My Drupal Blog

Wow! This has been way too long a break since my previous post, and I’d just like to start by apologizing. I know how annoyed I get when people don’t post regularly, and I had hoped to avoid falling into the same trap – sorry about that.

Anyway, I haven’t just been sitting around all that time – well actually I have mostly been sitting around, but also working ;). I’ve been doing a few bits, one of which I’d like to give you a little more detail on now partly because it’s my own site :) but also because, as web designers, you might find it useful, and I’ll explain how I built and themed it in Drupal.

The site in question is htmlbuzz.com. It’s a web design aggregation site, and users can view news by source, topic, or forum.

So, how’s it built? Well, it’s pretty simple really.

• I use the core aggregator module and the leech module to pull feeds into the site.
• The aggregator module generates blocks for each feed and/or category.
• I use the views module to create blocks for the feeds which are pulled in via leech.
• All of the blocks are then laid out using custom panels.
• Extlink module is used to add the little external link icons.
• Finally, the nifty ‘hover-over-a-link-and-get-a-preview-of-the-post’ trick is accomplished using a light sprinkling of unobtrusive javascript.

What about the theming? Well, obviously with this much dynamic content running through the site the design needed to be kept light – both so that it would be fast loading, and also so as not to detract from the content.