Hey All!

Sorry for our lack of blogging. Jon and I have both been doing lots of Drupal theming on various projects. We promise to blog more when we get some time (like when we finish moving this site over to Drupal 7 :o)

In the mean time, I’ve been tweaking out since I haven’t done anything creative for a few months and have been failing miserably at keeping an updated personal site. Sidenote: Another problem with the personal site is that I have a tendency to completely ditch my previous design and create a new one every few weeks or design something so unusable that I am completely filled with glee, while my users (friends?) just rip me a new one about proper design. It’s my own site! I do what I want! Oh no, I’ve becoming sidetracked.

Back to post. I present to you, the new and improved, mostly readable, probably unusable in anything older then IE7, philipscheffer.com.

Visit PhilipScheffer.com Now!

PHP is a very powerful programming language which is favored more than many other languages when it comes to web functionality. In a personal viewpoint after learning functions and then on to classes you can start building much more advanced scripts and the only limit is your imagination.

First lets get an basic understanding on how functions and classes work together. A class would refer to a “vehicle” in whole, and each function would be each “component” to make that vehicle run. Classes can not work correctly without functions, however you can run functions without a parent Class. Since this is the case, lets first build a function to see how they work.

The only prerequisites needed to follow along with this tutorial would either be a server (online) or a offline “localhosted” service. If you would look for a easily deployable PHP install check out: http://www.apachefriends.org. Their packages support: Linux, Windows and OSX.

After you have a enviroment to work in lets start off by creating a file in your server’s live directory called: “helloworld.php”. Then proceed to write some code as follows:

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<?php
 
/* Lets build our function below! This is a basic print function  */
function helloWorld() {
	print 'Hello everyone! Check out my small function!';
}
 
/* Now we will call our inline function and invoke the print! */
helloWorld();
 
?>

Granted that is very simple, but we need to start somewhere. Lets now more fancy and invoke some parameters to this function. You can either EDIT the previous file or create another, but lets modify some code to print some dynamic text.

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<?php
 
/* Lets build our function below! This is a basic print function  */
function helloWorld($name) {
	print 'Hello everyone! My name is ' . $name . '. Check out my small function!';
}
 
/* Now we will call our inline function and invoke the print! */
helloWorld('Jonathan');
 
?>

That following script should print out what ever is inside the “function call” which in our case is “Jonathan”. This again was very basic but can easily have IF ELSE statements, or other variables passed into a function. There is something to remember about functions, is that any items within the function can not be accessed from outside. Any internal variables are only accessible from within. Once familiar with building functions you will notice how much easier they turn code into. Lets see a real world use of a more complex function.

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<?php
 
/* connect to a database */
require("db.inc.php");
 
/* build a mysql_query function that can be used multiple times without duplicating queries. */
function query($query){
  return mysql_query($query);
}	
 
/* turn the query into a variable */
$results = query("SELECT * FROM users");
 
/* lets loop through the results and print a user name */
while($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($results))
{
	print $row['name'];
}
 
?>

Lets now learn up on “classes”! Again this could be considered the whole “automobile” or full unit with all its functions. One example where i use classes would be for “database” functions. Anything that interacts with the database will be within that class.

First we would need to figure out what our class will be doing, for my particular instance we will be continuing the database “theme” and create a “database” class. Lets create a new file called “database.class.php” and put the following code:

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<?php
 
class MySQLDB
{
 
	/* connect to a database */
	require("db.inc.php");
 
	/* build a mysql_query function that can be used multiple times without duplicating queries. */
	function query($query){
	  return mysql_query($query);
	}	
 
};
 
/* Create database connection */
$database = new MySQLDB;
 
?>

Notice in the script the function “query” is not being executed anywhere in that snippit, the reason behind that is normally you would be including your “classes” into your documents rather than inline coding. This object oriented coding allows for you to break your code into “building blocks” which are easier to maintain. In our example you would be keeping all your database functions in one spot.

Now, you can not just “call” the function by just typing: function query(); anymore. Now since its in a class you will now be using the line: $database->query(); which again helps keep all your code more organized.

Hopefully this has helped some, and feel free to ask questions or help in regards to my code. I tried to stay simple but this can lead to a very hard and complicating subject.

