Includes Upgrading Drupal Modules, Themes, and Site

I am a fan of check lists. They help simplify and improve the effectiveness of repetitive processes over time. The following is a recent check list I shared with a client as a summary of the process used to upgrade from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6. Please feel free to use it and add your own notes.

1. Together with client identify the list of key content and expected behaviors/displays. Includes any publishing/business logic.
• Should be approximately 30 or so check list items, with accompanying screenshots where appropriate.
• This will form the QA test script to confirm the quality of the upgrade and will be the list for acceptance testing.
2. Duplicate the site, code, db, and files into an upgrade branch on dev server.
3. Version control all code, db, view exports, ect. throughout the process
4. Confirm there are no custom hacks on Drupal core.
5. Run the upgrade process for Drupal Core.
6. Test
• All steps titled test include some automated testing as well as use of the coder module.
• I also just came across the deadwood module.
• Test steps also include running through the QA test script when appropriate.
• See links below.
7. Run the upgrade process on views, converting views to views 2
8. Test
9. Identify any custom hacks on contrib. modules.
10. Upgrade contrib. modules which have D6 versions
11. Test
12. Identify upgrade paths for non standard modules and those which do not have a d6 version
13. Code the upgrades and run them
14. Test (full developer review)
15. Client QA and site review/Bug fixing Cycle
16. Prepare deploy plan
17. Deploy the upgrade on production server
18. Client QA and site review/Server Configuration and Bug fixing Cycle
19. Client Acceptance testing (walking through the script), reporting and fixing issues cycle

Links About Upgrading Drupal

Converting 5.x modules to 6.x - http://drupal.org/node/114774

Updating Drupal Modules to D6 in Three Easy Steps - http://www.webmasterworld.com/content_management/3...

Coder Module - http://drupal.org/project/coder/

Deadwood - http://drupal.org/project/deadwood - http://boombatower.com/tools/deadwood

This post from 37 signals provides a nice understanding of estimates.

While contracting for the Tree House Agency last fall, I am very happy to have architected, project managed, and lead the development of the New House Democratic Website (http://dems.gov)

From: http://www.dems.gov/press/house-democratic-caucus-launches-new-website

The site features what Democrats are saying each day, by issue and about major legislation. For the first time, visitors will be able to easily find quotes from Members on the topics and legislation they care about most. The site also features major legislation passed by Democrats and summaries of upcoming bills. In addition, the public can find House Democrats’ official websites, YouTube channels, and Facebook pages using an interactive directory.

The new site allows the caucus to:

1. Aggregate content from congressional members (video, text, feeds, and other forms of media)

2. Share content with the public and reporters in a way that it easy to navigate

3. Provide multiple views for visitors to browse and search content by facets of interest

Of course we built it in Drupal for the public facing website because of its ability to present content to visitors in a variety of ways; with all the social networking tools of today’s websites and Drupal on the administrative end was the clear choice when it came to meeting the administrative and security needs of the Caucus.

Nice post on Smashing Magazine reminding us not to forget the small stuff in the new year: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/01/23/dont-forget-the-small-stuff-this-year/ .  For example, did you change the copyright date on all your clients’ sites?

Here are two interesting client issues I had in after the New Year.

Expired Security Credentials

A client called to ask for help getting access to an old Content Management System they had for about four years.  The site just stopped allowing them to log in. Turned out to be the site was on a Windows Server which authenticated via the Windows User Groups.  After four years, the server reset the user account privileges. 

The lesson: Watch server configs and security accounts in the new year.  They often (correctly) expire after a certain period and this often occurs at the start of a new year.

CCK Date Fields Stopped Working

Here’s one for us Drupal CCK Date field users.

One of my clients has a content type which includes a publication date using a CCK Date field.  Suddenly, they could no longer save changes to nodes in this content type. 

This was the error message:

An illegal choice has been detected. Please contact the site administrator.

Here’s what happened:

The CCK Date field has a setting called, “Years back and forward.” 

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A friend just emailed me the following question:

As a Business to Business Company is it better to have your company blog hosted on the company website or should it be more indirect and hosted on wordpress or something like that. 

I am getting conflicting answers from my people and was wondering if you had any advice.

The following is my response back.  Hope this helps you as well.

In answer to your question about whether a B2B company should have their blog hosted on their website or on something external I'd look at the importance of the following:

1. Branding
2. Maintaining the technology
3. Lock-in
4. Reasons to not be on your main company site

Branding

To me, branding is the most important.  If your blog is a key part of your communications strategy then you should have full control over all the elements that show up on the blog:

This is not to say you can't use a service hosted off your current servers.  Just that the logo, design, content, domain, comments system, auto-emails, and even functionality should all reflect your brand.  I recommend the blog be on your company's main domain.  If it must be hosted somewhere else, then a sub domain can work.  The key is that you do not dilute your brand across multiple domains. 

