How-To Tutorials - Web Development

  Web 2.0 Solutions with Oracle WebCenter 11g Learn WebCenter 11g fundamentals and develop real-world enterprise applications in an online work environment Create task-oriented, rich, interactive online work environments with the help of the comprehensive Oracle WebCenter Suite 11g Accelerate the development of Enterprise 2.0 solutions by leveraging the Oracle tools Apply the basic concepts of Enterprise 2.0 for your business solutions by understanding them completely Prepare development environments that suit your enterprise needs using WebCenter applications Define collaborative work environments for the members of your organization Read more about this book (For more resources on Oracle, see here.) The Oracle WebCenter Discussions Service provides a forum tool that can be used within the organization to share information and foster collaboration. Forums are one of the most popular information exchange mechanisms used on the Internet. We are all familiar with the power of forums to create user communities and disseminate information. If you have used the Oracle Technology Network Forums, the WebCenter Discussions Service will look very familiar to you—both use the same powerful forum software. (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) Some of the common challenges we have found with implementing forums for the enterprise have been related to the following: Integration into the existing technology stack User and group administration using existing LDAP Support Cultural adoption With Discussions, Oracle has successfully minimized the technical level of effort required during implementation by addressing the main technical challenges (numbers 1 and 2 above). And with formal support offered, as well as the general idea that forums integration using Discussions will not be unique for each implementation, organizations can feel more comfortable about viable long-term support. Given how well Discussions addresses the first three challenges, we now view the cultural adoption as the largest challenge, which can be overcome with effective training and strategic management decisions. Forums in general have become increasingly popular within organizations and Oracle has implemented an intuitive end-user approach. The Discussions Server is installed as part of Oracle WebCenter installation. It can be accessed directly at the default location http://hostname:8890/owc_discussions. While Discussions in itself is a useful forum tool, the real power comes from the Discussions Service that enables us to embed, view, and interact with the forums as part of custom WebCenter applications where forums can be used as a means to obtain and share information by the enterprise from within the current application being used. A Wiki is a website that allows a group of editors to easily create web pages in a collaborative manner using simple markup language. The markup language helps to organize and format the web pages. Many corporations use Wikis to create documentation internally. Each employee of the company has easy access to edit the information within the wiki, and can therefore incorporate new information for the entire community. A Blog is a website that allows an individual author to post a stream of content for a community to view. The word "Blog" is derived from the contraction of "Web Log". Each item in the Blog stream can be viewed as an article. An article can be something as simple as a video or image posting, or something as formal as a newspaper article. It is up to the author to decide what content to post. Typically, authors allow members of a community to engage in dialog related to the blog article by allowing them to post comments on the article. Both the Wiki Service and the Blog Service depend on the WebCenter Wiki and Blog Server. Both services use a single connection to the single backend server. Discussions configuration Our application is built with JDeveloper 11g and connects to the Oracle WebCenter Discussions Server. Ensure that the Discussions Server is running by connecting to the Discussions Server URL (http://hostname:8890/owc_discussions). It is a good idea to populate the Discussions Server with some example users, categories, and forums. The Forums Admin Console is used to create new users and forums. The admin console can be accessed at http://hostname:8890/owc_discussions/admin. The default admin username is weblogic and the password is weblogic. This is irrespective of any username/password specified at installation time. You can configure a wide variety of settings in the Admin Console, including but not limited to the following: Content Structure: Categories, Subcategories, Forums Users and Groups Permissions Filters and Interceptors Moderation User Interface (Colors and themes) Reports and Metrics System Settings (Cache, e-mail, locale, and so on) Plugins The following is a screenshot of the admin console home page: We will not focus on configuring all aspects of the forum, but instead the main pieces required to get started and integrated into WebCenter. Specifically, we will focus on users/groups, and the overall forum content structure. Content structure The general structure for Discussions is as follows: Categories: logical grouping of discussions content Subcategories: optional subgrouping(s) Forums: Lowest-level grouping where end users can create discussion threads Threads: Entries made by end users, which contain the original entry as well as replies Within the Forums Admin Console, you can define a structure that makes sense for your organization. The same principles that apply to other forum software will apply to Discussions content structure. For the purpose of this demo, we have created a Marketing category and a Marketing Ideas forum. The following is an image of that Category Summary that reflects the new Marketing Ideas forum that was just created: User and group structure We have worked on this Discussions Service as an independent service, and hence created our users and groups manually. In an enterprise solution, you will likely hook this into your LDAP (like Oracle Internet Directory) using Enterprise Manager. Following is a screenshots of the users we have configured within the Discussions administration: As shown previously, we have added two users— amit and jimmy—with the appropriate privileges to post to the Marketing Ideas forum. Integrating Discussions with WebCenter During the remainder of this article, we will create a custom WebCenter application, which will integrate with the Discussions Server and in which we will expose a view of the forum that allows you to interact with the forum using task flows. Oracle exposes multiple task flows for the Discussions service. We have listed all the out-of-box task flows in the following table and bolded the ones we will drop into our WebCenter application: Task Flow Description Discussions Forums This task flow shows all the topics associated with a specified forum. Users can create, read, update, and delete topics based on their privileges. Discussions - Popular Topics Shows the popular topics under a given category ID or forum ID. Discussions - Recent Topics Shows all the recent topics under a given category ID or forum ID. Discussions - Watched Forums Allows users to see all their watched forums under a given category ID. Discussions - Watched Topics Allows users to see all their watched topics under a given category ID or forum ID. Discussions - Sidebar View This shows a combined view of the Popular Topics, Recent Topics, Watched Topics, and Watched Forums task flows. The main steps we will complete are as follows: Ensure the Discussions Server is running Create a WebCenter application Create a connection to the Discussions Server Create a JSF page Select appropriate Discussions Service Task Flow and embed it in the page Deploy, run, and test the application Ensuring the Discussions Server is running Before we start developing the application, ensure that the WebCenter Discussions Server is running. If the Discussions Server is not running then start the WLS_Services managed server. Using a browser, open the URL for Discussions (for example, http://hostname:8890/owc_discussions). Log in with the newly created users and post some sample articles. Creating a new WebCenter application Using JDeveloper, create a new application, selecting the WebCenter application template. Creating a JSF page Next, we will create a JSF page to host the view for the Discussions Forum. In the Application Navigator, highlight the ViewController project, right-click on it, and from the context menu select New. In the New Gallery, select JSF Page to create a new JSF page. In the Create JSF Page dialog, select a name for the page and create the page. Creating a connection to the Discussion Forum In order to use the Discussions Service in our application, we need to create a Discussions Forum connection to the Discussions Server. This connection will be used by the application to connect to the backend Discussions Server. Note that it is possible to modify the connection after the application is deployed to the WebLogic server by using the Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control. To set up the discussions connection, right-click on the Connections node in Application Resources pane and select New Connection | Discussions Forum. Select a unique name for the connection such as MyDiscussions. Ensure that the Make this the connection default checkbox is ticked. Next, we have to set the property values for the forum.url and admin.user. The value of forum.url should be the URL of the Discussions server. The default admin user is weblogic. Click on Test Connection to ensure that the connection is set up properly. Click Finish to complete this step. Click on the Resource Palette and open My Catalogs. You should now see the WebCenter Services Catalog. Expand the catalog to view the various task flows available. In the task flows shown, you see the various discussions-related task flows such as the Discussion Forums, Discussions – Popular Topics, Discussions - Recent Topics, and so on. We will use these task flows in our application to create a view of the Discussion Forum.

(For more resources on Afresco 3, see here.) Workflows can be configured for both web forms and non-generated web content. In order to submit content to the Staging Sandbox, workflows need to be configured. We will discuss shortly how form-based and file-based workflow can be configured, and also how content can be submitted to the Staging box. Associating workflows to web forms Workflow for web forms can be configured using the Create Web Form Wizard or the Edit Web Form wizard. Using these approaches, workflows can be configured for all web projects and for a specific web project. Assuming that we have already created a web form, we will use the same web form to drive a workflow. In this example, we have to use the Edit Web Form Wizard. Follow these steps to assign a workflow for the web form: Ensure that the Alfresco server is up and running. Go to Company Home Data Dictionary | Web Forms|. Click on the Edit Web Form action under the training (web form name) space. Clicking on this will open Edit Web Form Wizard. Click on Next twice to reach the Configure Workflow window. Select the Yes radio button and click on Next. Click on Finish. Associating workflows to web projects To assign a workflow for a specific project, you can use two approaches. The first approach is by using the Create Web Project Wizard that will be used if you are creating a new web project. The second approach is by using the Edit Web Project Wizard. We will be using the second approach since we have already created the Cignex web project. Follow these steps to associate workflow for a web form: Ensure that the Alfresco server is up and running. Go to Company Home Web Projects | Cignex|. Select Edit Web Project Settings from the action menu. Click on Next. On the next screen, click on Next. In the Step Three window, you will notice the added web forms in the panel as shown in the following screenshot. You can see the Configure Workflow button available for each web form. This button is enabled only for those web forms for which we have configured workflows. Notice the attention icon next to the workflow. This indicates a workflow has been selected but not configured: On clicking the Configure Workflow button, the Configure Workflow window is opened. This window is used to configure form-based workflows (web form generated content). This is specific for web forms only. Fill out the details as shown in the following screenshot: Click on OK. Now, if you notice, the attention icon disappears. Click on Next. You will again see the Configure Workflow window. Click on the Add to List button to add the workflow for the web project. Once the workflow is added in the panel, you can configure file-based workflows (non-web form generated content). They are configured based on filename pattern matching. In Workflow Settings, note the default regex pattern matches .*. This default means that any asset web form generated, and non-web form generated, will go through this review process. Also, you can add the Web Site Submission workflow multiple times in this wizard. For each instance you can configure a different chain of reviewers for different sections of the websites or types of assets by modifying the regex pattern match in Workflow Settings, for example, .css, .html. Please note that the Configure Workflow window can be used for both file and non-web form generated assets. But this window is mainly used for non-web form generated assets. Click on Finish. Submitting content to the Staging box Content can be submitted in two ways. The first option is by using the Edit Web Content Wizard or the Create Web Content Wizard. With this option you can submit only form-based content. The second option is by using the Submit Selected or Submit All option provided under Modified Items. With this option you can submit both form-based assets and non-form based assets. Using the Edit Web Content wizard We assume that the web content is already created. So we are going to use the Edit Web Content wizard. Log in as Mark Steven, who is the Content Manger of the Cignex project. Follow these steps to directly submit content to the workflow: Go to Company Home Web Projects | Cignex|. Select the Browse Website option to browse all files and folders. Go to the common/inc folder. Click on the Edit action placed next to the training.html file. Click on Next. The Summary window is opened. It has the functionality to directly submit content to the workflow (this functionality is also available in the Create Web Content Wizard). Select those checkboxes to submit directly. This saves you from initiating a separate submission process. Click on Finish.

