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Computer and video game developer Electronic Arts (EA) is using Drupal for their upcoming shooter game called Battlefield Heroes. I'm not big on games, but their trailer looks fun so maybe I'll give it a try. It sounds like, for a change, I wouldn't repeatedly get killed by a ultra-skilled 15 year old ...

According to the trailer, they have big plans for their website. They want to use it to host a long-running territorial conflict meta-game. Curious to learn if that will be built in Drupal too.

I am not strong with the command line. As such, I rely on PHPMyAdmin to get things done in MySQL quickly. One of the big problems with PHPMyAdmin are the import limitations and timeout issues. In my case, my host's implementation of PHPMyAdmin doesn't even include the import function. In my last post, on upgrading to D6, I described a situation where I really needed to import a database, that I had performed the update on my laptop.

I used PHPMyAdmin to export the database on my live site and plopped it on my desktop. I fired up MAMP and went to MySQL. I created a new database and granted all to a new user on the blank database. I *tried* to import my database--which currently is about 56--and had no joy. I increased the file size and timeout length, but that didn't help me out--I could only get two out of 88 tables to import.

I needed a different solution. In comes BigDump.

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I have been wanting to upgrade this site to Drupal 6.x for quite some time. It has morphed from 4.x to 5.x and now 6.x over the last year and 10 months. This site started as an experiment as I tried to work out how Drupal might fit into my previous job and has, I hope, evolved into a place with its own voice.

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One of the biggest unknowns for those of us that live in the north central United States...how many Drupal enthusiasts are there in our area?  Not knowing the answer to this question has been bothering me.  I have also been a little disturbed seeing the map so empty of a Drupal user group for my part of the region.  So I'm hoping those of you that are Drupal users from South Dakota and bordering areas will join me and others in the new South Dakota Drupal User Group at groups.drupal.org.

This is a group for those in the state of South Dakota and and the border areas of South Dakota who are interested in Drupal! The number of Drupal users in our area may be small, but our numbers are steadily increasing. Lets get together and chat about all things Drupal whether you are a Drupal user, developer, or Web designer.

Could we have enough people for a Drupal meet-up?  Stay tuned...

credit: Monster Much

In about week this years european DrupalCon in szeged starts, and Dude - Im readdy to Geek!

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The more I use Drupal, the more I like it. While not an easy program to master, you can find ton's of information on how to use it.

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The almost-legandary geekfest is a single-track extravaganza where you can screen drop on Dave Winer, party with Marc Cantor and schmooze the people making the Internet (and other revolutions) with their bare hands.

Chris and Ponzi cultivate an "everyone's a VIP vibe" with parties, conversations and great food. Krug shares photography tips on Friday and will be snapping throughout the event.

Bonus: It's Geeky Fun! (song by Derek K. Miller).
Tip: Get in front of KK's lens to get the best profile pics ever. 

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Sadly, I won't be there... but you should be!

I have to sit this one out due to scheduling conflicts, but the posted schedule looks really good. Of course, the Lullabot team members going are all over the schedule. Everyone should attend webchick's intro to testing and be sure to attend the testing party - she has promised chocolate!

Scanning through the schedule, it's nice to see that fellow Toronto Drupal Users Group member, Emma Jane, will be giving a presentation on Drupal for small business networks.

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Through many crazy paths and a book proposal that some have seen already, I am embarking on writing Hello! Drupal for Manning Publications, the creator of the popular 'In Action' series. Manning has an Early Access program where some of the unedited chapters are available for free, and all chapters are available to anyone who pre-orders through the site.

Currently Chapter 1, 'Drupal, A Hammer that hits many Nails' is available to the public. I also plan on writing many tutorials here as well on the Handbook pages that intersect with the material that will be found in the full book.

Manning also said they can setup a direct affiliate program earning 15% of sales for Drupal.org and any partners who buy through the Drupal.org affiliation.

