-building workshop that works a bit like this. You bring people of varying skill levels, randomize the parameters (e.g., beat, topic, required lyrics words), impose a time constraint and kick the teams loose. Each team presents at the end, and sometimes we have a mock judging for best song.
The constraints are a fantastic way to get people moving and collaborating in creative ways - the same would apply to Drupal-building. Mixing people into groups lets them meet, learn and get inspired. Sometimes the people with the least experience have the most amazing ideas.
--
Less isn't more; just enough is more.
- Milton Glaser
Hi everyone, the meetup
Hi everyone, the meetup tomorow is cancelled, sorry for the late notice. See you in January!
/user/666
unlockedmedia.net
Meetup alternative
Due to the cancellation of tomorrow's Toronto Meetup (Nov 29), Is anyone interested in meeting tomorrow any way?
Can we still meet at The Centre for Social Innovation or do we need to find a pub? Any thoughts?
Help!!
Is there someone in the local (Toronto) community who can help me debug a simple Drupal Gardens site? I'm a total noob. I first discovered Drupal about two months ago, just before the Toronto camp.
I'm trying to replicate a simple static site with about 10 pages. The main content (area C) is working OK, but I also have header content and sidebar A content that is supposed to appear on specific pages, but does not. Is there a business model for this kind of thing? I'm thinking if one of you smart guys looks at this for 5 minutes you'd be able to tell me what wrong assumption I've made about how this is supposed to work ....
Please let me know if this is possible.
Thanks, Jim
NOOB Alert: Transition from GUI to programmatic stuff
Greetings
I discovered Drupal about three months ago, just before the Toronto camp. Since then, I have installed v6 and v7 on MAMP stacks, and I have had modest success using the graphical tools in Drupal Gardens to develop a static site hosted there.
I have a comp sci background, though it's been a while since I did C, awk, and shell programming back in the day. Recently, I've built a few ugly but functional websites using naked html, css, php and MySQL.
I've perceived a great divide in Drupal, between the GUI side and the programmatic side. One of the things that originally attracted my to Drupal was the idea of inserting custom code for specialized behaviour, but everything I've done to data has been leveraging the graphical stuff in DG. I have no clue how to start using the programmatic approach.
My question is: does anyone have any tips re how to make the transition from graphical to programmatic?
Thanks, Jim
Pro Drupal Development
100% double-plus agree. "Pro
100% double-plus agree. "Pro Drupal Development" happened to be the first thing I ever read about Drupal, and even with only an amateur comp sci background at the time, it put everything in perspective. I can't imagine having dove in any other way!
Hey Jim, I was going through
Hey Jim,
I was going through the same process as you a few months ago, wanting to get into programming (not that I'm way beyond that point now though...). I definitely agree that "pro drupal development" is an awesome tool and what also worked for me was trying to create my own modules instead of relying on the views module. I found that was a good way to learn the hooks, functions, etc.
Also, I recommend checking out the Lullabot module development tutorial and (sorry to plug my own site but) i've done a couple video tutorials on module development (nothing over the top) at www.torontowebsitedeveloper.com
Hope that helps,
pete
Why people are shallow and why we have to lie about what we do?
QUOTE: “I was going through the same process as you a few months ago, wanting to get into programming”... that is just funny.
QUOTE - from http://www.torontowebsitedeveloper.com/drupal-tips-tricks/how-i-learned-... “When I started out with Drupal over a year and a half ago, I knew nothing about web design, CSS, HTML or anything.”
Now... am I just dumb or this guy is a genius?! Custom Drupal theme and module development… starting from 0 (in web design or dev) in a year and a half???!!! That's like those amazon book reviews: I've read .... book in 3 days and it's just the worst programming book that I've read so far || laid my eyes on...
Let me recap here just the basics that you’ll need to understand, in order to do something like above.
LAMP (that’s Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) lots of books to read here man…
CVS/SVN/Git more books…
Javascript, jQuery, AJAX more …
IDE - you wanna leave your DW/BBEdit and go for Elipse PDT for serious programming… oooohhh… check this out… more books to read.