(For more resources on CMS, see here.) Have a go hero – determine your keywords Search engines read, crawl, and index text and only text. They don't recognize images, Flash, or Silverlight content. That's why it's important to use the most relevant text for your website and sprinkle the content with the right keywords, while placing the selected keywords in strategic locations where there is a maximum chance for the spiders of a search engine to read, crawl, and index. Embedding keywords in the heading, initial part of the first paragraph, page titles, filenames, and directory names are some of the most commonly used strategies for improving page ranking. You can also consider including keyword phrases in the URLs or domain names of your website. This is one of the most important ways to improve the page ranking in various search engines' results pages. You need to be very careful when selecting the keywords for your website and choose words that describe your website. Sometimes, you may be confident that keywords that you choose are the best descriptions. But how do you know whether you have chosen the best keywords? What if there is no one out there who will submit a search query for the keywords you chose? This is where web analytis plays an important part. While it's tempting—resist the urge to go with uniquely different keywords or made up words. This may sound appealing to reduce the overlap with your competitor's websites. Unfortunately, you may find yourself not featured in any specific results at all. This is the main reason you should consider using keyword phrases that are popularly searched. There is a wide variety of keyword suggestion tools available, which can give you statistics, competition level, and search popularity that can help a company make an informed decision. While it is typical to determine a list of six keywords, depending on your marketing budget, you may only want to finalize a list of three. Spend some time with your marketing department to determine these keywords. Once this is done, validate these against several of the online keyword suggestion tools available. Finalize this list and make it available to all content editors with specific recommendations about their usage. Time for action – forbidden URL characters In order to guarantee URL consistency, HTTP defines a set of forbidden characters (' / : * ? " < > | & ; % . ; % . ' # [ ] + =.). In addition to these pre-defined characters, we want to remove the $ character from any URL string in our site to provide better navigation. This can be done using the following steps: Log in to Site Manager, select the Settings tab, select URLs and SEO, as shown in the following screenshot: (move cursor over image to enlarge) In the Forbidden URL characters field, enter $ and select Save, as shown in the following screenshot: Don't forgetThis setting defines characters in addition to the HTTP forbidden characters mentioned earlier. Log in to CMS Desk, select the News folder, and click the New document icon. In the New document screen, select the News item, enter the following information, and select Save. Sign out of CMS Desk. In the live site, select the News menu item, click the Get An IPhone for $50 link to view the URL containing the replaced characters, and the News item, as shown in the following screenshot: What just happened? When you selected the URLs and SEO menu option, this brought us to the system management screen. This screen contains a variety of options for managing various advanced aspects of the URL and SEO functions. When we entered the $ into the Forbidden URL characters field, this appended our character to the default HTTP forbidden list. Once this was saved, we then created a new news item that contained a $ in the title. By default, all new News URLs are created using the News title as the default URL. The resulting URL contained a - instead of a $. Time for action – changing the site name The name of any page displayed in the browser window is based on a system-wide default that starts with a page prefix. Now that we have our basic site configured, we want to change the name of the page prefix from Corporate Site to the name of our company, namely, Big Company, using the following steps: Log in to the live site to view the default site name, Corporate Site, as shown in the following screenshot: Log in to Site Manager, select the Settings tab, and then select Web site, as shown in the following screenshot: In the Site drop-down menu, select Corporate Site, as shown in the following screenshot: In the Web site properties for the Corporate Site, change the Page title prefix field to Big Company, as shown in the following screenshot and select Save. Log in to the live site to view the changed page prefix to our company name, as shown in the following screenshot: What just happened? When we selected the Web site and then Corporate Site, this brought up the default site settings. We then changed the Page title prefix field to our company name, and when we logged into the live site, this was reflected across all pages. This change is also captured by any search engines currently indexing our site. Global settingsYou can configure the format of all page titles, descriptions, and keywords for all sites by logging into Site Manager selecting Settings, then the Web site dialog, and then by selecting the (global) site. This allows you to configure the Page title format for all pages. The default title format is:{%prefix%} - {%pagetitle_orelse_name%} This means that the format consists of the site prefix followed by the page title value. If the page title value is not set, the document name is used.

(For more resources on Oracle, see here.) Portlets, JSR-168 specification Specification JSR-168, which defines the Java technologies, gives us a precise definition of Java portlets: Portlets are web components—like Servlets—specifically designed to be aggregated in the context of a composite page. Usually, many Portlets are invoked to in the single request of a Portal page. Each Portlet produces a fragment of markup that is combined with the markup of other Portlets, all within the Portal page markup. You can see more detail of this specification on the following page: http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=168 While the definition makes a comparison with servlets, it is important to note that the portlets cannot be accessed directly through a URL; instead, it is necessary to use a page-like container of portlets. Consequently, we might consider portlets as tiny web applications that return dynamic content (HTML, WML) into a region of a Portal page. Graphically, we could view a page with portlets as follows: Additionally, we must emphasize that the portlets are not isolated from the rest of the components in the pages, but can also share information and respond to events that occur in other components or portlets. WSRP specification The WSRP specification allows exposing portlets as Web services. For this purpose, clients access portlets through an interface (*. wsdl) and get graphic content associated. Optionally, the portlet might be able to interact directly with the user through events ocurring on them. This way of invoking offers the following advantages: The portals that share a portlet centralize their support in a single point. The portlet integration with the portal is simple and requires no programming. The use of portlets, hosted on different sites, helps to reduce the load on servers. WebCenter portlets Portlets can be built in different ways, and the applications developed with Oracle WebCenter can consume any of these types of portlets. JSF Portlets: This type of portlet is based on a JSF application, which is used to create a portlet using a JSF Portlet Bridge. Web Clipping: Using this tool, we can build portlets declaratively using only a browser. These portlets show content from other sites. OmniPortlet: These portlets can retrieve information from different types of data sources (XML, CSV, database, and so on) to expose different ways of presenting things, such as tables, forms, charts, and so on. Content Presenter: This allows you to drop content from UCM on the page and display this content in any way you like or using a template. Ensemble: This is a way to "mashup" or produce portlets or "pagelets" of information that can be displayed on the page. Programmatic Portlets: Obviously, in addition to the previous technologies that facilitate the construction of portlets, it is also possible to build in a programmatic way. When we build in this way, we reach a high degree of personalization and control. However, we need specialized Java knowledge in order to program in this way. As we can see, there are several ways in which we can build a portlet; however, in order to use the rich components that the ADF Faces framework offers, we will focus on JSF Portlets. Developing a portlet using ADF The portlet that we will build will have a chart, which shows the status of the company's requests. To do this, we must create a model layer that represents our business logic and exposes this information in a page. Therefore, we are going to do the following steps: Create an ADF application. Develop business components. Create a chart page. Generate a portlet using the page. Deploy the portlet. In this example, we use a page for the construction of a portlet; however, ADF also offers the ability to create portlets based on a flow of pages through the use of ADF TaskFlows. You can find more information on the following link: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E15523_01/web.1111/b31974/taskflows.htm#BABDJEDD Creating an ADF application To create the application, do the following steps: Go to JDeveloper. In the menu, choose the option File | New to start the wizard for creating applications. In the window displayed, choose the Application category and choose the Fusion Web Application ADF option and press the OK button. Next, enter the following properties for creating the application: Name: ParacasPortlet Directory: c:ParacasPortlet Application Package Prefix : com.paracasportlet Click Finish to create the application. Developing business components Before starting this activity, make sure you have created a connection to the database. In the project Palette, right-click on Project Model, and choose New. On the next page, select the category Business Tier | ADF Business Components and choose Business Components from Tables. Next, press the OK button. In the following page, you configure the connection to the database. At this point, select the connection db_paracas and press the OK button. In order to build a page with a chart, we need to create a read-only view. For this reason, don't change anything, just press the Next button. (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) In this next step, we can create updateable views. But, we don't need this type of component. So, don't change anything. Click the Next button. Now, we need to allow the creation of read-only views. We will use this kind of component in our page; therefore select the table REQUEST, as shown next and press Next. Our next step will allow the creation of an application module. This component is necessary to display the read-only view in the whole application. Keep this screen with the suggested values and click the Finish button. Check the Application Navigator. You must have your components arranged in the same way as shown in the following screenshot: Our query must determine the number of requests for status. Therefore, it will be necessary to make some changes in the created component. To start, double-click on the view RequestView, select the Query category, and click on the Edit SQL Query option as shown in the following screenshot: In the window shown, modify the SQL as shown next and click the OK button. SELECT Request.STATUS, COUNT(*) COUNT_STATUSFROM REQUEST RequestGROUP BY Request.STATUS We only use the attributes Status and CountStatus. For this reason, choose the Attributes category, select the attributes that are not used, and press Delete selected attribute(s) as shown in the following screenshot: Save all changes and verify that the view is similar to that shown next:

