What if, just like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, you could wake up to a fresh and identical development environment completely free of yesterday's experiments and mistakes? Vagrant lets you do exactly that. more>>

This is a bit of a follow-up to Mike Bell's introductory article on using Codeception to create Drupal test suites. He concludes by stating he "need[s] to figure out a way of creating a Codeception module which allows you to plug in a Drupal testing user (ideally multiple so you can test each role) and then all the you have to do is call a function which executes the above steps to confirm your logged in before testing authenticated behaviour."

"Something along the lines of:

$I->drupalLogin('editor');

So, after skimming through Codeception and Mink documentation, I've tinkered with two potential ways of achieving this... for acceptance testing at least.

A crude toolbox

The first method is to use two custom classes to provide details of (a) a general Drupal site and (b) the specific site to be tested. This idea stemmed from this article which suggests that including literals - such as account credentials, paths and even form labels - in tests is bad practice. What if the login button label changes?

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The big week is finally here with DrupalCon Portland kicking off in our own backyard. For those of you not familiar with Portland, we're really big into birds (yes, I'm aware that's very 2010), and chickens in particular. I'm working real hard here to make a clever connection to RedHen, the leading native Drupal CRM, and the only one named after a bird!

Just in time for the conference, RedHen has a new release with plenty of performance improvements and bug fixes. We have a production site about to launch with over 100k contacts, and our test/development environments are running with over a 100k contacts with thousands of engagements each. We still have lots of work to do, but we're confident in RedHen's ability to scale to "enterprise" levels.

Understandably, one of the most requested features since we launched RedHen as been the ability to import contacts. Our initial pass at meeting that critical need also launched last week in the form RedHen Feeds, a Feeds processor for RedHen contacts. So get those contacts out of that spreadsheet and into RedHen! Support for organizational affiliations isn't there yet, but is in the works.

ThinkShout will be helping lead a RedHen sprint on Friday, May 24th, DrupalCon Portland's official sprint day. So if you're at all native CRM curious, come join our team as we hack away on RedHen and related tools. Learn about large datasets, Salesforce integration, managing memberships, email integration, event registrations, and common use cases. Site builders, documentarians, UX specialists, and developers are all welcome.

PS - ThinkShout is co-hosting the Drupal DoGooders Happy Hour, a fundraiser for Aaron Winborn, today, Monday May 20th. So please joint us and start your week off right by giving back to someone who has given so much to the Drupal community!

Tags: Drupal PlanetRedHenconferenceevents

About a month ago, I had the opportunity to present at Internet World London, why I believe that Drupal is the best Open Source solution to build professional level websites, e-shops or online applications and why you should dig in it and do your own research about it.

The speech is in English. You can enable the English or Greek subtitles by clicking the captions button or read the transcript below.

Presentation Transcript

Hello everybody, my name is Yannis Karampelas. I'm the owner and founder of Netstudio.

Netstudio is a Web Design and Web development company in Athens, Greece. I am Greek and this is the first time I give a presentation in English, so if what I say, sounds Greek to you, feel free to interrupt me and ask questions.

Drupal websites don't always need to allow users to register themselves with an account. This site doesn't, for instance. Anonymous commenting is turned on. The contact form is enabled for anonymous users. And those are the only thing that any member of the public would need to do - other than read. So nobody needs to set themselves up with a login. … Read more about Useful modules: Spambot

Blog Category: TechnologyDrupal Planet

I want to thank the good folks at ThinkShout and ZivTech for organizing the Drupal DoGooders Happy Hour to benefit my family and me, as well as giving people attending DrupalCon an opportunity to hang out and have some drinks. Even though I will not be in Portland this week, I plan to be present in spirit, beginning with a virtual appearance there. Join the crew this evening (May 20) at about 4:00 PDT to raise a glass in toast of doing Drupal Good and for a quick Q & A with me beginning about 4:30.

What a long strange trip it's been.

