Du Vien Trang is a Freelance Web Designer / Developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. This is his portfolio, blog and his digital playground.

CCK has been significantly reworked for Drupal 6, both to add new functionality and to provide stronger and code and APIs. We've tried to respond to many of the things that were often requested but were difficult or impossible to do in the Drupal 5 version: streamline the process of creating fields, use drag-n-drop to reorganize fields and values, provide a user-friendly 'Add more' button for multiple values, give developers an API and more tools to customize CCK behavior, and provide more documentation.

Many of the things you see in the latest code would not have been possible without all the new Drupal 6 and Views 2 features. Drupal 6, CCK 2 and Views 2 make a great combination!

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Now there is no excuse not to upgrade modules to Drupal 6.

If you have ever developed a site which heavily relies on Taxonomies to built up sections of a large website, you know how tedious and frustrating of a tasks it can become.  read more »

FreshBooks is another online invoicing service for small businesses. Like Blinksale and Simplybill, which also prepare invoices online, it's a somewhat spare utility that does just one business function.

But this one's feature set is not quite as spare the other utilities. There are more options for managing clients, projects, and contacts. The product will generate recurring invoices and auto-bill customers. There are several useful reports you can run. There's a rudimentary time-logging function (useful for billing services; see also Tick). There's even a support ticket module, although I'm not sure this belongs in an invoicing utility but I guess if a support issue is causing a customer to not pay you, you might want to track it here.

And here's a Drupal module for it: FreshBooks module

Here's an excellent way of adding videos to your contents, thanks to Sean Effel of drupaltherapy.com for providing the screencast.  read more »

Today, while I was doing a quick search on Google on my own site to see what result it will bring up, I was surprised to find a broken link which took a user to /taxonomy/term/CrossBrowserTesting.com page that doesn't exist on my site. I really don't know how that link ever popped up on Google.  read more »

This screencast provides a 34 minute overview of the new features that Views 2 offers. This video shows off not all the new features, but it is a good starting point if you want to learn how to use Views 2.

Written and recorded by Greg Knaddison.  read more »

I was contacted by a web agency over the weekend to help add a 'search by location' feature to one of the client's website (CLS Group). The function of it was to show the location and area where their homes were located and provide information about the homes. This was simply achieve using CCK and views modules, and the cool hierarchical select module. hierarchical select uses Jquery for a sliding effect to show multiple select group. You can see a working example at clsgroup website. The site runs on Drupal 5.7

Joomla to Drupal

Migrate Joomla to Drupal. Tested on Joomla 1.0.15 to Drupal 5.7.
Joomla module features:

• import Joomla Users include "Realname". You MUST install Profiles module. Joomla module will create a new profile field called "profile_realname"
• import Joomla Sections & categories

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Developing new modules for Drupal 6? Porting older modules? Packt Publishing has just released a new book, Learning Drupal 6 Module Development, by Matt Butcher. This book is targeted toward PHP programmers interested in Drupal 6 module development.

The book takes a hands-on approach. Each chapter walks through the development of a module, theme, or installation profile. As the reader progresses through the book, she or he will be able to create increasingly sophisticated Drupal modules.

If you're new to Drupal development (but have PHP development experience), this book will get you developing modules right away. Are you a more seasoned Drupal developer just looking to get some modules updated? This book focuses on many of the new features, changes, and improvements made in Drupal 6. Check out the sample chapter Creating Our First Module (1.3M PDF) to get a feel for how the book is written.

Read full article: New Drupal Book: Learning Drupal 6 Module Development

Dan from Inigo has kindly emailed me a link for a Drupal alternative admin panel called Rootcandy by Sotak. It is a customisable admin template that tries to tackle usability issues by rearranging the admin panel interface. Latest version now integrates with colour module (as used on the Garland theme) so users can change the colour of the admin panel to whatever suits them.  read more »