arthur's blog

This past summer, Packt Publishing was kind enough to send me a copy of Drupal 6 Content Administration by J. Ayen Green. Having told clients "hey, you wanted a complicated website, why do you think it's going to be easy to administer?" way to many times, I've been awaiting a book to provide an introduction to Drupal which covers some of the key- and not so obvious- aspects in a short read. Despite having been a Drupal developer for several years, I still find myself scratching my head at supposedly mundane tasks (what recipe is best for uploading files with a WYSIWYG editor for example). A book that can walk through day to day site administration tasks is a fantastic resource, especially for folks are on unfamiliar ground.

In the last round I showed a proof of concept. This time we're moving rapidly toward something functional- we've got a browser actually attached to a filefield, a pseudo UI, a much clearer idea of where our direction needs to go, and some eye candy. Checkout the screencast!

This quick video shows some of the progress that was made at the NYC Media Sprint last week. While it departs from some of the earlier mockups that we did this past spring, this is functional in terms of browsing and is quite a bit better thought through- thanks to all the smart folks sitting around the table.

I worked with MotherJones to produce a Drupal application that lets users create their own versions of the latest MotherJones cover. MotherJones wanted users to be able to upload their own photos and overlay a cover of their choice and add some text to the final image. Using Imagecache, Imagecache Actions, CCK, and some custom jQuery, I built a simple system that allows users to do this- all before rendering the image. You can check out the the application here: Climate Cover.