Aaron Niemi

Over the past six or eight months, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know Drupal. Coming from a PHP/MySql programming background, I have always been a little apprehensive about using a “mass distributed” framework, since you always hear things like “code bloat” and “how could my site be custom/different using mass distributed framework” etc. etc. After getting over my initial bias to hand coding & stereotype of frameworks, I decided to embrace Drupal.

Admittedly the first week (or two) was painful, the admin interface seemed cumbersome, the concepts seemed way too abstract, but once I “settled in” asked a ton of questions, watched a million video tutorials, I slowly began to see the benefits and the overall power of Drupal.

Drupal isn’t a small pill to swallow, it takes a time commitment to really learn the concepts, getting to know many of the thousands of modules, testing, playing, banging your head, laughing (and a little crying).

Suddenly you realize, hey this is a totally custom site, and I’m using a mass distributed framework…”I’ve been wrong all this time?!” Well wait a second, I couldn’t be wrong, I’m sure there is some dirty secret hid under the hood, let me open up and see how this thing ticks…”What?! this code is clean!!”, So at this point I have to take back all my preconceived notions, ouch. I’ve only been wrong once before .

One of the many cool & powerful things that Drupal can do is the module Views. This module is basically a window into all the fields in the database (and me bing a DB guy), fell in love with the ease of being able to basically write a query, and the interface in one action, being able to preview the results and modify, fine tune, and modify without every having to actually write any code. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing code, but this gives (once you know it) an edge, you can quickly build custom pages, reports, etc quickly and easily. Everything is laid out in front of you and all you have to do, is think it out, configure and test. Views is just one of the thousands of modules available for Drupal, making it easy to plug in new functionality to your site.

The one downside I’ve found with Drupal, is the ability to maintain a code base and track development. For instance, when you hand code you can plug your code into your favorite code repository, dump your database schema, check it in, and you can easily track/modify it’s progression, even with multiple developers. With Drupal this isn’t so simple, since all your configuration is stored as data in the database, and there isn’t really anything that separates what is what, so you can’t simply roll your development site into your production site. You have to recreate the steps that you did on dev on your production environment (and hopefully you remember them all, or you took good notes). There are a couple tools to help, for instance with views you can export the view and import into your production environment, same with panels and some others. But you can’t simply roll it all up (core settings) and be able to successfully merge it into your production environment. Hopefully this problem will be solved soon, then you can have a successful dev, stage, production setup. For small sites where that is not necessary, Drupal is definitely worth considering.

To reply to Dak’s question about email marketing integration, I thought it better to take a minute and contribute to the community. Below I’ll outline how to integrate an email marketing application (in this case mailchimp) into your PDG checkout page.

There are a couple pre-requisites:
1)You’ll need a mailchimp API key or Username & Password
2)Your server will need to run PHP
3)A wee bit of knowledge (but not alot)

Here’s a link to mailchimps API: http://www.mailchimp.com/api/    (You probably won’t need to see it, but good to know)

Since we don’t want users to have to open a popup we’ll utilize jquery (javascript) to pass the data directly to mailchimp in the “background” so it doesn’t detract from the checkout process. Jquery comes “default” in PDG version 5, if you’re using an older version I highly recommend using it. It allows you to take PDG to the next level (but that’s another topic).

In this example I’m utilizing some code taken from Mailchimp’s site and written by by Aarron Walter (aarron@buildingfindablewebsites.com), although we are slightly modifying it for our needs

So let’s get down to business… I’m using the “default” checkout template from PDG version 5.

Code from Checkout.html (PDG)

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>Please Provide Contact, Billing and Shipping Info</title>


<meta name="robots" content="index, follow" />
<script type="text/javascript">
/*this is the code to send the email address to the php if the newsletter checkbox is checked*/
function AddEmail(){
	if($('#email_signup:checked').val() !== null){
		var email = $('#email').val();
		$.ajax({
		   type: "GET",
		   url: "/includes/store-address.php", //adjust this is you don't use an includes folder or want it somewhere else.
		   data: "email_address="+email,
		   success: function(msg){
		   		if(msg != ''){
    		 		alert( msg );
					return false;
				}
   			}
		})
	}
}
</script>
</head>
<body>