From Sunnyvale in 2007 when I conceived the Embedded Media Field module, to Boston DrupalCon in 2008, where I presented my first State of the Media session, to DC in 2009 where we launched the Media sprint supporting the Media suite of modules, to Chicago 2011 and Denver 2012.

These are the fun times that I recall fondly, doing good with my fellow cohorts. And by doing good, I mean really doing good things. Because where else in the business world can you spontaneously form a group of competitors, build something awesome, and give it freely to the rest of the world?

I'm really going to miss that this year. I mean that even though I continue to contribute to Drupal whatever and whenever I can, I am going to miss seeing you guys this year. There is a magic that happens when you get three or more Drupalers together in the same room. But circumstance has had its way with me these past two years and until we have a DrupalCon "Three Mile Island", I will have to be content with a virtual appearance.

So, join me on Monday evening to see my Stephen Hawking impersonation.

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The Responsive eXtro Lightbox (REL) consists of a module and a plugin. Both versions have their own advantages: The module automatically creates thumbnail images of the images to display, all you have to do is to define the folder that contains your images. It can be published at any module position, or directly in an article by using the loadmodule plugin. The lightbox creates a so called roadtrip, ie all images are linked togehter and can be switched by clicking the left/right buttons. The plugin version of the Responsive eXtro Lightbox (REL) allows to display thumbnails with lightbox function anywhere on your site. However, the plugin doesn't automatically create thumbnails, thumbnail and full image must be defined separately in order to display correctly. Like the module, the plugin can also create a roadtrip of the images displayed in which the images are linked together and can be switched by clicking next/previous. The plugin allows the admin to use optimized tumbnails, or custom thumbnails which display completely different content as the full image, or even just a normal link. Module as well as the plugin are completely built in responsive design. This allows the lightbox to display optimally on small screens (smartphones) as well as up to large desktop displays. The lightbox script is very lightweight, but still offers a lot of functionality (see the documentation). It has been built in new modern flat design.

Requirements Joomla 2.5.4+ PHP 5.3+ Recommended for backend form creation Firefox 15+ Also tested with Opera 12+, Google Chrome 16+ and IE9 Features Form Creator: Drag and drop Interface for form elements Edit / duplicate / hide and delete your elements Place your elements accurately using a grid Bunch your elements together using a rectangle selection box (as known as in windows explorer) to select various form elements an move them to a new place All usual form field elements included (text, textarea, select, checkbox, radio) Add custom text to your web form with Joomla's TinyMCE implementation Add CSS effects to your form elements (select, checkbox, radio) Load your select box / radio button / checkbox values from your Joomla database Preselect options as you need Add required fiels -> Validate your users' entries Automatically log your users date of filling out the form / ip / userid Restrict users to fill out form only once and redirect them to a desired location if they tried to do so Filter your filled out text boxes and text areas for malicious code injections Add a individual CSS class to your form elements if you need to Add custom CSS styles to your form right in the backend form creator You may alter everything you need to fit to your needs Restrict access to your forms by adding Joomla's well known ACLs List View: Drag and drop Interface for creating lists of entries Sort your form fields for list view by drag and drop Add filters to your lists -> Retrieve your data quickly Predefine your desired initial sort order Rename labels individually for your list view captions and filters If your data is too long for list view, you may crop the data by your defined amount of chars Restrict access to your lists by adding Joomla's well known ACLs Mail system: Automatically sends a mail to a chosen Joomla group/s, if a form was filled out Set everything you need (to, from, cc, bcc, subject, message body). Optionally, mail may include the filled out form with all its data Use replacement Variables for: date / user / form name / form data in subject and message body Form view: Displays your form Optionally marks your required form fields with a red asterisk List view: Display all entries of your form in a handy list Define filters for retrieving data quickly Category / Categories view: Display your forms by category Extendable with plugins Check www.rootarea.de for a list of official plugins License Component for managing / creating web forms GNU/GPL Credits Implements jnbdz's excellent rectangle selection library for Mootools

This module is developed under the GNU license and is free and without warranty.

