$10.00 eBooks from Packtpub.com

Packt Publishing is having a great sale on a bunch of different titles for their 10th anniversary in the publishing biz. If you’re looking for a good tech book on coding, development or network engineering, these guys are great. Each eBook on sale is only $10 – a great value!

I’ve used PacktPub.com’s ebooks for years now. They are top of the line for all sorts of development projects. Check out what they have to offer!

 

http://bit.ly/1qqpLsu

Core Upgrade – 7.26 – 7.27

It has been a relatively long time for this update but it is finally here and should be installed as soon as possible. I followed the same procedure as always and have had no issues with the install.

Here is a link to the procedure:

Core Upgrade – 7.21 to 7.22 procedure for Centos 6.3

Shameless plug? Or good offer. You decide

Packtpub.com is having a great sale right now. Check this out for the details. Most of the books that I have on Drupal and open source stuff like xAMP come from these guys; their books are really good. This is a great deal too – buy one get one free!

http://bit.ly/1j26nPN

 

Drupal Core Upgrade – 7.26

This upgrade has come along pretty close to the heels of 7.25. But unless you want to see the warning message constantly, you’ll need to go ahead and put the upgrade in place.

I ran the usual procedure you can find by search for the word “upgrade” on this blog and experienced no issues at all.

Happy Birthday Drupal! Get ready for the Drupal 8 code sprint!

Tomorrow is Drupal’s birthday and Drupal.org will be celebrating with an awesome code sprint for Drupal 8. Check out the details here!

https://groups.drupal.org/node/390873

This would also be a great time to join or renew your membership for Drupal.org! It’s a great, inexpensive way to support the CMS that we all love!

https://association.drupal.org/membership

Read this….

You’re not a genius and your idea is probably dumb (and lessons I’ve learned from my own dumb ideas) 

http://projectricochet.com/blog/youre-not-genius-and-your-idea-probably-dumb#.UtKgF_RDvzY

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Admittedly, I’m not a genius either. And most of my ideas are incredibly dumb. But don’t worry, you don’t have to have a brilliant idea or be particularly smart to be successful in business and web apps.

On that note, I’d like to share with you a few lessons I’ve learned in co-founding and managing a successful web development firm as well as the recent beta release of our app, Pushpin Planner (launched without a single dollar of outside funding)…..

http://projectricochet.com/blog/youre-not-genius-and-your-idea-probably-dumb#.UtKgF_RDvzY

 

Drupal Core Upgrade – 7.25

 

 

There is a new core upgrade for Drupal, moving from 7.24 to 7.25. It appears to be pretty cut and dried. Once, again, I am using the procedure detailed from the link below. 

Core Upgrade – 7.21 to 7.22 procedure for Centos 6.3

 

Inexpensive Drupal Books – Packtpub.com

Packtpub is having a great sale until january 3th. All eBooks and Videos are on sale for $5.00. Very good deal. This includes all their books on Drupal, and they have a LOT of them. I’ve reviewed several of them and they are all really good. Check it out, it is an awesome deal! Find it here!

 

Create an embedded video library hosted by Youtube

Youtube help videos are the only way to go these days. Text based help files? Please. no one will read them. Don’t get me wrong; you still need them, if for no other reason than to aid you in understanding the application you are developing. But you have to have video instructions. And with Youtube, the hosting is free. And with the Embed Video Field module, this is really easy.

You can see the end result here, on my anonymous, non-restricted help page. This page was built using Views and Panels to display the custom content type called Help Videos I created for this very purpose. These are the high level steps I took to create this library

1. Create your Video Content. I used open source Cam Studio for my videos. Great product and easy to use
2. Upload the videos to Youtube
3. Install the Embed module and configure it to use a content type.
4. Create a new piece of content of the content type you want to use for videos
5. Add the “short url” for the video to the new node
6. If you don’t see what i have below, then there is an issue with the content type you are using and the embed module configuration
7. Use Views to display the new nodes (you’ll need to play with the settings unless you have done this a lot)
8. Use Panels to build the page 

 

Drupal Panel Pages, CSS and Mobile Tip

If you use Panels for your layouts, add a column CSS class to the most left hand column of your layout. Since Adaptive Themes will place this column first after the header stuff, this class will more easily allow you to adjust the margins of your content relative to the header.

You’ll need to add a custom style to the column in the Page Manager layout. If you choose no stylistic choices at all you will wind up with something like this selector:

.region-plain-box-fp-25-left-col {

1. background-color: #ffffff;
2. color: #000000;
3. margin-bottom: 10px;
4. padding: 10px;

}

Note that the Administrative title (so that it can be reused) that I have used will show in the selector. Since I have added this late in the development, I have to adjust it to the current style of my page.

.region-plain-box-fp-25-left-col {

1. background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0);
2. color: #000000;
3. margin-bottom: 0;
4. padding: 0;
5. margin-top: -59px;

}

 I have added the Margin-top parameter to move all the content closer to the header for the 320px width layout. Sort of a hack, but a really useful one!