!---TOP_NAV---


	<h1>Checkout</h1>
        <br /><br />
        <div id="basket">
	<br /></div>
	<div class="form">
	<form method="post" action="!---SCRIPT_NAME---" id="checkoutform" onsubmit="AddEmail(); return false;">
	<fieldset>
	<legend>Your Information</legend>
	<p>Please provide us with the following information so we may process your
        order promptly.  If any items are missing, we may not be able to process
        your order.  Most importantly, please ensure your email address is correct,
        as this is how we will notify you if any problems occur while processing your
        order.</p>
        <h3>Contact Information</h3>
	<label for="username">name:<input type="text" name="contactname" id="username" value="!---USERNAME---" /></label>
	<label for="email">email:<input type="text" name="contactemail" id="email" value="!---EMAIL---" /></label>
	<label for="company">company:<input type="text" name="company" id="company" value="!---COMPANY_NAME---" /></label>
	<label for="phone">phone:<input type="text" name="phone1" id="phone" value="!---PHONE1---" /></label>
	<h3>Billing Information</h3>
	<p>If paying by credit card, then your billing name should match the name
        on the credit card and your billing address should match your credit card's
	billing address.</p>
	<label for="billfirstname">first name:<input type="text" name="billfirstname" id="billfirstname" value="!---BILL_FIRST_NAME---" /></label>
	<label for="billlastname">last name:<input type="text" name="billlastname" id="billlastname" value="!---BILL_LAST_NAME---" /></label>
	<label for="billstreet1">address line 1:<input type="text" name="billstreet1" id="billstreet1" value="!---BILL_STREET1---" /></label>
	<label for="billstreet2">address line 2:<input type="text" name="billstreet2" id="billstreet2" value="!---BILL_STREET2---" /></label>
	<label for="billcity">city:<input type="text" name="billcity" id="billcity" value="!---BILL_CITY---" /></label>
	<label for="billstate">state (US/Canada):</label>
	<label for="billprovince">other (international):<input type="text" name="billprovince" id="billprovince" value="!---BILL_PROVINCE---" /></label>
	<label for="billzip">zip code:<input type="text" name="billzip" id="billzip" value="!---BILL_ZIP---" /></label>
	<label for="billcountry">Country:</label>
	<label for="billtext">billing comment:<input type="text" name="billtext" id="billtext" value="!---BILL_TEXT---" /></label>
        <h3>Shipping Information</h3>
	<label for="shipmethod">ship via:</label>
	<label for="shipdestination">ship to</label>
	<label for="shipname">name:<input type="text" name="shipname" id="shipname" value="!---SHIP_NAME---" /></label>
	<label for="shipstreet1">address line 1:<input type="text" name="shipstreet1" id="shipstreet1" value="!---SHIP_STREET1---" /></label>
	<label for="shipstreet2">address line 2:<input type="text" name="shipstreet2" id="shipstreet2" value="!---SHIP_STREET2---" /></label>
	<label for="shipcity">city:<input type="text" name="shipcity" id="shipcity" value="!---SHIP_CITY---" /></label>
	<label for="shipstate">state (US/Canada):</label>
	<label for="shipprovince">other (international):<input type="text" name="shipprovince" id="shipprovince" value="!---SHIP_PROVINCE---" /></label>
	<label for="shipzip">zip code:<input type="text" name="shipzip" id="shipzip" value="!---SHIP_ZIP---" /></label>
	<label for="shipcountry">country:</label>
	<label for="shiptext">shipping comment:<input type="text" name="shiptext" id="shiptext" value="!---REG_SHIP_TEXT---" /></label>
	<p><input type="checkbox" name="EmailSignup" id="email_signup" /></p>
	<div id="inputsubmit"></div>
	</fieldset>
	</form>
	</div>


!---BOTTOM_NAV---

</body>
</html>

This is the PHP that the ajax is sending to: store-address.php

<?php
/*///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Part of the code from the book
Building Findable Websites: Web Standards, SEO, and Beyond
by Aarron Walter (aarron@buildingfindablewebsites.com)
http://buildingfindablewebsites.com

Distrbuted under Creative Commons license
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/
///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////*/

function storeAddress(){

// Validation
if(!$_GET['email_address']){ echo "No email address provided"; }

if(!preg_match("/^[_a-z0-9-]+(\.[_a-z0-9-]+)*@[a-z0-9-]+(\.[a-z0-9-]+)*$/i", $_GET['email_address'])) {
echo "Email address is invalid";
}

require_once('MCAPI.class.php');
// grab an API Key from http://admin.mailchimp.com/account/api/
$api = new MCAPI('your_apikey');

