Darren Mothersele

Now you can define Drupal blocks in your themes! With the Theme Blocks module I just submitted to drupal.org you can include blocks with your custom Drupal themes.

Sometimes you want a simple block for your Drupal site, and you have to create a module just to implement hook_block(). For simple blocks you end up creating the same code again and again for every site. Defining the template in hook_theme() then implementing hook_block() to make Drupal aware of your block. I have abstracted this process to make custom blocks as easy as adding a template file to your theme and a line to your theme.info file. See the project page on Drupal.org for more information.

I recently spent an interesting 8 days in Serbia, talking about Web 2.0, Social Software and its use in Youth in Action programmes. I'd never been to Serbia before and I immediately found some "cultural differences". You can see the view I had from my hotel window in the attached photo. Yes, a bomb! Not what I expected to see when staying in a hotel at the top of a mountain in a national park.

Many things in Drupal are not obvious to non-techie (and even techie) users. One of the common sources of confusion can be the complex node content add and edit forms. One problem I've found in particular is using a tagging vocabulary and expecting users to format tags correctly and use commas to separate. Some users do and some don't which litters the site with long concatenated sets of tags.

Here's the first version of a module to make a nicer tag entry widget for Drupal vocabularies. This is somewhat inspired by Wordpress' tag entry system. This module is for Drupal 6 and provides a new option called "Active Tags" on the vocabulary edit page. If you select a vocabulary to be of the "Tag" type, and turn on Active Tags you will find a new widget for entering tags appears on the node edit page. Here's a before and after shot...

Currently being rebuilt in Drupal, a new version is on the way soon.
http://www.proteinos.com

CV Life Line was the result of last weekends participation in the Social Innovation Camp - an experiment in using social technology to address social needs.

I'll be adding more about this as there's some interest in taking this project further.

This charity really wanted a website they could easily update themselves. I quickly put together a site in a matter of hours using Drupal for content management, the Zen engine as a template, and TinyMCE for content editing.

The Commonwealth Countries League is a charity that works for the rights of women within the commonwealth. Their education fund sponsor girls of ability through secondary school where, without assistance, they would be unable or unlikely to continue.

It's almost there. In a couple of weeks we'll be announcing the launch of the Syllabus Music Platform.

Early 2008 saw the launch of RadarMusicVideos - the world's first online community site dedicated to commissioning music videos.

I was a founding member of digital music distribution company Uploader. My knowledge of the music industry, technology, and the digital landscape was invaluable during the growth of this company. After more than two years of operation, Uploader was aquired by IODA in March 2007, and became their UK office. I have since left the company to pursue other ventures.