The Great Sage of Drupal's Templates and Themes Resurects Blog

So my persistant blogging on themes just payed off big time. Adrian, the author of PHPtemplate, and the initial instigator of 4.7's revolutionary forms API has been provoked into restarted his blog. So, in moving forward, my readers who are interested in drupal need to:

1. subscribe to his rss feed(xml) right now.  

2. Pay him a visit. 

Spec for ZenGarden.Module (Shot in the Dark)

Shot in the dark, I know, but its going to be at least a month before I'll have time to build this correctly. I wouldn't ask if it were not for fear that the idea will loose momemtum without a place for interested folks to get together soon... Plus, I imagine a few folks might understand how useful this module could be. Thus, here's a shot in the dark, and basic spec of how the module is to work:

zengarden.module -- a module that enables an open-source approach to a drupal theme framework, and reusable CSS library. Yes, in many its kind of like the zen garden, but really more like listamatic... Here's how it would work:

Curved Slate Beta 2.0 + A Gizmo Theme Framework Prototype

Okay, time to come clean. The truth is that I'm developing this theme to solve a bunch theming issues on 6 seperate projects I'm working on (which are late, thanks to 4.7's beta (echm) comprehensive and constant updates to the core. So, I need to start applying a bunch of these solutions to my real work now.

However, here's the latest snapshot of curved slate, along with a gizmo prototype. This is the same snapshot which is running at  this blog. (which is now on drupal 4.7beta5).

This is a major update from the last beta. A multitude of bugs (not all of them) have been solved, the code is complety reorganized, and semi-documented, and actually makes sense.

Instigating the Gizmo: Our Drupal Theme Framework and Library is Awaiting Your Contribution

Yesterday, I wrote a post called Turning Drupal Themes Upside Down. Tonight I'd like to conclude those thoughts with a call to arms. Its time for us (you know who are you) to form a splinter project. For now I'm just going to refer to it as the Gizmo project. It would be rude of me to name our project before anyone even joined the party! Anyways, here's the basic concept (!$details).

The Goal of Project Gizmo is to create a theming framework that follows the modular, flexible precedent of drupal. The gizmo consists of a core that solves a multitude of difficult CSS/design problems that nearly every drupal site faces (whether they know it or not). In addition, it provides "hooks" and naming conventions to enable quick implementation of  common design, and UI patterns in a generic (read: flexible) way. Finally, gizmo provides a pregenerated set of blank CSS selectors that we the people of gizmo find ourselve commonly using. We shall extend this to encompass module styles as well.

In many ways, we're aiming to create a CMS that organizes and generates styles. The idea is not t build some "grandma can build a webpage" system. Really, we're looking to build a tool that moves drupal theming in a more ruby on rails direction. Developers, and users who are willing to learn CSS are the audience. Screw the folks that think we should build some magic mind reading design creation machine. Lets keep this practical.

Drupal Theme Development Turned Upside Down (part 1 of 2)

KHAN! khan... kha...In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, there is rather odd scene (actually, that movie is one long odd scene...) where the audience is introduced to "the genesis device". At one point during that scene Spock notes that "it's a timeless truth that it has always been easier to destroy than to create."

However, sharing that line from Star Trek is not entirely the reason why I am writing this post. nYou see Spock's somewhat haughty observation fired a synapse that gave birth to this post, and thus it became a "blog-worthy" introduction.

Curved Slate Beta Available for Download

I have decided to arbitrarily declare that my theme, Curved Slate, is now "beta". The link to the latest tar is available below. My very own blog is currently running the "out of the box" version of curved slate that is included in the download. So, there's your stinkin' live preview.

The only thing you probably can't see at this blog is the reloaded node submission form. The screenshot is seen below:

 

Before you download 

1. Curved Slate only works on drupal 4.7. I'm sure it could be easily ported back to 4.6, but I am lazy.

Why I Love Site5.com

Not long ago, a combination of too much coffee, persistant stress, and my uppity temperment led me to write a fiesty post about my frustrations with Site5.com's suite of account and website management tools. In retrospect, I was not warrented to have made the critiques that I did; especially considering that the problems I had resulted from the account's owner forgetting to send me all of the necessary passwords, and account info I needed.

Regardless, Adam Greenfield, Site5.com's Chief Technology Officer ,took what I wrote to heart, and posted a very comprehensive reply on site5's engineering blog. He addresses every concern I raised; but much more importantly, he describes a number of new features, and components that are designed to prevent future users from having the troubles I describe. Back in a former lifetime, I used to train teenyboppers and potheads on the art of good customer service in the service industry. In otherwords, I have an eye for stellar service.

Drupal 4.7 Cheat Sheet

Stumbled upon this lovely cheet sheet of drupal 4.7 database commands, hooks, sippets php-template variables, ect.

Print one out for yourself!

A Search Engine for Developers

Finally, a startup that does something useful. Krugle is a search engine that seeks to help developers find code and documentation.

Link:Wired article on krugle 

How I temporarily Screwed My SEO

As soon as I switched over to this new theme my search engine traffic plummeted. I was beginning to suspect that the spiders had confused the javascript that generates the markup for this theme's curves with an attempt to show two pages: one for spiders, one for humans. As it turns out however, it was a test site that I had forgotten to delete that was also showing Nick Lewis: the blog.

So google found the test site, and apparently knocked my search engine traffic in half. This morning I removed the test site, and my search engine traffic doubled, and is now at normal levels once again.

Pages

Subscribe to Nick Lewis: The Blog RSS