drupal

On Thursday, July 15th, Chris Frey gave the Waterloo Region Drupal Users Group a presentation about the Git version control system. I've uploaded a video of the presentation to archive.org. To get the slides and scripts, you can use Git:

$ git clone http://foursquare.net/intro_to/.git intro_to_git

I think I'm finally recovered from my week at Drupalcon SF. This conference was one of the best I've ever attended, and connecting and re-connecting with contributors from around the world was rejuvenating. I'm very grateful for the scholarship I recieved from the Drupal Association, and wanted to thank some of the people who helped make that happen.

One of the most difficult hurdles for new members of the Drupal community to overcome is making the jump from a "user" to a "contributor". Many associate "contributor" with core hackers, PHP gurus, and CSS wizards. In reality, any Drupal user or site builder can easily become a contributor, through support, advocacy, documentation, and so on. For more information, check out the attached slides, or see the Drupal.org Contribution page.

I received a most excellent Christmas present from a friend of mine:

Druplicon cookies (looks like she saw my Drupalcamp Montreal shirt!)

And though she didn't know it, the other cookies matched the theme perfectly:

Kitten cookies (taste extra good when you hack core)

I just finished giving a presentation at DrupalCamp Montreal about using Subversion to manage Drupal development and deployment. I've attached the slides and code I mentioned during the seminar; video will be posted by the DCM DBN team soon.

Yesterday I gave a presentation to the Waterloo Region Drupal User Group about the basics of using Subversion to manage a Drupal website. Most of the presentation applies to any use of Subversion, though I do touch on a few specifics relating to Drupal. If you're interested in learning about using version control to manage any website or project, this is a great place to start.

Pinchin Environmental is a Canadian company specializing in environmental consulting. Launched in October of 2008, this project involved replacing the previous DreamWeaver-based site with a modern, standards compliant website. Using Drupal 5, the site offers features and functionality impossible to implement with the previous system. To read the full case study, or to see screenshots of the site in action, please see the Pinchin Environmental project page.

Tonight I gave the Waterloo Region User Group a presentation introducing jQuery and it's use within Drupal websites. Topics covered included:

• What JavaScript is and isn't
• How JavaScript empowers developers to transform web pages into web applications
• Why many developers have avoided JavaScript in the past, and how jQuery addresses those issues
• JavaScript developer tools
• Introduction and live demos using jQuery