Aug 27, 2010

The Micropublisher

This summer I was a mentor for the Google Summer of Code program for Drupal. I maintain the Facebook-style Statuses module, which allows users to have a stream of “status updates” on their user profiles and to write messages on other users’ profiles, like Facebook. So when I had the chance to mentor the Facebook-style Micropublisher proposal, which built on Facebook-style Statuses to allow attaching images, links, and video to status updates, I jumped on it.

The result was a resounding success, and I learned a lot during the process. Nitin Gupta, the student driving the project (and better known to some as publicmind) was an extraordinary developer in the true Drupal spirit. He gracefully put up with my pickiness about coding style, thoroughly researched the best code architecture for our purposes, and even identified places where Facebook-style Statuses itself could become more flexible. I truly believe that Nitin will remain committed to the module he created, and that both of us are better Drupal developers as a result of this process. read more »


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Aug 19, 2010

Drupal Commons

Drupal Commons is a Drupal distribution billed as “social business software.” That means that Acquia is distributing Drupal bundled with some other modules preconfigured to work as a company’s interactive user-facing website. Drupal Commons 1.0 was released on August 5th. read more »


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Jul 26, 2010

The yellow brick road

Recently I’ve given presentations on Social Networking in Drupal. In my mind, status updates are a central tenet of any successful social networking platform, which is why I built the Facebook-style Statuses module for Drupal. There’s more to social networking than status updates though. In this post I’m going to go through some of the standard features of social networks to identify some of the places I hope Drupal will grow. read more »


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Jul 7, 2010

A social network

Since giving a presentation on social networking in Drupal, a number of people have asked me which “friend” module they should use. It’s a good question, and the answer is of course that it depends on your site. This post should explain the relative advantages and disadvantages of both to help you choose which one will work the best for you. read more »


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