Drupal
Usability is a major objective for Drupal 7, the new upcoming version -- so much so that they've set up a site entirely devoted to it called, 'Drupal 7 User Experience Project' -- or 'D7UX.org' for short.
You've got to love a site which wears a declaration like this on its sleeve:
"Our UX Principles: 1. Make the most frequent tasks easy and less frequent tasks achievable. 2. Design for the 80% 3. Privilege the Content Creator 4. Make the default settings smart"
It's the first thing you see!
Okay, it's official: thanks to the wonderful help of our friends at ALA, we have a meeting room for our Drupal4Lib BoF on Sunday, 7/12.
DATE: Sunday, July 12 (3:30p-5:00p)
LOCATION:
McCormick Place
West Building, Level 1
Conference Center Rm #11b
Chicago, IL.
I looked up the event listing for our Drupal4Lib BoF at ALA Chicago (Sun. 7/11, 3:30p-5p) and was happy to see we have more than a dozen sign-ups!
That's a good sign.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Mon, 06/29/2009 - 3:18pm.
Mick Jacobsen organized an informative and very well attended meeting on Drupal for Librarians at the Oak Park Public Library today. I was happy to see a few familiar faces from our Drupal BoF at DePaul earlier in the year.
Jenny Levine led off with a discussion of ALA Connect and what impressed me wasn't simply what they've been able to put together but their future plans for incorporating functionality.
Next Mick Jacobsen and Michael Buhmann from Skokie Public discussed Skokie Business Portal which at the time unfortunately was suffering from CSS indigestion.
Afterwards, Mick spent some time discussing Panels and we even managed to squeeze in a bit of time discussing Drupal in small groups.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Mon, 06/15/2009 - 6:51pm.
I see from Jenny Levine's comment here, that ALA Connect was afflicted (at least momentarily) with comment spam. It's a common affliction.
On most of the sites I support, I now pretty much have to moderate all comments. Even on sites where users have to set up accounts like LibSite.org, I still get spam.
While most of the sites are personal, it's the community or institutional sites where things get interesting/scary.
I'm currently working on a project, for example, where four different units of an large academic department are going to run their own blogs. This is precisely the kind of environment where comment spam can be a huge problem -- especially because the people running the thing from day to day are average (albeit web-savvy) staff members.
I'm just working on this at the moment, but my solution(s) is something along the lines of karenS' Comment Manager. Basically, it's to give a list of all the unpublished comments for the posts that the current logged-in user has written. From there, using Views Bulk Operations, they can either publish or delete the comments.
At the moment I'm trying to figure out whether I need Comment Manager at all, or whether I could get away with just putting the thing together using Views.
I don't really think this is a solution for ALA Connect but it's something I'm working on at the moment.
Update: I'm also looking at Show unpublished comments.
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 12:13pm.
So my next project is to do a blog and notification system for four different departments or sections at MPOW.
Each section will have its own team of 'authors' and 'editors'. The authors will create the content and the editors will approve it for final publication. In addition to the approval process, I need to build into the system a calendering option so that time-sensitive posts can be published by date. The whole thing will be pushed out to our static HTML pages through some form of RSS-to-HTML-thru-Javascript doohickey.
Anyway, I'm finding Chapter 6 "Managing Publishing Workflow" from Using Drupal particularly helpful.
I've already got Actions and Triggers installed, Workflow too. Since the workflow depends on Content Types and Roles, I'm also looking into Rules.
It's funny, I'm usually so focused on CCK and Views as the 'signature' Drupal modules. I'm coming to see that Actions and Triggers have a prominent role to play as well.
UPDATE: Matt Petrowsky has a very useful video on Actions/Triggers v. Rules over at the GotDrupal.com site. His bottom line: Forget Triggers/Actions -- Rules rules!
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 05/05/2009 - 8:08pm.
We had a wonderful turnout of close to 20 librarians from all parts of the Chicagoland area. Knowledge and skill-level ran from seasoned veterans to people being introduced to Drupal for the first time.
[read more after the jump...]
I'm pleased to announce a Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF on Friday, 3/20 (1:30p-4p) at DePaul's Loop Campus, 1 E. Jackson (10th fl., Rm# 10028), Chicago.
GOALS OF THE CHICAGOLAND DRUPAL4LIB BoF
The Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF will be an opportunity for librarians to get together and discuss how they use (or would like to use) Drupal in a library context. We'll ask people to present projects they're working on and we'll field questions on problems and approaches to implementing Drupal. All levels of knowledge from expert to n00b are welcome.
Also, since we're the 'host' city for the ALA Convention in Chicago in July, we'll have an opportunity to think about what we might want to do for that.
This Chicagoland Drupal4Lib BoF is a follow-up to our successful get-togethers last year at the Metropolitan Librarian System and at the wildly sold-out Chicago Drupal BarCamp in October.
CHICAGOLAND DRUPAL4LIB BoF - QUARTERLY BASIS
We'll be doing one of these on a quarterly basis -- or at least that's the intention. The people at DePaul have kindly made their location available for March; We'll be meeting at McCormick Place as part of ALA in July; After that we'll be meeting at the downtown offices of the Metropolitan Library System (MLS).
PARTICIPATION AND SUGGESTIONS
It goes without saying that your participation and suggestions are welcome. The format is free and open enough to accommodate a ton of different ideas and needs.
You can sign up here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/18820
Feel free to leave a comment there or email me directly -- and everyone start planning for an informative and rewarding event -- on 3/20!
Generally you make resolutions for the New Year but this is something I want to get done in the day or two I have off prior to January 1: Convert about half a dozen Drupal sites (like this one) to 6.x. It's about time!
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 12/24/2008 - 12:44pm.
I almost forgot about this but it's been a year (give or take a few days) since I started the Drupal4Lib ListServ.
I sent out the word on December 5 and within two days we had 200 subscribers.
As I said on a post that I sent out to the group, the original motivation for starting the List remains the same now as before, namely to provide an easily accessible environment to get helpful and reliable information on Drupal in a library context.
I'm pleased to say we now have 474 subscribers -- almost all who have been wonderfully 'helpful and reliable'.
So thanks to all the subscribers and happy holidays!
Posted in Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 12/16/2008 - 11:29am.