Additionally there should be no third-party content that could show up on your blog without your direct control, such as advertising automatically shown by the blog network you may be hosted on.

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Totally loving this tool to not only have my info backed up in DropBox but to also have it synced between my Laptop and Desktop.

Right now I have junctions (and thus synced directories, data, and profiles) for:

1. Skype
2. Firefox
3. Chrome
4. Aptana (Eclipse)
5. Topstyle
6. CuteFTP
7. My sticky notes
8. My local web server, sites, and databases
9. Pidgin

My new favorite jquery tool for data table sorting and searching.

Excellent tool with as little or as much configuration as you'd need for most any project. Very slick.

Used this to commit horrible usability crimes at the client's request. Shame.

After reading the book version of this article, Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef by Joel Spolsky I wrote down a few thoughts on the difference between knowledge management and creating a procedures/rules book.  

I often examine processes to improve productivity. On my teams I push for documenting solutions to record and share with other team members. However, it’s important to understand that documenting process and procedure alone does not equal the spread of knowledge or an increase in expertise within your team or organization.

As any phone call to Dell tech support will show you, the act of following a tech manual step by step will usually not get your computer fixed. Procedures are nothing without very smart and experienced people working for you to find a solution. It’s also the very smart and experienced who don’t really use a procedures manual.

As Joel Spolsky writes in his “Big Macs vs. The Naked Chef” post:

1. Some things need talent to do really well.

2. It's hard to scale talent.

3. One way people try to scale talent is by having the talent create rules for the untalented to follow.

4. The quality of the resulting product is very low.

So what do we use in our teams and organizations instead of rules and regulations?

1. We hire very smart and experienced people
2. We implement a knowledge management system

Knowledge management helps when you have a team of experts or hire really smart people, instead of just hiring people to follow a rules book.

Knowledge management means that geniuses within your company may apply different and varied solutions instead of a single cookie cutter one, as long as:

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I noticed two nice design changes in low-end laptops when I purchased a new disposable laptop this past weekend.

Wider (though) shorter screens and wider keyboards.

For cheap laptops screen sizes remain small. However, the trend now is to keep the height short  while adding to the width across.

Wider screens provide a nice usability enhancement in that they allow for more application windows to be open across the width of the screen while the total screen area remains smaller (shorter in height) to keep the price down.

Since the laptops have wider screens, they can have a wider keyboard. I looked over a number of nice sized keyboards with an additional number pad as a standard. This enhancement is really great if you find yourself working with numbers and data often.

These simple but thoughtful changes provide some nice usability enhancements to the less expensive laptops while allowing their prices to remain less expensive.

Kudos to industry for these changes.

By the way I bought the HP - Pavilion Laptop with Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor for $550 from Best Buy.

• Dimensions: 1.6 x 16 x 10.2 inches 
• 15.6" high-definition widescreen display With LED BrightView technology and 1366 x 768 resolution

I've been both developer and manager for years on both large and small projects with various sized teams. During the week to week management of these teams I tend to send little notes to help guide our work process. This week I have been breaking in a new team.

I thought it might be useful to other technical project managers and team leaders if I shared some of this week’s raw notes. I hope it’s useful for other managers to have a glimpse into the day to day notes of another in their same place.

Time Sheets

Please enter your time regularly into Fresh Books. Smaller more frequent time entries are preferred. Try to break them down by tickets and tasks in those tickets. Please always include the ticket number you were working on.

Please keep your entries up to date daily while on a project.

SVN

I believe in update and commit often.

Make sure you update and resolve conflicts before committing.

Enter in notes about what you are committing and when possible, enter the relevant ticket number.

Commits will auto deploy to the server within a few minutes. If you break something, you can roll it back but email the rest of the team to let us know so we can make sure to match our revision to the latest version on the dev server.

To roll back, log into [Spring Loops], choose the project, and then deploy the previous version number.

Remember that other devs are working in SVN too. So, update often, typically before starting a new change set. And commit often. I can help with any merging issues if you need it.

[Info here on how to contact me for an urgent need.]

Further Notes on SVN

The following is just a brief reminder about steps to take to not over write others work.

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If your are not a jQuery dev, don't worry, there are plenty of excellent resources to get you started using jQuery to enhance your site.

Star here

http://drupal.org/project/Modules/category/101 ( Drupal Modules: JavaScript Utilities )

Then simply:

1. Browse
2. Download
3. Install & Configure

Some module which I recommend checking out

UI Improvements

• jTooltips: http://drupal.org/project/jtooltips - adds in context user feedback
  
• JQuery Interface: http://drupal.org/project/jquery_interface  - might not be D6 ready
  
• jQuery UI: http://drupal.org/project/jquery_ui - a full library of effects
  
• Username originality AJAX check: http://drupal.org/project/username_check - This is the kind of enhancements jQuery is perfect for.