(For more resources on WordPress, see here.) Introduction Ubuntu Server is a robust, powerful and user-friendly distribution engineered by a dedicated team at Canonical as well as hundreds (if not thousands) of volunteers around the world. It powers thousands of server installations, but public and private and is becoming a very popular and trusted solution for all types of server needs. In this article I will outline how to install Ubuntu server toward the goal of running and publishing your own blog, using the WordPress blogging software. This can be used to run a personal blog out of your home, or even run a corporate blog in a workplace. Hundreds of companies use Wordpress as their blogging software of choice—I've deployed it at my office even. I personally maintain about a dozen Wordpress installations, all at varying levels of popularity and traffic. Wordpress scales well, is easy to maintain, and very intuitive to use. If you're not familiar with the Wordpress blogging software I'd invite you to go check it out at http://www.wordpress.com. Requirements In order to get this whole process started you'll only need a few simple things. First, a copy of Ubuntu Server. At the time of this writing, the latest release is 10.04.1 LTS (Long Term Support), which will be supported and provide security and errata updates for five years. You can download a free copy of Ubuntu Server here: http://www.ubuntu.com/server In addition to a copy of Ubuntu Server you'll need, of course, a platform to install it one. This could be a physical server, or a virtual machine. Your times (the 15 minute goal) may vary based on your physical hardware speeds. I based this article on the following platform and specifications: Dell D630 Core 2 Duo 2.10 Ghz 2G RAM VirtualBox 3.2.8 Open Source Edition Again, your mileage may vary depending on your hardware and network, but overall this article will quickly get you from zero to blogger in no time! The last requirement you'll need, and I mentioned this just very briefly in this last paragraph, is network access. If you're installing this on a physical machine, make sure that you'll have local network access to that machine. If you're planning on installing this on a virtual machine, make sure that you configure the virtual machine to use bridged networking, making it accessible to your local area network. To recap, your requirements are: Ubuntu Server 10.04.1 LTS .iso (or printed CD) Physical or virtual machine to provision Local network access to said machine Getting started Once you have everything prepared we can jump right in and get started. Start up your virtual machine, or drop in your CD-ROM, and we'll start the installation. I've taken screenshots of each step in the process so you should be able to follow along closely. In most situations I chose the default configuration. If you are unsure about the configuration requirements during installation, it is generally safe to select the default. Again, just follow my lead and you should be fine! This is the initial installer screen. You'll notice there are a number of options available. The highlighted option (also the default) of "Install Ubuntu Server" is what you'll want to select here. Next, the installer will prompt you for your preferred or native language. The default here is English, and was my selection. You'll notice that there is a huge number of available languages here. This is one of the goals and strengths of Ubuntu, "that software tools should be usable by people in their local language". Select your preferred language and move on to the next step. The next step is to select your country. If you selected English as your primary language you'll then need to select your region. The default is United States, and was also my selection. The Ubuntu installer can automatically detect your keyboard layout if you ask it to. The default prompt is no, which then allows you to select your keyboard from a list. I prefer to use the auto-detection, which I find a bit faster. You can use your own preference here, but be sure you select the correct layout. Nothing more frustrating than not being able to type properly on your keyboard! Next you'll need to assign a hostname to your machine. This is an enjoyable part of the process for me, as I get to assign a unique name to the machine I'll be working with. This always seems to personalize the process for me, and I've chosen a number of creative names for my machines. Select whatever you like here, just make sure it is unique compared to the other machines on your current network. To help ensure that your clock is set properly the Ubuntu installer will auto-detect or prompt you for your time zone. I've found that, when installing on physical hardware, the auto-detection is usuall pretty accurate. When installing on virtual hardware it has a more difficult time. The screenshot above was taken on virtual hardware, which required me to select my time zone manually. If this is the case for you, find your time zone and hit ENTER. The next step in the installation process is partitioning the disks. Unless you have specific needs here, I'd suggest safely selecting the defaults. If you're wondering whether or not you do have specific needs, you probably don't. For our intentions here toward the goal of setting up a web server to run Wordpress, the default is just fine. Select "Guided – use entire disk and set up LVM" and hit ENTER. The installer will prompt you with a confirmation dialog before writing partitioning changes to the disk. Based on the fact that making changes to partitions and filesystems will destroy any existing data on the disk(s), this requires secondary confirmation. If you are installing on a newly created virtual machine you should have nothing to worry about here. If you are installing on physical hardware, please note that it will destroy any existing data and you should be OK with that action. You also have the option of defining the size of the disk made available to your installation. Again, I selected the default here which is to use 100% of the available space. If you have more specific requirements, make them here. Lastly, in regards to the partitioning, one more final confirmation. This screen outlines the partitions that will be created or changed and the filesystems and formatting that will be done on those partitions. Each of these filesystem related screenshots selected the default values. If you've done the same, and you're OK with losing any existing data that might be on the machine, finalize this change by selecting YES. At this point the installer will install the base system within the newly created partitions. This will take a few minutes (again, your mileage may vary depending on hardware type). There are no prompts during this process, just a progress bar and a communication of the packages that are being installed and configured.

(For more resources on Moodle, see here.) New look – new wording Let's compare the former view of the Add a Resource drop-down menu with the new one. In the following screenshot, the left side shows us the Moodle 2.0 view and the right shows us the Moodle 1.9 view: The first thing to notice is that the wording is simpler –no more confusion amongst teachers as to what constitutes a web page as opposed to a text page; no more explanation needed that Display a directory actually just means Show a folder of my resources. The developers of Moodle 2.0 have taken onboard comments made by trainers and frequent users that certain terms were misunderstood by beginners. In the past, I myself have had to reassure newbies that even though they think they know nothing about web design, it is safe to select Compose a web page because doing so will simply bring up a text box where you can type your information or instructions straight into Moodle. Similarly, not everyone understands that a directory is just a fancy name for a folder that can house a number of your resources. This has now been made clearer. The selection Link to a file or web site has also been altered as these are now dealt with in two different ways. Let's take each option one at a time and study it in more depth. Adding a file The link File replaces the Moodle 1.9 Link to a file or web site option and is the place where, within your course, you would ordinarily upload and display files such as a Microsoft PowerPoint slideshow or a PDF resource. Selecting this from the drop-down gives us the editing screen, the top part of which is shown in the following screenshot: In our How to Be Happy course, our teacher, Andy, is going to upload an Open Office (odt) file with a tip a day for staying cheerful in February, a somewhat grim month in the Northern Hemisphere. Here's how we do it: For Name, as in earlier versions of Moodle, type the text you wish students to click on to access the resource. For Description, type a description which we can later decide to display or not. An Admin can set it so you aren't required to type a description. Click Add to start uploading the document – the File Picker appears: If it's not offered by default, click Upload this file… Add the author name and license type Then, as with Moodle 19, click Browse… to locate the document and then Upload this file… to upload it. You'll be returned to the main editing screen where the document appears as a blue link. As we scroll down, and with Advanced set to Show, we see other settings, some new, and some familiar from previous versions of Moodle but with extra functionality: Display: Choose how you want the file to appear and if you want the actual file name and/or its description to be shown. Advanced: With this enabled, you can decide the size of the pop up window and whether or not to filter the content Common Module settings: (as with Moodle 1.9) Decide whether to make the document visible or not and to set it for groups/groupings (which are now enabled by default) Restrict availability: This will only appear if the setting has been enabled in site administration and is a feature that lets you decide when and under what conditions the file may be accessed. Activity completion: This will only appear if you've enabled it in your course. It's a feature allowing students to check off what they have done or teachers to set activities to be automatically checked as complete under certain circumstances. Save: According to your preference, as with Moodle 1.9 Displaying a file As we went through the settings to upload and show our February Beat The Blues tips, we noticed a drop-down option Display. It gives a variety of ways a file such as our .odt document can appear on the course page in Moodle 2.0. How they display will depend on their file type. Display: Automatic Leave this as the default if you want Moodle to decide for you! In the case of Andy's slideshow, it's the traditional way of displaying an uploaded document, where once clicked on, it appears with a prompt box saying something like (depending on your browser) "do you want to open or save this file?" Display: Embed This will show the Moodle page with heading, blocks, and footer. It will show the title/description of the item and display the file directly in the page as well, so is good for videos, flash animations and so on. Display: Force download When a user clicks on the file, the web browser pops up with a "where do you want to save this file?" box. Display: Open This offers no Moodle heading, blocks, footer or description; it just shows the file as it is. Display: In pop-up This will cause the link to the file to appear in a pop up window before prompting you to open or download it. You can set the size of the pop up window on the Advanced settings page. Site administration | plugins | Activity modules | file gives us two other display options if so desired. These are: Display: In frame This will show the Moodle heading and the file description, with the file displayed in a resizable area below Display: New window This is very much like 'in pop-up', but the new window is a full browser window, with menus and address bar, and so on Resource administration If we click to update our file once it has been uploaded, we can see a new area in the Settings block, giving us options to manage this uploaded resource. We've seen this before: when clicking to update an item, we can tweak it from here. Let's take a look at these: Edit settings Here's where we update the details, display options, and so on (obviously!). Locally assigned roles and Permissions Moodle 1.9 gave us the facility to assign roles and permissions locally to an individual resource, so this is not new. In Moodle 2.0 the site administrator has more control over who can assign which roles by default. Check Permissions This is new however and enables to us be doubly certain our students are allowed (and not allowed!) to access what we want them to. Let's try an example: suppose Andy hides his February tips until the end of January but that he would like one particular student, Emma, to be able to access them in advance of time. He will allow her to view the February document even though it is hidden. He needs to ensure she doesn't have the right to see any other of the hidden files until the appropriate time. Here's what to do: In Locally assigned roles, give Emma the teacher role. This will allow her to view hidden activities, and therefore, our hidden February tips. In Check permissions, select Emma and click Show this user's permissions. This brings up a table showing what Emma's permissions are in this file. She can view hidden activities, and therefore, would be able to see the hidden February resource in advance of the other students. We see that because Emma's been assigned locally the role of teacher in our February document she is allowed to view the hidden file—but as she is still a student in the course as a whole, she doesn't have this right elsewhere –so we are safe!

