Over the last few weeks, we’ve added some features to Drupal that may interest you.
First, we’ve added some new buttons to the WYSIWYG editor:
- The “K” button works much the same way as the Flickr button, and allows you to embed Kaltura Videos (hosted on http://). For more information, talk to Dean Middleton
- The map button allows you to embed the new style Google Maps maps. Google changed both the Google Maps interface and the embed codes recently. If you see a white box on the left hand side of Google Maps, you’re using the old version, and should continue to just paste the map link into the WYSIWYG on its own line, like always. But if Google Maps takes up the entire screen, you need to copy the embed code and paste it using the new Google Maps button in the toolbar.
Second, we’ve had some problems with revision messages. Here’s a real life sample of some of the message we’ve seen the last few weeks:
- z
- .
- Revised page
- Update1
- page update
- routine
- same
- got it
Clearly, these are incredibly unhelpful. Log messages should be concise and descriptive. Here’s some great ones:
- Revised office hours and added fall term hours
- Update reference to Retail AAS
- added IT maintenance window event spud
- updated links to event flyers
- added link to BP040
When we’re trying to figure out when something changed, it’s a lot easier if we can skim through the revision log. And it helps you – that way you can see who else changed your pages, and what they did.
Due to the number of really poor revision log messages, we’ve been forced to add some checks within Drupal for obviously bad ones. If your message doesn’t meet the terribly low bar we’ve established, your node will not save, and you’ll be asked to enter a better message.
Remember, if you find yourself constantly entering messages like “Trying again” or “One more time”, you should try using the Preview button to make sure what you’re adding is what you want. That way you’re not creating 3 or 4 revisions for one small change.
There’s also a couple of people who include their initials with the log message. Although we used to really like having that information when we were using Contribute, we track your login when you make changes now, so there’s no need to also have your initials. Save a few keystrokes!
Finally, we’ve also open sourced a piece of our Drupal Migration. if you visit our GitHub page, you can find the source of our Migration Tracker, which kept track of the old and new URLs, and made it possible for us to migrate over several months, rather than needing to do it overnight.