Drupal Blogs, Pictures, and more on WordPress

Today I am starting a new series on Drupal where I will try to cover everything related to Drupal usage, installation, themes, modules, maintenance, applications, optimization, monetization etc.

Drupal is an amazing content management system built in PHP, Mysql and used by millions of users world wide to create websites at a very cheap and faster way. It has been used by novice to multi million dollars companies for their corporate and intranet websites. Some of the world’s biggest websites like Zappos, NASA, MTV, Yahoo intranet, Ubuntu are made using Drupal.

Drupal is very easy to install and though it has some initial learning curve but you can start building a dynamic website in less than 10 minutes.

Drupal has one of the largest user community which helps each other in the evolution of Drupal, which has grown phenomenally since its initial launch. It has hundreds of modules, themes which can be used to create almost any kind of website, be it music, video, educational or e-commerce sites.

The Drupal has comprehensive resources available on its website and there are specialized consulting companies which provides customization services.

I will help you learn Drupal and its applications in this 5 part series where I will cover everything from scratch.

All my previous attempts had failed miserably. My slice of the jungle was lost in the massive jungle with no easy way to find it and if my map was found, it was like trying to use directions drawn in crayon by a toddler.

I obviously needed to do it myself and I needed to find tools to help me do it. I scoured the jungle for help and eventually stumbled into the realm of the CMS. I didn’t know exactly what they did or how they worked but as far as I could tell, they were the perfect tool for building large maps and they made it easy to keep track of all the different little parts of the map.

I decided that the only way to really understand what the CMS did was to try one out and see what happened!

After a bit more jungle scouring I discovered the main three Open Source CMS tools. I went open source because I was sick of paying for things that didn’t work, on the event that I found something that helps me build the maps I need and the people looking at my slice of the jungle need, I will contribute and keep doing so as my map expands.

I needed to know which map managing system was going to suit me best:

WordPress was a good platform to write about your jungle and show pictures so it would build a fairly decent map, but I needed a platform where people could look at the animals (products) on my land and purchase one for themselves. I know people do build maps with their animals displayed but I needed to keep track of how many animals were available etc..

The other two were Drupal and Joomla I went for joomla because the information I had said it was easier to install.

I then had to figure out how I was going to test my map management system, they aren’t programs you can just run on a computer, you have to set them up on a system that decodes the jungle for humans to look at (a server) it also needed to deal with all the Greek (PHP, CSS, Java, it’s all Greek to me).

I wanted to be able to run it on my computer rather than having a live setup for the world to see. This would allow me to test and break my map at my leisure; So back to the jungle for some more research. suddenly your in a world of acronyms that mean nothing, wampp, xampp etc. the letters had to do with languages and some other bits and bobs. I eventually settled on xampp.

Once I had xampp up and running, I followed joomla’s installation instructions. I now had my platform ready for experimentation!

Use the comments below to tell everyone what route you took to map out your jungle!

The past month has been totally event-filled. After Asia Source 3 Camp, I found myself “fully-

Recently I got my hands on a Mac PowerBook with OS-X 10.6 on it. One of the reasons I’m not too hot on the Mac is that getting non-Apple development tools and software to work on the Mac can be a serious PITA experience. I suppose I could wax elegant about other things I don’t like about a Mac, but it is a nice piece of hardware so it would be cool to see if I can get Drupal installed and working and then be able to really develop on the platform.

To start off here’s an inventory of “crap” that needs to get done:

1. Get a proper version of Apache installed
2. Get PHP installed and configured
3. Get MySQL installed and configured
4. Get MySQL admin tools installed
5. Get Drupal installed

Now of course trying this all from scratch would be insane, right? Absolutely. I found a number of helpful sites, but no single site had all the tricks necessary (at least on my machine) to get it all installed and working right. Here’s a list of the major web resources that I used:

• http://drewish.com/content/2009/09/drupal_6_on_snow_leopard
• http://drupal.org/requirements
• http://www.simplisticcomplexity.com/2007/10/27/start-and-stop-mysql-in-mac-os-x-105-leopard/

The first link is definitely where to start. This is a very good post – but I found a few things a bit difficult. First off – how does one open a command line window, aka shell? Uh – of course that is in applications/utilities in the Finder.  Next up – my vi and emacs is very rusty. I’m spoiled on Windows and Linux with notepad and gedit. I found another much simpler text editor called Pico that you can start from the Mac terminal.