(For more resources on WordPress see here.) Feedburner Feedsmith By Steve Smith & Feedburner (http://feedburner.com/) Why it's awesome: Never having to worry about nefarious uses of your RSS feeds Why it was picked: Built by the Google crew at Feedburner Manual Install URL: http://www.google.com/support/feedburner/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78483 Automatic Install search term: Not available Geek level: Webmaster Configuration location: Settings | Feedburner Used in: Feeds Many times, hosting your own RSS feed can wreak havoc on your server without you ever knowing it. Due to RSS's out-of-sight-out-of-mind style, you often forget about it completely. Using Google's Feedburner is one way to ensure that a swarm of subscribers won't bring your server to a crawl. Feedburner acts like a conduit to your RSS feed by delivering the feeds from Google's servers instead of your own. Not only does Feedburner offload your server traffic, it also gives you an amazing view of what people are doing with your feed. The stats alone are worth signing up. Burning your feed Submitting your feed to Google will take only a few minutes, but the rewards are long lasting. Create a Google account You will need to have a Google account to leverage Feedburner. If you do not already have an account with Google, you can sign up at https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount Verify your blog's feed URL Each WordPress blog comes with RSS feeds enabled. To access your feed, go to http://yourdomain.com/feed/ Burn your feed Now we must set up a new feed to burn by visiting http://feedburner.google.com and adding our feed to the Burn a feed right this instant input box. Name your feed Once you have added your feed, you will need to name the feed and create a URL to use it. Your feed title should be something descriptive about your blog, as this is what all of your RSS subscribers will see as the title of your blog. Configuring WP-Feedburner Now that you have your feed hosted on Google, we can finish the process of setting up WP-Feedburner. WP-Feedburner's configuration is located in Settings | WP Feedburner. Your feed should now be officially set up to redirect to your Feedburner feed. To make sure everything is working properly, visit http://yourdomain.com/feed/ and check that the URL gets redirected automatically to the Feedburner URL that you set up earlier. SendIt By Giuseppe Surace (http://www.giuseppesurace.com/) Why it's awesome: Send e-mail campaigns for free Why it was picked: Easy to set up and free WARNING: This plugin is still in the beta stage, but the majority of the functionality works great. Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/sendit/ Automatic Install search term: SendIt Geek level: WP Ninja Configuration location: Top Navigation Newsletter| Used in: Newsletters SendIt has more potential to change the way you communicate with your readers than any other plugin mentioned in this book. SendIt was originally written in Italian, and every once in a while, you will stumble on to a few words that are yet to be translated. However, besides the occasional Italian noun, SendIt is very straightforward and makes running multiple newsletters as easy as managing your blog. SendIt overview Unlike other plugins, SendIt is a fairly large plugin with multiple configuration pages and areas to set up, tweak, and perfect. Newsletter: Compose and send your newsletters from the Newsletter section Manage subscribers: Add and remove e-mail addresses from a given newsletter SMTP settings: If you are planning on using SendIt to send to more than 600 subscribers, you might want to consider setting up an external SMTP server for sending your mail. Otherwise, you can leave this section alone Newsletter settings: Find, delete, and edit newsletters Import emails from comments: Quickly build e-mail lists from everyone who has commented on different blog posts Import emails from WP Users: Quickly build e-mail lists from other writers, users, and administrators on your blog Creating your first newsletter For the purpose of this example, we will create a Geek Newsletter for our blog readers to subscribe to. Start by visiting Newsletter | Newsletter Settings. Click Create New List. A new list will automatically be added to your Available Lists grid. Select Edit from the newly created list. Define the From e-mail address, newsletter name, and the header and footer for this newsletter template. The header and footer will automatically be applied for each e-mail you send from this mailing list. Click Save.

(For more resources on Oracle, see here.) BPMN 2.0 concepts BPMN stands for Business Process Modeling Notation and is a public standard maintained by OMG. It describes a business-friendly, flow chart-like graphical notation that business process analysts and business users can use to model business processes and has support for process interactions, exception handling, compensation semantics, and so on. It is widely accepted by both commercial and open source BPMS tooling vendors. It is highly adaptable and can be used to capture everything from abstract process outlines to detailed process flows to implementation ready processes. One of the main value propositions of BPMN besides being a diagram standard is the precise semantics behind the diagram. The shape, the symbols (also referred to as markers), the borders, the placement of the BPMN diagram elements, as well as their properties have well defined meanings and have to be interpreted in the same manner by all tools. While BPMN 1.1 comprehensively addresses process modeling notations, it's failure to address an interchange format (for diagram exchange) has resulted in implementation vendors adopting different standards (BPEL, XPDL, other proprietary formats) to store BPMN process models leading to not only a loss of portability across tools but also making it difficult to communicate across the various stakeholders. The vision of BPMN is to have a single specification for notation, metamodel, and interchange. In addition, BPMN 2.0 has been expanded to include orchestrations and choreography of process models. Salient enhancements to BPMN 2.0 are as follows: BPMN 2.0 includes both diagram interchange as well as model interchange (the interchange formats can be either XML or UML) enabling portability of BPMN models across tool vendors. Formal execution semantics for all BPMN elements—BPMN 2.0 can not only be used to capture process models but can be used as an implementation model as well. IT simply layers the process execution details on top of the business process model leading to effective business-IT collaboration. Historically, business process models developed by business people have been technically separated from the process representations required by systems designed to implement and execute those processes. Thus, there was a need to manually translate the original business process models to the execution models. Vendors used standards such as BPEL and XPDL to save as well as execute BPMN Process models. Such translations are subject to errors and the impedance mismatch made it difficult for the process model and the executable process to be in sync with each other, as changes were made to both during the process development life cycle. With BPMN 2.0, there is no translation involved and the model is the implementation as well. Defines an extensibility mechanism for both Process model extensions and graphical extension. Refines event composition and correlation. Extends the definition of human interactions and aligns BPEL4People with the BPMN specification. Defines a Choreography model. A quick introduction to BPMN At its heart, BPMN has only three main elements, also referred to as Flow Objects—Activity (rectangle), Events (circle), and Gateways (diamond). An Activity represents some work done; Gateway represents a decision point or parallel forking or merge or join; Event represents either a trigger generated by the process or received by the process (from external source or from some other part of the process). These Flow Objects are linked by connections referred to as Sequential Flows. These Sequential Flows represent the chronological sequence of process steps. The preceding steps pass control to the following step(s) along the connection. The data is also passed along the connection flow. The Activity can be either a Task (an atomic process step) or Embedded Sub- process (compound process step). The Embedded Sub-Process can be either expanded or collapsed and has access to the process data. BPMN 2.0 supports different flavors of Tasks, namely: User Task for a human step managed by the workflow component of the BPM run-time engine; Manual Task for a human step that is not managed by the BPM run-time engine); Service Task for synchronous system interactions; Send Task and Receive Task for asynchronous system interactions; Script Task for scripting needs; Call Task for invoking another BPMN process (process chaining). The different task types have different symbols or markers to visually distinguish them. In BPMN, the lane objects are used to group activities based on the categories (can be human resources or system resources) that they are associated for better visualization purpose. In Oracle BPM Studio, the lanes are associated with the BPM Role object and the Performer of the User Task is automatically set to the BPM Role object associated with the lane. The User Task is associated with Process Participants or Performers who represent the business users who need to carry out the User Task. The associated Task (work to be performed) is shown in the inbox of the assigned Performers when the User Task is triggered. The actual work is performed only when the Performer executes on his Task. The Task is presented to the Performers through a browser-based worklist application. In BPM Studio the Process Participant or Performer is a BPM Role object in the Organization model. Oracle BPM Suite supports out-of-the-box workflow patterns. Workflow patterns allow users to declaratively specify approval chains, notifications, and escalation and expiration policies. This simplifies the process logic by encapsulating approval chains within reusable task components. It is always possible to model the approval pattern using simple Tasks, Gateways, and Events within the BPMN process—but for many processes it is more convenient to define workflow patterns as well as notification, expiration, and escalation policies as part of the user task definition. BPM Studio exposes these workflow patterns through six flavors of Interactive Tasks. The User Task refers to the Single Approver pattern and the participant or assignee is the member of the Role associated with the BPMN Process swim lane. The Management Task refers to the sequential management pattern and there are multiple participants assigned to the Task in a sequential pattern. Further, these participants are based on the Management hierarchy defined as part of LDAP and have the notion of a starting participant as well as the number of levels to be traversed up the management chain from the starting participant. The Group Task refers to the Parallel Voting pattern and the participants are members of the Role associated with the BPMN Process swim lane. The tasks are assigned in parallel to the participants in this case and the task is completed when a percentage of defined voting outcomes are reached. The FYI Task refers to the notification pattern and the participants are based on the Role associated with the BPMN Process swim lane. The task is completed as soon as the work items are assigned to the Task Inbox of the participants. Finally, the Complex Task for complex patterns involving task chaining and in this case the participants are not tied to the BPMN Process swim lanes.

