After being introduced to the concept of responsive web theming, I took to it like a duck in water. I was pleased with the well documented contributed Drupal base theme, Omega based on the 960.gs grid. This amazing framework provides a plethora amount of configurable options, scalability and an overall sense of structure. I will not be covering any technical space-talk or how to configure Omega in this blog. If you would like to learn more about Omega, please visit the following site for more information: http://omega.developmentgeeks.com.

One of the things about maturing software is that there is lots of legacy code based on decisions that were made long ago. Oftentimes this is refactored or removed, but sometimes the concepts are so deep that they are there to stay. Something that has been rattling around in my brain for a while is a question about what we would do differently if we started Drupal today. There are tools that are available today that weren't available 10 years ago and the web has fundamentally changed since then.

Recently I was trying to build a user view for Tutr.tv that would include statistics on user flags. I fought views for a couple hours to try to generate the number of videos a user had flagged as watched and favorite. Then I took another direction that solved the problem in 30 minutes.

If you have ever tried to run a site without any caching at all, you will pretty quickly appreciate the value it brings to a site. Caching is basically storing previous information requests and calculations and checking to see if it has already been done before doing it again. For example, if I asked you to look up a name in the address book and you put your finger there and closed the book, if I again asked you for the same name you could very quickly look it up. This is very useful for common tasks and lookups since it can save time and resources that can be dedicated elsewhere.

Organized for the third year by LevelTen and the Dallas Drupal Users Group, Dallas Drupal Days is a two day, community-centered event for learning, teaching and sharing Drupal.

I've just discovered my latest favorite new feature in Drupal 7. Cron Queues. Previously when trying to process large amounts of data (like sending 10,000 emails) we were left with trying to get Batch API and cron to work together. Not the easiest thing in the world.

We're approaching that time when it is becoming increasingly difficult to decide which version of Drupal to use for a new project. There are those of you out there who would probably say all projects should be in Drupal 7 from now on but that isn't reality for everyone yet. Each project we are starting right now we are having to evaluate the pros and cons and make a decision. Since the beginning of the year we've decided used D7 for about half our projects and D6 for the other half.

So how do we make that decision?

We are pleased to announce that Drupal Training is coming to Dallas, TX July 5-7! Come and join us as we partner with Aquia for Drupal in a Day and Drupal for Site Builders the week leading up to Dallas' own Drupal Camp- DallasDrupalDays! It will be hosted in our training room here at LevelTen, lunch provided!

Monday night LevelTen kicked off our Introduction to Drupal Workshop here in our training room! It was a great success and we are already looking forward to the next session! For those of you who are unaware of this course please see the description below! We would love to have you join us, but rememebr to grab your spots fast as they are flying out the door. Priority also goes to those who attended round one!

Integrating user added images to a website is a nifty trick for a CMS. Drupal provides several different ways for users to upload images using their web browser and integrate them into content. The most common way to do this is using an image field.

Image fields give you a pretty intelligent way to upload and manage images. It can leverage Drupal's image styles system allowing you to specify a flexible array of image formatting and processing options. This gives you robust, automated control of how you image is displayed without having to use a photo editor like Photoshop.