I ran thru the instructions in the first url above and got PHP and MySQL installed. I did not install the XDebug stuff – I tried but the setup didn’t work so I gave up. I should point out that I already had XCode setup on my machine for iPhone development stuff that I do. I was able to login to MySQL and create a database and accounts for my drupal user. Then I remembered that there are some GUI tools for Windows from MySQL adn sure enough there are GUI tools for Mac here. They look and feel pretty much like the Windows versions. I had some initial problems getting the tools to actually connect to the database. MySQL clients connect to a database running on a local machine thru a socket file. For whatever reason my socket file was either in a funny place or something. I was getting a message about not being able to find the socket file. If you get that error there’s an option button on the login screen. Click that arrow and there’s a text box where you can manually set the location of your socket file. My file is at this location:

/opt/local/var/run/mysql5/mysqld.sock

Once I corrected that issue I could log into the admin tools with no issues. It will save that value so this is a one time only thing.

Now it is time to try out the Drupal installation, but um – where is my apache web root? When we ran Drewish’s instructions we installed a second copy of apache so it is not the one in /opt/local/apache2. After much probing, brain squeezing, and sweating I figured it out – of course it is in /Library/WebServer/Documents

A quick drag and drop of the drupal files into there and puch up the install url (http://localhost/drupal/install.php) and the installation is good to go…almost. Depending on how you have MySQL installed you might get some errors about not connecting to the database with “youraccount@localhost” during the connection test. My solution was to go into the MySQL Admin tool, select the user, and make sure the db account localhost has privs to your drupal database.

With that out of the way – the installer completes with no issues and my Drupal site is ready to go.

So wow – that was a pretty exhausting experience compared to windows, but it is better than it used to be. Next up I will have to try out getting Eclipse, Aptana, or some other familiar tool running on the mac so that I can actually develop something – perhaps a Saab RIP theme dedicated to my now defunct brand.

I learned some handy commands during all this for working on my Mac:

• Mac ports is pretty cool – it is kind of like yum on linux
• Working with text files on the command line is a pain – use pico if you don’t feel like trying to remember all those vi commands
• Apache conf file is in /private/etc/apache2
• Apache’s web root is in /Library/WebServer/Dcouments

If I remember any more I’ll update the list.

Php/Drupal Openings with Photoninfotech Chennai

Url : www.Photoninfotech.net

Skill – PHP/Drupal

Exp -2yrs – 5yrs and above (Not less than 2yrs)

Mode – Contract/Permanent

DOJ –1 Week

Job Location – Chennai

We are planning to organize an inperson interview for PHP Scheduled drive on Saturday (19th Dec 09) at Chennai.

Must have:

- Working knowledge in open source App (OS Commerce, Drupal, SugarCRM)

- Good in MySql (Query/Referential Integrity/DB model)

- PHP 4.X and 5.X

- Drupal 5.X, Knowledge in administration and Module development.

- MYSQL 4/5

Nice to Have

Twitter API integration

Multi Cart usage with IScript

Experience in E-Commerce

If you want to be part of this dynamic organisation please mail me your cv to my mail id with the following details.

Current ctc
Expected ctc
joining time req
Willingness to attend the drive.

Regards
Raghu
Adroit Solutions
www.adroit-solutions.com
9916972084
raghu.nandan@adroit-solutions.com

Basically, we have 4 ways in which, we can default drupal tpl files can be over ridden.

1. Substituting Templates: This is the simplest possible approach to override default tpl file. We find the tpl file to be overridden from the specific module folder. Just copy it and paste it in to the active theme directory. Now you can make the modifications as per the requirements.

2. Overriding Templates: you can extend the intercept and override concept further to achieve highly granular control of the page templates that are called in various situations. You can, in other words, intercept and override on a conditional basis.

