Archive for the ‘web development’ Category
WordPress MU for Joomla! from corePHP
November 2nd, 2010
Continuing with our movement to truly collaborate with as many Joomla developers as possible, we were sent a test copy of corePHP’s WordPress MU for Joomla! For the unacquainted, this is a full version of WordPress INSIDE Joomla! for those who want the best blog software inside the most versatile CMS.
Installation
I tested on a local MAMP install and the install process was timing out, so I checked the filesize – 2.5mb
 That’ll do it. This makes sense, since the component contains WordPress (duh). So I just unpacked in the tmp directory and installed from a directory and bam, the install worked in a snap.
At the end of the installed, you’re instructed to move a couple of key files for WordPress to work properly. I wish there was a link, but that’s just because I’m lazy. I like that it wasn’t automated, because I like to know when files are being moved into these particular directories.
I think clicked the link to Start Blogging, and pow, I’m in the WordPress admin. I fully expected this, but it’s still crazy at first. As a side note and time for a plug, using our AdminPraise2 Joomla! admin template with the WordPress inspired theme would really provide a seamless admin experience.
First Impressions
I clicked the link to preview my blog, and was taken to my Joomla! site, with a fully functional, fully integrated WordPress blog, and I’m severely impressed. I created a Joomla! menu item, where you can enter the ID of which blog you’d like displayed (since you can have multiple in WordPress MU), and there’s my site’s blog!
You can quickly add a new blog for a new user, as the Joomla! users are synced with WordPress.
Additional Extensions
corePHP gives you an entire slew of modules including tags, latest, and several others. They also included every native WordPress plugin you could possibly need. Lastly, they’ve included JomSocial plugins that will give your community the ability to have their own WordPress powered blog, sweet! I didn’t get to test the JomSocial plugins, but I’m sure it shows latest blog activity on the users’ JomSocial profile, and adds blog activity into the JomSocial activity stream.
Issues
I can’t give a perfect review of anything, it’s just not genuine (or in my nature). The only conflict I found was that the frontend layout for WordPress MU for Joomla! shares some common IDs used in Joomla! templates, such as “content” and “navigation”. These are commonly used in any layout from any CMS, so I’m sure they’re included as they would be in any WordPress layout, but to work well inside Joomla! they’d need names like “wp-content” and “wp-navigation”. This would take 2 seconds for the end user to fix, so it’s certainly not a show-stopper, but I could see a customer getting stumped and possibly confused for a moment.SuperBlog
With about 5 minutes of CSS love, I was able to get WordPress MU by corePHP working with our SuperBlog template. Not bad if I do say so myself.
Pricing
$79.95 for Single Blog, $99.95 for MU (as tested), $420.95 for 6 Site License
Rating
- Best blog software inside the best CMS
- Superb integration (frontend and backend)
- All the extensions you’ll need
- Price point may be high for some
- Possible (tiny) template conflicts
Update – New WordPress MU Quick Icons Admin Module!
We enjoyed our testing so much, we’ve gone ahead and created a new WP Icons admin module, with quicklinks to all the pages in the WordPress admin. Just like the AP Icons in AdminPraise2, it contains all the links with the ability to hide, or display to Manager & above, Administrator & above, or only Super Admins. Look for lots more of these types of modules from us soon!
Here’s a couple of screenshots of WP Icons in AdminPraise2 (WordPress theme) and the default admin template:
Configuring a mobile Drupal site and making your theme mobile friendly
October 27th, 2010
In this tutorial I’ll explain how to setup your Drupal site to be mobile friendly. Before you begin, it’s helpful to consider the following: 1) which mobile devices to support; 2) using a different theme for mobile; 3) which hostnames will be used; 4) multi-site configuration options; and 5) any site alterations to simplify the mobile experience.
For my site, I decided on the following:
1) iPhones (to start)
2) Use a more clean theme for my mobile site: DevSeed’s Singular
3) redirect mobile traffic to a new subdomain (mobile.thedrupalblog.com)
4) I was using sites/default for my blog, so hosting another hostname on the same filesystem was not an issue
5) I decided to remove some items in my primary navigation, and add some jQuery (accordion effect) to collapse node content on my front page.