// grab your List's Unique Id by going to http://admin.mailchimp.com/lists/
// Click the "settings" link for the list - the Unique Id is at the bottom of that page.
$list_id = "my_list_unique_id";

if($api->listSubscribe($list_id, $_GET['email_address'], '') === true) {
// It worked!
echo 'Success! Check your email to confirm sign up.';
}else{
// An error ocurred, return error message
echo 'Error: ' . $api->errorMessage;
}

}

// we're calling it with Ajax so we just want the function to be ran
echo storeAddress();
?>

You’ll also need the .php class (MCAPI.class.php), I’ve packaged this all together neatly for download here: http://www.aaronniemi.com/pdg-newsletter-ajax.zip
I prefer to keep my “code” in an includes folder, so this is how I’ve packaged it, if you keep your code somewhere else you’ll need to adjust some paths.
Also note that I haven’t ran this code, so if you notice a bug please let me know and as usual I’ll be glad to help fix it and I’ll update the tutorial. Another note, unfortunately worpress hoses my formatting (I’m looking for a good code format plugin if you want to suggest one). So I’d just work from the .zip file.

Thanks
-Aaron

If you’ve recently decided that you’re going to make a living off the internet, you’re probably inundated with all the options you have. In my own research I have found there are lots of opportunities out there for eager and self-driven people, but there are just as many scams for the people who are looking for “get rich quick” opportunities as well.

One thing I truly believe: “You’ll only succeed if you’re passionate about what you’re doing.” The reason I believe this is simple, if you’re not passionate about what your doing, you will only put lackluster energy into it, and therefore that is all you’ll get out of it (no matter what “it” is). If you part hard-work and enjoyment into it, you’ll get great rewards and enjoyment out of it.

So what have you got to offer? You don’t have to be a web-developer to make money on the internet, you don’t have to even have something to sell on ebay. The beauty of the internet is, you don’t even have to have products. One method to make income on the internet, which has taken off is blogging. I can hear you asking, how do you expect to make money off writing stuff? It’s simple really, let’s pretend I’m really into snowboarding (which I am), so I get a blog setup to write about all the awesome places I’ve shredded, and I write about all the sweet gear I bought and why it’s the best and why I love it so much. After awhile I have quite a few post’s talking about my passion, sooner or later other people surfing the internet come across your blog that tells all about snowboarding and all your awesome gear, they read your post and think “man I wish I had a sweet snowboard like theirs”, this is where the monetization part comes in… After you’ve written a few posts, you need to start signing up for affiliate services, there are tons out there and they pay different rates (so do some research), once you’ve picked your affiliates (ones that fit your blog subject), then as you write about your awesome Sims Snowboard, you link the words “Sims Snowboard” to the site (your affilate) who sells that board. So when your reader clicks the link and buys that snowboard you automatically get a commission.

So what’s the catch? There isn’t a catch, however I wouldn’t expect to get rich off one Blog about snowboarding, the key is to not only have one blog about snowboarding the key is to have a blog about every thing you’re passionate, experienced, or expert in. If you know something better than most, then there is an opportunity to be had. BUT, you have to be consistent, you have to add to your Blog(s) regularly, you can’t expect a post from 6months ago to keep driving traffic.

The only thing that limits you is you’re imagination, there are literally millions of ways to make money on the internet, many people sell things on Ebay, others open up E-Commerce sites, some create directories of other sites (affiliates) in hopes you’ll click a link and buy something someone else is selling. You can even get paid to simply link to other people’s sites (one-way linking). Whatever ideas you come up with, make sure you do you’re research, there is probably a good chance someone is doing it already, so learn from them. There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says: “A fool learns from his own mistakes, A wise man learns from the mistakes of others”.

If you’ve ever used Javascript for interfaces or for anything for that matter then it will be easy for you to fall in love with JQuery. I find it to be the most simple and elegant javascript framework around, and since it’s being adapted into other systems (like mobile phones) it’s sure to stick around for awhile.

The best part about it is you simply have to type less, hence the slogan “The Write Less, Do More, Javascript Library”. Here’s a sample of what I’m talking about:

Standard Javascript:
document.getElementById('div_id').innnerHTML = 'Add some content';

JQuery
$('#div_id').html('Add some content');

That by itself is almost half the keystrokes. We’re not even mentioning the fact that JQuery and JQuery UI have A TON of built in functions as well as a huge amount of contributed modules to quickly and easily spice up your site bringing it into 2.0 with a some quick JQuery additions.