User permissions in Drupal
Basic introduction to the permissions system in Drupal and how you can create custom permissions to fine tune what visitors can and cannot see at both a page and block level.
Database independent Views 3 custom field handlers
Views has so many convenient field handlers that almost all use cases can be covered using the standard set however there are times when you may need to display custom or specially formatted data in a view row without resorting to template hacking or views hooking.
Drupal debugging: Xdebug and Devel
Being able to debug core, contributed and custom code efficiently and verbosely is hugely important when developing with Drupal. The two main methods used in the industry are Xdebug and Devel DPM and both have strengths and weaknesses which will be discussed in this tutorial along with some information on how to get set up.
EWB Challenge
In 2013 Engineers Without Borders came to me with a new project that would service hundreds of heavily engaged engineering students across Australia and the UK. Using Drupal and the Gumby framework, I kept the project on schedule, on budget and drama free. In 2014, after a short sprint, we added discussion board functionality to the site using advanced forum and, within hours of going live, students began signing up and posting on the forums. Today hundreds of users log-in daily and receive notifications on activity in the forums and on the site.
Break out of the SimpleTest sandbox
One of the common elements of every single successful web project in history is thorough testing, whether manual or automated. Thankfully Drupal has a relatively painless out-of-the-box testing framework...
Victorian Government Solicitors Office
My first official contract in Melbourne, Australia turned out to be working directly for the Department of Justice: Victorian Government Solicitors Office - pretty neat!
So what is the VGSO? The VGSO is the Victorian Government's law firm and handle high profile cases that involve state government organisations (eg the Police). I learnt pretty quickly working there that lawyers can be very picky about content they publish.
The Diner
After working for Catch Digital on Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen I was chosen once again to work on another Barworks site for The Diner. If you live in London and you've been to the cool places (Shoreditch, Soho, Camden) you know what the Diner is and the kind of atmosphere they deliver. It's cool, it's hip, and they needed an awesome website to go with the awesome food they serve. Their old website was a Flash number built using Papervision, rarely updated and not the most mobile friendly. It was time for an update...
Theme override functions: beautify breadcrumbs, lists and form elements
Drupal offers developers highly flexible methods of modifying and overriding system functions and the theming layer is no exception...
Changing the page title with AJAX Commands in Drupal
Change the document page title using Drupal AJAX command callbacks and custom jQuery plugins.
AJAX commands in Drupal 7
One killer feature of Drupal 7 is the ability to use AJAX commands outside of FORM API allowing back-end and front-end developers to leverage high performance and solid JSON responses. JSON AJAX commands can be used simply and solidly in Drupal 7 to update blocks, nodes, pages and basically any element of a page...