I recently read the trending article The Web We Have to Save, by blogger Hossein Derakhshan ('Hoder'), who had been imprisoned in Iran for six years. In the article, he talks about how the internet had changed over that time. Quality can be drowned out; what is important is diluted in amongst the trivial. Personally, I believe any expression of culture will reflect the society it flows from. The internet is a global society, so incorporates so many different aspects of humanity - different, good, and bad. What does the internet say about our global society? I believe that we should all take responsibility to some extent -- especially those of us in the business of websites and content on the internet! Can we contribute to a more responsible internet? Are we equipped to do so?
We had a lovely time at Drupalcamp Bristol - and especially enjoyed trying to tell the world about our build pipe and automated testing setup. Sadly Mike's trusty laptop died just as he was about to demonstrate some exciting live action testing - but at least it meant everyone got to get to coffee a couple of minutes early. As promised the slide deck is available below - using google slides because it's slightly cooler...
Anyone familiar with developing with Drupal will be very familiar with how we use hooks to leverage functionality provided by other modules and the core itself. We use them as part of the course when it comes to wanting to tweak data or even extend some core functionality, but how do we expose our own hooks for others to be able to alter what our custom modules do without the need for a developer having...
Openlayers has a Drupal module which enables you to add maps to your site. We added locations and categories to the events on CoventryMotoFest.com, and wanted to be able to show maps of certain event categories - or just all of them. Once you get playing with Openlayers, though, you quickly find that it doesn't look that great. Whilst MapBox provides incredible customisation of the map itself, the popups and layer switcher just don't look...
We've done a fair bit of reading around lately, thinking through different ideals on content construction. There's a fine balance to be struck between atomic units of content, vs. an enormous amorphous blob of formatted HTML, and articles like this by Wim Leers and sessions like this provide great food for thought. ComputerMinds recently sponsored the site for Coventry Motofest, and I was lucky enough to be part of the team. We've done a few...
In recent months there has been much hype over the newest addition to Apple’s product portfolio: the Apple Watch. It’s undoubtedly an impressive looking piece of kit and Apple have been quick to show off its many features in an attempt to get developers thinking up weird and wonderful applications to make the most out of this whole new approach to how users both consume and interact with their content. But what does the Apple...
On April 21st, Google updated their mobile search algorithms to boost the rankings of mobile-friendly web pages, whilst conversely decreasing rankings for pages that have been designed only for large screens. This change is likely to have a big impact on many Drupal sites, and ComputerMinds have seen a surge in requests for retrofitting responsive themes onto existing Drupal sites. More information about the change - which is commonly reffered to as ‘mobilegeddon’ can be...
We are really excited to be a gold sponsor for the Bristol Drupalcamp. The event takes place on the 3rd and 4th of July and we will hopefully be bringing some super exciting drupal powered remote control cars - watch this space!