I added the new DNS for my subdomain to point to the same IP address of my main site. In a standard Apache vhosts configuration, you can add a ServerAlias directive to ensure the mobile hostname is handled by the main site’s vhost. For example:
ServerName thedrupalblog.com
ServerAlias mobile.thedrupalblog.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/thedrupalblog.com/httpdocs
I installed and enabled the Singular theme in sites/all/theme/singular.
I added some mobile specific configurations in my settings.php file (sites/default/settings.php):
/**
* Mobile Theme Configuration
*/
// define mobile http host
define(‘MOBILE_HTTP_HOST’, ‘mobile.thedrupalblog.com’);
// define mobile theme
define(‘MOBILE_THEME’,’singular’);
// override custom theme for mobile site
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] == MOBILE_HTTP_HOST) {
$GLOBALS['custom_theme'] = MOBILE_THEME;
}
// check for iPhone
$is_iphone = preg_match(‘/iphone/i’, $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
// redirect to mobile theme
if ($is_iphone && $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']!=MOBILE_HTTP_HOST) {
header(‘Location: http://’ . MOBILE_HTTP_HOST);
die;
}
?>
Now, if someone visits my site using an iPhone, the user would be redirected to my specified mobile address, AND a new mobile theme would be used!
In addition, I decided to make some alterations to my mobile theme to simplify the interface. I created a module and added a hook_preprocess_page() implementation:
function MYMODULE_preprocess_page(&$vars) {
// only process page variables if this is the mobile address
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] != MOBILE_HTTP_HOST) {
return;
}
// define mobile javascript
/*
NOTE: this jQuery is very specific to my theme, and is just shown as an example.
I looked into using jquery_ui’s accordion library, but it would not work out of the box with the structure of my new mobile theme 
In an ideal situation, all jQuery would be put in separate include files
*/
$js = “
// define node container
var node_container = ‘.front #page #content’;
// define function to collapse node content
function collapse_nodes() {
$(node_container + ‘ .node div’).hide();
}
// define function to add click event
function node_title_add_click() {
$(node_container + ‘ .node h2.node-title a’).click(function(){
collapse_nodes();
$(‘div’, $(this).parent().parent()).show();
return false;
});
}
$(document).ready(function(){
collapse_nodes();
node_title_add_click();
});
“;
drupal_add_js($js, ‘inline’);
// rebuild scripts variable
$vars['scripts'] = drupal_get_js();
// determine a list of hrefs to remove from primary navigation
$href_remove = array(
‘drupal’,
‘tagadelic/chunk/1′,
‘recent-posts’,
‘rss.xml’,
‘logout’,
‘contact’,
);
// loop through primary links and remove as necessary
if (is_array($vars['primary_links'])) {
foreach ($vars['primary_links'] as $key => $value) {
if (in_array(strtolower($value['href']), $href_remove)) {
unset($vars['primary_links'][$key]);
}
}
}
}
?>
By added the above module code and jQuery, I removed some items from my primary navigation and added an accordion-like interface for the front page:
NOTE: If you’re using a Mac, the iPhone Simulator application (which comes with Xcode + iPhone SDK) is a great way to development and test mobile configurations.
You can find original post here : http://thedrupalblog.com/
Setting up a symfony project with PHPUnit on Hudson
October 26th, 2010
We are using Hudson now for several months as Continous Integration System. This short article describes how we have configured a hudson project for a symfony 1.4 project. I am assuming that the reader is already used to Hudson and knows how a normal project has to be configured.
PHPUnit is the test framework of our choice (surprise, surprise) and we are using the sfPHPUnit2Plugin for all our projects. If you do not now this plugin you may first read another post where the usage and features are described in detail.
All requirements in short:
* Hudson has to be installed
* Hudson plugin xUnit Plugin has to be installed
* the symfony project needs the sfPHPUnit2Plugin
* PHPUnit has to be installed on your test server
Ok, here the configuration steps of the hudson project:
1. Configure your project
Configure standard settings for a hudson project like source-code management settings or email notifications. Please check the official docs if you do not know how to handle this.
2. Add a shell build step
Building a symfony project in a test environment is pretty easy. With the help of some shell commands the project is completely configured and ready for testing. Those shell commands may be entered in the build step section of the hudson project. Defining the correct commands is the main part during the configuration process.
