Drupal

From HHMI to BioRAFT...

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Tuesday, 14th February 2012 - 13:40
Drupal
BioRAFT
HHMI
Engineer


The year is finally set to start!  strangely enough it comes around just after the Tibetan New Year (22nd February, 2012).  I'm wrapping up as a Research Technician at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and starting my new (and return) career as an Engineer!  In a few short weeks, I will be starting with BioRAFT and combining my diverse background of chemical engineering, research, & Drupal web development to help them create & roll out some amazing software applications for researchers at the university and institutional level.  

Why the change?

The BioRAFT motto: Our Company was founded by researchers, for researchers. We support researchers by enabling them to focus on their research.

Having worked in various laboratories for over 10 years - I was immediately sold on BioRAFT's incredible application!  

Foremost is their dedication to taking the non-research (and more mundane administrative) tasks common to all laboratories across all universities and simplifying them and making them accessible to the appropriate people involved.  This could be as simple as following a simplified path to IBC Biosafety Registration; managing training modules within a laboratory including re-training and renewals; managing radioactive substances within the lab; and maintainance of occupational health & safety.  

I believe wholeheartedly that this is an application that would be an asset to every university (institution, & high school) laboratory.  As a researcher, we tend to take training courses for granted and forget what we're qualified in as well as to file the paperwork.  With BioRAFT - everything is handled online and organized in a matter of clicks by either the safety officer, PI, or member of EHS.  

So I am very excited to jump on board and to go charging into the mapping of this semi-un-charted territory.  

Their application is based in the Drupal CMS and therein lies the double excitement given my background in web developing and mucking around with all things Drupal.  BECAUSE their application is in Drupal, I am again confident that this application will carry through for all of eternity given the robust, secure, and dependable foundation that Drupal provides to a software.  

Boston Drupal Meet Up

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Tuesday, 6th December 2011 - 20:14
Boston
Drupal
MeetUp
Drush
Drupal Help
Documentation

Took advantage of our volunteer babysitter and finally ventured out to the Boston Drupal MeetUp since before I got pregnant.

Enjoyed working with Dani, whayes and ronaldmulero on Drupal 8 help documentation. We even submitted an issue.  The plan is to continue working on help documentation until the Colorado DrupalCon.  

BioRaft is hosting dinner. Sounds like a fast growing company supplying research applications and financial tracking to academia using Drupal.  They're currently hiring!

Tim Hilliard gave a lightening talk on Drush Debug Tools.  Updating Cron via "drush dt-cron" to see how long each segment takes.  On an aside, I am happy for someone asking how to look up specific drush commands.  I don't think developers realise that 'some' of us don't have that programmer backing and so using

drush | grep pm

to look up project management related commands would not be something that is obvious.  So here!here! and a Thank you! to the gent who asked the question.  

Kay spoke on getting someone to use Drupal and gave a spiel for Acquia U.  Courses are set to start in January and then again in June.

Other ways to get started on using Drupal are to look up the following... (for videos, seminars, webinars)

On discussion thanks to Jason of http://math.correctclass.com was how to have a view on a page feed to another view on the same page.  Suggestions included using views attach module, using blocks, quick tabs... and talking later to Daniella (another Drupalista) @ the Muddy Charles who suggested using Page Manager in conjunction with Panels and Views.  

Finally, looking forward to hearing about the DrupalCamp West Mass happening January 21st (or in the case of bad weather, January 28th) in Amhearst, MA.

Drupal 7 book by PACKT Publishing

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Thursday, 16th September 2010 - 15:12
Drupal
reviews

Drupal 7 - By David MercerI spent some time over the last few months as a Technical Reviewer of the material going into the PACKT Publishing book Drupal 7 by David Mercer.  I can attest that the author has a good voice and is clear in describing and disseminating all of the basics that you need to know to establish a web site running off a server using Drupal 7.

The only qualms with the book that I have are its speedy release date (Drupal 7 hasn't officially been released yet and there are still some fine tuning being done to such things as Views).  Also, certain key elements that have been added to D7 have been left out (RDF being one).  That said, the book is tailored to your average homebody Windows-using individual who wants to get their fingers wet.  A more complicated book would be good for advanced users but this is definitely for beginners.  I believe the author has included links and references where necessary to point the newbie in the right direction.