To give an example, let’s say we have an array that contains thousands of floating-point integers and each value needs to be run through a lengthy algorithm. Instead of running each value through the algorithm consecutively (i.e. one at a time), parallelism allows multiple values to be processed simultaneously (i.e. running many values through the algorithm at the same time), reducing overall processing time and producing fast and accurate results. There are some restrictions with using parallelism and not every program can be done in parallel. For instance, let’s say we have that same program from before but this time as we process a value we want to then check the currently processed value against all the previously calculated values in the array, before going to the next. We can confidently say all previous values in the array have been processed and are available to be accessed for the check. If we tried to do this in parallel, we could have incorrect data because multiple values are calculated at the same time and some may be ready for checking while others are not. Extra checks and steps are needed to prevent these types of concurrency issues. However, the results could still prove to be worth the extra steps. One of the major breakthroughs in parallel programming technology today goes beyond the scope of just multi-core CPU’s. Although they do offer a lot more power and potential than single-core units, another common computer component, the GPU, offers even more power, and NVIDIA’s flagship product, called CUDA, offers this technology to all developers easily and for free. CUDA was developed by NVIDIA to provide simple access to GPGPU (General-Purpose Computation on Graphics Processing Units) and parallel computing on their own GPU’s. The logic behind the idea is that GPU’s have much more processing power than CPU’s and have numerous cores that operate in parallel to run intensive graphics operations. By allowing developers to utilize this power for their own projects, it can create fast solutions to some heavy and time-consuming programs, specifically those that run the same process recursively and independently of other processes. The learning curve is not very steep for most developers. CUDA accomplishes making GPGPU easily usable by adding functionality to the standard C and C++ programming languages. This allows for fast adoption by almost any programmer and helps with cross-platform integration. To get started with CUDA, you will need a recent NVIDIA GPU (Geforce 8 series and beyond, or you can check on the NVIDIA website to see which GPU’s are CUDA enabled). CUDA works on Windows, Mac OSX, and certain Linux distributions. You will need to download and install the developer drivers, the CUDA toolkit, and the CUDA SDK off the Nvidia website, respectively. NVIDIA provides an installation guide on their website which provides more details about the installation process, as well as a method of checking the installation to see if it is working.

(For more resources on WordPress see here.) TweetMeme By Alex King (http://alexking.org/) Why it's awesome: Allows Twitter users to quickly share your blog post, and it tracks how often they do it Why it was picked: Super simple to install; no Twitter account is needed Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tweetmeme/ Automatic Install search term: TweetMeme Geek level: Webmaster Configuration location: Top Navigation | TweetMeme Used in: Posts, pages The TweetMeme button is the fastest way to allow your readers to quickly share your blog posts to Twitter with a single click. In addition to offering this awesome sharing tool, you can also sign up for TweetMeme's analytic services to track the effectiveness of each of your posts. Setting up TweetMeme You can access TweetMeme's settings from the Top Level Navigation and then TweetMeme Settings|. The following is a list of the most important settings to focus on and what they do. Display: Choose this if you want to display the TweetMeme button on pages, on the home page, and within your feed Position: TweetMeme allows you to display the TweetMeme button in various positions around your blog posts—before, after, both before and after, shortcode, or manually Type: TweetMeme offers two types of buttons—normal and compact. By default, the normal button is displayed Source: Supply your Twitter username here, if you have one URL Shortener: Often, WordPress blog post URLs are rather lengthy and can eat up to many of the 140 characters Twitter allows. It recommends using Bit.ly for your URL shortening—Bit.ly has proven to be a resilient company that won't be disappearing any time soon. TweetMeme API App ID & TweetMeme API App Key: TweetMeme offers detailed analytics when people re-tweet your blog posts. This service is not free, but they do offer a free trial to get your hands dirty. To leverage TweetMeme analytics, you will need to create an account at http://my.tweetmeme.com, after which you will be able to find your API App ID and API App key from http://my.tweetmeme.com/profile Wordbook By Robert Tsai (http://www.tsaiberspace.net/) Why it's awesome: You can share your posts to a user's Facebook wall Why it was picked: Ease of setup, integration level with Facebook Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordbook/ Automatic Install search term: Wordbook Geek level: Webmaster Configuration location: Settings|Wordbook Used in: Posts Robert Tsai's Wordbook is an awesome way to get your blog posts listed on your Facebook profile or your Facebook pages. WordPress will post to Facebook a snippet of your post and a thumbnail of any images that might be in your post. Once installed, you will see a red bar across your WordPress administrator section stating Wordbook needs to be setup—click the Wordbook link to start the configuration. In order to publish your posts to Facebook, you will need to connect your blog to Facebook—to start this process, click the blue Facebook button. Once you start the process, you will be redirected to Facebook to authorize WordPress to communicate with your Facebook account. Now, each time you create a blog post, WordPress will create a new shared item in your Facebook newsfeed. WP Download Manager By Lester Chan (http://lesterchan.net/) Why it's awesome: Quickly add downloadable files and media to your blog Why it was picked: Lester's plugins are legendary, they offer download tracking Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-gallery/ Automatic Install search term: WP Download Manager Geek level: Webmaster Configuration location: Top Navigation | Downloads Used in: Posts, pages It offers your readers the ability to download content. It is one sure fire way of increasing your blog traffic and the happiness of your readers. WP Download Manager makes managing and tracking downloaded files from your blog a snap. Adding a new download Start off by clicking Add File from the Downloads menu and follow these steps: File: Select how you want to add a file: Browse File will show you a drop-down menu containing any files in the wp-content/files directory on your web server. Upload File allows you to select any file from your computer to upload. The majority of the time, this is the method you will be using. Remote File allows you to grab a file from any web server using a URL. File Name: Give your download a human-readable name. File Description: Supply a little information that will help your readers know what the file is about. File Category: Select the category for this file. You can create new categories from the Download | Download Options menu. File Size: Unless you are using the Remote File method, leave this field blank. WP Download Manager offers automatic detection of file size, but sometimes it will not work properly on Remote Files. File Date: If you need to back-date your file, you can use this field to do so. However, the majority of the time you will leave this field alone. Starting File Hits: If you want to make your download look more popular, you can pad the number of downloads. Allowed to Download: If you want to limit downloads only to readers who are subscribed and logged in, use this drop-down menu to control who can download. Your options are Everyone, Registered Users Only, Contributors, Authors, Editors, or Administrators. Click Add File. Inserting a download into a post Now that we have a new file uploaded to the Download Manager, we need to make it accessible to our readers. The WP Download plugin will add a new button to your WYSIWYG menu on posts and pages. One downside to WP Download is that you have to know the ID of the file you want to include in your post or page. Once you click the Download button, provide the download id in the pop-up window. You can find the ID of your file by clicking Download | Manage Downloads; the first column will contain the ID of the download. Twiogle Twitter Commenter By Twiogle (http://twiogle.com/) Why it's awesome: Quickly fills your blog's comments with somewhat relevant content Why it was picked: Easy to set up, works exactly as advertised Manual Install URL: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/twiogle-search/ Automatic Install search term: Twiogle Commenter Geek level: Newbie Configuration location: Settings | Twiogle Twitter Commenter Used in: Posts, pages, widgets Twiogle Twitter Commenter has a horrible name, but an awesome result. If your blog is lacking in comments and chatter, this plugin will automatically add new ones from recent tweets. It works its magic by taking the tags from your blog post and searches Twitter for tweets that use the same tags. To really take advantage of this plugin, you need to make sure you add tags to your blog posts; the more specific your tags are, the more relevant the comments that will be imported. With any service that automatically adds content to your blog, you need to keep an eye on it. It is very much possible for your comments to get overrun with pointless Twitter chatter if you run this plugin for too long.

