Drupal Web Development

Your Drupal site help file: admin/help/blogapi

The Drupal handbook pages:

• BlogApi: post from blog tools
• Alternative ways to enter content

An important patch if you find your vocabulary terms fail to be listed within your external client:
Category Fix Patch

Forums thread discussing issues with setting up Windows Live Writer
with Drupal 6. Following the steps outlined above, you will avoid these
issues: Windows Live Writer and Drupal 6

I've proposed a session for the upcoming DrupalCon DC.

The session is titled, "Building Complex Application and Publishing Workflows."

Abstract: 

Do your site editors need a complex publishing workflow? Should your site behave more like a web application, responding to a myriad of user- and system-triggered events? Or do you simply want to add that extra little feature that would make your Drupal site just perfect for your site and business needs?

Join us as we present a quick-start session on using the Triggers, Actions, and Workflow modules to create the workflows your site needs.

Agenda

In this session, we'll look at why you might need structured workflows on your sites, and how you can create them. Topics include:

1. Common reasons for needing workflows
2. An overview of the Triggers, Actions, and Rules modules
3. Scenario: A complex site publishing workflow
4. Scenario: A site application workflow
5. Mini-cases: A quick look at solutions to other common issues

Discussions on scenarios look at the end-to-end process of creating the solution:

1. Needs analysis
2. User story
3. Planning the logic with the Drupal modules
4. Implementation
5. Testing

Goals

1. Create an understanding of the reasons you might want to implement structured workflows
2. Provide a blueprint you can use to implement key workflow solutions
3. Provide base ideas for creating solutions for ad hoc needs

Please vote for it here:
http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/session/building-complex-application-and-pub...

Also from Tree House Agency, check out and vote on these sessions:

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Introduction

The Need

Our clients and other Drupal site administrators would like to use the Workflow module to schedule transition states in their publishing workflow.

The Problem

Currently, within the Workflow module a node cannot be assigned a scheduled state change upon node creation. A node must be saved first, then edited a second time by the user.

After reading this comment in the Workflow module issue queue: http://drupal.org/node/189572#comment-704334 I decided to try to add a little more automation to the process of creating a node and adding a scheduled state change.

In this Post

You'll learn how to create a publishing workflow for your website, and how to improve the process of scheduling a transition change during node creation.

Let's begin.

Posted on TreeHouseAgency.com - Read more

I wrote this series on how to post to Drupal using Windows Live Writer because I saw a lot of questions and issues about this on the Drupal forums. I had previously gone through the trial and error process to set this up for a number of people who work for me. We now use Live Writer for initial posts and quick updates to a large site we manage.

I'd like other developers and Drupal service providers to see they can provide this option for clients and that Drupal communicates and does well with modern and useful web technologies such as blogging APIs.

The Need

The Archdiocese Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America (Archdiocese) wanted to use its Antiochian.org web site to promote awareness and understanding of the Orthodox Faith and the work of the Archdiocese.  They needed a web site to serve as a tool for effective communication to various audiences, including persons within the Archdiocese, other churches, the general public, and the press.

The site had to be easy to use for site visitors and for those who added content and administered the site.  The site’s appearance and user experience needed to be pleasing, as well as serve to further communicate who the Archdiocese is as an organization and as a church.

Sections of the site needed a cohesive look and user experience, to communicate unity across its many departments and organizations.

Web site accessibility was also an important consideration when developing the organization’s site.

The Results

Successful migration of the organization’s main web site from a large static html site to a Drupal powered CMS, realizing the following benefits:

• A web site based on a system and standards that are widely supported in the business and non-profit communities, providing many new support options
• A standardized system to make updates in a timely fashion and provide better support
• Improved search capabilities for visitors to easily find content relative to their interests and needs
• A better audio system, improved video postings, an easier way to syndicate content and to enable users to subscribe to the site content

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Proper Configuration Checks for External Applications to Use Taxonomy Terms

If you want your users to be able to assign terms to their content when they are using an external blogging application, like Windows Live Writer, make sure you have the Taxonomy module enabled, and that you have selected the appropriate content types, those available to the Blog API. I have forgotten to do this a few times when adding a new content type to use with the Blogging API. Each time a new content type is created, taxonomy requires you to go back and specify whether your new content type can use a vocabulary.

Content types section: admin/content/taxonomy/edit/vocabulary/<vocab id>

Getting Good URL Names by Using Pathauto

If you have Drupal’s Path Module enabled to allow users to rename URLs (custom URLs), I recommend using the “Pathauto” module in combination with your external blogging client. You can set it to give the content a URL based on the post title.

http://drupal.org/project/pathauto

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An external blogging application like Windows Live Writer will allow you to create and publish posts from your desktop to your Drupal site. But, before you can post via one of these applications you’ll need to enable and configure your Blog API module and a few additional settings.

Step 1: Enable the Modules

Enable your Blog and Blog API modules here: admin/build/modules

Step 2: Make Content Types Available to External Clients

Select the content types you’d like to make available to external blogging clients: admin/settings/blogapi

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Allowing Tags to be Added in the Post Body Text

Free Tagging when the Blog API Does Not Support It

The following is a quick code sample showing the start of a Drupal module which lets a user add new tags to a post by placing the tags in the body of the post in a format like so:

[tags]blog, blog api, blogging, Drupal 6, weblog, windows live writer, wlw[/tags]

Jump to the Source Code

Use Case

I’m only using code like this for one use case.  It’s for clients who do a lot of editing and posting of their Drupal content through Windows Live Writer.

With Windows Live Writer and Drupal, my clients use the “Movable Type API”.  Without extending the API, it does not yet support adding new vocabulary terms.  Thus, from Windows Live Writer to Drupal sites, one can only tag content with existing terms.  This code allows new tags to be added.

The terms are added to a specified vocabulary id and associated with the new or updated content node.

The inline tags are removed from the body of the text before insert or update.

• What's YUI Grids CSS and what are its benefits?
• What's in the library?
• How do we use it?

Note: The sound quality on the low res version is somewhat poor. You may want to watch the High Res QuickTime Movie, or just download the PDF to view.

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