By jibbajabba on
I'm doing a series of simple drupal tips on my site as a sort of cookbook for simple, mostly theme-related solutions to problems I encounter. Most of these tips I glean from forums when I have a problem. I'm already thinking of problems that I don't have solutions to yet. The goal for me is to point out how to do simple, but very useful things to address problems. Have any problems or solutions you think might fall into this category?
Comments
please do that here..
Hi jibba,
please do that in the handbook instead of an external site....
I thought of doing the same as you a while back for PHP Snippets and Theme snippets, but, since I started the php snippet section of the handbook, it has become extremely well populated by other Drupallers posting tips/tricks/snippets.
By adding a tips and tricks section to the handbook, or simply adding tips/snippets on to existing sections, it means everyone will benefit and others will be more inclined to contribute.
I started a new section/set of pages specifically for phptemplates and theming. It's a collection of tips/tricks/examples and snippets for theming specific pages in Drupal. Have a look at the image gallery example, or the more comprehensive "theming user profiles" examples/snippets.
hope that makes sense..
Dub
Currently in Switzerland working as an Application Developer with UBS Investment Bank...using Drupal 7 and lots of swiss chocolate
Some sites (like
Some sites (like http://allrecipies.com) sell physical books by using user submitted content.
I hope portions of the Drupal Handbook could be sold some day. That would be interesting. Especially if extra credits are given to contributors :). Just an idea.
Marcel
http://www.MacMiniForums.com/forum/
http://www.MxCounters.com
contributors listed here
http://drupal.org/node/14205
It's an idea. We'll see if we can get it to the point where it would be worth it.
-sp
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
time tested
Food recipes count on the fact that you can always get those core ingredients. There is no upgrade to flour 3.5 necessary to make a cake.
With Drupal things change, fast. So it would have to be a well prepared book for something like that to work.
I'll buy one anyway though.
True...Then maybe a list of
True...
Then maybe a list of non standard hacks that don't depend on upgrades.
Marcel
Blog Posts For Sale
Diarist.com - news from bloggers
Things don't change that
Things don't change that fast and we can version stuff in the handbook now. If we have a versioned recipe for 4.6, then someone else can use that as a foundation to update it it for 4.7....
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
agreed
I agree, I was referring to a print book, not the handbook. :)
Cross posts are appreciated.
As per my signature, this is yet-another thing that I'd love to have as the story type, where credit for the author is preserved and yet we have a continuous stream of content that can be subscribed to via email, RSS, etc.
--
Please turn on the "story" type, so we can use it to have an archive of best practices, how tos, and configuration recipes.
Planet Drupal
Would this sort of thing be what Drupal Planet is for? That way individuals can post to their own site and the feed keeps people updated of new content. I am publishing Drupal tips and tricks on my own site as well, and enjoy having my "own space" for my writing.
Dub and Boris - Both of your proposals have merit as well. It is nice to have a living, thriving, handbook area; though it is a little impersonal. Having the story node on would be nice as well, though it would sort of overlap with the handbook a bit.
Perhaps a book of stories separate from the handbook?
I like your drupal tips so far, it's been really interesting. Tips that 'output something' are very rewarding!
Stories
The problem is, we have no place for "unofficial" documentation -- in the form of best practices (sepeck, not so much your best practices, although even some of those could be considered opinion, rather than officially, this is the only way to do things), tips, case studies, etc. Heck, even "official" news like release announcements etc. would be much better as stories/a story archive rather than the munge of promoted forum posts that we have now.
There is official, step by step documentation that is verified and supported by the community, and there is the more informal, more opinion items that I mention above. I think they are different, and I think we need a different way of viewing/submitting/subscribing to the latter. Story nodes and a submission queue would handle it, I think.
Drupal Planet is excellent for general/informal stuff. But, unless this has changed, the aggregator (since it doesn't use nodes) is not searched at all. So, anyone coming here would not necessarily see any of that remote content.
ah
I wasn't aware that aggregator items were unsearchable. It's too bad that Drupal Planet couldn't be integrated into what you are describing. A post made to a users website in a designated category could be picked up by Drupal and made into a node here in a special section; though this would be ripe for abuse I suppose.
Actually, the tips he is
Actually, the tips he is blogging about would now go into the Customization and theming section. That section will be getting a slight re-org. It already has a place for themeing snippets. Many of Micheals posts could go there.
I think blogging about it is great and then adding the releavant parts to the handbook. People blogging alows for you to follow a designer, migrating the tips into the handbook allow a central record to be built over time.
I don't think there is 'unofficial' documentation. There is only what people write and contribute. I am trying to re-org the handbook so that more people can contribute. If people want, I can easily create a section called, user contributed tricks. I think it would be better under the existing snippets area's.
-sp
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain
-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide
We disagree
Perhaps I have a stricter view of documentation. There exists things for which there is a right answer and for which there is a wrong answer. We put the right answers in the handbook.
Anything else is *opinion* and is one of several ways of doing things -- e.g. organizing your site with books, organizing your site with taxonomy. I, personally, would prefer to have this opinion clearly separated (as well as attributed to a particular author).
This will get added over time and people can actually subscribe to/discuss/comment on these opinions. Such is not the case with documentation...it is right, or it has errors which people try and correct.
But, obviously, no one has found any interest in this, so I will stop talking about it.
I think I agree
I think I agree with you Boris. I think there should be official documentation on the one hand and that cookbook type things, snippets, etc. SHOULD be separated. Maybe this is one of the reasons I find the documentation to be so hard to navigate. The official and the unofficial are all in one big doc soup.
my posts to the handbook got removed
I tried to do something similar by posting to the handbooks on this site. I must have misunderstood what is appropriate content for the handbooks as my posts were removed. Luckily I had backed them up or days of work would have been lost. I think it would be useful if a documentation section could be set up where people can write unofficial documentation that people can easily find. This could be info that we users judge as useful, especially newcomers. The developers know Drupal so well that something may seem really obvious to them and they may not think it needs to be explained. I tried to explain things that I thought would be very useful to newcomers. Right now, we are very dependent on the search results, which vary in quality.
Drupal is a terrific CMS with a terrific community and I appreciate all the hard work that the Drupal team has put in over the years.
ae2005
Will blog first and organize on Drupal.org afterwards
I think what makes sense is for me to blog these tips first and then post them to the drupal.org site afterwards. Because drupal.org forums and handbook pages have grown so much and I really haven't kept up with changes to the site, I have been a little overwhelmed when it comes to trying to find out where things should go in the site.
Most of the tips I'm posting will probably be gleaned from the drupal.org snippets and support forum, so I don't want to duplicate what is there. But I would like to try to come up with other problems and present as a cookbook.
So I'll let the tips I post on urlgreyhot mature a little and see what people suggest as improvements to my methods. Then I'll sum back up wherever it seems best on drupal.org.
Boris's suggestion sounds good, by the way.
moved to front page
this discussion is continuing on the home page at
http://drupal.org/node/44233
I made similar blog with help
I made similar blog with help and tips here http://www.drupaldump.com/
Adriadrop Drupal development