(For more resources on Drupal, see here.) Themes The use of themes makes Drupal exceptionally flexible when it comes to working with the site's interface. Because the functionality of the site is by and large decoupled from the presentation of the site, it is quite easy to chop and change the look, without having to worry about affecting the functionality. This is obviously a very useful feature because it frees you up to experiment, knowing that if worst comes to worst, you can reset the default settings and start from scratch. You can think of a theme as a mask for your site that can be modified in order to achieve virtually any design criteria. Of course, different themes have widely varying attributes, so it is important to find the theme that most closely resembles what you are looking for in order to reduce the amount of work needed to match it to your envisaged design. It is also important to understand that not all downloadable themes are of the same quality. Some are designed better than others. This article utilizes Zen, which is one of the cleanest and most flexible around. Different themes are implemented differently. Some themes use fixed layouts with tables (avoid these because web design should not rely on tables), while others use div tags and CSS (favor these as they are far more flexible and powerful)—you should play around with a variety of themes in order to familiarize yourself with a few different ways of creating a web page. As mentioned, we only have space to cover Zen here, but the lessons learned are easily transferred to other themes with a bit of time and practice. Before we go ahead and look at an actual example, it is important to get an overview of how themes are put together in general. Theme anatomy Drupal themes consist of a set of files that define and control the features of Drupal's web pages (ranging from what functionality to include within a page to how individual page elements will be presented) using PHP, HTML, CSS, and images. Different Drupal 7 template files control different regions of a page, as shown in the following diagram: Looking at how theme files are set up within Drupal hints at the overall process and structure of that theme. Bear in mind that there are several ways to create a working theme, and not all themes make use of template files. However, in the case of the Drupal's default theme setup, we have the following: The left-hand column shows the folders contained within the themes directory. There are a number of standard themes, accompanied by the engines folder that houses a phptemplate.engine file, to handle the integration of templates into Drupal's theming system. Looking at the files present in the garland folder, notice that there are a number of PHP Template files suffixed by tpl.php. These files make use of HTML and PHP code to modify Drupal's appearance. The default versions of these files, which are the ones that would be used in the event a theme had not implemented on its own, can be found in the relevant modules directory. For example, the default comment.tpl.php file is found in modules | comment, and the default page.tpl.php file is located, along with others, in the modules | system folder. Each template file focuses on its specific page element or page, with the noted exception of template.php that is used to override non-standard theme functions—that is, not block, box, comment, node, or page. The themes folder also houses the stylesheets along with images, and in the case of the default theme, colors. Of special interest is the .info file that contains information about the theme to allow Drupal to find and set a host of different parameters. A theme's .info file holds the basic information about a theme that Drupal needs to know, namely, its name, description, features, template regions, CSS files, and JavaScript. Here's Garland's .info file: ; $Id: garland.info,v 1.9 2009/12/01 15:57:40 webchick Exp $name = Garlanddescription = A multi-column theme which can be configured to modifycolors and switch between fixed and fluid width layouts.package = Coreversion = VERSIONcore = 7.xengine = phptemplatestylesheets[all][] = style.cssstylesheets[print][] = print.csssettings[garland_width] = fluid; Information added by drupal.org packaging script on 2010-05-23version = "7.0-alpha5"project = "drupal"datestamp = "1274628610" Note that this file holds, amongst other things: Name—A human-readable theme name Description—A description of the theme Core—The major version of Drupal that the theme is compatible with Stylesheets—Stipulate which stylesheets are to be used by the theme These are not the only types of information that can be held by .info files. As we'll see a bit later on, when it's time to add scripts to a theme, they can be added to the .info file too. To quickly see one way in which .info files can be put to work, look closely at the .info file in the update_test_subtheme theme folder in tests (Below garland): ; $Id: update_test_subtheme.info,v 1.1 2009/10/08 15:40:34 dries Exp $name = Update test subthemedescription = Test theme which uses update_test_basetheme as the basetheme.core = 7.xengine = phptemplatebase theme = update_test_basethemehidden = TRUE; Information added by drupal.org packaging script on 2010-05-23version = "7.0-alpha5"project = "drupal"datestamp = "1274628610" Notice that this contains a base theme directive that is used to specify the parent, or base, theme. A sub-theme shares its parents' code, but modifies parts of it to produce a new look, new functionality, or both. Drupal allows us to create new sub-themes by creating a new folder within the themes directory and specifying the base theme directive in the new theme's .info file—just as we saw in update_test_subtheme. In a nutshell, Drupal provides a range of default themeable functions that expose Drupal's underlying data: such as content and information about that content. Themes can pick and choose which snippets of rendered content they want to override—the most popular method being through the use of PHP template files in conjunction with stylesheets and a .info file. Themes and sub-themes are easily created and modified, provided that you have some knowledge of CSS and HTML—PHP helps if you want to do something more complicated. I should make it clear that this system makes building a new theme fairly easy, provided one knows a bit about PHP. Here's the process: Create a new themes folder in the sites | all folder, and add your new theme folder in there—call it whatever you want (provided it is a unique name) Copy the default template files (or files from any other theme you want to modify) across to the new theme directory, along with any other files that are applicable (such as CSS files) Rewrite the .info file to reflect the attributes and requirements of the new theme, including specifying the base theme directive Modify the layout (this is where your PHP and HTML skills come in handy) and add some flavor with your own stylesheet (included into the new theme through the .info file) Before moving on, there's one small issue of practicality that must be addressed. When it is time for you to begin doing a bit of theme development, bear in mind that there are many types of browser and not all of them are created equal. What this means is that a page that is rendered nicely on one browser might look bad, or worse, not even function properly on another. For this reason, you should: Test your site using several different browsers. The Drupal help site has this to say about browsers: It is recommended you use the Firefox browser with a developer toolbar and view the formatted sources' extensions. I wholeheartedly agree. You can obtain a copy of the Firefox browser at www.mozilla.com/firefox. Firefox should also be extended with Firebug, which is an extremely useful tool for client-side web debugging: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1843/. Choosing a base theme As discussed, Drupal ships with a few default themes, and there are quite a few more available in the Downloads section of the Drupal site. Looking at how Drupal presents its core Themes page under Appearance in the toolbar menu, we can see the following: Any new themes that are added to the site will be used to enable, disable, configure, or set as a default from this page. Be aware that some themes might not implement functionality that is important to your site. Ensure that you test each theme thoroughly before allowing users to select it. Enabling the Stark theme, and setting it as the default theme, causes the site, which has been presented in the standard Garland theme up until now, to look something like this: This is a vast change from the previous look. Notice too that the entire layout of the site has changed—there are no well defined columns, no visually defined header section, and so on. In addition, the previous fonts and colors have also been demolished. Take the time to view each theme that is available by default in order to get a feel for how different themes can produce wildly differing looks and layouts. That is not the end of the story, because the Drupal site also has a whole bunch of themes for us to explore. So head on over to the themes page at http://drupal.org/project/themes and select the relevant version tab to bring up the themes that are available. You have already seen how to download and install other modules, and the process for installing themes is no different—download and extract the contents of the desired theme to the themes folder in sites | default or sites | all. For example, the Zen theme was downloaded and extracted, and provides us with a new option in the list of themes (some downloads will provide a number of sub-themes too), as shown in the following screenshot: Enable and set default causes the site to look like the next screenshot: Notice that while the color scheme is effectively non-existent, the page has retained its overall structure in that it has defined sidebars, a header region, and a central content region. Before we begin customizing this, let's take a look at the configuration settings for this theme.

