Beginning Drupal7 Book Review

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Posted on 24th March 2011 by Krow in Books

Beginning Drupal7 Book ImageBeing new to Drupal I thought that I would start with the basics. I decided to start with the APRESS Beginning Drupal 7 book. Here is my review of what I thought about the book and Drupal.

I was pleased with this book and would (and have) recommend it to anyone how is wanting to get started with Drupal. As I stated I have no experience with developing with Drupal and this book provides a great start. It was a quick read with lots of illustrations and provided you with the information needed to get going developing a basic website using Drupal. The book covered everything a beginner needs to know to get started, and presents it in a decent way without you feeling lost or confused.

Some of the features I found most helpful:

  • Authors suggestions for modules
  • Integrating social networking

The book was written when Drepal 7 was still in development and so some of the content is not so clearly explained as the writer would have to speculate as to how it would work in 7.

This book does not go into much detail about custom themes, modules or anything for that manor. But is a great starting point for anyone that is wanting to learn the basics of Drupal.

Some things I would have been interested to learn more about:

  • How to customize the Home page more
  • How to mange the built in Content Form
  • More information regarding Views

Overall this book is a great start and introduction to Drupal and I now look forward to reading “Pro Drupal” and “Foundation Drupal 7″ next.

Installing FireFox4 in Ubuntu

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Posted on 23rd March 2011 by Krow in Browsers |Ubuntu

So now that Mozilla’s Firefox’s latest release has been released people who run Linux are wanting to get their hands on it. This is not a hard thing to do but still is confusing to some.

I hope that this post will help those who are searching for the help.

  1. Open a terminal and type the following commands
    • sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/firefox-stable
    • sudo apt-get update
    • sudo apt-get install firefox ubufox

That is it. Start FireFox as you normally do. It will then check that the “Add-Ons” that you have installed are compatible. I have about half a dozen there were not compatible but the ones that I needed were (i.e. FireBug, DummyLipsum Generator, WebDeveloper, Read It Later etc.)

Hope this help. Please let me know what you think of the new version. So far I am liking it.

I am back

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Posted on 11th March 2011 by Krow in Miscellaneous

It has been almost exactly one year since I last wrote. To those who have continued to come back thank you. I have had a lot happen in the past year. But to those fateful followers have made me feel guilty for not writing more.

So to those followers I say: “I am back and have many things to write about.”

This last year I have learned, experienced, and thought about many things. I can’t wait to write about them all. But this post is an overview of last year, what I learned and what I hope to write about.

One of the biggest things that happened to me is the birth of my 4th son Sean. I forgot of how much work a newborn is and at the same time how much joy they are. My family has and still is the greatest thing in the world to me. My wife is so understanding of my weaknesses, hopes, dreams, desires, and faults (OCD, perfectionist) and my glutardness. My kids are great as well. I have learned so much from my children and they are truly the light of my life. Thank you for help and love.

The past couple of months have been hard as well. I have missed my mother a lot lately. I have had so much happen to me in the past month that I have missed having her to speak to. She was always so helpful by lending me an ear and advice of what she felt was best. It has been a hard month for me and I have wanted that “other person” to talk to for an outside look in. Something she was great at.

This year I have pushed my limits to the max. I have been learning and working on learning everything possible to be the project manager my job is needing. I have read 3 books on project management this year and many many blogs and opinions out there on the subject.

I have read book on SVN and learned more then I thought I would. But due to my position at work I don’t get to work with it as much as I would like. But even the basic understanding of it has helped me as the PM at work.

I have also been exploring the science and mystery of SEO. I have read only 1 book so far on the issue but have learned so much. I am excited to post what I have learned to get feedback from others.

Another issue I have now started to explore is Drupal. Just another tool I would like to try to add to my belt.

One other thing that has helped me with this learning is the start of a local user group that I and a friend has done. This group is known as Davis Open Source Group. We have received sponsorship with Apress publishing and this has been a great help.

Again thanks to everyone. I am back and will post more to share with those what I know and hope to learn more from those out there.

Here is to new beginnings.