Clean URLs
I make the assumption that virtually everybody enables clean URLs on their Drupal site. In the default setup of Drupal the .htaccess file is already set to handle clean URLs. When you install Drupal,...
View ArticleWhat's the difference between a Page and a Story?
Drupal creates two default content types when you install it. These are the Page and Story content types. (Note: the default content types are renamed in Drupal 7 and are not created at all if you...
View ArticleWhy would I want to create different content types?
In a previous entry I wrote about a couple of default content types that Drupal creates and the difference between those two content types. In this entry I will expand on the idea of why you will want...
View ArticleGlobal theme settings
To get to the global theme settings page, navigate to admin/build/themes/settings/global. As stated at the top of the pageThese options control the default display settings for your entire site, across...
View ArticleSetting your site information
In my blog entry about the difference between the Page and Story content types I mentioned that one of the differences between the default Page and Story content types is that the Story content type is...
View ArticleUsing roles and permissions
When you first create your Drupal site, you are asked to supply a user name and password. This first user (User ID 1) is the "root" user. This user has complete control over the site. So, you will want...
View ArticleTriggers and Actions in action
It's been a really long time since I've posted anything and since I was just fooling around on the site to set up an action/trigger pair to notify me when somebody comments, I figured it would make a...
View ArticleWhy doesn't (my custom) menu such-and-such appear in the menu settings dropdown
Well, I guess that (choose as many as apply): a) I'm really feeling like a fount of information today; b) I'm really inspired to share; c) I'm really trying to avoid doing any work. So, here's another...
View ArticleHow taxing is Taxonomy?
It took me a long time when I first started using Drupal to conquer my fear of the Taxonomy module. With its technical sounding name, I figured you had to be a really smart advanced user to take...
View ArticleWTF: How do I get Drupal to put placeholder text inside my textfield?
What's that feature: the #attributes key.Perhaps you have written your own javascript code to determine that an empty textfield does not have focus, and in such a situation place some placeholder text...
View ArticleWTF: How do I get Drupal to put placeholder text inside my textfield?
What's that feature: the #attributes key.Perhaps you have written your own javascript code to determine that an empty textfield does not have focus, and in such a situation place some placeholder text...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Basic Drupal Principles
The first thing to understand about Drupal is that it is based on a modular approach to providing functionality. I will elaborate on this further in another post.The point I want to focus on in this...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Subthemes
In order to retain the changes you make to a theme like the Bartik theme you need to create a custom subtheme. Use the Bartik theme as a base theme.It's beyond the scope of this post to go into detail...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Modularity
I mentioned in a previous post that Drupal is a modular framework. The idea is that modules should be designed to do one (small) thing well. This is in contrast to the monolithic approach that plugins...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Extensibility
When creating a module for Drupal it is important to write the module so that it is extensible by other modules. I will talk about ways that it is possible to do this in other posts.I mentioned a...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Collaboration
Collaboration is an important part of the Drupal community. The principle of collaboration applies equally to how people in the community engage with each other and to how modules are written.I...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Hooks
In Drupal a hook is intended to provide a way for actions to be triggered during a point in the execution of a certain event or process. Hooks are defined within individual modules. Those modules then...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Themeable Output
The whole point of creating a custom theme is to get a website to look the way you want it to. So, it's important for the output that modules generate to be themeable.I will give a simple example of...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Alters
In Drupal an alter is intended to provide a way to modify an object during a point in the execution of a certain event or process. Alters are defined within individual modules. Those modules then give...
View ArticleUnderstanding the Drupal Way - Specificity
In the post on making output themeable I discussed the example of overriding a template file for a flag. The template file I overrode was a generic definition of the markup for all the flags on a site....
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