Deploying your skins and containers Like a module, skins must be packaged and deployed to your DNN server. Once deployed, they will appear on the Skins page under the Admin menu for preview and applying to the portal. In previous article, we saw how to create new skins directly on a test DNN portal. This allows you to edit the files and immediately see the results just by refreshing your browser. But once a skin has been fully developed, this recipe will show you how to package your skin into a portable ZIP file using the package wizard. Once created, you can install the skin package on the DNN site by logging in as SuperUser then uploading the ZIP file and installing the skin package as an extension. The skin is installed in the Portals_defaultSkins folder. As of DNN 5.x, only the SuperUser can deploy skins. This was done as a security precaution as skins can now contain user-written code. Getting ready For this recipe you will need skin files to deploy. We will use the skin files from the previous article, from the recipe: Creating a simple ASCX skin. How to do it... Begin by logging in as the SuperUser. Look under the Host menu and select Extensions. The first step is to look under the installed extensions and find the SampleASCXSkin under the Skins section. If you see it, skip to step 8, otherwise you must create the extension first. Start by selecting Create Extension from the action menu (or click on the link at the bottom of the page). Choose Skin from Extension Type drop down and fill out the form as shown: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) Click on Next. Provide the owner information and click on Next. The SampleASCXSkin skin will now appear in the list of extensions. Click on the Edit icon next to the name. Scroll to the bottom and click on the link Create Package. The Create Package screen will display. Click on Next. On the next screen you will see the files of the skin. Click on Next. Next, the manifest is displayed. Click on Next. The wizard will now generate a file name for the ZIP file using the owner name and the skin name. Click on Next. The wizard will now complete with a summary page. You will now find a ZIP file in the /Install/Skin folder. Click on Return to close the wizard. Once the file is packaged in a ZIP file you can upload and install it. Exploring Skin Objects In this recipe we will expand the sample ASCX skin and demonstrate additional Skin Objects you can use. Getting ready To follow along with this recipe you must have completed the following recipe: Creating a simple ASCX skin Here is a diagram of the new page layout we will create: How to do it... Start by locating the default skin folder within your test DNN portal (Portals_defaultSkins). Next, create a new folder to hold the skin files. Call this folder DetailedASCXSkin. Launch the Development Tool. Open the SampleASCXSkin.ascx file from the Creating a simple ASCX skin recipe. Add the following register directive after the existing directives: <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="BREADCRUMB" Src="~/Admin/Skins/BreadCrumb.ascx" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="TEXT" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Text.ascx" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="LINKS" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Links.ascx" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="COPYRIGHT" Src="~/Admin/Skins/Copyright.ascx" %> <%@ Register TagPrefix="dnn" TagName="CURRENTDATE" Src="~/Admin/Skins/CurrentDate.ascx" %> Next, replace the existing Login_Style DIV with a new DIV encompassing both Login and User links: <%--By placing the SkinObjects inside a parent DIV they share the same style--%> <div class="bread_bg"> <div id="bread_style"> <dnn:TEXT runat="server" id="dnnTEXT" CssClass="breadcrumb_text" Text="You are here" ResourceKey="Breadcrumb" /> &nbsp;<span> <dnn:BREADCRUMB runat="server" id="dnnBREADCRUMB" CssClass="Breadcrumb" RootLevel="0" Separator="&nbsp;>&nbsp;" /> </span> </div> <div id="login_style" class="user"> <dnn:USER runat="server" id="dnnUSER" CssClass="user" /> &nbsp;&nbsp;|&nbsp;&nbsp; <dnn:LOGIN runat="server" id="dnnLOGIN" CssClass="user" /> </div> </div> Lastly, leave the ContentPane DIV as it is and add these new DIVs right below it: <div class="bot_bg links"> <dnn:LINKS runat="server" id="dnnLINKS" CssClass="links" Level="Root" Separator="&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;| &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" /> </div> <div class="bot_pad"> <div id="copy_style" class="footer"> <dnn:COPYRIGHT runat="server" id="dnnCOPYRIGHT" Align CssClass="footer" /> </div> <div id="date_style" class="footer"> <dnn:CURRENTDATE runat="server" id="dnnCURRENTDATE" Align CssClass="footer" /> </div> </div> Separating the Copyright and Date into separate DIVs allow us to put one in the lower-left corner and one in the lower-right corner of the page. Select Save SampleASCXSkin.ascx As… from the File menu. Browse to the DetailedASCXSkin folder and save the file as DetailedASCXSkin.ascx. These new Skin Objects will need styles. Open the skin.css file from the Creating a simple ASCX skin recipe. Add the following styles to the bottom of the skin.css file: /*breadcrumbs*/ .Breadcrumb, a.Breadcrumb:link, a.Breadcrumb:active, a.Breadcrumb:visited {color: #800000; font-size: 13px;} a.Breadcrumb:hover {color: #C00;} .bread_bg {background-color: #EAEAEA; fontfamily: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; border-left: solid 1px #EAEAEA; border-right: solid 1px #EAEAEA; margin: 0 5px 0 5px; height: 30px;} #bread_style {float: left; padding: 10px 0px 0px 17px; color: #000000; font-size: 13px;} /* for the bottom of the page */ .bot_bg {background-color: #EAEAEA; border-left: solid 1px #EAEAEA;border-right: solid 1px #EAEAEA; border-bottom: solid 1px #EAEAEA; padding: 10px; margin: 0 5px 0 5px;} .bot_pad {font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 20px; padding: 0 30px 0 20px;} #terms_style {float: left;} #copy_style {float: left;} #date_style {float: right; padding: 0px 0px 0px 10px; } /*links*/ .links {text-align: center;} .links, a.links:link, a.links:active, a.links:visited {fontweight: bold; color: #800000; font-size: 11px;} a.links:hover {color: #C00;} /* Sets the font size and text color of the footer at the bottom of the page */ .footer, a.footer:link, a.footer:active, a.footer:visited {color: #800000; font-size: 12px;} a.footer:hover {color: #C00;} With these styles we are positioning the Breadcrumb links just below the menu on the left. The Login and User links remain on the right side, ContentPane and RightPane stay the same, and the new Links, Copyright, and CurrentDate controls are arranged along the bottom of the page. Select Save skin.css As… from the File menu. Browse to the DetailedASCXSkin folder and save the file as skin.css. To see how the new skin will look on the site, log in as the SuperUser. Look under the Admin menu and select Skins. The new DetailedASCXSkin will now appear: Click on Preview to see how the skin looks: See how the breadcrumbs (You are here:) appear on the left under the menu, user and login are on the right, and links along the bottom and the copyright message and current date appear in the bottom corners. There's more... If you're curious to see which Skin Objects are available on your DNN site, you can log in as the SuperUser and select Extensions under the Host menu. This will list all the skin objects and their version number. Some skin objects may not be installed by default and will not appear in this list until installed.

(For more resources on Drupal, see here.) Not everything that is available in Drupal's Configuration section is discussed in this article. Some settings are very straightforward and really don't warrant more than perhaps a brief mention. Before we start It is sensible to make note of a few important things before getting our hands dirty. Make it second nature to check how the changes made to the settings affect the site. Quite often settings you modify, or features you add, will not behave precisely as expected and without ensuring that you use a prudent approach to making changes, you can sometimes end up with a bit of a mess. Changes to the site's structure (for example, adding new modules) can affect what is and isn't available for configuration so be aware that it may be necessary to revisit this section. Click on Configuration in the toolbar menu. You should see something like the following screenshot: A quick point to mention is that we aren't giving over much space to the final option—Regional and Language. This is because the settings here are very basic and should give you no trouble at all. There is also an online exercise available to help you with date types and formats if you are interested in customizing these. Let's begin! Site information This page contains a mixed bag of settings, some of which are pretty self-explanatory, while others will require us to think quite carefully about what we need to do. To start with, we are presented with a few text boxes that control things like the name of the site and the site slogan. Nothing too earth shattering, although I should point out that different themes implement these settings differently, while some don't implement them at all. For example, adding a slogan in the default Garland theme prints it after the site name as shown in the following screenshot: Whereas, the Stark theme places the slogan beneath the site name: Let's assume that there is a page of content that should be displayed by default—before anyone views any of the other content. For example, if you wanted to display some sort of promotional information or an introduction page, you could tell Drupal to display that using this setting. Remember that you have to create the content for this post first, and then determine its path before you tell Drupal to use it. For example, we could reference a specific node with its node ID, but equally, a site's blogs could be displayed if you substitute node/x (in node/ID format) for the blog. Once you are looking at the content intended for the front page, take note of the relative URL path and simply enter that into the text box provided. Recall that the relative URL path is that part of the page's address that comes after the standard domain, which is shared by the whole site. For example, setting node/2 works because Drupal maps this relative path to http://localhost/drupal/node/2 The first part of this address, http://localhost/drupal/ is the base URL, and everything after that is the relative URL path. Sometimes, the front page is a slightly more complex beast and it is likely that you will want to consider Panels to create a unique front page. In this case, Panels settings can override this setting to make a specific panel page as the front page. The following settings allow you to broadly deal with the problem of two common site errors that may crop up during a site's normal course of operation—from the perspective of a site visitor. In particular, you may wish to create a couple of customized error pages that will be displayed to the users in the event of a "page not found" or "access denied" problem. Remember that there are already pretty concise pages, which are supplied by default. However, if you wish to make any changes, then the process for creating an error page is exactly the same as creating any other normal page. Let's make a change very quickly. Click on Add new content in the Shortcuts menu and select Basic page. Add whatever content you want for, say the Page not found! error: Don't worry about the host of options available on this page—we will talk about all of this later on. For now, simply click on the Save button and make note of the URL of the page when it is displayed. Then head back to the Site information page, add this URL to the Default 404 (not found) page dialog, and then click on the Save configuration button: If you navigate to a page that doesn't exist, for example, node/3333, you should receive the new error message as follows: In this example, we asked Drupal to find a node that does not exist yet and so it displayed the Page not found! error message. Since Drupal can also provide content that is private or available to only certain users, it also needs the access denied error to explain to the would-be users that they do not have sufficient permissions to view the requested page. This is not the same as not finding a page, of course, but you can create your own access denied page in exactly the same way. Finally, you will need to specify how often cron should run in the Automatically run cron drop-down at the bottom of the Site information page. Cronjobs are automated tasks (of any type—they could be search indexing, feed aggregation, and so on) that should run at specified intervals. Drupal uses them to keep itself up-to-date and ensure optimal operation. Drupal uses web page requests to initiate new cron runs once the specified interval has elapsed. If your website does not get visited regularly, cron itself cannot run regularly. Running cron every few hours is reasonable for the vast majority of sites. Setting it to run too quickly can create a huge load on the server because each time the cron is run, all sorts of scripts are updating data, performing tasks, and consuming server resources. By the same token, run cron too infrequently and your site's content can become outdated, or worse, important module, theme, and core updates can go unnoticed, among other things. Actions and triggers Quite often, it happens that for specific events, it is useful to have Drupal automatically perform a specified task or action. An action, in the Drupal sense, is one of a number of tasks that the system can perform, and these usually relate to e-mailing people or acting upon user accounts or content. There are a number of simple actions that are available as well as a few more advanced ones that can be set up by anyone with sufficient permissions. To configure actions, navigate to Actions in SYSTEM under the Configuration menu in the toolbar: Default simple actions cannot be modified, so we will ignore these for the moment and focus on creating a new, advanced action. Set up a new Send e-mail action by selecting it from the drop-down list and click on the Create button, as shown in the preceding screenshot. This brings up the following page that can be set according to how this specific action will be used: It should be clear that the intention of this e-mail is to notify the staff/administration of any new site members. The Label field is important in this respect because this is how you will distinguish this action from the other ones that you may create in the future. Make the description as accurate, meaningful, and concise as possible to avoid any potential confusion. Also notice that there are several placeholder variables that can be inserted into the Recipient, Subject, and Message fields. In this instance, one has been used to inform the e-mail recipient of the new user name, as part of the message. A click on the Save button adds this new action to the list where it can be modified or deleted, accordingly: So far so good—we have set the action, but this in itself does absolutely nothing. An action cannot do anything unless there is a specific system event that can be triggered to set it off. These system events are, perspicaciously enough, called triggers and Drupal can look for any number of triggers, and perform the actions that are associated with it—this is how actions and triggers work together. Triggers are not part of the topic of Drupal configuration. However, we will discuss them here for completeness, since actions and triggers are integrally linked. Triggers are not enabled by default, so head on over to the Modules section and enable the Triggers module. With the module enabled, there will now be a new Triggers link from the Actions page. Clicking on this brings up the following page: Triggers are divided into five different categories, each providing a range of triggers to which actions can be attached. Assigning a trigger is basically selecting an action to apply from the drop-down list of the relevant trigger and clicking on the Assign button. To continue with our example, select the USER tab from the top of the Triggers overlay and, in the TRIGGER: AFTER CREATING A NEW USER ACCOUNT box, select the newly defined action, as shown in the following screenshot: Click on the Assign button, and the newly assigned action will show up in the relevant trigger box: In the same way, a large number of actions can be automated depending on the system event (or trigger) that fires. To test this out, log off and register a new account—you will find that the New User Alert e-mail is dutifully sent out once the account has been registered (assuming your web server is able to send e-mail).

