When I’m developing I don’t like having to download stock modules or run extra drush commands that I use in nearly every project. Acquia is a commercially supported Drupal distribution that comes pre-stocked with Drupal’s greatest hits and it’s free. If you’re new to Drupal and don’t have much development experience this is a great way to go since Acquia takes it a step further and offers Drupal ‘Dev Desktops’ that you can download for both Windows and Mac that let you get going fast without even having to install a web server.

Mamp allows you to create a local web server where you can install Drupal and mess around with it. It has PHP installed, MySQL and a database management tool, phpMyAdmin . There’s a PRO version available but generally the free version is good enough.

Coda is a minimalist text editor/ftp/ssh client for mac. It’s also beautiful and made by the super smart people at Panic. They also make Transmit, a great ftp client, that integrates somewhat with Coda. I’m still hoping for some kind of cloud syncing ability from Coda, but I don’t think Panic has made any promises. Transmit is great and allows you to sync data via MobileMe, but it’s not feature complete. I don’t personally find Coda’s subversion features to be adequate but I really love GUI’s and don’t like terminal that much, so I use Versions instead. For Git projects I use Gity (free Mac app).

It’s unfortunate that the name isn’t a bit more indicative of the power behind this module. It is essential for building anything with Drupal. Devel tells you all about what Drupal is doing and, in opening that up, gives you a chance to shape it’s output and ‘hook’ into it’s operations. In combination with Firebug it is the route to understanding and manipulating Drupal.

I’ve already mentioned it, but Firebug deserves another mention and a chance to list some of it’s many submodules. With Firebug “You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page”, which is kind of handy. Drupal has it’s own set of tools for Firebug, Drupal For Firebug which integrate with Devel to show you all sorts of useful information, all you need to do is wrap something with firep(); and arrays are displayed nicely formatted in Firebug without messing up your page layout. Firecookie, Firepicker, and Pixel Perfect are a few of my favorite firebug addons and there are many more.

I keep copies of my “rough” work (scripts, demos, modules and themes) in dropbox and symlink those directories to Drupal installs in my /User/Sites directory. That way I can work on the same module on different machines without having to manually sync those folders. If I have something quick I want to try I revert the database and install my module from scratch, ready to go.

Although I’ve known about features for some time, it wasn’t until recently that I’ve seen first hand how seamlessly Features integrates with subversion. You can export your feature, overwrite it in subversion and then ‘revert’ to the new version — a bit of a mind twister for me at first. Using Features is an amazing way to manage small and large feature sets in simple and complex projects with a few or many developers working on the same code base.

Random notes:

I didn’t want to build a giant link list to other sites but of course no toolbox is complete without drupal.org, lullabot.com, stackexchange.com, and the recently launched drupal.stackexchange.com.

My life changed immeasurably for the good when I started debugging JavaScript with console.log();. If for some reason you’re not debugging your pages with console.log() stop what you’re doing and go learn how to use it and the other amazing information firebug can provide.

Sometimes it’s just easier to hard code something into a WordPress theme. Many is a time I’ve spent a half hour looking for a plugin to “just do it for me” only to get back a truly ugly button that not even a mother could love.

You can use this anywhere in the wordpress loop to make a simple ‘tweet this’ link:

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<div id="custom-tweet-button">
 
  <?php
    $twitter_permalink = urlencode(get_permalink($post->ID));
    $twitter_via=urlencode('twitterusername');
    $twitter_post_title = strip_tags(get_the_title( $post->ID ));
    $twitter_blog_title = urlencode(get_bloginfo('name'));
  ?>
 
  <a href="http://twitter.com/share?url=<?php print $twitter_permalink ?>&amp;text=<?php print $twitter_post_title ?>&amp;via=<?php $twitter_via ?>" target="_blank" title="Tweet this">Tweet</a>
 
</div>

And remember to always theme with care.

With a bit of help from @yummygum for a few of the icons.

I just deleted my Facebook account. Yes, Facebook was annoying but I’d learned to live with the endless stream of  announcements, invitations and notifications that I didn’t care about. Facebook was poorly designed, but I’d also stopped caring about that as well. But lately… Facebook has turned into a liability that far outweighs it’s value as a marketing tool, social network or even as a piece of software. And with an irrational dictator at it’s helm the company is en route to a spectacular ending, I’m sure. (more…)

Open Space has a new Drupal website that make it easy for staff members and volunteers to access information and archives online.

I also redesigned Open Space logo and branding as a part of this process.

Sp0xx6 is the latest version of my Drupal UI. It’s a minimalist concept, great for populating sites with content quickly and for first-time users.
(more…)

Stratford Hall is a Drupal-based site I built while at Trapeze Communications.

Design by Neil Tran.

I find javascript particularly useful to make up for the shortcomings of IE6 and that is what this post is mostly about. (more…)

In the last few months I’ve finished some pretty large drupal projects and thought I would share my top five tips for getting things rolling on your next drupal site. If you want a general overview of building drupal sites smashingmagazine.com just published the definitive post that I’ve read to date.

1. Adhere to drupal best practices from the start. Look forward to your site being around for a long while and set it up correctly. Even the basics, like taking advantage of using the sites/all folder to hold your non-core modules and themes can save you a lot of time down the road.

2. Make the website accessible to a wide range of people. It is easier to plan things like text-size controls, email-to-a-friend and print buttons when you’re in the design stages. Adding them in afterwards can look amateurish.

3. Give yourself time to input content and give it some TLC with proper formatting. Nothing is more boring than the same basic text layout on every page. With CMS’s half the point is having the same frame around your content so that navigation is consistent, etc. – but that doesn’t mean your text and image content has to be the same with every node. Float an image left, float it right, pull out an important quote and give it the bold+italic treatment. Don’t rush through this “final part” of the job – it’s very important.

4. Use some kind of design/development framework. Whatever works for you, but the point is to keep it consistent so that when it comes time to fix something or add a feature you can do it quickly. For most people just starting out with the same basic theme, like Zen, is enough. Later on though you might need to start keeping a folder of your regular modules, pre-configured modules, sample configurations of certain key theme components, and anything else you might need within arms reach. A note of caution though – make sure you check drupal.org for updates of the modules once in awhile.

5. FCKeditor – is the best editor there is, period. A lot of folks swear by tinyMCE but I think they’re just plain wrong. FCK has a built in file manager (that is a pain in the ass to configure but very worth it), a default CSS XML-based stylesheet associated with user-styles that is easy to override,  but most importantly it has a feature tied into the text editor that shows block elements boundaries in your html structure which is of huge benefit to 99% of all users.

http://www.fckeditor.net/