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Looking for a way to show your support for Drupal? Easy: sponsor the upcoming European Drupalcon. You'll be helping to fund critically important work--and increasing your exposure and profile in the community at the same time.

Drupalcon is the single largest source of revenue for the Drupal Association, the non-profit that supports Drupal. Sponsorship revenues make it possible for us to tackle key Association priorities, from protecting the legal integrity of the Drupal codebase to improving the infrastructure driving drupal.org.

Revenue from past Drupalcons is directly funding pressing projects like our top priority this year: improving the drupal.org website. Sponsoring Drupalcon is a direct and concrete way to financially support the Association's work.

Sponsoring Drupalcon is not just a way to support important work promoting the Drupal platform. It's also an opportunity for exposure and profile in the Drupal community.

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Drupal 5.x does not support HTML image inputs (<image type="input" src="..."/>) out of the box. A common solution to this problem is to provide your own theming function to handle any buttons you want to turn into images, as described at http://drupal.org/node/144758.

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I was recently asked my opinion of whether to use Drupal or one of those other ones. I was going to just write a flippant reply, when I realized I'm not actually qualified to answer the question.

I have never personally used WordPress. I read a comparison of it and Drupal some years ago, and knew even then that WordPress would just never cut it. And I've never looked back.

Now if Joomla had been part of the original question, I would have had slightly more qualifications to answer. I used that once (back when it was Mambo, and for all of three weeks), and was sorely impressed at first. But the glow faded quickly when I realized that though it was slick out of the box, it required more work tearing it down to make it do what I wanted than Drupal's simple building blocks offer. And again, I've never looked back.

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Ever tear your hair out for hours trying to track down why something is not working, only to find out that it is the simplest thing? Well, after losing a large chunk of my life that is never to return, I am happy to say that it is solved.

While doing some module development on my Mac using xampp, I was running into the problem that file uploads to nodes, either via upload.module or CCK filefield was not working at all. Not in D5, not in D6. Nothing I could do or think of would solve it. Nothing on Google or any other search engine despite my myriad of search terms.

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Day 6 and done with chapter 5! That is, almost done with that chapter. I will need to listen to some in order to tell the post-production team what to cut out...

I probably constantly mix up "page" and "plage". "Page" means page (of a web site too) and "plage" is the wonderful beach only 10 minutes from here, waiting longingly for me to place my body and soul on the sand once I am done with the recordings...

Do you use Drupal/CiviCRM or Joomla/CiviCRM to manage your donors? Do you think CiviCRM is a good fit for your donor management software needs? Show your appreciation for CiviCRM/Drupal/Joomla and open source software by taking part in the NTEN Donor Management Survey. We got a pretty good grade in the NTEN CRM Survey (read more about it at: CiviCRM comes out on top in NTEN Survey). The current version, v2.0 and the upcoming version v2.1 are significantly better than the version when the previous survey was done (v1.7)

PLEASE NOTE: NTEN does not consider CiviCRM donor management software (?!) so you will need to "write in" CiviCRM. Will be cool to come out with high grades as the write-in candidate :)

The below is the email NTEN sent out earlier today:

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I've never blogged about Drupal Docs.

It's a project to get a new home to Drupal documentation and expand its power. The most important things here are:

1. Get a nice place for documentation and make it easier for people to find what they want.

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Drupal 6.4 and Drupal 5.10, maintenance releases fixing problems reported using the bug tracking system, as well as critical security vulnerabilities, are now available for download.

Upgrading your existing Drupal 5 and 6 sites is strongly recommended. There are no new features in these releases. For more information about the Drupal 6.x release series, consult the Drupal 6.0 release announcement, more information on the 5.x releases can be found in Drupal 5.0 release announcement.

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...ok, so while I did indeed win the Mindfield Sony SingStar Karaoke competition at Lollapalooza (prize: brand new PS3!), this post is not actually about me.
It’s about how the Drupal Association came to name Mark Boulton Design Ltd as their design partner in the Drupal.org redesign.

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