JMod Contact is a module developed by Jmodules to insert a flexible contact form in your joomla site. Below are some features of this module: *Input you email in Email Recipient and you are ready, so easy!!! *You can edit all info messages easy *Align your fields from module options *Add Up to 3 Custom Fields! *Change email header *Change labels names ! *Add Recaptcha Protection! *More than 20 options if you want to go advance!!! Please feel free to contact us , we welcome suggestions and we will be happy to help you with your project! "The module includes a Backlink to our site."

This easy to use image gallery with caption display and animation, responsive layout and touch support for mobile devices works perfectly on desktop and iOs or Android mobile devices. It is compatible with all modern browsers starting from IE8. Image Swoop uses the same helper file with the Joomla Articles Newsflash module and automatically updates with Joomla platform keeping your configuration options safe.

The "GeekBanner" module for Joomla allows you to display a series of images. The transitions between these images are crossfades. Concerning "backoffice", it is possible to add, edit, delete, resize and crop images.

JLex 360 is plugin to display 360 view of product or images. Customers will have a more holistic view of your product. It is easily integrated into articles, K2 and Virtuemart extensions. Features: Find and sort images in the selected folder Animated rotation and inertial motion. Intuitive operation. Supports both mouse and touch. Apple, Blackberry and Android mobile devices supported. Many options Support JPEG,JPG,PNG,GIF

This module was made to facilitate the implementation of Twitter Bootstrap into Joomla. You just need to select the folder that contains the images to display in the carousel.

Floating Social Tabs is a sticky vertical social share Joomla module, which stays on the side of your browser window and slides, as you scroll down. It lets you share your current page on facebook, twitter, linked in and google plus. All you need to do is the define the DIV of the upper block and bottom block. The Downloads Access and Extension Support is valid for 6 months from the date of purchase. Features : Floats Social Icons on left side of your page Define theme Comes with clear documentation Jquery ON/OFF feature to avoid script conflict Compatible with all the browsers Compatible with Joomla 1.5 ,1.7, 2.5 and 3.0

WMT JS 3D Gallery Free Joomla Module and Component is a jQuery based 3D gallery. Packed in this extension are a Joomla 2.5 and 3.0 Module and Joomla 2.5 and 3.0 Component.

Pure Slider Minimum Requirements: > Joomla 2.5 or 3.0 Description: This is a flexible, simple-to-use plugin that is used to add a Nivo-based Slider to any article created in Joomla 2.5 or 3.0. It works with either Mootools or jQuery, or even both at the same time. Main features: > Choice of Nivoo v1.2.1 (Mootools) or Nivo v3.2 (jQuery) as slider engine > Makes a Slider of the images files in a directory > Can specify all the files or only the a selection > Can add a caption to any image

Gallery JLEX is a plugin that allows embed one or more slideshow into your article. Apply for Content and K2 component. With Gallery JLEX, you can: - Find and auto create thumbnail images from folder selected. - Embed images Picasa, Flickr or remote URLs - Optimizing your site loading speed - Setting size image, lightbox, auto start, effect,image Alignment..etc - Add title, description and link for each image - Enable fullscreen function - Support video from Youtube, Vimeo, get thumbnail image - Include 5 package template. - Easy code editor - Auto responsive - Works well on all browsers

It’s that time again. Drupalcon is about to kick off and it’s the biggest one yet. Over 3300 Drupalers from across the globe will meet in Portland tomorrow to delve into one of the fastest growing open source technologies in the world.

And ImageX will be there loud and clear. As Gold Sponsors of the conference, we’re building on our commitment to give back. Members of our team will be presenting in sessions, participating in birds of a feather groups, co-hosting an after party with Mediacurrent and taking part in code sprints to help support and grow Drupal.

Integrates the Moot.it forum, comments and blog tools into Joomla. Easily place a Moot.it comments section on any page, or include a full-featured forum within your Joomla site without hosting the forum code. A free http://moot.it/ account is required to use the plugin.