This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

You'll forgive me for not being in favor of making our code lower quality to cater to a dying browser that has already resulted in the waste of hundreds of thousands of hours. If you use @import, you cannot effectively Save-As a page because the imported stylesheets don't come with it. Frankly I've yet to hit the 30 stylesheet mark myself so I've not encountered this problem.

If, like me, you are forced to work in the real world and not some idyllic fantasy land where you get a completely standards compliant browser AND a pony, you can adapt my solution below. This solution is ideal if you do not want to, or cannot, patch or hack away at Drupal's core.

In your theme, instead of using drupal_get_styles(), we'll use our own function. Find where the styles markup is defined or echo'd to the browser and replace it with a call to a new function:

   1:$styles = my_group_css();

Before that function is called, you'll need to define it with the following php code:

   1:<?php
   2:// Max limit of stylesheets in IE bug: see http://drupal.org/node/228818
   3:function my_group_css()
   4:{
   5:    // despite the name, this returns an array of all stylesheets
   6:    $styles = drupal_add_css();
   7:    $output = '';
   8:    foreach ($styles as $media => $css)
   9:    {
  10:        $css = array_merge($css['module'], $css['theme']);
  11:        $groups = array_chunk(array_keys($css), 30, true);
  12:
  13:        foreach ($groups as $grp)
  14:        {
  15:            $output .= '<style type="text/css" media="' . $media . '">';
  16:            foreach ($grp as $url)
  17:            {
  18:                $output .= '@import "' . base_path() . $url . '";' . "\n";
  19:            }
  20:            $output .= '</style>';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $output;
  25:}
  26:
  27:

Our new offerings are part of a strategy to bring cloud benefits to all businesses with simple, cost-effective products that everyone can use, backed by the best customer support that only Rackspace can deliver

We already had a module to customize the site, and we added the hook and a helper function to it. First we needed a way to test if the logged in user was the buddy of the profile being viewed.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Tests is the logged in user is a buddy of the specified uid
   4: * @param integer user id
   5: */
   6:function user_is_buddy($uid)
   7:{
   8:    static $is_buddy;
   9:    static $user_buddies;
  10:    global $user; // logged in user
  11:
  12:
  13:    if (!isset($is_buddy[$uid]))
  14:    {
  15:        if (!isset($user_buddies))
  16:        {
  17:            $user_buddies = array_keys(buddylist_get_buddies($user->uid, 'uid'));
  18:        }
  19:
  20:        // users are their own buddies
  21:        if ($uid == $user->uid)
  22:        {
  23:            $is_buddy[$uid] = true;
  24:        }
  25:        else if (!empty($uid))
  26:        {
  27:            $is_buddy[$uid]= in_array($uid, $user_buddies);
  28:        }
  29:        else
  30:        {
  31:            $is_buddy[$uid] = false;
  32:        }
  33:    }
  34:
  35:    return $is_buddy[$uid];
  36:}
  37:
  38:

In our implementation of the alter content hook, we simply remove the content we do not want to display if our is_buddy test fails by setting it to null. If content is empty, then the pane does not display at all. For most panes, the delta attribute should be sufficient to identify it, but some panes, like node fields and node field groups, have different deltas per user, so we had to rely on the subject property instead.

   1:<?php
   2:// implementation of hook_panels_pane_content_alter
   3:// http://groups.drupal.org/node/7678
   4:function my_module_panels_pane_content_alter($content, $pane, $args, $context)
   5:{
   6:    // user profile customizations
   7:    if ('user' == arg(0) && $profile_uid = (int) arg(1))
   8:    {
   9:        // don't display profile about stuff to non buddies, EVER
  10:        // delta is diff for every user
  11:        $is_buddy = user_is_buddy($profile_uid);
  12:        if ('About You' == $content->subject && false == $is_buddy)
  13:        {
  14:            $content->content = null;
  15:        }
  16:
  17:        // don't display blog posts to non-buddies
  18:        if ('blogs_user_id'== $content->delta && false == $is_buddy)
  19:        {
  20:            $content->content = '';
  21:        }
  22:    }
  23:
  24:    return $content;
  25:}

Yahoo Web Analytics to finally give Google some competition

In addition to faster data, Yahoo will also provide all analytics data in raw form, instead of a periodic aggregation of things like total visitors to a page. This access to data becomes quite significant with Yahoo's promise of a forthcoming API, another feature that Google Analytics doesn't match—at least not yet.

I'd written earlier about other tools for measuring your website.

