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Review: Philipp Krenn - SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets

Mon, 04 Jul 2011 22:28:43 -0500

I promised last month that I'd post a proper review of Philipp Krenn's SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets. Here it is. Both of you who were waiting on this to buy the book can now go ahead. ;-)

The book is somewhat misleadingly labeled as a beginner's guide. It does an admirable job of covering SilverStripe's basics and the principles behind them, but it also provides powerful tools and techniques. These can, if used carelessly or with poor understanding, do anything from breaking default features in unexpected ways to deleting or corrupting the entire database. The good practice of learning and experimenting in a safe development environment is essential here.

The presentation is consistent, lucid, and well organized; an English reader with a fair grasp of programming for the web should be able to follow easily. Detailed examples and 'pop quiz' sections provide means of learning by doing and incentive to retain the information.

I was initially somewhat concerned that some of the techniques presented blur boundaries between model, view, and controller; however, while these cases may not be clearly labeled in advance, the MVC issues they present are generally discussed before the end of the section, enabling an informed decision on costs and benefits of departing from the pattern. The outright errors I've noticed are trivial - for example, the filename of a downloadable extra chapter being given the wrong number.

Krenn provides solid coverage on everything from concepts such as the Model-View-Controller pattern (and why it's a good thing), inheritance, and abstraction, to specifics such as shortcode, widget, and module creation and implementation. He also gives instruction and examples on topics like caching and optimization, as well as bells and whistles such as locale switching and AJAXifying forms.

All in all, I don't know a better way of learning SilverStripe 2.4 (and preparing for the release of SS 3.0, which is expected by the end of 2011) than to get this book and work through it. I'll be looking out for Krenn's work in the future.

The book is available from Packt Press here:
http://www.packtpub.com/silverstripe-2-4-module-extension-themes-and-widgets/book

UnSummit 5: Impressions

Sat, 18 Jun 2011 19:17:16 -0500

I hate to be the guy who points out problems, but it's time to address the elephant in the room: UnSummit has a major flaw, and it's only getting worse.

It may seem uncharitable to complain, given the coffee, muffins, pizza, and beer; the lovely space in which it was held; the habit-forming Clockwork notebooks for which Meg and Mykl play the fools (not that they'll be taken for such); the high quality of discussion, formal and informal; and the price, which could only be better if we were paid to attend. All that notwithstanding, I feel it is my duty to call attention, at least momentarily, to this one problem: with the present structure, it is not physically possible to avoid missing something good, and by 'something good' I mean a lot of fascinating discussions and learning (and networking) opportunities. I did my level best to be everywhere, even going so far as to register twice* - but to no avail; I managed to attend only a quarter of the sessions, and I heard others express regrets at what they missed as well.

In fairness, I do have some hope that videos of the sessions will surface at some point, given the number of cameras present - which would be a fine thing for those unfortunates who were absent altogether.

In any case, what I didn't miss was worth not missing. After Mykl and Meg's mashup I took part in a formal and highly erudite debate, led by Art Allen, on the relative merits of Star Trek and Star Wars. You'll be pleased to know that we arrived at a definitive and perfectly objective score of 7-6, favoring Star Trek. So that's settled. You're welcome.

Toby Cryns led a lively session on cooperative learning and, if you will, recursive brainstorming - talking about creating and maintaining an idea-friendly environment and why it's important, even sometimes essential, to do so. Good discussion and a bunch of usable ideas there; particularly fitting, given that generating ideas was a major topic in the first place.

Ginger Bucklin's discussion of family and technology and presentation of the Bucklin Family Foundation (a nonprofit centered on this subject area) was both interesting and encouraging. Being a parent of geekily inclined kids, I found her focus on enhancing the positives refreshing. I'll be following the Foundation with interest.

Lunch followed, entailing a number of conversations and a certain amount of unavoidable talking with full mouths. (My sincerest apologies to anyone I may have gotten crumbs on.)

Calling Don Ball's session on market power 'lively' might be an understatement; his example choice of the home mortgage industry and possible Internet-facilitated ways of exerting consumer pressure seemed to strike a nerve or two in different ways. Personally, I found myself hoping that it was more than just a 'for instance.'

Meg Canada's session on voice in online writing shed some much-needed (for me, at least) light on how to find adjectives to describe the intended voice of a site or blog, and then use them to guide the tone and style of the writing. She specifically recommended the Yahoo! Style Guide for further guidance (as more current and better geared for online writing than the AP Stylebook or the Chicago Manual of Style): one more book on my list.

