We're happy to announce the December meetup. Our plan is to focus a discussion on theming in Drupal 6 and will have a number of presentations. The presentations will start at 5:30pm and informal discussions will begin at 7:30.
If you have suggestions for presentations, please leave comments below.
Regular meetups will be held on the first Monday of every month.
NOTE: there has been a location change for our meetup. Initially we had hoped to have our meetup at The James Street Pub again but Mondays are wing nights and they don't want to give up their basement to us.
RealDecoy has been kind enough to let us use their board room though so we can all meet there. There is a nice big LCD monitor for our presentations plus WiFi and a kitchen..
RealDecoy is located just down the road from The James Street Pub so it's still central. The address is 1-205 Catherine Street, which is one address East of Bank on Catherine (right behind the Galaxy Photo building). The entrance is at the side of the building (not the main entrance unfortunately). Just come down the stairs and ring the doorbell and someone will come and let you in.
A Google Map can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/6aor8g
Please RSVP if you can make it. There is a growing interest in Ottawa and it is a good opportunity for newbies and guru's to get together and learn from each other.
Please forward this on to anyone who might be interested in attending. If you've got a Drupal site or are just curious about this great CMS then please come on by. We're also encouraging everyone who has come in the past to try to bring someone along in December.
Comments
Common Look and Feel
I just wanted to mention that one of the things that we'll be discussing is the evolution of a Common Look and Feel (aka CLF 2) theme for Drupal.
For the uninitiated, CLF is the common presentation layer that the Treasury Board has mandated for all public-facing GoC sites. We now have the basis of a pretty good CLF theme so Drupal might be a pretty interesting package for some government agencies.
CLF Demo
On the CLF theme, this is a demo of the theme Lee mentioned.
http://clf.dev.openconcept.ca/
The guidelines for the CLF are available here for those who are curious:
http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/clf2-nsi2/index-eng.asp
Mike
OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca
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OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
And continuing the theming theme...
This is a timely topic for me as I'm struggling (unsuccessfully so far) to understand exactly how to get things themed. It's not CSS that's the problem but how to grab and manipulate the output from various modules. I think I have a tentative grasp of the broad concepts (on a very high level) and the devel module themer thing is useful, but the actual workflow details are completely opaque for a non-programmer like myself.
If anyone has been thinking of offering a class or maybe a one day "Theming for Dummies" workshop I'd be the first one to sign up. I'd even be willing to pay money for it (!).
could offer theming course
Lee, it looks like my current course offerings don't include theming: http://www.liquidcms.ca/drupal_training, although i have listed views specific theming as part of Views course.
If there was enough interest i could certainly put together a overall theming course. Mike and Pat approached me last night about presenting some of my "best practices" for theming at the Dec meet; that might also help.
Unfortunately the bulk of my theming experience has been with Drupal 5 as opposed to 6; but i could likely brush up on Drupal 6 theming quite quickly as it likely isn't all that different. Drupal 6 has the concept of child themes which i actually coded into Drupal 5 about a yr ago.. so shouldn't be too hard to get up to speed with 6.
Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Management Solution Experts
Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts
CLF, themes, etc
We did a Drupal 5 CLF theme for a government client last year. It would be a quick & easy port to Drupal 6. I'd be happy to help anyone out that needs it or is looking to develop their own.
Also if you need more people to talk about themes, I can throw something together. We've written heaps of Drupal 5 & 6 themes over the past few years.
Steve
Steve
Great to hear
Would you be willing to contribute your theme to a GoC initiative to build/evaluate a CLF theme? Would also be good to have more firms who work with the goverment represented.
There are a couple floating about, but it would be nice to be able to compare them, pull in the best elements and produce one that would provide the most flexibility for Drupal, while supplying the most compliance out of the box for government departments.
Mike
OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Definitely
Sure, I'd be glad to kick in my CLF2 theme. I'll dig it up and dust it off.
Steve
Steve
Excellent
Make sure to put in references to wirespeak in the text. Thanks!
OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
themes and theming
and not to be too picky.. but i do tend to be that way... I thought perhaps the more junior drupal gang here might be interested in the clarification... a drupal theme and drupal theming are very different things.
A Drupal theme typically refers to a set of standard node type templates (for page, node, block, etc) along with various CSS definitions to go with these. Drupal theming (themeing??) refers to the practice of creating templates for your custom node types and views.
ok, yes.. picky picky.. :)
Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Management Solution Experts
Peter Lindstrom
LiquidCMS - Content Solution Experts
Drupal Theming Workshop
Anyone planning to go to this theming workshop at the end of the month:
http://groups.drupal.org/node/16578
Looks like it could be quite good.
Mike
OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
I'm in
Exactly what I've been looking for. Thanks!
Providing a Report?
If you make it down you'll have to give us a report on it.
Mike
OpenConcept | Volunteer Canada | prax.ca
--
OpenConcept | Twitter @mgifford | Drupal Security Guide
Realtime collaboration tool
At the last meetup I was telling a few people about the realtime document collaboration tool that was being used at the Montreal DrupalCamp. At the time (after two beers) I couldn't remember what it was it was called, but today I see that it's featured on LifeHacker: http://lifehacker.com/5083404/gobby-makes-cross+platform-collaboration-a.... Omar was saying that Koumbit uses it quite a lot for their projects.
December meeting
Hi guys,
Hope it went well. I didn't see the note about change of venue until just now (when I got home). I'll watch for January.
K.
Hi Kath, Sorry you missed
Hi Kath,
Sorry you missed the notice about the change of venue, we are all here in the RD board room having a nice discussion about themes and useability. Hope you have a good evening and we'll see you in January (the 12th, we are moving it to the second Monday of the month.. long story).
Pat Cooney
Web Application Developer
RealDecoy
Pat Cooney