Introduction In DNN, skinning is a term that refers to the process of customizing the look and feel of the DNN portal. One of the powerful features of DNN is that the functionality of the portal is separated from the presentation of the portal. This means we can change the appearance of the portal without affecting how the portal works. To create a skin in DNN we will work with three kinds of files: HTML, ASCX, and CSS. The HTML or ASCX file describes the layout of the page and the CSS file provides the styling. If you have worked with HTML and CSS before than you will be able to immediately get started. However, if you are familiar with ASCX (and as a DNN developer that is likely) you can achieve the same results faster than HTML. In the recipes, we will show primarily ASCX skinning with some brief examples of HTML skinning. Skin Objects Before we start looking at the recipes, we need a quick word about Skin Objects. Skin Objects are used in both HTML and ASCX skin files as placeholders for different kinds of dynamic functionality. In HTML skins, you place text tokens such as [CURRENTDATE] in your code and when the code is parsed by the skin engine it will insert the matching skin object. If you are working in ASCX, you register skin objects as controls that you place directly in your code. DNN offers many different skin objects such as CurrentDate, Logo, Login link, and others and we'll see many of these in action in the recipes of this article. Downloading and installing a skin Often the easiest way to start skinning is to download an existing skin package and see the different files used for skinning. In this recipe we will download an excellent skin created by Jon Henning from a site called CodePlex that demonstrates the most common skin objects and layouts. Another reason for starting with an existing skin is that it allows incremental development. We can start with a fully functional skin, deploy it to our DNN portal and then edit the source files right on the server. In this way the changes we make are immediately displayed and problems are easily spotted and fixed. However, as applying a skin can affect the entire site, it is best to create and test skins on a development DNN site before using them on a production site. Finally, it should also be noted that as a skin is really just another type of extension in DNN, you are already familiar with some of these steps. How to do it... Open your favorite web browser and go to the site http://codeendeavortemplate.codeplex.com/. Click on Downloads in the toolbar. Scroll down a little and click on the CodeEndeavors Template Skin link. When prompted with the License Agreement, click I Agree. The File download dialog will ask if you want to Open or Save. Click on Save and select a temporary folder to hold the ZIP file. That's all we need from the CodePlex site, so close the browser. To install the skin on the DNN site, begin by logging in as the SuperUser. Look at the Control Panel and make sure you're in Edit mode. Look under the Host menu and select Extensions. Scroll to the bottom and click on the link Install Extension Wizard. The wizard will prompt for the ZIP file (called the extension package). Click on the Browse button and select the file you just downloaded (for example CodeEndeavors.TemplateSkin.install.v01.01.07.00.zip). Click on Open then click on Next. The wizard will display the Extension information. Click on Next. The wizard will display the Release Notes. Click on Next. On the license page, check Accept License? and click on Next. Now the install script will run, creating the skin. At the end you should see the message "Installation successful". Click on Return. To make the skin active, select Skins under the Admin menu. (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) From the Skins drop-down lists, select CodeEndeavors.TemplateSkin. For this article, we will use the Index skin for our examples. Click on the Apply link under the index skin to make it active. To see the skin files, you can look in the root folder of the DNN instance under Portals_defaultSkinsCodeEndeavors.TemplateSkin. Here is a summary of the key files you are likely to see in a skin like this: File name Description animated.ascx An ASCX skin file. container.ascx An ASCX container file. index.html An HTML skin file. skin.css The stylesheet for the skin. container.css The stylesheet for the container. TemplateSkin.dnn The manifest file for the skin package. thumbnail_animated.jpg A preview image of the ASCX skin. thumbnail_container.jpg A preview image of the ASCX container. thumbnail_index.jpg A preview image of the HTML skin. license.txt The text of the license agreement. releasenotes.txt The text of the release notes. version.txt The version number. Images folder A folder holding the graphic images supporting a skin or container.

Creating custom container images Containers can do more than just act as placeholders for module content. By expanding the container skin to include images we can create more elaborate containers limited only by our creativity. Styling a DNN container using images is a two-part process. First we must create the images we need and save them as a set of graphic files. Then we must design the container to position the images around the container. In this recipe we will see how to create the custom images for styling a container. In the next recipe Styling a container with images we'll see how to position these images to create the final container. Getting ready Here is a diagram that shows what the final container will look like. We need to create the five images highlighted in red. As you can see in this diagram, we need only create images for the distinctive elements. CSS can fill in the gaps by repeating the background image as necessary to fit the size of the container. Creating images for a container is a four-step process: Decide which sides of the container will use images. In this example we will create images for the top and bottom container edges and leave the left and right sides as a simple border line. Decide the size of the images. A container border can be very narrow or very wide. In this example we will create a 27 pixel wide border with the images. Decide which images will tile to support variable-sized containers. As containers can stretch or shrink, we need to use an image that can tile. That is, the image can be repeated as many times as necessary to fill the width of the container. In this example, we will pick one image to tile across the top and another to tile along the bottom. As the sides will be just a border line we won't need to worry about tiling vertically. Choose a drawing application (such as MS Paint) to create the images and save them to a temporary folder. You can use a variety of formats—in this example we will save the images as GIF files to save space. How to do it... Start by launching your favorite drawing application (such as MS Paint). Set the image dimensions to 98 pixels wide and 27 pixels high. There's nothing special about these dimensions, they just look good for this particular design. Draw the image for the upper-left corner of the container. This image will be the background for the title of the module, so it needs to be an image that can tile horizontally as the length of a container title varies. Save the image as a GIF file called ContainerUL.gif. Next, create a new image with dimensions 80 by 27 pixels. This image marks the end of the module title and the beginning of the top container border. It does not tile and is used in this example to connect the upper-left corner to the border image that runs across the top of the container. Save the image as a GIF file called ContainerUC1.gif. The next image is the top border of the container and will tile horizontally as the width of the container changes. Set the attributes to be 12 by 27 pixels. Save the image as a GIF file called ContainerUC2.gif. For the border along the bottom of the container, we need two more images. The first is the lower-left corner. Make this image 90 by 27. This image will tile across the bottom for the width of the container. Save the image as a GIF file called ContainerLL.gif. The last image is for the lower-right corner. This image doesn't tile. Make it 100 by 27 pixels. 12. Save the image as a GIF file called ContainerLR.gif. At this point you should have five images in a temporary folder that look something like this: (Move the mouse over the image to enlarge.) There's more... In this recipe we saw how to create images for a container and a little bit on how the images can form the borders of a container. In the next recipe we will see how to create the container that will use these images.