Phase2 Technology

Video Embed Field is a module that provides a simple interface for placing videos on your Drupal site. It works by simply providing a field of type 'Video Embed' which allows a user to paste in the link to a video from Youtube or Vimeo. The module then provides formatters to show the video and specify settings for it (for example: autoplay, width and height of player, skin color) or as a thumbnail. My hope with the module is to make videos really simple to add to any Drupal site, without a lot of configuration or headache. This blog post is a walkthrough of how to create handlers for other video services that you wish to support.

An issue many people have had with Omega and Delta layouts is the inability to stack regions within a zone. Word on the street is a better solution for this is coming in Omega 4, but currently this is an issue for many Omega users, and has been an issue for us here at Phase2 on a few projects now.

As a programmer, one of the things that I enjoy most is solving problems by creating new solutions. While I enjoy solving complex larger issues, I also love fixing existing problems in the form of a bug. Bugs usually have a distinct problem that needs to be solved. When I am working on a bug fix, my mind usually cannot rest until I have come up with a sufficient solution.

Last week the new Georgia.gov was unveiled, giving us a first glimpse at the Georgia Technology Authority's innovative platform built on OpenPublic. This coincides with a recent Government Technology (GovTech.com) article, “Why Big Sites Run Drupal,” which describes the benefits of Drupal for government agencies, and shows that it's not just federal agencies that are making the move to Drupal.

Building on the successful transition of OpenPublic and OpenPublish to Drupal.org new distribution packaging system, we are now releasing Open Atrium though this system. This will provide automatic packaging and direct download of Open Atrium from Drupal.org. You will of course still be able to download Open Atrium directly from http://openatrium.com

Last summer, while sitting in the East Room of the White House, I discovered that Twitter can help me hear. This experience shed light on the parallels to the principles of Open Source technology: You never know how someone may find an innovative use for existing solutions for social, human, and/or environmental good.

Let’s face it – data is invaluable, integrations are key, and generating that information into something that will show up on a person’s browser (often) thousands of miles away in a matter of seconds is a modern miracle. However, if your site isn’t aesthetically appealing, nobody will stick around to see all the good stuff. This is where Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) come into play, and why tools such as LESS that make CSS easier to develop and revise have seen widespread adoption in web development.

For those who use Aptana, I just found its formatting tool to be very useful. It can quickly help you set your code to Drupal's Coding Standards.

Here's a series of cartoon sketches to illustrate some aspects of a Drupal migration. These were used at a DrupalCon presentation given recently, "Managing Highly Successful Drupal Migrations" by Frank Febbraro and Mike Morris.

The parties are over, the tshirts have migrated into our closets, and the swag has been artfully distributed through our homes and offices. Now that we've all settled back in to real life, it's time to get caught up on what we missed. Session videos are up, and I've pulled together the links to our team and client sessions.

This post was brought to you by The April Fool. While the prospect of world domination via super-Drupal has its own megalomaniacal charm, variety really is the spice of life. :) Kudos and many thanks to Jeff Robbins of Lullabot, who came up with the idea, wrote the "release," and herded the cats. If you enjoyed this, the bs4drupal search on Twitter is good for a few more chuckles.

Drush Make is an amazing tool for creating site builds and managing codebases but, not many know of the secret agenda... Creating a better Drupal citizen.

Saving the best for last: I will discuss the new Features 7.x-1.0-RC1 release and the new Features Override 7.x-2.0-alpha1 release and how these two modules finally solve the "override problem".

Drupalcon is once again upon us. Thousands of community members are gathering in Denver to talk shop, learn, socialize and most importantly share ideas and write code.

This morning, we announced that Phase2 Technology and Treehouse Agency are merging to form a combined firm. We are incredibly excited about the future possibilities of this team, and hope you'll join us in our excitement.

This week, we've been announcing several improvements that make it easier to connect as a community around distributions and products in Drupal. We showed you how people can host and support their distributions on drupal.org; we introduced a new wiki-based platform for product documentation; and today, we'd like to introduce you to the Open Atrium Features Directory.

You may not have noticed, but Drupal.org has rolled out full distribution packaging support on Install profile project pages. What this means is that now we can host complete distro downloads (including 3rd party libraries) directly on Drupal.org. No longer do we have to download Drupal core, download a Profile, download all required contrib modules and libraries (or use Drush Make like a sane individual to manage all of that). At this point you might be saying, "Big deal, so now there is an archive on Drupal.org." At first glance it might seem that way, but what we have effectively done is bring it all back to Drupal.org.

So I can’t tell you how excited I am to go to my first Drupalcon as Community Manager of Phase2! While I attended both Drupalcon DC and Drupalcon San Francisco, I know Drupalcon Denver will give me the opportunity to meet more members of the community and to talk to you about your experience with our products.

We've got our sites set on some pretty exciting sessions at the 2012 DrupalCon in Denver. I made sure to poll the team on their top picks technical, government, business and design sessions, and I have them for you here…

Twitter is one of the most ubiquitous social networks out there. As such, it's not uncommon to see a list of related tweets accompanying an article or blog post to provide additional context into the subject matter at hand.