Content Browsing

• jCarousel: http://drupal.org/project/jcarousel - nice for creating a recent post/image browser, or a headlines browser.
  • Also see @ http://drupal.org/project/jcarousel_block
    
• Views carousel: http://drupal.org/project/viewscarousel

Photos

• Thickbox: http://drupal.org/project/thickbox or Lightbox2: http://drupal.org/project/lightbox2 
  • @see Comparison of “lightbox” type modules: http://drupal.org/node/266126
  • @see Lightbox2 demo http://www.stellapower.net/lightbox2
• Slideshow Creator: http://drupal.org/project/slideshow_creator
  • @see Cool demo here: http://www.malsup.com/jquery/cycle/

Theming and Display

• jQuery Eye Candy: http://drupal.org/project/jq_eyecandy  - if you really must use jQuery rather than CSS
  
• JavaScript Theming: http://drupal.org/project/js_theming
  
• Page Style: http://drupal.org/project/pagestyle - a style changer in a block and in the browser for better Web Accessibility

jQuery Plug-in Management

• jQuery plugins: http://drupal.org/project/jquery_plugin - call jQuery plugins from any module or theme by calling the jquery_plugin_add($plugin) function
  
• jQuery Plugin Handler (JQP): http://drupal.org/project/jqp

• jQ: http://drupal.org/project/jq

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In D6, you can put a .js file in your base theme directory and it will automatically be loaded by Drupal.

You can also include a js file via an entry in your theme’s .info file:

scripts[] = your_javascript.js

However, I recommend the following:

Consider your JavaScript theme-able like HTML.

1. It should be able to be themed
2. Put JavaScript in .js file
3. Use drupal_add_js() in a theme function
4. If in a module, call it with hook_init()

As HTML in a theme function / tpl file, calling your JS with a theme function allows theme developers to modify or override your JS in the theme layer.

Here it is in a module:

<?php

/**

 * Implementation of hook_init()

 */

function trickoutmysite_init() {

 theme('trickoutmysite_javascript');

}

/**

 * Implementation of hook_theme()

 */

function trickoutmysite_theme($existing, $type, $theme, $path) {

  return array(

    'trickoutmysite_javascript' => array(

      'arguments' => array(),

    ),

  );

}

/**

 * A themable function which uses drupal_add_js to include the js file

 */

function theme_trickoutmysite_javascript() {

  drupal_add_js (drupal_get_path('module', 'trickoutmysite') . '/trickoutmysite.js');

}

?>

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Use jQuery to Enhance Site UI, Display, or Interaction

jQuery is an excellent tool for improving your site’s interface. It’s also helpful to target and change specific CSS and HTML elements quickly. [1]

I tend to use it mostly for UI (user interface) enhancements or when there is a semi-dynamic event in the display, after the page has loaded.

Examples uses include:

• User feedback in messages
• Tool tips (in-context user guidance)
• Enhanced image/gallery display
• Tabs for quick access to hidden information
• As a style sheet switcher (helpful with accessibility)
• Form enhancements and client-side feedback
• Menu enhancements
• Data entry such as a date picker
• Table and data sorting
• Media players
• Content flagging
• Tagging (better input methods)
• Loading additional content without a page refresh
• Dynamic Charts
• Content Carousels (albums, photos, headline news stories)

Do Not Use jQuery as the Primary Driver for Site UI, Display, or Interaction

jQuery should not be used as the primary driver of your site’s display and not as a cornerstone of any primary functionality for your site.

In other words, sure, enhance your web sites e-commerce process with jQuery, but have it:

1. degrade gracefully,
2. making sure people may still go through the e-commerce process,
3. even if jQuery fails completely.

Simple uses can have big impact

When consider the rendering of display effects such as rounded corners and color gradients, consider CSS instead.

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With Drupal being an open source software and having such a great set of features right out-of-the-box, people may wonder what they pay for when going to an expert Drupal developer or shop for their Drupal install.

A good Drupal site may cost thousands of dollars. For an enterprise level site the budget may be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. What’s that all about? I thought Drupal was “free”. The following is a bit of explanation.

Most web site features are already built into Drupal and ready to be configured. With professional Drupal development you are not paying for features, but rather expertise. What expertise?

Professional Drupal developers and shops offer expertise in Drupal site:

1. branding and visual design
2. theming (to be defined below),
3. feature integration,
4. architecture,
5. scaling,
6. optimization,
7. and security.

What are professional Drupal development budgets based on?

Not Just Features

As Drupal’s base install already has a large feature set which will meet many site’s needs, it is important to note that there are actually very little features lost or gained at budget levels past a certain point (the cost of install, setup, and deployment).  What budget levels do affect, that is, what is lost or gained are levels of feature integration (interaction) and design implementation (theming).

Theming

To meet real business branding and marketing objectives, companies need their professional visual design developed into Drupal in a way that effectively and successfully communicates their brand.

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