IF you would like to know more and dont mind reading documentation please read up on:

Functions: PHP – Functions
Classes & Objects: PHP – Classes & Objects

Riot Riot is back in “The Valley” and missing the awesome sites, sounds and smells of San Francisco. Our final day was spent catching up on work for our clients, replying to new people we met at DrupalCon and sightseeing.

DrupalCon was great for RiotRiot. We learned new things, met new people, and came away wanting to contribute more to the community (more on that in another post). The rain stayed in its clouds (like its supposed to) for almost all of our trip and last but not least, the food was awesome.

Food highlights from San Francisco:

• Cha Cha Cha – Great sangria!
• Gott’s Roadside Eatery – Awesome hamburgers and the best garlic fries.
• Pazzia Caffe and Tattoria – Delicious bruschetta (The owner gave us an order for free while we waited for friends!)
• Thirsty Bear Brewary – Delcious beer. Ok food.
• Specialty Cafe – Long lines = good (most of the time)
• House of Nanking – The calamari is just awesome. This was the 2nd time I went there since February. It was less busy and you could tell in the quality of the food.
• Rotten City Pizza – Last delicious food stop in E’ville. Man it was so good.

Thirsty Bear

House of Nanking

Rotten City Pizza

ps. Dont use Yelp.

After this session and reviewing some notes i felt that (at least the beginning part) this presentation was great because it did give me some new things to implement into our (rr) business plan and our design process.

I am going to share some points that i feel are really important. As brought out in the beginning of the session, it begins here:

Defining Your Process

1. Identify the areas in which you work
2. Put the steps of your process into order
3. Ask yourself is this really into the way we work?
4. Can we simplify out work process?
   1. Workflow
   2. Verbal overview
   3. Presentations
   4. Graphic form of processes
      1. Are they simple?
      2. Direct?
      3. Attractive?
         1. A well defined process shoold describe the way you work and clearly show value it offers
5. Target the work you belong too.
   1. Work closely to the clients and have a great experience with the building. The take away from both parties shoold be refining processes. Enable what you are trying to do.
   2. When changing processes to fit early on with a solid prototype prevents lots of frustrations.
   3. Connecting the development with the clients will allow for excitement and help get through the process. Any gap will be lowered.
   4. Good clients will acknowledge the processes.
6. Focus on what is best for your client
   1. Again refine the process again so that we can deliver more and more to each client.
   2. Not only being simpler, but to improve the value of your service. Improving your approach to the design function coold be tedious but has many advantages but it will allow for merging all the best idea’s after getting feedback.
   3. Be open to any feedback a client will give us otherwise we are constricting what involvement is needed.
   4. If they are not prepared and accepted into helping they feel a loss of freedom. This is a precedent.
7. Find the rough spots.
   1. If a process is hard for you, then it is impossible for your clients.
8. Pursue great projects and clients if it is a bad fit walk away.
   1. This is super important because if they do not fit into your process this will never end in satisfaction.
   2. Be choosie, but really know what your getting into and be selective.
9. BE BOLD
   1. When changing through processes even when they are working be bold and always improve. NEVER just sit on a project process since there is always room to be better.
   2. Listen to what other firms are doing and how they succeed.
10. Communicating your process
    1. Actual value converted into perceived value.
       1. Show clientele what you’ve done, and services so that its not YOU convincing them but its your work.
    2. Show what you DO and what you DON’T do. That way there is no grey area’s… this will prevent clients expecting something that you do not or cannot do.
    3. Open communication will help set a foundation for a successfol project.

As said the presentation had a rough delivery but i made due with the content. There was many people that felt that the information wasnt important but i thought the contrary. Since being a new company and learning new information from a successful company can help no matter what. I hope anyone reading this felt the same way i did.

ALSO keep in mind this information was strictly information noted down from his presentation and does not reflect RIOTRIOT’s work schema or planning. However we might adopt some of the idea’s that we’re mentioned since they are legitimate good work practices.

Some of my favorite new Drupal 7 theming “features”:

• jQuery UI is in Core! Neato.
• html.tpl.php – Granular theming of HTML. Pretty cool.
• hide() and render() functions
• Alter functions can now happen in template.php. Rrrrawesome.