For example, if you wish to have different templates used for different types of content, you can create template files that are displayed only when that content is displayed.

The page.tpl.php file is one of the most important in a PHPTemplate theme. This file is largely responsible for the results that appear in the browser—it defines the overall layout of the pages of your site.

let’s assume you wish to customize the user page. In the absence of any special definitions, Drupal will call page.tpl.php. when a user clicks on the My account link on the main menu of the default distro. If you want a custom page to be displayed, you will need to intercept the default page and display the page of your choosing. To do so, you will need to create a new template named page-user.tpl.php and place it in the active theme’s directory.
The system will give the file named page-user.tpl.php precedence over the default page.tpl.php.

Taking this one step further, let’s say you want to show a particular user a
customized user page. In that case, you would create a new template based on the page.tpl.php file and name it page-user-1.tpl.php

Currently I’m trying to do some implementations between Taxonomy and Gmap Views, where nodes with a certain region (taxonomy term) will be shown in a Gmap View when accessing the region page (page-taxonomy-term.tpl.php).

At first I thought that this would be as simple as usual implementing a view by just calling it with:
<?php print views_embed_view("name-of-view", "default", argument); ?>

This resulted in an error message though stating that:

“Javascript is required to view this map”

Not very helpful, since Javascript is up and running. The problem is that some module specific .js files need to be imported, not that Javascript isn’t running. In the head of your .tpl file you need to add some scripts. What worked for me was as follows:

<script src="http://maps.google.com/maps?file=api&amp;v=2.115&amp;key=[Your API key here directly followed by]&amp;hl=en" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="[change following src:s to your path to the gmap module]/gmap/js/gmap.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/all/modules/gmap/js/marker.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/all/modules/gmap/js/gmap_marker.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/all/modules/gmap/js/poly.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/default/files/js/gmap_markers.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/all/modules/gmap/js/icon.js?Q"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/dp/sites/all/modules/gmap/js/markerloader_static.js?Q"></script>

This could probably be put in a template.php function instead and added to the $scripts variable, but since I’m currently exploring the possibilities of combining Gmap Views with Taxonomy and Date/Calendar and not working on slim code I’ll leave it at that for now.

If these scripts shouldn’t work out’ve the box for you, open up a page-view of your Gmap and look in the source code there for what scripts are added and copy everything Gmap related to your .tpl file.

ทำเมนูในdrupal แบบรวมหลายเนื้อหาให้ใส่เครื่องหมาย + เช่น taxonomy/term/4+5+6+7 ในช่อง Path:

I found the Synthetic Librarian Blog recently and he got me thinking – what is MY blogging “voice?”

I started this blog as part of a class assignment. Over the ensuing months, this blog has evolved, as has my personal voice. My concentration in the MLS program is information technology – an obvious choice given my background in software development and an undergrad degree in computer science. I am especially interested in ways to improve information gathering and structure, such as semantic web programming and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. I have enjoyed working with the open source content management system Drupal and pondering its Web 2.0 potential for libraries. I see the open source software movement (Deek, 1), with its peer review process, as the perfect companion to the library’s  philosophy of free information exchange.

In short, I am interested in the evolution of librarianship from library 1.0 to library 2.0 to library 3.0.

I have been surprised to see that I have had replies from people outside of this class, and it has encouraged me greatly.  I have never been one to journal my thoughts, but this process has helped me academically. I plan to continue to blog.

To be continued…

Deek, F. P., and McHugh, J. A. M. Open source: technology and policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

If you’ve never had the pleasure of hearing Kristina Halvorson speak, you’re really miss

Drupal Learning Curve

How to be an expert

Drupal is the celebrated content management system (CMS). The software package which is freely available is very useful for individuals or companies that publish, manage and handle a wide range of content on their sites. Many of people and several organizations are using it to manage a lot of content on several different types of websites like e-commerce portals, community websites, discussion forums and many other types of websites.

You need to look at things like disk space, bandwidth, databases, and other common things. And also some of the main features that are required to run Drupal websites with ease.