Then you wanna upgrade your skills and choose a back-end framework since you learned a front-end one (jQuery). So, either you start learning OO-PHP, design principles and patterns etc, to go into Zend FW or Symphony OR YOU CHOOSE DRUPAL. Drupal evolved from a simple WCMS to be almost a full-stack framework. I’ll say Drupal it’s the easier way to go since is mostly procedural (and you learned that from the books above) but with OO in mind architecture. And… more books to read…
Jimbob54, there is a long way ahead of you actually. Same as you, I came from a desktop app environment (Java - JDK/J2SE for a telecomm company) and since 3 years I am doing web dev because I figured out that most desktop apps will migrate to web and then back to desktop (AIR, Silverlight) or mobile apps. But to help you out with your programming PHP in Drupal question I would say:
Don't start your journey with "Pro Drupal Development" it's for advance to pro developers. Noobies look god if they say they read it but don't understand a thing from that code or even a flowchart.
Read first "Learning Drupal X Module Development" it's a very good book to get you started, understand basic concepts and good practices and then move on. Adixon just gave you the best advise -> read the code from small contrib modules. I'ts open source this Drupal guy?
But b4 that, since you have some experience in web design, I would start reading "Drupal X Themes" and especially "Front End Drupal". You will learn about Drupal template engine here and most of the front-end stuff. You will learn how the "View" is integrated in the system and outputs it's stuff.
Start small and build on top. It's the best way. Don't leave gaps in between because it's so much ground to cover that you won't have enough time to come back and read.
Leave Gardens for now, you don't wanna be like a Wordpress guy.
If you want more advices from my side in what books I found worth the money (jQuery, PHP, Linux stuff, Drupal) just reply to this post.
Lullabot video series on module development - plain c_rap. Themeing videos - decent to good. I would go with Lynda videos better.
Disclaimer:
I don't do Drupal for a living, I do ZendFW among others, but I've read 8 Drupal books and chapters from other Drupal books that I own on "ebook" and interested me.
I do Drupal for fun... BUT I STILL DON'T GET IT HOW CAN YOU DO IT IN ONE AND A HALF YEAR, INCLUDING 4 portfolio projects.
Aaaaa... and Jimbob54, you see... it's almost 2 am and I'm not in bed. That's the difference between a designer and a programmer so get used to it.
Regards,
PopeMarinaru
Hi PopeMarinaru, obviously
Hi PopeMarinaru,
obviously you have a bit of a chip on your shoulder and I have no idea what your problem is. I apologize for being honest on my site - I literally didn't know a thing when I started and spent pretty much every night from 7pm to 2am working to learn Drupal because I was passionate about it. Luckily there were people along the way who were a little more understanding than yourself which made things easier. Yes, a few months ago I really wanted to dive into module development and only had a basic understanding of PHP and the Drupal API so again, I pretty much spent every night from 7pm to 2am learning it. You're right to point out my portfolio has 4 projects in it because I don't include every project I work on. I have a full time job, unrelated to Drupal, web development or programming and so I've only listed some selective projects because I largely rely on word of mouth and don't post most of my projects. That said, in light of people like you visiting my site, perhaps I should.
My previous comments were solely intended to help someone who I felt was experiencing something similar to my previous situation. When I wanted to get into Drupal development I kept hearing write patches, read the code, start a small module, read a book but I found none of it helped me. I debated chiming in this thread for the sole reason of getting a response like yours. Maybe I'll think twice next time.
Anyways, regardless of your thoughts/comments, I forgot to mention previously that mustardseedmedia.com/podcast is another great resource and I've left comments / emailed Bob on a few occasions and he's been more than willing to answer quick questions. He's also sympathetic to people starting out. I apologize to everyone else in the group for what feels like hijacking this thread but I felt the need to respond.
Pete
Apologies
Hi Yaworsk,
My sincerely apologies for offending you in any way and I would like to ask DUG Toronto admin to unpublish or modify my post. It was one of those nights when something went wrong with my code and I was taking a break writing this reply. I didn't realize that I've used such words until this morning.
Once again, sorry for my mistake.
Ah the bane of textual
Ah the bane of textual communication. But hey -- you were both trying to help Jim, some dude neither of you had even met, so I think that's the biggest testament to your common character. This will all seem silly over beers next meetup
And if not, we can always organize a duel. My money's on Pete. I'm thinking you could probably master the musket in like two weeks :)
Catch you folks around
I already started reading up
I already started reading up on the musket last night... i'll have a video tutorial up tomorrow which includes a demonstration on how to install your own bayonet