What Makes a Content Management System?

If we look at content management functionality as a continuum, there’s a graduated scale between the two. On the one side, you have something simple — an “articles” table with a couple of password-protected pages to update it. On the other side, you have a commercial CMS that you paid $50K for with all the bells and whistles. Specifically, how are the two different?

<div class="select v2">

  <div class="option" value="bird">Bird</div>

  <div class="option" value="plane">Plane</div>

  <div class="option" value="superman">Superman</div>

  <div class="option" value="long">Some really really long title that far exceeds the box width</div>

</div>

$(function() {

    $(".v2 .option").click(function() {

        $(this).toggleClass("active");

        $(".v2 .active").each(function() {

            // Show the value of each selected element

            var pickval = $(this).attr("value");

            alert(pickval);

        });

    });

});

Dancho Danchev, writing for ZDNet, reports on the emergence of CAPTCHA-breaking as an economic model in India. He reports that it's impossible to untangle the corporate web that's unfurled, given that large CAPTCHA-breaking companies often farm work out to multiple smaller businesses, but all available information suggests that CAPTCHA-cracking (referred to as "solving" in marketing parlance) is a booming sector of the Indian tech economy. Danchev reports that CAPTCHA-crackers can earn more per day than they can as legitimate data processing centers.

Earlier this year I asked Should you rely on CAPTCHAs to stop malicious behavior?

AideRSS

I discovered AideRSS through Beth's blog as well, and its very handy for identifying valuable content. If you have a syndication feed available on your site, it can analyze the entries and produce ranked listings that detail, per entry, how many people saved it to delicious, suggested it on digg, or left a comment. At the top o fthe report, it breaks down posts between good/great/best, and also the top 20. Ideally, you'd like to have more posts in the great and best categories, these are pieces of content that your audience wants to read. You can also get some insight into what kind of articles and posts your audience finds valuable, since you can see which posts are being saved, recommended, and discussed. AideRSS can help you write good content that people want to read. Although it seems to accept any site that provides a syndication feed, it seems to be geared towards analyzing blog feeds. Finally, its limited to items that appear in your syndication feed, so you'll want to check your feed in AideRSS regularly.

SEOmoz Trifecta

SEOmoz's trifecta tool, analyses a site with data from various web services and rolls them up into a score from 0 to 100. While it claims to measure your blog's "importance and popularity", its really usefuly for seeing how well your site will rank in search pages. Better search engine rankings move you to the top of search page results, and that it turn leads to more traffic from search engines. The final score is useful for checking trends over time, but the real value of this tool is in the variety of services it polls for data, including Yahoo Site Explorer Links, Alexa Rank, Technorati Rank, Google Blogsearch Links, among others. It also allows you to compare your score to general website categories, and also provides generic tips for improving your score. Its not a prescriptive tool, but it can be used to measure the effects of site tweaks, link exchanges, and other marketing efforts. While its free, users must register and are limited to one report per day.

Website Grader

Website Grader by HubSpot is very similar to SEOMoz trifecta. Both are good tools, but Website Grader gives more prescriptive advice on improving your site. For example, if you are missing a Description meta tag, it will notice and recommend that you have one. It also reports on search engine optimization metrics including Google PageRank, number of pages in Google's index, number of inbound links. Like Trifecta, this tool is more useful fo rmeasuring the effects of improvement efforts.

Google Webmaster Tools

If your site is like most others, the majority of traffic comes from Google. It's important to keep tabs on how well and how frequently your site is crawled by Google. Luckily, they provide a tool for webmasters. Once you've verified ownership of a site, you'll have access to a ton of data about how google sees it. The first page tells you when Googlebot last crawled your home page, you'll want this to be realtively recently, and verifies that your site is included in Google's index. From there, you can see if their are any technical problems preventing google from accessing content. Such problems may include HTTP errors, broken links on your site, and unreachable URLs. If any number is very large, relative to the number of pages on your blog, you should investigate and try to correct it. The Content Analysis reports can tell you if you need to pay attention to meta descriptions, missing/duplicate title tags, and other elements which can negatively affect search engine positioning. I've found the webmaster tools most useful for discovering what external sites link to a site, particularly for interior pages.

First, define your theme override function according to the following convention (See also Theming your Views):

function theme_views_view_TYPE_VIEWNAME($view, $nodes, $type);

This is called after all of the header and before any footer information are displayed. This is likely to be the most commonly used theme function simply due to its relative simplicity. All this function has to do is loop over the $nodes array and display the data based upon the type of the view. By default, the TYPE may be one of:

• list
• table
• teasers
• nodes

but plugins could offer other types that may also be themed.

