mori's blog

So it's finally here. During DaNGO project, which was funded by Microsoft, two existing modules were updated and three new modules as well as an install profile were produced.

Modules that were produced / updated

Windows Live Messenger - provides an affordable (free) online chat functionality to your website. Developed by Django Beatty from Adub.

Geocode Bing - allows you to use Bing maps to geocode your information e.g. which areas you work in the world. Developed by Benedict Steele from Homemade Digital

Activity dashboard - an API-only module that works with Silverlight to generate a site dashboard-type feature. Useful for generating an overview of the site activity for executives. Developed by Ben Alexander from Homemade Digital.

Email Newsletter - a powerful newsletter module that allows you to stay in touch with your supporters. Developed by Robert Castelo from Code Positive

Fundraising module - allows you to set up fundraising pages with a fundraising menu that gives donors a better idea on how the money is spent, as well as a list of preset donation amount that makes it easier for them to make a decision. Developed by me :)
The actual transaction is handled by the dependent module PG API.

DaNGO install profile - Installs all the modules listed above, as well as their dependent modules.

I've made a good progress this week. The things I've done are:

• Built basic features of fundraising module
• Installed PHP and Drupal on IIS (finally)
• Learned a bit about Silverlight and tried out the developer tool

Fundraising module

As mentioned in my previous blog post, I decided to use PG API as the basis of the fundraising module. It is light-weight and yet it provides good enough payment handling features.
As of now, the fundraising module:

• Allows admin to enter the amount for donation amount options

The past two weeks had been a bit frustrating. Apart from falling ill and spending few days in bed, we haven't been able to set up Drupal on IIS.

Problems installing Drupal on IIS

The problem is that, when Drupal's installer runs, I get this error message:

Blogging about the project's progress and Microsoft's tools is one of the requirements so I'll be blogging about these topics weekly.

Here's a list of things I did last week (w/c 1/March/2010):

1. Researching on existing payment modules
2. Configuring the IIS server

1. Researching on existing payment modules

A couple of months ago I was approached by Robert Castelo of Code Positive if I would be interested in working with Microsoft to build some useful Drupal tools for charities and NGOs. Since I work exclusively with charities as a Drupalista, there were no reasons to decline. I was also interested in getting in touch with Microsoft to know what they have to offer.

In October, I proposed an event called Practical Drupal for Small NGOs because I know some small NGOs that need a website, but they don't have enough budget to build one. These people usually have very interesting projects and do really good jobs. I thought it would be fun and practical to set up a regular Drupal event to help small NGOs build their websites.

Note we are not building websites *for* them. It's because I know a number of individuals and organisations who built websites for NGOs free of charge, but they worn out and completely abandoned those websites and stopped supporting. I didn't want to see that happen so I decided to ask NGOs to build and look after their sites by themselves, but we would do as much as we can to help them.

Following our presentation at Drupalcon Paris, Philipp and I have received almost an overwhelming number of compliments and positive feedbacks. Thank you for those who attended the presentation and I am very glad many of you have found the presentation useful :)

A number of people have also asked me to:

• a) make the slide available online
• b) share the names of books I recommend

I attended the Drupalcamp UK which took place over this weekend (13th & 14th of June, 2009) at BBC office in Manchester. I was only able to be there for the first day, but I enjoyed it so much!
Since Tim Millwood has provided an overview of this event in his blog post, I'll just omit that and write about some of the sessions, including my own.

The Japanese community is representing Drupal at OpenSource World, which takes place in Tokyo in July.

This is exciting news especally for Japanese Drupallers, as there has previously been no active offline communities in Japan that could represent Drupal at such events.

At Code Positive, it is a standard practice to login to client's server via ssh and check out the code from Code+ server if their site is not hosted by Code+. Instead of uploading hundreds of damn files, it is a smart and efficient way of copying all the latest files to client's server.

Since I now have my own server and clients, I've been trying to set up this process myself. Here's my note (largely for myself) on how to do it.

Prerequisite:

• You have your own *nix server / ability to add new users
• You have access to your server via ssh
• Your client has a *nix server and is accessible via ssh
• Your client's web server has svn client installed