This was my second experience as a technical reviewer with PACKT.  I think the experience was a good one.  The previous experience was a bit more over my head and I'm not sure to this date if the book I had been reviewing has been published.  To anyone out there thinking of being a reviewer - make sure you know the content of the book you're reviewing! Frankly, David Mercer is a wonderful author and it was a pleasure to review his material.

Drupalcon Copenhagen

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Tuesday, 29th June 2010 - 11:28
Drupal
conference

Just had to post this - we'll see if my husband notices.

Planning to be in Copenhagen for the event though whether or not I attend has yet to be seen!

Redesign of Sunyata site complete!

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Thursday, 18th March 2010 - 8:31
Drupal
charity
Sunyata Centre

The update of the Sunyata Retreat Centre is complete thanks to the efforts of Heather and the centre managers Bart & Marion.  I think I can safely believe that the site is in good hands as Heather takes over some of the foreground work that I had been doing previously.

Updates: Events list, Registration Form, Admin interface, theme layout, email address, removal of repetitious information, Ability to register/book for retreats/events online via credit card or laser card, general site clean up.

working on a final redesign of the Sunyata Retreat Centre website!

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Wednesday, 10th March 2010 - 15:41
Drupal
Sunyata Centre

Hard at work from last night and this morning on tidying up the content and layout of the Sunyata Retreat Centre with Marion's daughter Heather.  Communication is great and I'm looking forward to seeing the final product! There won't be any changes of theme but I have hot-wired things so that there is less clicking around (thanks to the criticsm of the site that Heather was good enough to write, 5 pages!).  Hopefully now things will be more streamlined. We've ripped out a lot of repeatitious links that were really unnecessary.  Now if only I can figure out how to make information appear via views in a shadowbox - that would be cool.

Another nice detail is to be able to register for retreats online using a credit card!  This was in place but we never properly converted all of the existing retreats.  There were quite a few views related issues for me to answer, especially the admin side interface so that the center has full control over all of the content! 

Finally, what to do about shrinking the number of pages with detailed content?  Well, that's Heather's department and for that I'm forever greatful!

I'll post again when the changes go live.

New & Improved theme of ahasaetharu.net...

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Friday, 15th January 2010 - 15:39
Drupal
themes

I've always had a bit of a problem with the layout of my site.  For one, it had a green background.  For two, as much as I liked the bookmark, there were too many colors contrasting off each other.  But most importantly the theme did not reflect the title of the site - Stars in the Sky.  A few other content issues - that I would like to invite people to post their own opinionated blogs on the site, and that the site isn't solely to sell me - but to be informative and to a purpose.  So - with all of these things in mind, I've reduced the amount of content.  To find out about me, you need to go to the "About" page.  But for all other things - there are direct links off the main page.  Colors are a splash of gold with lots of light and a white background.

In other news: Drupal 7 - Alpha has been released!  I will be slowly migrating everything to a new D7 site over the next while. 

Creating a 'booking' type form for retreats in Ubercart

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Tuesday, 15th December 2009 - 18:31
Drupal
charity
Ubercart
Sunyata Centre

What do you do with a tortoise stuck in its shell?  You walk around it and occasionally poke at it with a stick which will either have one of two responses of either it'll stick it's head out or stay stuck. 

This is my description of the problem of creating the right user experience / interface for creating a booking form.

  1. Need to enter retreats with the ability to 'book' or submit a deposit and register.
  2. Need guest to fill out a form answering questions the retreat centre needs to know about their history, preferences, etc.
  3. Need to be able to track and record all this information.

Keep in mind for this application Ubercard needs to look less like a "Shopping Cart" and more like a "Donation Box".  It took me awhile to suss out what it was tht I needed. 

Prime objective: create a content type that essentially integrates the exisitng fields found in my "Retreats" content type (includes calendar, sometimes repeating dates, linking to other content type like "teacher", associated images, etc) with the fields found in an Ubercart content type (in this case cost and that lovely "Add to Donation Cart" button). 