For dessert, Phil Wilson offered a look at humor online and off, inviting us to think about how we get to the funny, what we're prepared to do for it, and how online humor providers might gain some revenue from their efforts. Engaging topic, and not as light as it may sound: humor is serious stuff.

In the interests of not being completely redundant, I'll refrain from listing everything I missed, but here are some highlights: I didn't get mad as hell, dismantle the system of separation, explore my online neighborhood, manage complexity, forge a partnership with either a business or an artist, go mobile, or become more agile. I wish I had.

But I'm happy that people around me did those things and more, and I'm already looking forward to next year.

*Well, OK, that was accidental.

Pre-review: SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 06:05:09 -0500

Nettercap's content management system of choice is an open-source one called SilverStripe. Its light resource footprint, model-view-controller organization, and relative ease of use for content owners make it an ideal choice for us and for many of our clients. I'd encourage anyone who installs or maintains CMSes to have a look at it; in my experience it gives enterprise-level products a run for their money.

Philipp Krenn and Packt Publishing have very kindly sent me a review copy of Krenn's SilverStripe book, SilverStripe 2.4 Module Extension, Themes, and Widgets. I'll be putting up detailed impressions when I've digested the book; for now I can say that I'm impressed overall and would recommend it to anyone either learning for the first time to modify the SilverStripe CMS or looking to expand their skills with SilverStripe modules, themes, and widgets.

The list of credited reviewers sets expectations high for anyone already familiar with the SilverStripe community: Aaron Carlino (a frequent contributor and top-notch SilverStripe extender, better known on the forums as UncleCheese), Ingo Schommer (SilverStripe's development manager), and Sigurd Magnusson (one of SilverStripe's three founders). The book's content does not disappoint.

Online payments: a rant and a rave

Wed, 25 May 2011 22:18:30 -0500

In the course of one day - yesterday - I've been both impressed and excited about the potential of an online payment tool and considerably frustrated and disappointed with another.

The latter is PayPal, which needs no introduction. I've used it for years, both as a consumer and as a merchant (as well as setting up PayPal-backed ecommerce for others) - though it's been some time since I've made a payment through PayPal. I would consider myself fairly familiar with its ins and outs, and I've seen the benefit of the public's familiarity and comfort with the system.

Yesterday I tried to register for a day of advanced training in Google Analytics. Registration was handled through EventBrite, which - at least in this case - handles payment exclusively through PayPal. It being professional development, I wanted to use my business bank card for easier tracking. Simple, right?

In the past, I've been accustomed to filling in credit card information on an ad hoc basis if I wished, rather than logging in. I was annoyed, but only mildly, to find that this was no longer an option. I spent five minutes or so searching for a setting I could change, and finding nothing, went ahead and logged in. The card wasn't associated with my PayPal account, but adding it was no big deal. Actually using it proved less straightforward.

I had a small positive balance in my account, which I wanted to leave there. After ten more wasted minutes of looking for absent options, I came to the reluctant conclusion that this also was not permitted: any purchase I made would use the funds in my account and only go to the card once these were exhausted. With tax time fresh in my mind, I was unwilling to complicate my accounting in this way, so I logged out and set about setting up a new account using business contact information - only to be notified once everything was filled in that the card, being associated with another account, was ineligible for use.

Fine, then. I logged back into my personal account and removed the card, then logged out and went through the new account process again - with the same result. By this time I was rather annoyed. I dropped the card information and tried again, this time getting an error stating that the email address I had entered was already in use.

At this point I dropped back and looked more diligently for ways of either excluding funds in the account from a payment or simply making a payment without logging in. Again, I came up empty. Since I'm accustomed to navigating the spotty documentation that tends to come with open-source software development - a category that PayPal is well outside! - my best guess is that PayPal no longer allows ad hoc payments and that they require account funds to be spent before associated credit cards are used.

I'm not impressed, and rather than wrangle further, I've opted to study the Google Analytics materials I already have in greater depth on my own.

It may be that my tolerance was lessened by the contrast with a far smaller contender in the field - smaller in every respect, as it happens. I had the pleasure yesterday morning of talking with Noah Ready-Campbell, one of the founding developers of Minno. Minno bills itself as "spare change for the Web" and, during its beta period, rewards new users with a couch-cushion-worthy $2 with which to try out the service. Noah was forthright and articulate despite the poor phone connection, and I came away looking forward to broadening my use of the service and offering integration to Web clients. This is, in my opinion, one to watch.

One bit of integration they've already set up, with no effort on the user end, is monetization of SoundCloud downloads. For an example, check out the download button (downward arrow on the right) on the SoundCloud track below.