If you have a teasers view named 'latest_success_stories', your theme function would have the following signature:

   1:<?php
   2:function theme_views_view_teasers_latest_success_stories($view, $nodes, $type)

Second, in your theming function, you'll have to iterate and load each node to get the fields you want to display and return the html to display.

   1:<?php
   2:function theme_views_view_teasers_latest_success_stories($view, $nodes, $type)
   3:{
   4:  // Set up some variables that won't change.
   5:  $base_vars = array(
   6:    'view' => $view,
   7:    'view_type' => $type,
   8:  );
   9:
  10:  // OAM - GRRR, have to load the whole node here? http://drupalworx.com/node/14
  11:  foreach ($nodes as $i => $node_info) {
  12:    $vars = $base_vars;
  13:    $node = node_load($node_info->nid);
  14:    $vars['node'] = $node;
  15:    $vars['count'] = $i;
  16:    $vars['stripe'] = $i % 2 ? 'even' : 'odd';
  17:
  18:    // make the fields we want available as variables in our template file
  19:    $vars['title'] = $node->title;
  20:    $vars['link'] = l($node->title, 'node/' . $node->nid);
  21:    $vars['learn_more'] = l(t('Learn more'), 'node/' . $node->nid);
  22:    if ($node->field_thumbnail)
  23:    {
  24:        // we only want the first field
  25:        $vars['thumbnail'] = array_pop($node->field_thumbnail);
  26:    }
  27:    $vars['teaser'] = $node->teaser;
  28:    $items[] = _phptemplate_callback('latest_success_stories_teasers_item', $vars);
  29:  }
  30:
  31:  if ($items) {
  32:    return join('', $items);
  33:  }
  34:}

Additional Notes

If you are working via a sub-theme of another theme, the paths to your template files have to include the directory of your subtheme. For example, if you're using the zen theme as your base theme and have subtheme named 'spiffy', the phptemplate callback would look like

   1:<?php
   2:$items[] = _phptemplate_callback('spiffy/latest_success_stories_teasers_item', $vars);

If you are theming multiple teaser views where nodes have some set of fields in common that you want to use in your theme, you can create a generic function to do the real heavy lifting and call it from your theme override functions.

   1:<?php
   2:/**
   3: * Themes a set of node teasers using the given template
   4: * @param string
   5: * @param array
   6: * @param string
   7: * @param string
   8: * @return string HTML output
   9: */
  10:function generic_views_teasers_theme($view, $nodes, $type, $template)
  11:{
  12:  // Set up some variables that won't change.
  13:  $base_vars = array(
  14:    'view' => $view,
  15:    'view_type' => $type,
  16:  );
  17:
  18:  // OAM - GRRR, have to load the whole node here? http://drupalworx.com/node/14
  19:  foreach ($nodes as $i => $node_info) {
  20:    $vars = $base_vars;
  21:    $node = node_load($node_info->nid);
  22:    $vars['node'] = $node;
  23:    $vars['count'] = $i;
  24:    $vars['stripe'] = $i % 2 ? 'even' : 'odd';
  25:    $vars['title'] = $node->title;
  26:    $vars['link'] = l($node->title, 'node/' . $node->nid);
  27:    $vars['learn_more'] = l(t('Learn more'), 'node/' . $node->nid);
  28:    if ($node->field_thumbnail)
  29:    {
  30:        $vars['thumbnail'] = array_pop($node->field_thumbnail);
  31:    }
  32:    $vars['teaser'] = $node->teaser;
  33:    $items[] = _phptemplate_callback($template, $vars);
  34:  }
  35:
  36:  if ($items) {
  37:    return join('', $items);
  38:  }
  39:}
  40:
  41:/**
  42: * Themes the teasers view In the News.
  43: */
  44:function theme_views_view_teasers_in_the_news_latest($view, $nodes, $type) {
  45:    return generic_views_teasers_theme($view, $nodes, $type, 'spiffy/views-teasers-thumbnail-right');
  46:}
  47:
  48:/**
  49: * Themes the teasers view for the Success Story homepage block.
  50: */
  51:function theme_views_view_teasers_success_story_homepage_block($view, $nodes, $type) {
  52:    return generic_views_teasers_theme($view, $nodes, $type, 'spiffy/views-teasers-thumbnail-left');
  53:}