drool presentation from drupalcon2007

[email protected] | www.illuminateict.org.uk

Drool (Drupal Tool):Site Management

and Rapid Theme Design

Presented by: Dr Nick Blundelland Matthew Shepherd

[email protected], [email protected]


Overview● Introduction● Motivation● Drool

– What is it? What does it do? Status?● Demonstration (by Sir Matthew)● Summary● Questions?


Introduction: Who are illuminate iCT?● We are a smal l team of ICT

professionals working closely with voluntary and communi ty organisations in the UK.

● We conduct research and devel opment of innovative systems (especi ally open source) to better fit the sector's needs


Motivation● The sector was badly in need of some high-quality low

cost dynamic websi tes to let the world know of their good work

● We quickly identified Drupal as an excellent means to do that

● To keep costs down, we had to make the process of developing and managing multiple Drupal websit es as efficient as possible


Drool: What is it?● A command-l ine tool for creating and

managing Drupal websites● Basically, in a simple fashion, it

coordinates:– Apache– MySQL– Multiple Drupal Installations


Drool: what does it do?● With a simple one-l ine command:

– Creates new Drupal sit es (i.e. loads tables)– Clone whole sites (i.e. data and f iles)

● Very useful for establishing template sites– Installs correct versions of modules/themes

directly from Drupal.org


Drool: what does it do?● Supports mul tiple Drupal installations

(e.g. 4.7, 5.x, 6.x)● Allows sites' data and fil es to be packed

up into a single fil e and stored or unpacked onto another server

● Dumps and loads databases from si tes: hand for backup


Drool: what does it do?● Oooooh: my favourite bit !● Allows specified regions of the theme to be

skinned with single images, which are automatically sliced into css div backgrounds. (e.g. page, blocks, header, footer, primary link buttons)

● More time can be spent on the graphical design than on faffing with slicing and css/html tinkering


Drool: status● We have been using drool for over a year will

little modification and on consider it to be stable

● We plan to release this as a open source project after this conference – if there is interest, this will help; if there is funding, this will also help

● If you are interested in trying this out, please get in touch.


Demonstration: Sir Matthew● Skin the page● Skin the blocks● Skin block titles● Skin specific block titles● Package/Unpack (i.e. clone)● Install module direct ly from drupal.org● View a list of sites on server

Note: at the conference, the demo was in real time. This is a representation of what we did.


Create a new, blank drupal website, based on a drool template site.


Prepare a page design.

This was rapidly drawn in inkscape, an excellent open source drawing package.


With a singlecommand, thepage image hasbeen applied tothe site.

drool skin barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk page page.png


Prepare a ser ies of images to use as 'skins' for the blocks and block title regions.


With a singlecommand, theblock image hasbeen applied tothe block regionsof the site.

drool skin barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk block block3.png


With a single command,the generic block title imagehas been applied to eachblock title region.

drool skin barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk blocktitleblockheader-generic.png

With a series of commands, the calendar and user login blocks are skinned with

specific images.

drool skin barca2007.illuminateweb.org.ukblocktitle blockheader-calendar.png--skinPrefix=#block-event-0

drool skin barca2007.illuminateweb.org.ukblocktitle blockheader-talk.png--skinPrefix=#block-user-0


The drool theme reacts to changes in text size based on it's accessibility features. Reacting to browser based text size changes is a planned feature.

The site layout drops from 3 columns to 2 columns.

Skinned regions are able to stretch to accommodate larger text sizes


Drool can be used to pack up a websi te:

drool pack barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk

This produces a file named as follows: DROOLPACK-20070921-140550-barca2007.illuminateweb.org.ukwhich can then be used to duplicate or recreate the site on another server:

drool unpack clone-demo.illuminateweb.org.uk >>> DROOLPACK-20070921-140550-barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk

The barca2007 site can be used as a template and cloned with a single command:

drool clone barca2007.illuminateweb.org.uk www.mynewfabsite.org.uk

Drool is also used to install modules directly from drupal.org

drool module clone-demo.illuminateweb.org.uk ecommerce

And to get status information from all hosted sites:

drool list

Other drool functions


Summary● We told you who we ar e● We told you about our need to develop

and manage Drupal websi tes efficiently● We described and demonstrated drool


Questions?


References● http://www.illuminateict.org.uk● http://projects.nickblundel l.org.uk

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