Colin Calnan's Blog Posts
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Using oEmbed to deliver video thumbnails in Drupal
February 14, 2012 CommentsWe've gone to great lengths over the past few years to create a smooth workflow for allowing clients to insert video on their Drupal sites. We're currently working on a Drupal distribution which needs a really straightforward way for embedding video, one that can be achieved by any type of user.
When we first meet with clients we give them two options for video:
- Upload a video file, and an image to use for a thumbnail in listings
- Use a third party service such as YouTube and upload a thumbnail image for listings
1. Upload a video file and a thumbnail image
There are many modules available to allow this to happen.
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Drupal 7 Geotagging and Silverlight Maps
December 23, 2011 CommentsRaised Eyebrow is currently working with Microsoft on a multi-faceted Drupal 7 project. One of the project's technical requirements involves displaying nodes that have been tagged with Geographical information on a Silverlight Map.
As part of the requirements gathering phase of the project we were given access to a recently built Drupal 6 site - http://bhangra.me, which features just such a Silverlight map on its homepage, to provide a base for how we would create similar functionality in Drupal 7. Our job has been to decipher how the map on bhangra.me functioned and then replicate that in Drupal 7.
The Easy (Silverlight) Part
I say easy, because it was the easy part for me. The Silverlight Control was developed externally and was cleverly built to accept and parse an XML/RSS feed from Drupal (or elsewhere). This RSS feed contained some simple Geographical information stored as so:
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RE Apache SOLR Extras module on Github
October 25, 2011 CommentsThis is another small Drupal module that was developed to satisfy a single requirement. In this case, the requirement was to allow the creation of Apache SOLR cores via the Drupal administration backend. We developed a site cloning tool for a client using the Aegir project, and each cloned site required its own individual Apache SOLR search, which in turn meant setting up an individual core for each individual site. Setting up individual cores can be a tricky process and this module provides a simple interface for creating the cores. The process of creating cores manually is documented on drupal.org. When you configuring Apache SOLR on your site, you usually visit - http://example.com/admin/settings/apachesolr configuration page, and enter the Apache SOLR path:
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Prevent client frustration by reducing downtime
September 26, 2011 CommentsWe've all been there, the phone rings and suddenly it's panic stations. A client site is down, they're panicing and are very upset, and we have to drop everything to find out what's happening. This doesn't happen often, but when it does it puts the client and the whole dev team in a spin. It certainly not predictable, it's somewhat preventable, and it's completely frustrating.
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Text message your Drupal site
September 8, 2011 CommentsIn May, while speaking at and attending the Make Web Not War conference in Vancouver, I met up with Adam Kalsey from Tropo and attended his talk outlining how his messaging service, called Tropo, can be integrated with Drupal. I came away with tons of ideas on how to use this service to do neat things with Drupal. I decided to start with some low hanging fruit. We currently have a module for Drupal that plugs into the Webform module and allows users to enter their postal code and return information about their local Member of Parliament (MP) in Canada. This module communicates with the API at howdtheyvote.ca to return all the necessary MP info, such as:
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Transparent PNGs in IE
July 26, 2011 CommentsThere are lots of ways to achieve working transparent PNG's in IE (Microsoft Internet Explorer). I have found that none of these have succeeded in making life really easy when doing the dreaded cross browser testing and debugging. Until now that is. Today I discovered DD_belatedPNG by Drew Miller. An awesome library with a really strange name :)
With some simple JavaScript you can have transparent PNG's in a matter of seconds. All it takes are 3 steps:
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Accessing node flagged status in a Drupal 7 theme
July 22, 2011 CommentsI was recently working on a Drupal 7 project which required updating an Image style on a node based on whether or a flag was set or not.
The Requirements
The specific context was that the nodes were biography nodes and each biography had an image attached. The requirement was to give editors the ability to allow certain bio's to display a large or small version of an uploaded image.
I considered using taxonomy, a CCK field and finally settled on using a flag. Mostly due to the fact that the Flag module places a nice Ajax link on the node for logged in users, allowing them to quickly tag and un-tag the node as needed.
What you need to achieve this is:
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Using Droptor to better serve our Drupal clients
May 10, 2011 CommentsWe work hard to streamline our processes here at Raised Eyebrow. We've come a long way since I was the sole developer and using FTP to install Drupal 4.x sites. One thing that's always been difficult to manage is ensuring that all of our Drupal sites have the most recent security updates installed. Given that fact that last year alone we launched over 30 websites and so far this year we've had 20 launches, keeping track of which sites need updates can quickly become difficult to manage. I recently posted a question to the Drupal groups site in a effort to garner some advice from the wider Drupal community on how best to keep track of what's happening with security releases on all of these websites. I received some great responses and one in particular which pointed me to the Droptor service.
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A busy Open Source week
May 6, 2011 CommentsFor those in the know it's Open Source Week May 2-7 and it's been a busy week for us here at Raised Eyebrow. There are lots of events happening around the city to celebrate all things open. Luckily, Raised Eyebrow is involved in more ways than one.
OGDI Field Module on Drupal.org
I launched my OGDI Field module on Drupal.org. It's now available for you to download and try out on your own Drupal website. The only requirement is that you need the CCK module and you're set.
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Surrey Drupal Meetup
April 15, 2011 CommentsJust last night I gave a talk at the Surrey Drupal Meetup. The topic was "How to use template.php to power your Drupal themes". I became aware that most beginner themers have no idea that everything you need to create and start a theme is available in Drupal core. Download and opening files in themes like Zen can be a little overwhelming for a beginner so in some cases it's better off to build it yourself from the ground up.
The talk aimed to remove the veil of mystery on staring a theme and provide some tools for find theming functions in Drupal and via the web.