The most significant thing you need to keep in mind when buying Drupal hosting is that it is an application that is developed in php, and it is critical to buy hosting that can execute php scripts. Apache comes very much recommended but Microsoft’s IIS is also good for Drupal web hosting. You can keep in mind buying a Linux platform that supports php and provides PostgreSQL or MySQL database and comes with an easy to handle control panel, which will help you to manage your database and carry out everyday tasks for maintaining your Drupal application.

The most economical and basic is known as shared hosting. These packages are normally under $20/month and a great way to get your site started. With shared hosting you are sharing the server with other users, so it’s not a great choice for most established and busier site, or where uptime and performance is critical, like with an ecommerce site.

If you have a higher traffic site or you run something like an ecommerce site you will want to look at one of these choices. VPS is similar to shared hosting, except you have your own virtual server that you have full control over. For even more reliability, flexibility and no sharing you would choose a dedicated server. The dedicated server option gives you complete control of your hosting environment, and your sites will be the only ones on the server.

You should also look at your immediate needs as well as your future needs when purchasing reseller hosting . You should select a host that will allow you to expand your hosting package to bigger one if the need arises in the future. Always find a respectable host based on the requirements of your site.

Other articles you might be interested in:
Free Joomla Templates
Locating A Mambo Host

Let’s dig into the basics of Drupal quickly.

A Drupal module is a functionality complete object (or component of another module) that can be installed to Drupal. Drupal modules are the butter to Drupal’s bread. Most everything you want to has already been done, and made easy with a module.

A block is a box of information that can be displayed on various parts of the website.  Blocks are essentially the UI of some funtionality.

Drupal comes with some predefined content types, such as a page. Pages are for information that rarely changes, like mission statements, or contact information. Stories are sometimes changing information, like news, events, etc.

One of the best ways to learn something is to go do it! It took me about an hour to acquaint myself with all of the Drupal menus and functionalities and content creation system.

Drupal CCK and Views are two must-have that are for anyone who wishes to do anything beyond Drupal’s out-of-the-box functionality. CCK defines new types, like a class full of view-set-modify’able variables. CCK creates new Content Types. For example, you might create an Image Post type or a PhoneBook Entry type.

Once the type is created, you make new instances of the type (ie, PhoneBook Entry ‘bob smith’) like you would a new page. Now that you have some data to work with (mind you Drupal maintains it’s own database!), we probably want to display it in some manner. This is where Views comes in. Views organizes and creates the way you might desire to view this data – for example, perhaps as a specialized listing, or perhaps categorized, etc, etc, all of this is done with Views.

There might not be real rock stars at Do It With Drupal, but some of the web team from MTV.co.uk are

Drupal is a very in demand CMS (content management system). People like to use it because it’s both free and easy to use. It allows you to easily manage and publish content on your site, all from a centralized online interface. Because of this popularity you are likely to find many Drupal hosting companies.

Before purchasing Drupal web hosting, you need to look at a few important things just as you take into account before spotting a host for any other type of website. You need to take into account things like disk space, bandwidth, databases, and other regular things. And also a few of the main features that are needed to run Drupal websites with ease.

The single most essential aspect is that since Drupal is written in PHP, you will need a hosting package that supports PHP. Fortunately almost every package out there does, so that shouldn’t be a problem. As far as web server type, you can use either IIS (known as Windows hosting) or Apache. Keep in mind that search engine friendly URLs typically work better in an Apache environment. Drupal also stores all of it’s data in a database, so your potential host will need to support either MySQL or PostgreSQL. It’s also recommended to look for a control panel, like cPanel. The control panel will make managing your files, database, emails and more much easier.

There are also a few different types of accounts you will find for your Drupal site. The most economical and basic is known as shared hosting. These packages are normally under $20/month and a great way to get your site started. With shared hosting you are sharing the server with other users, so it’s not a great choice for most established and busier site, or where uptime and performance is critical, like with an ecommerce site.

