Pages

10/16/2011

Drupal Modules for your Portal

After a few months of having our new portal up and running, I thought it would be good to share some the modules we have put to use.  We are using many more, but these are the main ones to point out.

Drupal 7 Modules

Homebox
This took some work to get it tweaked the way we wanted, but works pretty well out of the box. Homebox allows you to create a dashboard that users can customize.  The user has the ability to add/remove blocks that you provide or add custom content blocks that they can configure.  It works well if you want to allow the custom content blocks, which allows a user to use Google Gadgets in they dashboard.  We fixed some refreshing issues, don't allow minimizing/maximizing, added the custom content to allow for HTML, and stopped the ability to duplicate blocks that don't need to be duplicated.  Contact me if you would like a customized version of what we are running.


Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
This module allows you to do a couple of things. You can use the LDAP protocol to tie to Active Directory or Open Directory, allowing users to use the same password.  You can also sync the groups from the Directory to Drupal, allowing to sync roles within Drupal.  We are currently using it to sync groups to roles.

CAS
I must if you are currently or will be leveraging Central Authentiication Service SSO. We are currently using this and it works great with the LDAP module.

Kaltura
Allow your users to be able to upload, edit, and share media in this open source platform.  We are currently using this to allow users to upload videos. It converts them on the fly and provides a way for users to share media.  It has the capability of recreating youtube within Drupal.

Login Destination
Force your users to go to certain pages on login.

Front Page
This module changes the front page for users, great if your using Login Destination also.

Node Privacy by Role
Lock down your content but assigning specific roles to different node types

Tray
Need a floating menu bar? This module is a quick way to add one. We've done a bit a CSS tricky with ours but overall great if you don't need anything complicated.

Shadowbox
Add some flair to your size, by provide lightbox style popups to your site for media.

Forum Access
Provide specfic permissions on those Drupal forums.

10/13/2011

Google's free LMS is coming soon...

Keep an eye out for this one. Google and Pearson have teamed up to create a free Learning Management System/Social Network for Education. It is primarily focused for Higher Education, but should be interesting to say the least. It's suppose to drop ship in the marketplace on Oct 18th.

Google on "Improving the DOM"

Google has some amazing things in the works, namely "Dart". I highly suggest checking it out, I find this pretty exciting and expect it to get some major traction.

Improving the DOM