Check if user is part of OG group

if (og_is_member('node', $current_group->nid , 'user', $account)) {

Seems that lates og_is_member needs 4 parametars when checking if user is part of the group, not 3 like it is written in most posts online, so you can get it like above.

FB connect - invite friends, no notification

If you are using FB connect module and its Invite friends submodule or making your own invite FB friends submodule (which is easy). You could probably get into a problem of having no notifications sent to user when you do click Invite in FB dialog box.

Views doubt: make a template or style in interface

Views has many options. You can change styling and structure of rows of data in interface of with templates. When I first started using views I choose templates, partly also because of not so much power in UI, but now you can do almost anything with UI. But after using UI, I would still recommend templates.

New Age sliders and carousel (Responsive)

After using views slideshow and jCarousel (and not so happy the way they work, mostly in theming department) there are new players in town and they are even responsive. Also easy to theme and easy to setup.

Setting Sessions and Cookies

Setting a session in Drupal is easy, everything is set from the Drupal boostrap, all you need to do is to set it and get it. Like

$_SESSION['zip'] = $form_state['values']['zip_code'];
and latter you just get value on some page like
$view_filters['field_zip_range']['value'] = $_SESSION['zip'];

View 3, alter filters programmatically

function custom_views_pre_view(&$view) {
    if ($view->name === 'pricing') {
  $view_filters = $view->display_handler->get_option('filters');
    $view_filters['field_zip_range']['value'] =  $_SESSION['zip_code'];
   
  $overrides = array();
  $overrides['filters'] = $view_filters;
  foreach ($overrides as $option => $definition) {