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Several months ago Ryan Price interviewed Emma Jane Hogbin, one of the authors of Front End Drupal, for DrupalEasy Podcast 10. At the time I hadn't received a review copy of the book, so I made a mental note to check out the book based on the interview. Six months later, the folks at Prentice Hall were kind enough to send me a copy, and I was not disappointed. Emma Jane Hogbin and Konstantin Kafer have written Front End Drupal in a way that makes it a valuble resource for virtually anyone who uses Drupal in one form or another. The strength of the book lies in the fact that it explains core concepts and best practices of how sites are built in Drupal, with an empahsis on theming. Rather than writing a full-on review for a book that has already been reviewed more than a couple of times elsewhere, I thought that I'd provide a list of 10 things that this book covers really well.

I recently had the opportunity to spend a few minutes on the phone with Timi Ogunjobi of websesame (@websesame twitter), author of Drupal 6 Site Blueprints from Packt Publishing. Originally, we planned to share the interview as a DrupalEasy Podcast, but a poor connection scuttled those plans (things like that happen when the interviewee is calling in from Africa. Luckily, I had a backup plan (always have a backup): this article! What follows is some Q&A with Timi compiled from the pre-interview and selected quotes from the actual interview.

You can still register for DrupalEasy’s end of summer full day workshop on the How-To of the impressive Ubercart set of modules in Orlando on August 21st. Coffee and Carbs will rev you up at 9 am for a full day of getting up to speed on these useful ecommerce tools including shipping, payment, shopping cart and related functions. The day starts with a detailed explanation of Ubercart, how you can use it to sell physical and downloadable products, and charge for online events and site access. You’ll learn about the core components such as shopping cart, payments support, shipping support and order processing, as well as optional features like setting up affiliate programs, integrating Quickbooks and providing discount coupons. This is the final in our summer hometown no frills series available for of $124. Register today!

The deadline for winning one of four Drupal-related books that we're giving away will be here before you know it. UPDATE: the entries are now closed. Thank you for your participation.

We've seen in the previous four articles that RDF has the potential to be a game-changer when it comes to linked data on the web. The fact that is it an open standard, easy to understand, and implementable on sites from those powered by the most complex web applications to simple hand-built web pages makes it easy to understand why so many people are starting to look at RDF as one of the future cornerstones of the web. Luckily for the Drupal community, our fearless leader Dries Buytaert recognized this in 2008 and suggested that Drupal take the lead in implementing RDF among open source content management systems. Since then, a number of individuals have stepped up and committed to working to get RDF functionality in Drupal 7. The Semantic Web group on Drupal.org is the focal point of the work that is going on in this effort. Earlier this year, they posted a video about what will be possible when RDF functionality is available. They showcased advanced search results and the ability to navigate the relationships that RDF triples provide with HTML documents.

After a decompression-Sunday with some friends in the DC area, I made my way back to sunny Florida today ready to start taking advantage of some of my new-found Drupal knowledge. Once I dug out of my piled-up mail and dirty laundry, I decided to summarize the rest of the 'Con. So, here goes...

Dave A Ingram also brought the youngest Drupaller - just 3 weeks old! He is dave.ingram on drupal.org, and he comes from Gainesville, FL

In the most recent DrupalEasy Podcast we talked about a few sessions we're looking forward to at DrupalCon DC. Here are my picks and a few reasons why I'm interested.

As part of our second podcast (which may or may not have been posted yet), Ryan, Andrew, and I discussed which of the DrupalCon DC sessions each of us were most looking forward to. In the interest of time (and retaining listeners), we each only talked about a couple. Here's my full top 5: 1. Advanced Ubercart Usage - Friday, 3PM - Ryan Szrama - I've built a few Ubercart-based sites in the past, but they've always been very simple implementations. I'm really looking forward to seeing what else this module is capable of. 2. Drupal and the Geospatial Web - Wednesday, 1:45PM - Jeff Miccolis - Location-based services always perk my interest. I've been using the GMap module for quite some time, but it doesn't always fit my needs. The folks at Development Seed have done some really neat work in this area and I'm looking forward to learning more. 3. Why I Hate Drupal - Friday, 9AM - James Walker - I've never seen a James Walker session I didn't like. I'm looking forward to hearing what parts of Drupal he'd like to see improved. 4. The Next Decade - Friday, 4:45PM - Karoly Negyesi and David Strauss - chx, 'nuff said. One of Drupal's biggest brains, I'm looking forward to once again realizing how little I actually know. 5. Building a Frankenstein monster & how to maintain it - Thursday, 1:45PM - Morton (King of Parties) - Everyone who's built more than a couple of Drupal sites has seen a theme grow out-of-control. Any tips I can pick up to prevent it from happening in the future is worth an hour of my time. I'm disappointed that there are no sessions involving the Rules or Workflow modules. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a BoF session or two...

This is rather self-serving, but I actually got quite a bit of traffic on this site in the last few days, and that made me wonder if some older posts I've written on my personal blog were worth anything. There was really just one useful one: