Next meetup Mon, Jan 24, 2011

Drupal Development Study Group
Katy chaired the Skype voice conference call
Attendees: Ariel, Kalpana, Tena, Kathy, Katy
Time: 6pst/7mst/8cst/9est
Date: Jan 24, 2011

Katy asked: How was your first experience in building your first custom module?

Tena said Katy’s build your first module tutorial was good. Some didn’t have time to go through the tutorial. Find it here: http://mydrupal.ca/how-build-your-first-drupal-module

Ariel asked for help with setting up her own Drupal development environment. She uses Windows XP and had trouble installing Acquia Drupal Stack.

1. We recommend older version of XAMPP available at apachefriends.org. Version 1.7.2 and up uses PHP5.3. Although Drupal 6.20 says it works with PHP5.3, Kathy and other Drupal developers recommend PHP5.2. Drupal 6.20 has some problems with PHP5.3 and works best with PHP5.2

XAMPP 1.6.8 or 1.7.1 uses PHP5.2. Drupal 6 works best with PHP5.2.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/xampp/files/XAMPP%20Windows/

http://www.oldapps.com/xampp.php?old_xampp=44

2. Download Acquia Drupal – has bundle of modules that are very useful including image module, CCK, Views, Imagefield and Filefield. For Windows, use Acquia Drupal full install.zip

3. Ariel uses 7-zip to extract zip and gzip and tar.gz files. It’s a free download.
http://download.cnet.com/7-Zip/3000-2250_4-10045185.html

4. Kathy and Tena helped us get set up with IRC. Two ways to use IRC
1. No installation needed - Free online chat client: http://webchat.freenode.net.
2. Or you can download a Firefox plugin, ChatZilla.
Install the plugin. You will see a list in the window saying “Available networks are” choose freenode and the URL at the top of the page becomes irc://freenode
You get automatically assigned the nickname User_. Click on the User_ button in the lower left corner and choose Change nickname to change your nickname.
Click on IRC in the top menu and choose Join channel. Type in the channel #drupal-studygroup into the Quick Search box and press Enter. You can also join another channel such as #drupal-support or #drupal-themes. Don’t wait for it to search and find the channel. Just type it in and press the Enter key.

Kathy: Homework for next week is to download Twitter module – drupal.org/project/twitter and investigate how it’s made. See also the API to see how to pull in the Twitter feed.

Kathy set up a Ning group for our study group. You can join for free at http://drupalistas.ning.com.

Kathy offered some space on her shared hosting account if you want to upload your work and share it with the group. She talked about setting up a sandbox environment where we can work together and demo our modules. More details to follow.

If you need help setting up your Drupal development environment on your home computer, let us know. We will be hanging out in IRC at #drupal-studygroup

Prerequisites for building custom modules
1. You must have a PHP/mySQL server set up on your computer for a development/testing environment. Use XAMPP for windows or MAMP for Mac.

2. You will need to have a fresh install of Drupal set up to test your custom modules. www.acquia.com/downloads

3. Knowledge of PHP is required to build custom modules. Here are some free online tutorials:
http://www.w3schools.com/php/default.asp
Complete the course and get a certificate

http://devzone.zend.com/node/view/id/627
Absolute Beginners course Free from Zend

4. You can download a free community server from Zend and also a PHP development environment that has a PHP debugger built in.
http://www.zend.com/en/products/server-ce/downloads
choose the one with PHP 5.2

Zend Studio – IDE with PHP debugger. Free 30 day trial

Free PHP IDE:
http://www.phpedit.com/en/download/download-latest-versions
http://www.phpedit.net/ - tutorials

5. Add your favourite tools for Drupal Development. And list any resources and tutorials you find online here. Post your questions here, too.

When is the next meeting? Is there one tonight? I'm late to the party...
Also I was going to suggest DAMP for Mac - it's really wonderful. I have Mac OS X (native), MAMP and DAMP all running simultaneously, and I really love DAMP, and while I've used MAMP/MAMP Pro and Mac OS X for many years, I have to say DAMP is awfully nice.
Thanks,
Kelly