Spring can play hide-and-seek all it wants, this is still our favorite time of the year. Why? Because it's almost time for DrupalCon!

We're sponsoring our third US DrupalCon this year, and we could not be more excited as we look ahead to catching up with old friends and exploring the latest advancements, achievements, and best practices coming out of the Drupal community.

This year marks some exciting new developments for us, and we're psyched to introduce them at this year's DrupalCon.

Welcome to Time Out

Our first big intro is to welcome our newest partner/client Time Out to the Drupal family.  We've been working with Time Out for the past year on a massive relaunch effort, and Project Lead Anna Murray is slated to join us in presenting a case study on their experience on this project--pending your votes, of course!

If you are like me, you have avoided diving into coding for the black hole that is Views. Every time I started to look at the mass amount of documentation, I went blind. There is no shortage of documentation and examples. Besides looking for how other modules have implemented Views, the following documentation is available.

• Views Developer Group Page
• Offical API
• Help file

Even with all of this documentation, something didn't quite click. Sure, I could do the easy stuff, like expose a new table to views or manipulate an existing view, but when it came it creating a custom handler, I was lost.

So today I'm sharing with you an example of a new custom handler. We had the need to create a modification of the taxonomy term filter that allowed for using multiple vocabularies. We also needed it to be in an exposed filter to be used in an administration screen.

Let's start by first looking at what is different, then at the current filter.

This is the last post in a 4 part series about Views, Views Bulk Operations, Actions and Features. In the first post of the series I walked through the Views Bulk Operations module. In the second post, a high level plan was put into place for the comment moderation feature. We also created the action plan that we followed for the final two posts. In the third post, we implemented several parts of our action plan. This included the view, creating the feature and coding the actions.

This post will finish up the comment moderation feature. Below is the action list. The bold items are addressed in this post.

Create View with 2 page panes.

A client recently had a requirement for what we call a canned search.  A canned search is simply a saved search with specific criteria that can be accessed directly at a URL.  This allows content editors to easily generate a list of various types of content suited to a specific topic without having to specifically link the items together in another manner.

As you might have guessed, Views is the primary engine for this feature.  However, it also uses a couple of other capabilities of Views that demonstrates another side to its already amazing flexibility.   Exposed filters is a well-known feature of Views allows a user to modify search criteria on the fly so that everything does not have to be determined ahead of time when the view is created, but one other less well-known feature is the ability to display those exposed filters separately in a block.  These are the primary builing blocks of our canned search feature.

This is an exciting time for Taxonomy Menu.  I have just released the new UI that will be the base for creating menus in version 3.  The plan for the new API will allow any module to use the UI to create the menu structure, but give them the ability to create the menu in their own method.  No longer will you be restricted to only menu links.  You will be able to create blocks, HTML, or any other Drupal structure from taxonomy terms.

As of version 3, Taxonomy Blocks and Taxonomy Navigator will be merging with Taxonomy Menu.

Please join in the dicussion.

You can see a screencast of the new UI here.

I hope to hear from all of you!

In my last post, I walked through the high level plan for the Comment Moderation feature. We came up with a summary of tasks. In this post we will be creating the views and actions. Below is the list of the tasks, bolded tasks are being tackled today.
Create View with 2 page panes.

Today I released the Node Reminder module.  The Node Reminder module was based upon the code for the Post Reminder module.

The idea behind the Node Reminder module is to have a very simple way to remind you to look at a particular node to update the content.  An example use case would include licensing issues where you may have rights to use an image for only one year.  Setting the reminder for 11 months gives you time to either delete the post or update the image.

Features
• Allow Reminders per content type.
• Template for email Subject and Body with Tokens integration.
• Views integration.
• Actions integration.

You can make an administration page using Views Bulk Operations.

In the last post, I walked through the Views Bulk Operations module.  My initial plan was to write this post about actions, but  after researching how to best write about actions, I found a ton of detailed information about how to make an action. 

• http://drupal.org/node/172152
• http://api.drupal.org/api/function/hook_action_info
• Chapter 3 of Pro Drupal Development.

So instead of walking through Actions in detail, I'm going to walk you through plan for the comments moderation feature.  The next post will have the comment moderation actions and views, and the final post will discuss the integration with other modules.

Requirements for the comment moderation feature are:

Did you ever find a Drupal feature that was so incredibly simple and easy to use that you were sure that everyone else already knew about it? Using Views Bulk Operations (VBO) together with Actions was one of the moments for me. Asking around to my fellow developers, I discovered that the use of the combination of VBO and Actions is common. In this blog series, I am going to walk you through using VBO and Actions to create some kick-ass administration forms. First we will look at the basic concepts around VBO and Actions, then I will show you 2 examples: comment administration and user administration. Both will be made available as a feature.

Part 1: Views Bulk Operations

Views Bulk Operations is a contributed module by kratib. There is a good general description of VBO on the project page:

We are proud to announce that Tree House Agency will be a sponsor at the highly anticipated DrupalCamp NYC 7. On Saturday, December 5, the Polytechnic University in Brooklyn is expected to be packed to capacity with 100’s of members from the Drupal community. Be sure to sign up today to confirm your attendance. 

Our very own Senior Developer, Steven Merrill has offered to speak on a variety of topics at the event. 

Possible topics of discussion by Steven include: