Technology

I wanted to show how so-called "non-coders" can make significant contributions to the Drupal project. Probably the quickest way to make friends with a module maintainer is to help out in the issue queue. You can also help out with triage on some of the busiest projects. This requires no coding at all. (Check out the Views bug squad!) After triage, the next things you can do are: Try to replicate bugs - are you finding the same problems under the same conditions? Download and test patches - does the patch work as expected under your conditions? Previously in Part 1 - I described how you can simply download and test your favorite modules to make sure they are working in Drupal 7. Even simple modules like "Environment Indicator" have alpha versions available for Drupal 7. That project has no issues for 7.x version. But has it been fully tested? Give it a whirl! If you find a bug, then say so. In this next part, I have 2 videos which will show your how I apply and test a patch with a GUI; then how I create a new patch. Now we'll look at patches: applying, testing and submitting. First: What's a patch? Does the word "patch" sound mysterious to you? Never had a chance to "apply a patch"? or "Reroll a patch"? Or possibly even submit a new one? Patches are text files they have instructions indicating differences with lines preceeded by a "-" to indicate that a line will be deleted, and a "+" sign to indicate a line will be added. This set of instructions is saved, instead of just making the changes directly. This means you can pass along this fix. By sharing this fix, other people can apply this patch and get the same fix. When we say "don't hack core" in Drupal, it means don't change the files directly. You can however write neccessary patches, apply and share them. Patches are written to fix a bug, but sometimes can introduce new problems. Because of that, they need to be tested. And we'll see how to do that. More...

Drupal site building often involves moving a site from one environment to another: from a local development environment to a staging server on the web to a full production cluster. This short screencast shows how to export a site from Drupal Gardens and import that site into Acquia Hosting. More...

Several people in the Drupal Gardens forums have asked how they can eliminate the vertical gaps between major sections of their themes.  Here's an illustration of these gaps. More...

We had 226 respondents to a survey about roles in the Drupal community. Though we pilot tested the survey and honed down the questions, the findings were inconclusive, though we could draw one result. Apparently we use terms like "themer" or "module developer" yet these platonic ideals seem to only exist in our heads. In reality, a person on a team will find themselves handling many roles. In the context of a larger organization, Drupal is one tool in a larger set to be integrated with. In a smaller dev shop, Drupal is again, one tool of many which are used. Slicing up Drupal developers into roles turned into a muddy exercise. However, there was one interesting outcome. Of the respondents, 203 individuals replied to the open-ended question: "What do you wish you had known when you started Drupal"? It's taken me this long to code and analyze this information so we can make some use of it. I think it can give people within Drupal some insight on how we can improve our welcome mat. And for those who are new, I hope this gives you some good tips and advice! More...