By telenaut on

Hello.

I'm interested in creating a blog that shows a timeline of events in the
1800's. Other than Wordpress and iWeb, I've found no blogging software
that will enable me to pre-date posts 2 centuries back.

The ability to add categories and/or tags is also important.

Can Drupal enable dating posts into the 1800's, and keep the dates in
historical chronological order, not the actual posting date, as I add them
in the coming years?

Thank you very much.

Comments

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

The problem you're running into has to do with the year 0 for machine world. All dates in Unixtime descend from the holy year January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT which is second 0. Drupal unfortunately isn't an exception. All PHP programs that use the time() function will be afflicted by this.

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patrickharris’s picture

patrickharris commented

the new php5 had provision for dates starting in 1900?

sami_k’s picture

sami_k commented

i actually have not had the oppurtunity to test it on PHP5... So if someone has Drupal on PHP5, edit a node, and put in 1880 as the year of creation and then 1901, and report back with the results. That fact still would not solve the problem this guy is having as it takes place before 1900, but good to know.
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showcase | blog | rob's book

telenaut’s picture

telenaut commented

Thanks, Samik and Patrick.

Creating timelines for historic information like trial evidence timelines or property title searches seems like such a natural fit for blogging apps that offer comments, trackbacks and tags.

I find it odd that other than Wordpress and Apple's iWeb, I haven't found any blog apps that support dedicated timeline-style historical blogging for events before the last century.

For simple timeline graphics for the classroom, there is a nice little program from Tom Snyder productions called Timeliner:
http://www.tomsnyder.com/products/product.asp?SKU=TIMV50

...and Bee Docs Timeline:
http://www.beedocuments.com/software/Timeline/

A serious blogging component together with graphical timeline export capabilities would be a very useful tool for understanding historical dependencies.

I'll keep looking.

MaryE’s picture

MaryE commented

Was just looking into this (again!) for the most recent version of Drupal ... Drupal is such a natural fit for this with its blogs, taxonomy and RSS feeds (not to mention its recent popularity) -

Here's the not so good news (warning: tech details of core hacks) - the only "easy" way (a few years back) I've gotten the blog module to understand earlier dates is to replace the NODE tables's "created" time DB attribute with a double, hacked the node module to use the ADOdb libraries and hoped nothing else broke. It seemed to hold up (there's also a last "changed" field that I did not change, so cron could do its thing), but I don't relish changing core code, particularly the node module!

The other approach I've considered -- see what I can do with hooks to add the historical time. Leave creation time alone. I still have to see whether I do my own or use flexinode "datetime" fields. Then to hook it in, I would hope that the modules could remain as-is. May still have to add a new module(s), it depends upon how much I can do with a hook.

Another twist I've considered is to look at how I can create "on the fly" taxonomies based upon dates. This would eliminate the need to revisit the archive module and add a feature that I've wanted anyway - the ability to roll-up date into monthly, yearly, etc.

BTW, you can modify other blog tools much easier than drupal - several of them use datetime fields on their db, and others even use the ADOdb date time functions. If you want details, you can email me and I can provide a list of those I've worked with. (AFAIK, WP does not provide this OOB, but a few folks have used the hack on the forums).

M.

patrickharris’s picture

patrickharris commented

it's not easier to do in Drupal. Storing dates before 1970 has all sorts of uses. Maybe CCK will add a historic date field?

MaryE’s picture

MaryE commented

... perhaps I'll trudge on ...

So is CCK is the latest thing (I've used flexinode)? I've been out of touch for a while. It might do what I want if it permits you to extend the basic types already available.

My current approach was to use taxonomy, something that can also be used with all content types.

I've spent some time today looking at the handbook which describes a module ("taxonomy on the fly") that permits authors to add to a taxonomy. If I can find it, I might start with that and change the GUI so that it will more "date like". Then I can use all sorts of taxonomy goodies to manage the date. I was hoping to build a "virtual" taxonomy, but that would probably mean hacking the taxonomy module itself. Would still need to do something with events if I wanted them in the past, and of course birthdates (mine included ...)

M.

patrickharris’s picture

patrickharris commented

CCK would definitely be the way to go ... but best to wait until the ordinary date field has been finalized. Last time I looked, a javascript calendar interface was being created to help date input.