Our configuration looks like this:
1. cd $WORKSPACE/trunk
2. sh _deployment/install_test.sh
3. php symfony cc
4. php symfony phpunit:test-all –configuration –options=”–log-
5. junit=build/testresult_$BUILD_NUMBER.xml” cd build
6. ln -s -f testresult_$BUILD_NUMBER.xml currentTestResult.xml
1. Jump in the project root of the project
2. Install the project on the test server with the help of a internal shell script. This step includes for example the generation of the databases.yml.
3. Clear the symfony cache (always a good choice)
4. Run all PHPUnit tests including unit and functional tests. The test result is written in a jUnit compatible logfile (needed for the xUnit Plugin).
5. Jump in the build directory, which is internally used by Hudson
6. Symlink the latest testresult
3. Configure Post-Build-Action
After the xUnit Plugin is installed correctly, an additional PHPUnit Pattern field should be displayed in the post build action section. In this field has to be entered:
1 trunk/build/currentTestResult.xml
The options “Fail the build if test results were not updated this run” and “Delete temporary JUnit file” should be both checked.
The xUnit Plugin takes the currentTestResult.xml file, which was previously created with the help of the sfPHPUnit2Plugin and analyzes it. When everything works fine, you should be able to review the created test reports.
Here some screenshots how this result could look like.
Build history:
Trend graph of the test results:
You can find the original post here : http://dev.esl.eu/blog/category/symfony/
A new perspective on the future development of Joomla!
October 26th, 2010
There have been endless discussions around how Joomla! is developed and maintained. One thing is clear though: development is quite slow and new significant features for the end user have not yet been introduced since the Mambo days… It’s one of the reasons we decided to build K2, so we could introduce more modern and popular features into Joomla! now.
But how could the development of Joomla! not be slow? Given that the core team are human beings and not robots that work 24 hours a day on coding and debugging Joomla!, it’s really simple to realize why the development process is slow. Additionally, it is not easy to contribute code to Joomla! because there are certain protocols need to be followed that make the entire process even slower.
Obviously this is not a post to bash the core team but a new thought on how we could possibly see Joomla! being development in the not so distant future.
So how could we speedup Joomla! development?
It’s really simple. Joomla! is modular by nature. So why not make development modular as well?
Here’s a realistic example: Joomla! is made up of components like com_content (for articles), com_menus (for the menu management system), com_polls (for the polls) and so on. The Joomla! team could easily “contract” some professional developers and have them undertake the development of a specific component or perhaps module or plugin or whatever!
Imagine this: Joomla! 1.6 will be released without comments (despite original claims for the opposite). How difficult would it be for some developers to create a comments component, contribute it to the default Joomla! 1.6 distribution and also be responsible for maintaining the code!
One thing is for sure. A lot of weight would be lifted off the core team and significantly boost Joomla!’s development. If a bug is introduced on the above example of the comments component, the developers of that component could issue an upgrade and deliver the upgrade through joomla.org to all Joomla! users. Why update an entire Joomla! website when there is a specific problem in some component?
It’s how things work in bigger software deployments like operating systems (OS). Teams and sub-teams developing and maintaining individual applications that make up the end product. The best example I guess is from the Linux world where there are applications developed for certain Linux distributions – the bond is so strong that you think they are actually part of the OS (see Ubuntu).
To conclude, I don’t think it will be hard for the Joomla! core team to find such developers to code and maintain specific elements of Joomla!. If others can do this in projects with a gazillion lines of code, then Joomla! can do it too.
We (as JoomlaWorks) have offered to code (yes, code, not debug) many times and I know a lot more people who have expressed the same interest as well. And I know it’s difficult for the core team to just give away SVN access to others. I wouldn’t easily trust other devs to code on K2! But I would certainly trust someone to develop and maintain a module of K2 and have it included in the default distribution.
The only hard part is for the Joomla! core team to actually approve that some developer can deliver quality code by some standards, but it’s really no biggie. We are a large community and there’s a lot of talent to jump in and help things out. Can you imagine what a positive impact this would have to Joomla!’s PR and especially to users of other content management systems?
What do you think?
You can find the original post here : http://blog.joomlaworks.gr/a-new-perspective-on-the-future-development-o