The latest sprint we completed for Drupalize.Me was called Pinkie Pie (we name all our sprints after My Little Pony™ characters—yeah, we’re fun like that). And although the name is silly, we took seriously the efforts we made to improve the Drupalize.Me experience for our members.
We’ve been listening to your feedback, and some of the changes we made in this sprint include:
New Features Video Released
Blog postToday we released a new video on using the Features module for Drupal 7: Deployment with Features and Drush. This is a wonderful developer tool that helps you roll out consistent features to your sites and speeds up deployment (e.g., moving work from a development server to the live site).
Our new podcast, Drupalize.Me Podcast 3: The 3 W's of the Drupal 8 Initiatives - Who, What, and Why?, is a great overview of the new, cool stuff coming in Drupal 8.
This week we're happy to continue two series for you. Coding for Views series continues to dive into fields and handlers, while the FREE Building Websites Using Panels series looks at using variants.
Coding for Views
Last weekend we had a bit of a kerfuffle with one of our video streaming servers which affected those of you on, or connecting to our servers on, the US west coast. And unfortunately it took a bit longer for us to notice than it should have. We're sorry about that and we learned a lot in the process. Now that we've had a chance to fix the problem, understand why it happened, and have a plan for preventing it in the future here's a brief explanation.
This week we are launching a great new series by Jen Lampton, "Building Websites Using the Panels Module," in addition to continuing our Coding for Views series. The Panels module which has been a long requested video series from our members and we are proud to kick that off with this introductory set of videos.
Jen covers everything from the Panels interface to using variants for multi-scenario layouts. She'll cover creating multi-column pages and how the Page Manager module, part of CTools, with Panels gives us a much more flexible layout engine than Drupal alone. This will lay a great foundation for a future, advanced series on how to use code with Panels to really get crazy.
Drupalize.Me Podcast 2 with Jen Lampton
Blog postWe're happy to present episode 2 of the Drupalize.Me podcast. In this podcast, Addi interviews Jen Lampton, who is a long-time Drupal contributor.
Community Tools Resources
Blog postOur CapitalCamp workshop is all about getting people up to speed with various community tools. We're going to spend three hours walking through the basic things you need to get geared up, and while we're stoked to be able to do this live in DC at the camp, we figured we could also share the resources we're using for others out there who'd like to do this as well. Each session begins with a short, simple, 15-minute presentation, and then we move into demonstration and hands-on work.
Drupalcon Munich and Community Love
Blog postThe Drupalize.Me team is excited to be going to Germany in just two weeks, for DrupalCon Munich. DrupalCon is always an amazing event with thousands of Drupalers sharing ideas, having fun, and helping to make Drupal even better, both as software and as a community. For our part, we will be involved in several sessions, as well as doing everything we can to make the sprint day successful by providing free training on community tools. What is a "sprint day" you ask? Well let me explain what's going on and why we're so excited.
Coding for Drush Series
Blog postThis week we're releasing a new series, Coding for Drush. If you've ever used Drush, and wondered how you can create your own custom Drush commands, then this series is right up your alley. When I sat down to start planning the content for our recent Coding for Views series I found myself in a position where I needed to quickly generate a bunch of random data for a custom module’s database table, so that when querying the table with views there would be something there.
Calling All Curious Drupal Beginners!
Blog postDrupal Global Training Day is an initiative by Drupal Association to introduce new and beginning users to Drupal. Every quarter, the Drupal Association partners with training experts, like us, around the world to make this happen! In December, Drupalize.Me will be joining in the fun by offering an online introduction to Drupal workshop, called "What is Drupal?"
Tired of Stressful Launches?
Drupal is an endlessly flexible and configurable tool. It’s also very complex. So, when it comes to building real-world, usable sites, there’s a lot to know: planning, budgeting, wireframing, picking which new tools and modules to use, migrating content, managing go-live and so much more. Phew!
Lullabot’s team has successfully designed, developed and launched some of the biggest websites in the world -- Harvard, MIT, Martha Stewart, the Grammys, WWE and Verizon, just to name a few -- and we want YOU to learn from our experience!
Group Subscriptions Are Ready!
Blog postWe're happy to announce that we've rolled out group membership options on Drupalize.me. We even created two different approaches, so that you can pick which one works best for your group. The first option will let you buy a set number of accounts for your group (see basic pricing information in our FAQ about groups) and the second gives you unlimited accounts when accessed from a particular range of IP addresses. Here is a brief overview of the two choices and how they work.
Introduction to Drush
Blog postExperienced developers, and new site builders alike can remember a time when installing a module meant visiting it's project page on drupal.org, downloading and unpacking it and dropping it in the correct directory. That process can be quite tedious every time there's an update if your site has dozens of modules. Thank goodness for drush. While drush's utility certainly isn't limited to helping download modules for your site in an efficient manner, it's an absolutely invaluable tool for anyone working with Drupal sites on a regular basis. We're happy to present a new series, Introduction to Drush, with the first video, What is Drush?, released today.
Get more Drupal training for less! Drupalize.me now has new, lower prices -- as little as $35/month for an annual subscription -- so it's a great time to sign up. And, if you're one of our loyal learners (Lullabot loves you!) you will automagically be charged the new lower rate for your selected payment plan on your next billing.
Also, if you have a 6-month plan you'll be getting an additional month added to your account for FREE, and if you have an annual plan you'll receive an additional 3 months for FREE.
Announcing New Payment Options!
Blog postOne request we have consistently gotten from current subscribers and people on the fence alike is the ability to signup for 6 months or a full year at a time. Well we think that's just ridiculous. Come on! Only kidding, that's actually a very reasonable request that we've been hard at work on it for a little while now. It was a tricky thing to figure out since we wanted to let current subscribers also switch OFF of their monthly account option to another plan if they wished to. We didn't want our awesome Drupalized people having to cancel just to get the billing frequency they prefer!
New Free Community Videos
Blog postWe've added a new category to the site, called Community, and we've already added two new free videos to it, Applying a patch to a module and Creating a patch for a module. We got the idea for the new category from a question asked by Paul Johnson on Twitter, and set to work on getting some videos up about patching.
Site Improvements with Daisyjo
Blog postAnother Drupalize.Me release, another pony. Our Daisyjo release touched lots of little bits and pieces of the site. We implemented a number of changes that many of you have been asking for, as well as adding some things that would let you get to know us a little better.
Happy New Year! The Module Development series is wrapping up by working our way through another major API in Drupal, the database layer. We have five videos to walk you through it.
- An overview of the database layer in Drupal 7 is an excerpt from our Overview of Drupal 7 roundtable discussion, led by Angie Byron, the Drupal 7 co-maintainer.
Release Day: More Module Development
Blog postFor this Wednesday, we're adding more videos to the Module Development for Drupal 7 series. We have three new videos for you:
- Altering forms with hook_form_alter introduces you to one of the most used hooks in Drupal development. It lets you change any form in Drupal and is a great tool in your kit.