Drupal

The deviantART Embed Drupal module version 1.0-beta2 is released.

In terms of user features, there is nothing new. But in terms of going the Drupal way, a major overhaul has been done on the module.

The dependancy list now includes the CCK, Embedded Media Field and Views modules. The project itself is split into two modules: deviantART Embed, and deviantART blocks.

This project is mainly the glue between core Drupal and the other reliable contributed modules. In fact, all the current features of deviantART module can be installing and enabling these dependent modules and manually configuring them. The module aims at providing the 'out of the box' experience in terms of integration with deviantART.com with a Drupal powered website.

The 6.x-1.0-beta2 release is usable, and I would release the final 1.0 version after some feedback.

The next item on my TODO list for this project is to provide user account association with a deviantART account.

Yes, you are right. I am asking you to shift to using Twitter module instead of Twitter Block that I developed.

The reason is simple - Twitter module does a lot more than provide a Twitter block. It allows you to post directly to Twitter from your Drupal site. Just note that to use Twitter module as a Twitter block, you will need to install and activate Views and Views UI module.

It may seem like complicating things, but if you need flexibility and reliablity of a large team of Open Source enthusiasts, you should opt for the one that gets more effort put into.

You may not notice any change on my homepage sidebar, but I have shifted to using the Twitter module and it looks as my custom module with minimal change to the CSS. (I just changed the class to id supplied by the View).

Perhaps, I will write some basic documentation of what I got using the Twitter module.

This is related to the Twitter status you see on my homepage.

Update: There will be no support for Twitter Block module. Please use Twitter module instead. Read the reasoning here.

I was browsing around, when I came across Aaron's on adding Twitter to a Drupal site. Since I am in the process of redesigning my site, I was a little more aware of the closure variable and hence I commented so on his post. He nudged me on his respone through Twitter.

Thus, I created the Twitter Block module. It is quite minor and straight forward at this moment and advanced modules have already been coded. (See the modules download page over at Drupal.org).

Download module: Twitter Block

I am yet to put the license files, but it is provided under GPL. The installation is simple - just copy to your modules or sites/all/modules folder. You should get the Twitter Block menu in the admin/settings once you enable it. It lets you configure:

• Twitter User Account
• Twitter Block Title
• Disable/Enable Follow Me link
• Text of the Follow Me link

As far as the comment goes, I was able to add the Javascript references to the $closure variable. For a background, you can see from Twitter page, that putting the Javascript references near the footer increases the page load times.

Hot tip! To ensure loading of your page even in the case of twitter.com non-loading, move the two lines that start with <script type="text/javascript"... to the bottom of your page (just above </body>).

While coding this module, I took a wrong turn with the drupal_add_js() function, and after some trial and error, use the hook_footer() to get these Javascripts into the $closure variable properly.

Once you install and configure this module, you can sytle it by lathcing on to the block-twitterblock class. You can see the result of my current theming on the Twitter Block:

Credit goes to DryIcon via SmashingMagazine for providing the Twitter icon.

Finally, I got to the point where I upgraded to Drupal 6 for this website.

The regular readers might have noticed that there is a starking change in the theme. Earlier, I was using another theme, Alek 2.0. A beautiful theme, but it seemed to have problems with Drupal 6.x - or atleast with the set of modules I had installed.

Hence, I thought I would do "a quick and simple" theme myself. The result is here, and it can be called to be in a beta state - not sure if I would release it or not because the CSS is a bit messy. It turned out to be not that simple.

There are a few things I will be fixing in terms of styling the links (you can see a lot of blue and purple sprinkled around currently) which would all go monotone and be harmonized. Drupal, striving towards flexibility gives a lot of class attributes to the numerous elements and I am yet to have a full understanding of the theming architecture to do it efficiently.

I still remain impressed though - the theme as it is currently requires only one style CSS file, one tempate file (page.tpl.php) and the .info file.

Expect few more changes around here.