Feb 17

Adding Manual Teasers on Related Links

Related Links is a very useful module for any Drupal content management application. Your content can display links to other content in a number of interesting and automated ways, such as based on the content type, the author, common taxonomy terms or keyword search results.Read more

Feb 09

Polishing up user registration: username availability

I have been working on polishing up user registration routines for a number of sites, and downloaded the Username Check module by Dmitry Kresin last night. The module performs an AJAX request during registration to check for the availability of a username so that the user does not have to submit the form only to find out the chosen username is unavailable. This is good usability practice, but the module remains a little rough around the edges.Read more

Oct 15

Must Have Module: Trackback

Content that you publish and comments about the content you publish are both just as likely to be found beyond the ramparts of your website as within it.1 In the latter case, a communication standard broadly called trackbacks has evolved to facilitate automated notification between websites, letting the original content publisher know that related information has been created and inserting a brief excerpt of the new content on the original site.Read more

  1. Does the proposition of not controlling the message, discussion or dissemination of your content scare you? Meet Stewart Brand...
Sep 30

Uneasy with the Top Drupal Modules on UnSpun

The Drupal community is rich in active developers. By my very unscientific survey, there are 1,110 contributed modules that are ostensibly 5.x compatible.1 It can consequently be daunting for both newcomers and old hands alike to keep abreast of what's useful on the Drupal scene which is why lists of top modules are ever-popular. I came across the Top Drupal Modules list on UnSpun by Amazon, and was shocked by which modules did not make the cut on the community-ranked list.Read more

  1. Module directories in the Drupal CVS were counted if they contained both .module and .info files. This number is likely to under represent the total available modules since projects without a HEAD tag are not available via CVS.
Sep 24

Pitfalls of Converting HTML Forms to PDF

For a recent project, I recreated an online version of the Federal form Request for Taxpayer Identification Number and Certification, otherwise known as the W-9. The form was stylesheet formatted and implemented as a Drupal custom node type. Then came the project requirement to convert the filled out form into a PDF document to be emailed as an attachment. Uh oh.Read more

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