Ventura Cottage
Ubercart - running straight out the box
I am working on a type of advanced profile (actually zipped site and sql dump) that will enable others to get Drupal and Ubercart 2 up and running within minutes.
You can see and USE the demo at http://ubercart.venturacottage.com Out the box it has been configured to handle:
Themeing tutorial using Color module
With an eye to the forthcoming Drupal 7, I was keen to encourage everyone to look at developing stunning themes to go with this shiny new release and all with the help of the excellent Color Module. It also applies to Drupal 6 and uses Garland as its starting point.
in /themes make a copy of garland folder > rename say swirly (or whatever your theme is called)
in /themes/swirly rename garland.info to swirly.info
Splash theme
This is a recolourable multi-column liquid/fixed layout theme, that uses the Color module to change the theme colour without any need of coding.
It has an optional frontpage layout that uses promoted pages as a full page slideshow. Also built in is the ability to have different banner headings (and logos) for different sections of the website. available now from our store
apple no pic
For articles such as this one that have no accompanying image, we use coding within the theming layer of Views to add a default thumbnail image if the story appears on the frontpage. This relates to the tag that is attached to the story so for example in this case the apple tag is translated into the parent taxonomy of fruit.
Coding then checks the image directory for fruit.png and serves it up next to the relevant title.
The code looks something like this:
<?php
if($output==''){
Semi transparent navigation background
Looking at ways to make the excellent superfish dropdown navigation less prominent - I chose a lighter colour at the bottom of bg-header.png, added an off centre photo to the LHS that slightly cut behind the start of the navigation bar and then added the following code to the style.css
#superfish-inner .menu li {
background: #B1E1EF;
opacity:0.7;
filter: alpha(opacity = 70);
}
The filter: line is a duplication of the opacity: line but it is required for it to work in good old IE.
The end result can be seen opposite
Relative elements and dropdowns
Various Drupal themes now use the excellent Superfish dropdown menu navigation, including Pixturerr. But if you then customise the theme such as adding a frontpage with RELATIVE elements you can find (as in the picture) that the dropdows appear BEHIND other elements, in good old Microsoft Internet Explorer!. This is what I did to resolve the issue.
go to admin/build/themes/settings/pixturerr
we need to set the color set back to Girly Pink default
Add background image to node
Client brief:
Show the different styles of illustration INCLUDING within the welcome article.
Method:Using Firefox's Firebug I identified the div controlling this articles elements as:
<div id="node-30" class="node sticky">
Firstly I tried adding properties to:
.sticky but that would limit the use of this feature - so instead
In [theme]/style.css i added the following
#node-30 {
padding: 1em;
background: #000 url(http://www.leetoons.com/images/total.jpg) repeat-x
scroll 0% 100%;
border: 1px solid #e7e0db;
Black Garland Theme Mod
See screenshot opposite.
I have zipped the mod and it is available at the bottom of this article
Adding content to site via email
Wouldn't it be great if adding articles and images to your website was as easy as sending an email. It can be, here is a quick tutorial on how to add this functionality to your site.
Firstly you need to setup a unique email account that the site can use eg website@YourDomain.com.
Whatever gets sent to this email account (from approved users) will be published automatically on the site, any spam or non authorised users will be ignored - clever!
Now download and install the following:
http://drupal.org/project/mailhandler
Revitalising a Quotations section
Sometimes it can be a challenge to explain to a client the practical benefits of moving from a static hand coded website to a content management system, such as Drupal. Phrases like "the content is seperated from the styling" can make their eyes start to glaze.
Website briefs
My client (offering specialised counselling) was having problems knowing what they actually wanted from their site. So I switched tack and asked their information officer what her main challenges were. She explained that most calls are requesting a counsellor in their area but unfortunately many areas have few or no counsellors nearby. So she ends up giving a few telephone numbers of those offering telephone counselling.
Garland Simple mod Tutorial - (part 1)
Quick tutorial based on what I did at www.biblesql.net First as with all learning – before you start make a backup of your site and database in case of any problems. Now go to Admin > Themes > Garland > Configure. Chose the standard colourset that most closely matches your desired end result. In this case I am choosing Greenbean. Turn off [Logo], [Site name], [Site Slogan] and [Mission statement] and click [Save configuration].
css and templates tutorial for beginners
a tutorial for all those of you trying to understand this tricky subject
Like many newbies, I found one of the hardest aspects of Drupal and web design was theming and css. I dipped my toe in by taking an existing theme (Garland) and tweaking it slightly with varying degrees of success.
However I soon needed to create a very different front page and found it hard to start from scratch and wanted an easy way to work out what was going on. Thanks to Drupal user Sym , I was able to get my foot on the ladder and offer this quick tutorial to other that are still staring up at the bottom rung!
Transparent Nice Menus Tutorial
This tutorial will show how to add semi transparency to nice menus backgrounds and then to adapt Garland theme to add a background image to the right sidebar.
As always remember to backup your site before experimenting.
Firstly download and install nice menus onto your site. For ease choose a left style menu and place in the right sidebar. you should now have something that looks like this.
Quick Faqs
Q - How do I create dynamic URLs that will change when I move the site?
A - Use php print ...
Simply alter the link:
<link type="text/css" href="themes/dropdown10/page-front.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
to become...
<link type="text/css" href="<?php print base_path() . path_to_theme() ?>/page-front.css" rel="stylesheet"/>
don't forget to alter the input format to PHP.
============================
Q - How do I get the Event listing block to only use one line per event?
Mandatory Groups Video
This video talks you through setting up, configuring and using Mandatory Groups by rol. Using PHP to create an assignments system for a school class is challenging.
Adding pupils to a subject is fine but when the year is finished and they move up a class. You need an easy way to avoid adding them back in manually.
Garland Simple mod Tutorial - (part 2)
An example of what will be achieved by the end of this tutorial can be seen at www.venturacottage.com/venturacottage.comold
Using a fresh install of Drupal5 > Using [Windows explorer], Go to themes folder > make copy of Garland folder and rename custom > open custom folder > > open style.css in notepad and alter the lines...
see full tutorial at tutorial/garlandmod2.htm
Events block space saver
Q - How do I force the Event block wording into one line and remove the (Event) tag?
A - In Drupal 5 use CSS...
Add the following to the bottom of your style css, this avoids altering the module, which as well as not being a good idea would also be overwritten when you upgrade:
/**
* Should force event block wording together and remove (Event) and ical icon
*/
span.event-timeleft {
display:inline;
padding-left:5px;
}
span.event-nodetype {
display: none;
}
.ical-link {
display: none;
}
How to turn off all contrib modules
If your site is totally crashed and you suspect it's a contrib module but don't know which, here's a quick way to turn them all off in the database:
UPDATE `system` SET status=0 WHERE filename LIKE '%sites%'
This simply disables them; it doesn't uninstall them. It also assumes you are putting your contrib under sitesall or sitessitename.
further reading http://shellmultimedia.com/articles/how-turn-all-contrib-modules
Page content as tool tip
One of the things I am always being asked by clients is how to reduce the number of clicks users have to do to get to the information they want.
If you are using views then one way to do this is to go to
admin/build/views/edit/[viewname] > Fields > add field : Node:Body - exclude from display. Then order the fields so this is at the top. In Fields > Node: Title > tick [Output this field as a link] > Link path: [view_node] > Alt text: [body] > Update > Save.