Be a happier Drupal developer with Rules

Be a happier Drupal developer with Rules

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Are you using Rules yet? You should! The Rules module can take care of a whole lot of things that previously would require you to write a custom module, and can help you automate processes on your website.

This session will give you:

• An introduction to what Rules is and some basic use cases.
• Hands-on demonstrations of some intermediate use cases, including Rule sets and Rules scheduler*.
• Hands-on demonstrations of advanced use cases – where Rules and Views Bulk Operations work in harmony or short PHP snippets make Rules do things you thought needed 200 lines of code.
• Some hints and advice of how you shouldn't use Rules.

* See comment below

While writing custom mini modules may be fun, every line of code is also one line to debug, update and document. Rules gives you a robust framework, which makes life easier for both developers and site managers – during development, live use and upgrades.

Using Rules is easy. Using Rules is fun.
Be happy. Use Rules.

Note that this session will mainly consist of hands-on demonstrations, and it will only cover Rules 1 for Drupal 6. Don't miss fago's and klausi's session about Rules 2 and rule-based interaction with remote systems!

Image by http://www.sxc.hu/profile/clix

What is Rules?

New to Rules? There's a neat documentation for the module and you can find discussions and support at the Rules group. Here are some examples of what you can do with Rules:

• Populate CCK fields with complex conditions
• When a node gets updated, perform updates on referenced nodes as well
• Notify authors of node and parent comment when new comments are posted
• Let users delete their own accounts – even in Drupal 6!
• Schedule publishing, unpublishing, deletion and other actions on content
• Send reminder emails to users who haven't logged in the last month
• Unpublish comments with at least three abuse flags, and notify administrators

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