Happy Pixels - Web Development & Drupal Specialists

New business cards!

Florian — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 15:14:32 +0000

My new business cards from moo.com got here in the mail. The nice thing about moo.com is the possibility to make each card unique (they also have a public API) and the great quality of their product. I used the header image overlay from my custom colorable theme to generate different color variations, and then cut that up to get three variations from the wavy gradient.

Dries, if you come to Munich...

Florian — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 11:54:52 +0000

The Drupal community is a very diverse one. So when the idea came up to make a viral video to promote the DrupalDevDays and invite Dries Buytaert (founder of the Drupal project), we didn't have a shortage of talent in the local community. From video experts to stunt actors, everyone came together to produce this video, and with some key people coordinating everything we managed to launch the whole campaign in just a few days. If you have as much fun watching the video as we had making it, please help us spread the word!

If you were already planning on coming to the DrupalDevDays, or if our video just convinced you to come, make sure to register now. Tickets prices will be raised next week so you don't want to wait too long.

Happy Pixels gets revamped

Florian — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:31:22 +0000

It's been about two years since I registered happypixels.net. What started as a simple blog has now become the web presence for my business as an independent Drupal consultant, and the website needed to be updated to reflect that change. Besides registering happypixels.com, I have also been reworking the design and decided to launch the new theme before continuing with other changes.

Drupal Dev Days & Ticket Giveaway

Florian — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:49:22 +0000

As a member of the organizing team, I am happy to invite you to the Drupal Dev Days (aka DrupalCamp Germany 2010), which will take place on May 8th and 9th in Munich. We already announced the event on many German-speaking channels, but I would like to invite those of you who might be coming from further away.

Upgrading large & complex sites

Florian — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 22:45:38 +0000

Upgrading Drupal websites from one major version to the next is painful. Most people solve the problem by sticking with the old version, and I've seen a lot of people give up after trying for many days. I've myself done a good amount of (successful) upgrades from Drupal 5 to Drupal 6 in the past year and decided to share my experience and hopefully help some people get through with it. My presentation Upgrading Drupal takes a look at what issues make those upgrades so damn problematic and what solutions we can implement to solve them. I'll be giving the presentation for the third time at DrupalCamp Spain this coming week-end, and I proposed it as a session for DrupalCon SF (please vote!).

The two main problems with upgrades are complexity and time: a lot of operations need to be performed in a specific order within a short period of time to minimize downtime. Any solution that addresses these two problems will need to be automated, and the best way to do this that I found involved a VCS, drush and some minimal shell scripting. The presentation is about the WHY's, and this article is about the HOW's, with more implementation details that wouldn't fit well in a presentation.

Just hang your coat on the tree

Florian — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:39:43 +0000

No, I'm not talking about trees as a data structure, I'm talking about branches where you can actually hang stuff. Apparently people liked the coat-hanger tree in the hallway of our apartment, and those who couldn't see it in person asked for pictures. It took more time to decide how to make it than to actually do it, but we had a lot of fun doing both.

DrupalCamp Vienna

Florian — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:37:05 +0000

I'm back in the office after a wonderful week-end in Vienna. DrupalCamp Vienna and the surrounding activities were great to meet new faces, catch up with friends and build new relationships.

Upgrading Drupal

Florian — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:13:50 +0000

Here are the slides for my presentation Upgrading Drupal at DrupalCamp Vienna and the updated version for FOSDEM and DrupalCamp Spain.

See this article for more details on the upgrade script.

DrupalCon Paris 2009

Florian — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:55:44 +0000

Right after I got my new appartment in Munich, I'm going to head off to Paris for DrupalCon. I'll be getting there a few days early to visit the city and meet with a few people, so let me know if you'll be around and want to pre-drupalize. I won't be presenting this time, so I'll have more time for everything else!

Migrating from Subversion to Bazaar

admin — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 19:21:33 +0000

There are a lot of options when moving from Subversion to a next-generation Version Control System, but Bazaar's ability to interact with a subversion repository can make the transition easy and painless. While it is possible to use the bzr command in a subversion checkout or use it to connect to a subversion repository, you sometimes want to completely move to Bazaar and stop using subversion at all. Here's how to do it.