Discussions of Drupal, Web Development, and Libraries

Site Authors

Covering the Drupal content management system, web development, different aspects of librarianship and libraries, and the personal pursuits of Mark and Jill

Teens and Social Networking Survey

Thank you for taking the time to answer my survey about how you use social networks. Your answers could be published! Srsly, I'm writing a book about how teens use social networks and I might just use your survey answers in my book!

Setting Up a Luminis Channel That Displays Links to Scantron Class Climate Course Evaluations: A Recipe

If you are working at a university or other institution that makes use of the Luminis portal application delivered by Sungard Higher Education and you're wanting to set up a channel that pulls in survey links from Scantron's Class Climate system for students to fill out course evaluations, this recipe is intended for you.

Requirements to use this recipe:

  • Luminis IV
  • Separate server that can run PHP version 5
  • Scantron Class Climate v4.0 server w/ web services API

Adding an .htaccess Rule to Make Simpler Links to Drupal Files

In a site I was recently working on, I found myself hard-coding links to files stored within my Drupal site's "files" directory. If you've ever coded these links before, you know that they normally look something like:
/sites/[sitename]/files/[someotherdirectory]/image.jpg

This can be somewhat painful to add to the site, especially if you have any plans to ever change the domain name of your site. It would really be ideal if you could leave the domain name out of the equation and just write the link in the format:
/files/[someotherdirectory]/image.jpg

This is actually possible to do using the .htaccess file that appears in the root of your Drupal installation. Basically you just need to add a single line:
RewriteRule ^files/(.*)$ /sites/%{HTTP_HOST}/files/$1 [L]

After you implement this rule, you should be able to start writing simpler links to your "files" directory.

Happy coding!

Image of the rewrite rule and the alternate links. See PDF on DIWD Site.

How to Set Up a Luminis Automated Notification for the Group Request Queue: A Recipe

If you are working at a university or other institution that makes use of the Luminis portal application delivered by Sungard Higher Education and you’re making use of the included Group Studio tools, you have probably noticed small a flaw with this section of the application. Luminis does not, by default, actively alert administrators when new groups have been requested by users of the system.

An Open Letter to Kristin Cashore

Ms. Cashore,

Thank you for writing Fire. That is all.

Sincerely,
Jill Jarrell

Basic PHP Code Troubleshooting Strategy

Well, I originally wrote this for a coworker, but thought that others might be interested in a simple strategy to use while investigating a problem during PHP coding, so here it is.

We've moved and I'm writing

Sorry I've been silent of late but we have been in the throes of relocating from Colorado Springs, CO to Clarksville, TN. Mark has taken a new position in the IT Department with Austin Peay State University. We've been in Clarksville now for about a month and we are slowly settling in. In addition to relocating, I'm currently co-writing a new book for teen librarians and teachers with Tara Cannon (previously of the Pikes Peak Library District). We are so very excited about this book as it focuses on a topic very near and dear to our hearts--teen nonfiction.

Library Skate Night at Skate City

This past Tuesday evening 80 teens participated in our Library Skate Night at Skate City! Skate City sponsored the teen summer reading program by giving us a private party with free tickets to 4 hours of skating with skate rentals included! Skate City even provided a bus to pick up 17 teens from the Fountain Library, our southern most branch. The Skate City staff were very friendly and accommodating and went out of their way to make sure that library staff and teens had a great time.

Day in the Life of...

So, here's my addition to the Day in the Life of a Librarian meme :)

7:20AM awake and doing all the normal getting ready for work type activities.

9:00AM arrive at work, parking in the overflow parking lot. And lug the huge backpack full of brochures, library card applications and other booth paraphernalia to my desk (My next post will be all about the library skate night at Skate City so stay tuned!).

DrupalCamp Colorado Form Alterations Presentation Files

Yesterday, I gave a presentation at DrupalCamp Colorado entitled "Form Alterations - Getting What You Want in Drupal Without Hacking". I wanted to make sure that everyone has access to the files from the presentation, so here those are:

Session Page:
http://drupalcampcolorado.org/sessions/form-alterations-getting-what-you...

Slides:

File: