Every quarter or so my husband, Cal, puts on an all day virtual conference called Day Camp 4 Developers. Of course this endeavor was in need of a website to give information and take registrations. The registration part was easy as we use a 3rd party service, but what to do with such a simple website.

Cal decided he wanted one page to display four different panels of information which answer the questions What, When, Where and How (the Who was obvious). My approach was to create one scrolling page containing four blocks of content. This was actually very simple using HTML, CSS and a little jQuery.

I started with one all containing div tag and made it rather large (1620 pixels square). That tag contains four other div tags (800 x 800) which are absolutely positioned so they appear in a grid. Using jQuery’s animate command each block moves when you click on the arrow. The arrow points to the next block.

The trickiest part was doing the math and discovering how many pixels to move each block, taking in to account the margins.

The results can be seen on DayCamp4Developers.com

I’ve created this post as a reminder of silly workaround and easily forgotten configurations that exist in Drupal. Just so next time I don’t spend forever trying to solve the same problem.

Browse button is missing in CK Editor

• Make sure after you install ICME the checkbox for it within the editor’s configuration is checked.

Clean URLs not working in Drupal 7 and the button to enable it is missing.

• OMG go the the clean URL admin page with out the stupid overlay. I knew I didn’t like that “feature”

Adding countries to Ubercart

I did find this on the 20 Miles North website, posting here for my future reference
1. Get an additional list of more countries here: http://www.ubercart.org/project/fullcountrylist

2. Unzip the files, find the ones you would like to add and upload them to the server at this path: /sites/all/modules/ubercart/uc_store/countries ; you should see plenty more .cif files there.

3. Log into your Drupal administration panel and select:
Administer > Store Admin > Configuration > Country Settings and select each country .cif file

First impression: Thousands of people in a relatively medium-sized space.

Keynote addresses were quite good including : Clay Shirky and Jared Spool. Dries gave insight into the beginnings of Drupal 8 while I’m still trying to wrap my brain around 6. The second keynote pertained to the effects of the new social networks. How people find power by gathering virtually. The third keynote about usability was excellent and probably stuck with me the most (maybe because it was the last). The speaker had great examples and introduced concepts about user knowledge level and target knowledge level. He reminded us that “good design is invisible.” And, provided us with three methods for user testing.

Sessions
There were over 85 sessions put into several tracks. The media session was more than disappointing. The presenters were more interested in talking about how they made the module and its history than demonstrating what it will do in Drupal 7.

The HTML5 session was a call for implementing more HTML5 into Drupal core and module… HTML5ify Drupal! Although some features of HTML5 are exciting, in some ways it seems to just add more code to simply mark an item as a header or footer etc. But there are many useful changes as well.

The Views Demystified session was probably my most productive. I like the changes I see in Drupal 7, especially the ability to determine a tag wrapper on certain elements. I knew most of the information in this session but it was useful to revisit things, plus I did pick up some new information.

The Haml, Sass, Compass and Peroxide session gave a glimpse into these new methods of writing styles and markup. I was interested in the ability to use variables and calculations within Sass. I’m still not totally sold on using frameworks and technology that just writes out HTML and CSS. But the possibilities are worth investigating.

The session I attended on Features, Profiles and Drush Make was by far the most interesting. I now have seen a feature being built and used in action. I can see many uses for this type of “bundling” in building sites, especially if you’re building them for vertical markets. The presenter of this session was a young man who actually wrote Drush Make. He was knowledgeable, personable and entertaining.

I attended an Advanced Drush session that was just a little over my head, I left early with my co-workers in tow. (Except for the one who made us go to the session and then didn’t show.)
Drupal commerce looks promising although the words “if someone would like to contribute that module…” were repeated quite a bit. So I came away with the feeling that there is still much to be done. They are separating some of the elements so that it will be easier to sell subscriptions and donations without making someone go through a shopping cart interface.

Probably the best part of any conference is the time spent with friends and strangers. I met several people made at least one new friend and got to know my co-workers a little better. Dinner with Jamie was a great time. Meeting Mark from Microsoft and Adam was a pleasant surprise.

All in all I have much to learn still but I now have some direction and a glimpse into technologies I didn’t know existed. I did not walk away with any hard knowledge, yet many new ideas to investigate. If only there were 10 more hours in each day!

Final impression: lots of people still drinking in the lobby at 6:30 AM!

Can’t wait for Nashville Drupalcamp and Drupalcon 2012!

Over the last few months I’ve been privileged to work with the great people at Mind Cartel on a new site for Fushi Copperweld.

The site was my latest creation in Joomla and I feel it was a rousing success. As with any projects we had our challenges to overcome but the end result is a vast improvement over their previous site.

The largest and most challenging section of the site was the Investor Relations. I created a specialized landing page for it which incorporates a Yahoo! Stock Quote module which pulls in pertinent information about the company’s stock and displays it directly on the page. It worked like a charm. I also implemented a Latest News module, a HTML module and a couple of RSS feeds in this section.

In addition I deployed a specialized contact form module and a form creation module to handle the multiple forms within the site. We still have things to add but overall I’m pleased with the results. I look forward to working further with Mind Cartel.

You can view this site at FushiCopperweld.com.

My latest project was to re-design the blog for Cal Evans (my long-time significant other). The new site is a WordPress template created especially for this site. Cal wanted to stay with the blue and orange colors used in his logo (which comprises of a C with equal signs on each side). Cal also wanted rich color but more of a 2.0 look.

The design incorporates a complex repeating background, portions of which appear only behind the main header.

There were some tricky WP “features” I had to overcome to create the final template. Being the widgets in the left column do not necessarily use the same styles used in the basic template there was quite a bit to tweeking to be done. The blue background behind the headings in the left column were a particular problem as adding no margin to the li would cause all the text to be flush with the borders of the box, or if one added padding it would cause the blue background to move as well resulting in a gap between the background and the bar. The answer was to resort to actually changing the PHP code to add a class around the text in the blue bars. And then going into each widget and adding a little padding.

Overall I’m pleased with the results and enjoyed the challenge.

View the finished site.

Well here it is… KathyEvans.biz V2.0, the WordPress site.

I’ve built several CMS sites in the last few years, but this is the first that I can call my own. This one I can manipulate, experiment with and just have some fun.

My goal with this blog will to be to share some of my “web-worldly” experience, such as how I solved a certain problem or what I’ve found that’s new and exciting (for a web designer). I might even post a few pet peeves, so tread lightly.

One new and exciting change that I’d like to share is my future job as an adjunct instructor with The Art Institute of Nashville. Web design is a career that has sprung up quickly and I feel proper training in the field has been neglected, this is my way of contributing to the development and improvement of the vocation. I’ll be teaching Information Architecture, so expect to hear a lot about that.

One less exciting change is that I’m currently umemployed. I’m seeking either a full-time or free-lance position. So if you need a designer, my resume, portfolio and contact information can be found here at kathyevans.biz.

Have a great day!

K