Opening "Products" and "Retreats" and "add new content type" resulted in the forementioned "prodding a turtle with a stick".  Not to be outdone, I did a search on drupal.org and found a lovely post started by Webchick explaining the concept of the Ubercart Class - prompting me to announce my love for her via twitter!  It was literally a light bulb turning on in my head as I had wondered what these mysterious "product classes" were but was a bit afraid to 'read the manual'... (for those of you who don't know me, reading the manual is scor's job... I usually throw myself full tilt in trouble before I even look for a manual). 

So now I'm doing the obvious - having created a content type magically by defining a new product class under the Ubercart Product menu - I can now add all of the pre-existing fields to mash up my desired "Ubercart Retreat" product which can in future be used to create retreats by the site admin!

That's item #1 on my list... stay tuned for how I solve #2!

Troubleshooting the Charity Donation Box using Ubercart, RealEx, UC_donation, Uc_addresses

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Tuesday, 15th December 2009 - 13:35
Drupal
charity
Ubercart
Sunyata

Currently troubleshooting the website - making sure the links to the response messages and emails are all acceptable and make sense.  Spent quite a bit of time to realise it was my site's fault that new users were being pointed to the wrong address to login.  Then there was the issue of - do you create new userids for anyone who puts in a donation?  If so, how do we tie the address they have entered in ubercart to that of their profile?  After some careful searching I found reference to the UC_addresses module.  This was the answer to all my queries.  But just as I started really getting things working - the RealEx site stops working properly.  So now, I'm waiting for input from the other side before I continue.

Another not so important issue was adjusting permissions so that the site administrators could access all the relevant menu items for viewing orders, products, and reports.  Its funny how you forget the simplest of things when you haven't done something for an age!

I hope I get this donation site up in time for when they need it! Fingers crossed!

Setting up a Charity Donation Box using Ubercart, Realex, & Ubercart Donations

Submitted by Diliny C.
on Monday, 14th December 2009 - 16:00
Drupal
charity
Ubercart
Sunyata Centre

It has been awhile since I've posted anything technical!

I'm working on adding a donate feature to the Sunyata Retreat Centre website.  This involved downloading the latest Ubercart module for Drupal 6.x and looking up all the modules that may or may not help in setting up the feature. 

UC_add_donation (looked at and disabled), UC_donation, UC_realex were what I ended up installing.  The first module (UC_add_donation) worked great but depended on you having other products available.  This would be fine in the future when the site has the functionality for signing up for retreats and paying a deposit online.  However, for the moment what suited the retreat centre's needs more was the UC_donation module which allows you to add the amount you want to donate and click "Donate" (after editing the button wording).  As for UC_realex, Realex is the company of choice for most Irish and possibly other european companies/banks for handling credit card transcations. 

One challenge was in changing a 'shopping cart' to something more like a 'donation cart/box'.  Afterall, you're not purchasing an item - you're giving a donation or a deposit.  So I did what I've almost never done, and edited the uc_cart.module file in ubercart so that "Shopping cart" is replaced with "Donation cart".  Same goes with running through all instances of dialogue and re-wording to suit the use case.  This was after checking on drupal.org and finding a similiar issue with this action as the recommended fix.

My next hurdle will be to set up already existing retreats as something to "book" by submitting a deposit online. 

The Sunyata Centre in County Clare, Ireland, is currently in great need of donations and other such contributions to keep providing a comfortable meditation and retreat centre.  They are an Irish Charity (Charitable Tax Exemption Number: CHY 17855) and all donations go towards the upkeep of the centre and the travel expenses of the teachers/instructors as needed.  For more information please visit their website: www.sunyatacentre.org.

(Please stay tuned to "Ahasaetharu" on twitter if you want to know when the link will be up to make a donation! - I'm still waiting on the set up of the account on the RealEx side of things.)

UbercartAs for my review of Ubercart - I simply love it!  Being a virgin to e-commerce meant that I had to click around multiple times looking at everything upside and down before I had myself properly familiarized with the interface and how it worked.  It helps to create a product and then to run through the purchasing process to see all of the interfaces.  Downloading and installing the uc_donation module also helped in making things easier for me to understand. 

Like all things in Drupal 6.x, there is nothing that can't be done - but you have to tinker with everything a bit before its set up to your specific use case.  So it's not completely straight forward, but once up and running - you're flying.

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