Drupal Update - Days 1 and 2

I have spent the majority of the last two day's having my first look into the Drupal content management/development platform. My first impressions are that Drupal could actually be something quite useful for me when building sites that need to be maintained by somebody else. In fact, after a recent meeting with the Design and Technology teaching staff I'm using some of their ideas and requirements as a Drupal test subject. They want a gallery and a glossary and Drupal has modules for both - hurrah!

I have to admit however, for almost two full day's of work I don't have much of a site yet :$ If I had been using my usual photoshop / dreamweaver combo I would have at least had decent page template and some kind of site architecture. Alas, that has not been the case with Drupal.

Day 1 - Setting up a database and installing the core codebase. You would think that would be the easy part huh? Oh my god. I can not tell you how long it took me to set up that bloomin' database. I feel that the process was hindered by the fact that I actually read and followed some instructions. I spent an absolute age trying to run some kind of script in phpMyAdmin which I never actually got to work properly. I did a bit of asking around and decided to ftp the codebase to the server and see what happened anyway. It worked ... well, kind of. I spent a couple of hours trying to get the php.ini file working properly because my hosting isn't very Drupal friendly. I gave up and went home.

Day 2 - After giving up on the php.ini file on Day 1, I managed to get it working in literally moments on day 2. Typical. I then started playing around with installing new themes (easy peasy) and modules (easy peasy install to the back end but still no sign of them on the front end website). At one stage I found a seemingly very useful feature ... a site maintenance option that essentially turns off the site and displays a we're-working-on-it type message. This is all very well and good until you consider that you need to be IN the site to edit it and if you close the admin area while you are still in site maintenance mode you can't get back in. Well, after searching the Drupal Support forums I discovered that there is a back door, obviously, but you do need to be able to remember your password which I couldn't for a while LOL. I was horrified at the time but it is reeeeeeeally funny in hindsight.

So, today is Day 3. I'm going to try and get the modules actually working properly. One of them is a gallery2 module which means I get to play with some other open source goodness :o))

Learning Plan

Despite the very recent end of my post-grad studies (for now at least) I do need something to keep my mind stretching. I will never be the sort of person to learn how to do something and then stop. I have two things on the go at the moment.

1. Actionscript 3.0 - a necessary evil. I really must try and get to grips with this before actionscript 2.0 is completely obselete.

2. Drupal - The Drupal for ELearning and Education book I mentioned in my last post has landed on my desk so this morning I have downloaded the core codebase (that's the base install of the essential drupal modules that you download from the drupal website) and now I am going to sort myself out some server space on which to experiment. My diary is clear so I think I can safely spend the rest of the week playing Drupal Developer. Goodie!

Official - Gemma Witton MA

I have just about stopped celebrating for long enough to write a post to report that I have finally had the results from my final MA module, H810 Accessible Online Learning : Supporting Disabled Students. Somehow ... and I'm not quite sure how ... I managed to scrape myself a Distinction grade by getting my highest mark of all for the final examinable component. I haven't done enought to get a distinction overall for the MA, that ship sailed long ago, but it is certainly a very VERY nice way to end the course and I am absolutely chuffed to bits :D

Graduation will take place on Saturday 20th June, 3.00pm at Symphony Hall in Birmingham. Family tickets are booked and gown hire is organised, so all thats left to do now is turn up, find Sarah, shake hands on stage in front of a few thousand people (eeek) then most probably find tapas and cocktails afterwards!

I Need a Good Plan

It has been over a month now since I finished my final MA ODE module. The results are due in a couple of weeks but I'm feeling moderately confident of a pass. I have been enjoying not having to study at the weekends, having time to cook and bake, spending a bit of time in the garden and generally looking after myself and my surroundings. I am even reading some books for fun ... The Mighty Book of Boosh and Nigel Slater's Eating for England.

That said, I am starting to feel a little bit itchy for some professional development now. I have vague plans to develop some Flash Actionscript 3.0 skills and have access to some online training at linda.com but I haven't actually got past the introductory videos yet which only tell you WHY you might want to learn it and not HOW things are actually done. My attempts at learning previous versions of actionscript have been fairly unfruitful in so far as I get to a certain point in the training and then get completely lost. At some point I seem to always miss something vital and end up deeply frustrated.

I also just read a blog post reviewing a book on Drupal for Education and ELearning. At the moment I have no real need to learn Drupal but it's something I am definitely interested in. My MA sparked my interest in all things open source (and gave me the confidence to stick-it-to-the-man with a eeepc that runs linux instead of windows but that's another story really) and I think having a bit of knowledge on the subject - even if i don't actually do anything with it - can only be a positive thing.

So, the next thing I need to do is come up with some kind of learning plan. Part of that plan is a career upgrade but these things take time, especially in the current job market. I also need to make some time for Actionscript 3.0 and Drupal learning.

Time to formulate a plan ...

Saving Bletchley Park

I've just plurked, re-tweeted, facebooked and now blogging the link to Save Bletchley Park.

If the govenment can plough £millions into banks and car manufacturers than perhaps they can spare a few bucks for one of the most important sites in the history of computing?

There was a programme on tv about this recently, I can't remember what the programme was, or when it was shown. It could have been an item on the news in fact. Bletchley park was somewhere I had never heard about until that show and the forgot about shortly after. BUT I have just been reminded about it by a tweet by Stephen Fry who I have just started following on twitter (let's face it, if anyone has anything worth listening to on Twitter it's likely to be him).

The upshot of having the link twittered by Mr Fry is that the petition to the government to save Bletchely has been signed by an extra couple of thousand people in quite literally minutes. Bloody impressive. I think we can safely say that social web stuff is really starting to have a serious influence.

A New Name for a New Chapter

Being as H810 is essentially over now (results pending) I decided that the blog name H810 And Other Stories didn't really fit anymore. Being as I do want to keep the blog for general professional development, reflection and other interesting things I come across along the way I have decided to rename the blog "Little Bits of Learning" and will be on the new domain http://www.littlebitsoflearning.blogspot.com from now on.

A little light accessibility relief.

For anyone after a little light relief from the final week stresses of H810, here's a fairly amusing and possibly even thought provoking little song about the W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Thanks to Sarah Horrigan's original blog post for introducing me to the joys of eLearning inspired Hip Hop. Enjoy!