Your other alternatives are VPS hosting and dedicated servers. If you have a higher traffic site or you run something like an ecommerce site you will want to look at one of these choices. VPS is similar to shared hosting, except you have your own virtual server that you have full control over. You will also have RAM and CPU that is dedicated to your site, meaning that other sites won’t have as much impact on you. For even more reliability, flexibility and no sharing you would choose a dedicated server. The dedicated server option gives you complete control of your hosting environment, and your sites will be the only ones on the server.

Finding a Drupal hosting company that offers all of these options should be your goal. While you should start with the lowest package that you feel comfortable with, having all services with the same host makes upgrading a much easier process when you need to.

Please follow the step-by-step upgrade instructions at the end of this post, it is import to do it that way because the module has the same name but a different folder structure..

Current Features
- Flash 10 Support (tested with 10,0,12,36)
- One button to select the images, uploading does start automatically
- Display of the queued images, successfully uploaded images disappear from the queue after a few seconds
- Live-Preview of uploaded photos, each photo is linked to its site and below a link to the album is displayed
- Upload-Errors are displayed if it is a “user-error” like illegal filetype, size, zip files and so on..
- More detailed errors are logged with watchdog
- Flash upload is possible at /photos/upload and /node/-id-/photos (if node is an album or a node type which allows photo uploads)
- Link to the classic upload script and back…
- Flash detection, should display an errors when loading of flash fails (not sure how good this works… )
- Errors, Queue and Preview are displayed as collapsible form fieldsets…
- general.pot and german translation

- (technical) refactored the upload function into multiple methods
- (technical) removed the upload_node function, as it is not needed anymore

Not yet working stuff
- flash upload at edit node / create node forms
- Cancel queue function ( is there actually any need for this ? )
- configuring the look of the upload button

Upgrade instructions
1. Disable phtos_swfu at /admin/build/modules
2. Delete photos_swfu.info, photos_swfu.module and the directory v102demo
3. Upload the folder photos_swfu from the photos_swfu.zip attachment into sites/all/modules/photos
4. Re-enable photos_swfu module
5. (Probably not necessary but to be sure… ) clear the cache at /admin/settings/performance

This is for those who want to get the information about website hosting servers and the plans for it . For novice persons who want to start a website and do some thing interesting and want to earn money via websites this will be a good information . First step as all knows we have to buy a the domain name  from any reputed sites like godaddy ,square brothers etc and the next step is to host the domain on some server. Cause only after hosting the site it will be live and can be accessed  by any one on the world.

For this hosting process we need to know some information about the web hosting plans ..because the hosting is for money as well as for free . But there are many difference between free and paid one according to the endurance level of the server and up time stats.We have to read the review of the experts of the hosting server before we get the server.

Open source content management review is also given here which will be helpful in designing  our websites with out any programming work. The cms like drupal is the best example for this kind of work. And there are many stuffs related to web hosting and websites which will be very useful for both novice and professionals.

I admit that I really had no idea of what Open Atrium was before I went to this talk. If you’r

Project Details

  For Indiantravel.info, we have customized multiple wordpress integration under a single domain. This is a comprehensive Question/Answer portal on travel in India.

Salient Features

•  Customized wordpress – Multiple wordpress integration under a single domain, extensive use of customised plug-ins.
• Photo Gallery in Drupal
• A convenient yet safe way to post questions without having to log in.
• Advance Ajax enabled features for great user experienceElegant Sleek Design

 Technology

  WordPress, Drupal

Drupal-founder, Dries Buyaert has announced that the new website of the White House will run on Drupal. Drupal is a Belgian open source software program designed for web content management. Popular and important websites as www.navo.com, www.nasa.com and the personal websites of Hillary Clinton and Jennifer Lopez are already running on it.  The fact that also the government of a world leading country as the United States of America is, is giving their trust and believe in open source software is a new highlight for the sector. President Obama and his new “partner”, Drupal are a perfect match. Just like president Obama’s policy, Drupal stands for an open, transparent, low cost and efficient way of working.

Karel Supré

Source:

http://www.standaard.be/artikel/detail.aspx?artikelid=20091026109459&word=open+source