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Found this at Infographiclabs

This week, I learned that Ubercart, out of the box (and in Drupal 7), does not have the functionality to configure a multi-step product ordering process. For example, you have a products with several choices on the first step, then on the second step you allow users to write in specific instructions, and so forth, without showing users the contents of their cart until the very end.

On api.drupal.org, I found that with the referer_uri() function in Drupal, which is basically the $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] PHP function, you could write a script that forces the browser to go from product 1 directly to product 2 when the "add to cart" button is clicked, instead of showing the cart's contents to the user.

But apparently, the referer_uri() function does not work for everyone and also doesn't work with authenticated (logged in) users.

My solution to this issue and modification to the product ordering process is to basically set up multiple products, according to the product ordering steps, using the attributes as possible product choices and to write in specific instructions. And via PHP, checking which step/product the user came from and redirecting them to the next step. To find the current page/path in Drupal, I used the current_path() function and for redirecting the browser to the next product/ordering step, I used the drupal_goto() function. I wrote the following code for this at the bottom of the template.php in my custom theme:


<?php
$last_page_visited = $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'];
if(preg_match('/order-step1/', $last_page_visited) && preg_match('/cart/', current_path()))
{
drupal_goto($path = 'order-step2');
}
?>


I'll post the URL of this functionality working on the website, once it's complete.

This week, I've received a couple of interesting emails. It appears that a Chinese company is using my first name and last name, Daniel Gurtner, for "keywords." Here's the first email:

Dear CEO,

(If you are not in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO, because this is urgent. Thanks)

We are a Network Service Company which is the domain name registration center in Shanghai, China. On Feb 28, 2012, we received an application from Hengtong company requested "danielgurtner" as their internet keyword and China (CN) domain names. But after checking it, we find this name conflict with your company name or trademark. In order to deal with this matter better, it's necessary to send email to you and confirm whether this company is your distributor or business partner in China?

Kind regards

Paul Pang
Office Manager
Shanghai Office (Head Office)

Today, I received the following email. It appears that these guys are not in agreement with each other, if they want to use my first name and last name for their Chinese websites...

Dear Sirs,

We are Hengtong company based in China. We will register the "danielgurtner" as internet keyword and CN domain names .cn, .com.cn, .net.cn, .org.cn. We have handed in our application and are waiting for Mr. Paul Pang's approval. We think this name is important for our products in Chinese market. Even though Mr. Paul Pang advises us to change another name, we will persist in this name.

Best regards

Gareth Lee

Well, I wonder what comes next - and maybe I should try to register the domain names in China, just for fun... What do you think, dear reader?

This week, my family and I have been printing our own Valentines Day cards. And just the other day, I was asked to show some of my more recent graphic design work, specifically in Photoshop. So, without further ado, I present to you the Gurtner family Valentines Day cards for 2012... (and the descriptions that go with them, as they have been relayed to me by the boys. And yes, they are very simple. Please click here to see my more complex graphic design work.)

"For that special girl in my class"

"For all the other girls in my class"

"For all the boys in my class that I consider to be my friend"

"For all the other boys in my class"

In a nutshell, Solr is an open source enterprise search platform from the Apache Lucene project. Its major features include powerful full-text search, hit highlighting, faceted search, dynamic clustering, database integration, and rich document (e.g., Word, PDF) handling.

Solr uses the Lucene Java search library at its core for full-text indexing and search, and has REST-like HTTP/XML and JSON APIs that make it easy to use from virtually any programming language.

From what I've heard so far, Solr can also be well integrated with Drupal 7. I will definitely post an update as soon as I know more. Sounds very exciting

Learn more about Apache Solr

Ever needed an older version of Firefox? Or just wanted to use a really really old version just for the fun of it? Well, now you can download any Firefox release ever that tickles your fancy. Just click here to see the entire list of releases.

Today i got a call from someone looking for a graphic designer in La Mesa. Apparently, they had googled "graphic design la mesa" and found me and called me. I was unaware that I could be found that way, but I like it :-)

Remember back in the day, like summer 2 years ago, when I was an intern at Balboa Park Online Collaborative? Well, I wrote a quick review about Open Atrium as a possible solution for an intranet for teams and museum staff to collaborate within the park. It was to be an alternative to using BaseCamp, Unfuddle or FogBugs. At the time, the current version was the 1.0-beta2 release. And I didn't like it very much. I concluded that it wasn't able to do what we needed at the time.

Today, I took a second look. And to my surprise, the full 1.0 version is now the current version, released on July 18th, 2011. I've installed this new version and have been trying it all day. I like it. And throughout this week, I will be building it out to see how well I can use it this time around.

I am very pleasantly surprised as to how far Open Atrium has come in the last 2 years and highly recommend it as a valuable team collaboration tool.

I've just recently completed a web project in Switzerland. It was a redesign of an old website from around 2003 (!)

Musikhaus Gurtner, my Dad's business in Switzerland. Check it out at musikhaus-gurtner.ch

I built the site using WordPress because of it's ease of use, so my Dad can update and add content on his own. The theme is based on the ElegantThemes theme "Modest". My Dad has already received several compliments from clients and suppliers :-)

Found this on LinkedIn...

You can find the original article at: mashable.com