So, to toot our own horn, Jon and I are riding the BART from Emeryville to downtown San Francisco every day for DrupalCon. In doing so, we save an estimated 8.0 pounds of CO2 emissions per passenger, per ride (from MacAuthor to Montgomery St. stations.)Some light pencil work later: we will have omitted 96 pounds of CO2 emissions from going into the environment by the end of the Con. Are we now going around enjoying the smell of our own farts? YES. But I think the real issue is, why did San Francisco ever think it would be a good idea to put carpet floors and cloth seats in a commuter train?

Jon and I are in San Francisco attending Drupalcon 2010 to hone and learn our Drupal skillz (and possibly meet new people who want to hire us!) Day 1 was pretty varied. We are jumping around instead of following a track. Highlights below.

Views Examples – Arguments & Relationships

The best thing I learned from this was to select Fields link in Views UI to override all of the fields. This is a time saver as I normally always select a field, then chose to override, and save. It sounds trivial, but its awesome.

Theme Preprocess Functions — An Introduction

I just remember there was a failed live demo. UGH. I think the guy presenting was actually doing well up until that…

Lunch

Credit: gastronomyblog.wordpress.com

We had lunch with two of my old co-workers, Brian Fending and Kelly Lucas at Gott’s Roadside Eatery. Let me just say the garlic fries are awesome. Really wish I had taken a picture. If you are in SF, definitely check them out. I love food.

State of Drupal

Drupal is rapidly growing. It now is used for 1% of the top 1,000,000 websites that are actively tracked. Pretty awesome IMO. Dries said they think there are about 500,000 Drupal sites online currently (number is an estimate because Drupal 5 did not have the current version of update that pings home.) There is some other cool things coming, GIT, Drupal 7, RDF, Drupal 8 (:o) and much more. Was an interesting Rah Rah speech. I was encouraged. Tonight I am going to look at the Drupal 7 bug fix queue to see if there is anything there that I can do!

Monetizing Drupal

This panel of small businesses using Drupal to be profitable reaffirmed many obvious ideas, but golly its nice to hear it come out of someone else’s mouth, and be in the audience with a hundred other people nodding their heads. Contracting for the win!

Taunton Case Study

Jay Hartley from Taunton presented the cluster that was their work flow and explained how things are being corrected with Drupal. High five.

Photoshop to Template

Ok, I’m going to be honest… I’m writing this post currently. I already know how to theme.

Jon and I (Phil) are in San Francisco attending Drupalcon 2010. This is our first conference as Riot Riot, and it is very exciting. We arrived on a beautiful Sunday and were able to get some site seeing in (bridges, cliffs, naked hippies, etc.) We had dinner with some fellow Drupal developers and themers at Cha Cha Cha in the mission district. They have great tapas and sangria [Cha3.com].

We are guests of gracious host, Chelsea Mclaughlan [chelseastandsalone.com] and are ready for this exciting week! Check back later for more Drupalcon/SF updates!

Ever work in sync with another co-worker on a particular program or file? If that’s so i’m sure you know some of the problems that can be run into. There is the potential chance of file over-writing or mistakenly deleting something that you should not have. Philip and I have both encountered this before when working on projects, and trust me after spending many hours on a particular section on a site then only to be saved over by accident by your partner almost makes you want to smash your head into the wall.

This is where collaborative software comes into play, which we have been using constantly. Even more important is that we both can edit documents together if we have access to internet! This is crucial since we there are times when we are not physically next to each other. You are probably wondering what we have been using?

Panic’s CODA.

Neither of us can really tell you have valuable this program is. Obviously you need to be running OSX to use this, but trust me when i say this program is FAST, Lightweight and reliable. Barely ever has this program crashed, and the functionality works flawlessly. Of course there are parts of CODA that i feel are missing but all-in-all they get 5 stars from us at (rr).

If you are looking for some help with programming, CODA comes loaded with “books” to help programming! Most other programs do not supply help with code other than word/function suggestions. This becomes very helpful for new and experience programmers!

Another tool… that has to be another key part in over-the-internet collaborative design would be iChat or Skype! This allows audio chat while coding through the same document! That ensures that nothing is missed or confused! It would almost be like working side by side even though we might be thousands of miles apart.

The last tool… would probably be the use of google’s services weither it be DOCS or their email system. Its a free service, and quality so why not use whats available? Well there you have it, a little break down of Riot Riot’s design and development tools.

Huzzah!