Speed up Drupal development with Search Krumo module

Submitted by vadim on Tue, 02/28/2012 - 11:38

How often do you use dpm() function from Devel module? I guess, you are using it often, when you writing your own PHP code.

If you have ever printed a view object using dpm() function, you might know how difficult is to find anything in such big and recursive accordion.

I would like to show you one of the must-to-use module, called Search Krumo, which allows you to find a text in a Krumo accordion, printed by dpm() function.

After you entered the text to find, you can select, which Krumo object to use, and click the Submit button. Then you will get Krumo expanded with a highlighted text entries.

Session about Open Source inspired attendees of the DrupalForum ZP

Submitted by vadim on Sun, 02/19/2012 - 16:35

The DrupalForum ZP is an annual Drupal event which happens in Zaporozje, Ukraine. This year it was it's second time and gathered more then 150 of attendees form all over Ukraine and nearby countries. There were more then 25 sessions with a separate track for nubes and 4 BoFs.

DrupalCamp Donetsk 2011 was a great success!

Submitted by vadim on Mon, 12/05/2011 - 14:49

On 25-27th of November in Donetsk (Ukraine) there was DrupalCamp, an international event related to the content management system Drupal. The event gathered more the 170 people from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus. Venues of the DrupalCamp were conference-halls of Shachtar Plaza и Ramada hotels. While the conference there were 20 sessions, 5 BoFs, code-sprint and a party. Elloria rock band performed some Drupal songs, rock covers and their own themes. Slides and videos from the event will appear on the DrupalCamp website soon: http://donetsk.drupal.ua/.

Groups in Twitter

Submitted by vadim on Sat, 07/23/2011 - 19:23

There is no secret that in Facebook we have very useful feature to post messages in a group. And so many interesting discussions have been started there. But many of us often use Twitter, and would like to have same functionality there.

The solution is really simple.

Group

  • Group is an twitter account.
  • User can follow group or add it into a list.

Entry into a group

  • To add new user into a group, group should follow that user.
  • Group can automatically follow back people who follow it.

Improving DHT reliability

Submitted by vadim on Fri, 06/17/2011 - 19:07

In this post I am going to make a few notes about how reliability of Distributed Hash Table (DHT) can be improved. Distributed Hash Table is a decentralized peer-to-peer system that provides lookup service in the similar way how regular hash table does. One of the popular implementation of DHT is file sharing used in BitTorrent Protocol, it allows to download files without use of the tracker.

DHT Implementation

Let's take a quick look on how DHT Pastry works. All other DHT tables have similar implementation with a few differences. The main concepts are:

  • Each data object has a unique identifier (key) which is calculated as hash of it's content.
  • All keys belongs to 160 bit circular key space.
  • Files are stored on a multiples nodes (equal PCs).
  • Each node have random unique identifier in the same key space.
  • Data object is stored on the working node which id is closest to the data object key. Special routing function is used to find such node.
  • Once data object has been pushed it could not be deleted from the DHT.
  • Replica function transforms key to another key, that could be used to store copy of data object.

DrupalCamp Kyiv 2011 rocks the Drupal scene!

Submitted by vadim on Mon, 06/06/2011 - 13:46

I was very excited about attending DrupalCamp Kyiv 2011. It was awesomeness and the most fantastic Drupal event that I have ever visited in Eastern Europe. It had the same Drupal spirit as one was on DrupalCon Copenhagen 2010. Most of the slides were in English. Interesting sessions were performed by guys who worked in Belgium company Inuits, which was sponsoring students to attend this event.

I was visiting sessions about Services, MongoDB, Git, Varnish, participated in the small talk with Yuri Gerasimov about future of Menu Token module and performed two sessions. First one was about Best practices for cross-browser compatibility of Drupal website, which I prepared for DrupalCon Chicago 2011 and the second one was about OpenAcaDept – Drupal distribution for building academic departmental websites.

I was very happy to meet and to drink beer with some well known guys in Ukrainian community. They had made great contributions to d.o and at that time were seating in front of each other and having fun. I also liked talking to Michel and Safeen from MadCap.

I am speaking at DrupalCon Chicago

Submitted by vadim on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 01:05
dcc2011_speaker.png

I'm happy to announce that I'll be presenting the session, Best practices for cross-browser compatibility of Drupal website at DrupalCon Chicago!

This session is aimed to show the different ways of making your Drupal website to be cross-browser compatible. It includes overview of most often CSS issues and typical solutions that are done for Drupal:

  • Conditional Comments
  • CSS hacks
  • JavaScript tricks

Setting up Drupal development environment based on Ubuntu 10.10

Submitted by vadim on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 22:05
ubuntu-drupal.jpg

Following manual works perfectly for Ubuntu 11.04. It takes me about an hour to install all the things I need and configure them.

Linux is a best choice to be Drupal development environment, the benefits of it are powerfull shell, perfect command line applications, a lot of web development software and manuals for linux, and finally free price of Open Source. Well, the best Linux distro, I guess, is Ubuntu. I have tried OpenSUSE ans ASP Linux before, they are good too, however Ubuntu is the best. You can find many articles glorifying Ubuntu and they are fair. It is easy to install it and configure new software for it, Ubuntu supports newest hardware and perfectly plays video. It worth to use it.

The software we are going to install and configure

let's divide software on two parts by it's usage: web server and development. As a web server software we are going to install and configure Apache, PHP Memcache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Tomcat, Apache Solr and Postifx. As a development software we are going to use Xdebug, Drush, NetBeas, Aptana, etc...

Awesome Drupal monsters

Submitted by vadim on Thu, 12/09/2010 - 21:01
drupal_modules.jpg

How do they make such funny logos for Drupal modules? They are awesome Drupal monsters! And what do those modules do? Look:

  • Strongarm - Strongarm gives site builders a way to override the default variable values that Drupal core and contributed modules ship with.
  • Boxes - Boxes module is a reimplementation of the custom blocks (boxes) that the core block module provides.

Tuning up Drupal performance

Submitted by vadim on Fri, 11/05/2010 - 23:56
drupal_performance.png

Yesterday I was invited to the meeting in office of Gorod.ua, the Ukrainian web portal, to speak about Drupal performance. The way like those guys are using Drupal is good, however there are lack of performance. They are spreading a spirit of their child to the whole of Ukraine, so it is a time to expect more visitors. We spoke a lot and I got better understanding of what is needed. We touched many problems, including non typical ones and theoretically solved them.

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