Oliver Polden

My top Utility modules for Drupal

This list created with the help of ‎Drupal.org project link filter

Hotkey
Keyboard shortcut
Form Tips
Build modes
ModalFrame Exclude From Node
User Quota
Clicktale
jQuery Msg Alert
Realtime CSS Editor
Nice dash
Userfly Advanced Integration
lc
Page renderer
Desktop Notify
Scrolling Tutorials
Web Slices
Bot user interface
Domain Access
Domain Bulk Import/Export
Config Check
Calendar Block
Environment Indicator
Logging and alerts
SEO Watcher
Pageroute
Manager
Dynamic Dashboard for Storm (Project Management)

How to get the variables available in a Drupal template

This is such a basic PHP function but easy to forget and hard to find for some reason. Anyway, here are a selection of the best ways to find what variables are available in a template file.

First off, the function you need is:

get_defined_vars();

The quickest way to use it is to put the following in your template file:

print_r(get_defined_vars());

Next, install the devel module. Once installed you will now have a 'Devel' tab available when viewing nodes (if you have the correct permission set up).

Drupal popup forms

I've been trying to find a standardised way of creating popup forms that appear in a lightbox. Everything just seemed too inelegant. Then it hit me... Why not use the Drupal menu system itself to form the basis of this functionality?

First of all, this is for Drupal 6 but the technique is probably almost identical for Drupal 7.

How it's done.

Whenever I build something, I always build an HTML fallback. I usually find it makes you think in the right way and greatly simplifies coding. So first of all you build a normal menu item where the page callback is 'drupal_get_form'.

Super high value Continuous Integration test with Drupal, Jenkins and Selenium

Sometimes unit testing is a lot of work, especially if you have a system that has had many months of development without it.

One very valuable test is to check there are no errors in the Drupal log after you've committed new code.

First I clear the Drupal error log when Jenkins runs an update from version control using Drush:

cd /var/lib/jenkins/jobs/mysite
drush --uri=http://test.mysite.com watchdog delete all

Prometheus Traffic and Lead generation software tool for affiliate marketers

Prometheus is an amazing new software that is coming out that will allow you to find existing sources of traffic and also leads. This is a great tool that will be amazing for affiliate online or internet marketers. You could even just create a business to match leads classified as buyers to leads classified as sellers.

When it's available I will post a link to it here.

Here's a bit more about it:
http://www.prometheusleadgenerationsoftware.com

and here's a great webinar:
http://tiny.cc/hc4h0

Setting up memcache and memcached in Drupal

Memcache had always seemed like some magic black box to me until the last time I set it up and really took the time to understand what it does.

I'd say there are two main benefits to memcache:

  1. Reducing hits on the database - all of Drupal's normal caching can be set to store in memory instead of the database thereby reducing expensive inserts and large numbers of reads

How to do online trading

I recently went to a trading course and learned some great stuff. When you don't know anything about trading it can seem like a mammoth task to actually do an online trade let alone find the right tools to use and choose the right shares to trade. So I created a book to teach people the fundamentals of how to do online trading.

Setting up automated Selenium testing with Jenkins/Hudson

Please note: This article is old and refers to Selenium Server which has been deprecated by Selenium Webdriver so the following post is now pretty useless!

Kubuntu VS Ubuntu... again

So Natty has been out for a couple of weeks now. Some of my computers are up to date, I'm honestly not sure which ones are, I guess that's a good thing because it means nothing can be seriously broken!

I still feel like I want to be using Ubuntu rather than Kubuntu because of performance but rather than do a direct comparison I thought I would just list stuff day to day that I think I might miss if I moved to Ubuntu. I'm sure there's stuff I would prefer in Ubuntu but I don't know because I don't use it yet!

Day One

Kindle DX, iPad or other tablet?

I've got a Kindle 3 with a 6in display which I love. It's just great and very comfortable to read. But I've found quite a lot of PDFs that I want to read. They're all A4. The Kindle screen is good enough that you can generally read an A4 page scaled to 6 inches, but then you get the occasional smaller text and diagrams which make it not quite practical.

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Author of...

  • My blog about 'Time is NOT money'... and value http://t.co/g2C6pZy0 12 years 7 weeks ago
  • I've found an excellent query logging and filtering module for Drupal. Not available via http://t.co/U1Xe92Th: http://t.co/2qvg1DgE 12 years 11 weeks ago
  • I've just spotted my first © 2011 at the bottom of a website. 12 years 11 weeks ago
  • @da_lune That's the spirit, oh, too late @gavinbrook, Wordpress is fantastic & now more than a blogging tool but Drupal = more functionality 12 years 15 weeks ago
  • @oliverpolden is having an amazing day for many reasons. I feel like giving back: http://t.co/JvKVVMBF Have a request? use the contact form. 12 years 15 weeks ago
  • The world's population is 7 billion. If a few 'competing' companies mutually helped each other get more customers business would be easy. 12 years 15 weeks ago
  • @Casablanca Amazing photos! Thank you for sharing. 12 years 16 weeks ago
  • Ahh, the Christmas Snow module for Drupal: http://t.co/QzvkQiT2 12 years 16 weeks ago