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torifile
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Join Date: May 2004
Location: Durham, NC
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2007-09-04, 21:08

I just got a gig to do a website for an old colleague. It's a "business" site that he wants to be extensible and all that good stuff. Nothing fancy right now - basic static pages with a calendar module. Some multimedia stuff but all <embed> type things.

Since I could whip up a functional wordpress site to handle this pretty easily (hell, I could probably hand-code it but I'm not that interested), I thought I'd "earn" my money and look at drupal. It's a little overwhelming but I can see how it could be very useful and a good CMS platform to learn.

So, any drupal users out there? Any starting points, etc.? TIA.
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ghoti
owner for sale by house
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-09-04, 21:55

*raises hand* Drupal is great. It's very bare-bones, but there are tons of well-maintained modules and the community is very active. Drupal.org can be painfully slow sometimes, but you will get any question answered there. The handbook and the forums are the main source of information for me.

Be sure to get the Update status module right away, then AcidFree for pictures, tinymce and imce for editing/file management, urllist, XML Sitemap, pathauto, and nodewords for SEO, and the Content Construction Kit (CCK) for flexibility. There's also a module for using reCAPTCHA as your spam protector if you want to have comments. If you tell me more precisely what else you are looking for, I may be able to point you to a few more relevant modules.

Here's my Drupal-powered website: EagerEyes.org
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torifile
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2007-09-04, 23:30

I'll put up a test site shortly.

Basically, they want a few mostly static pages right now. Some guy was going to charge them $1000 for 7 static pages. That's it. No fancy programming or anything. Just static pages. I know drupal is overkill for their needs right now, but I can see them wanting more and more down the road so...
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torifile
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2007-09-05, 00:15

Ok. I put up a test server at www.psydesigns.com/drupal-5.2/ .

I haven't added anything yet but that's where I'll be working.
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ghoti
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2007-09-05, 09:02

The style sheet is borked, but perhaps you're working on it right now. If you're only using it for a few static pages, Drupal is of course overkill. But it will give you a lot of room to grow should your friend/client start seeing all the potential and want more features. I also just wanted to have an online editor to write my stuff whenever I felt like it, not have to futz around in HTML, and get a consistent menu. But over time, I have started using a lot of additional functionality that's not spectacular but just makes for a nicer and more usable webpage, even a rather static one like mine.
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torifile
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2007-09-05, 09:13

I mapped it to a subdomain. The new URL is http://dukescience.psydesigns.com



Christ. What just happened? I can't log in even though I was just able to. Any ideas?
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ghoti
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-09-05, 09:31

It may try to take you to a page that doesn't exist after the login. Great, my own server is down again, so I can't look up the place where you might have to change the site URL. Moving a site around is a bit tricky, because of the domain for the cookies and perhaps also paths. More when my site is back online ...
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torifile
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2007-09-05, 09:33

Well, I did a google search and it seems there's some sort of a cookie problem when moving things around. Using a different browser allowed me to log in. I tried clearing the cookies in Safari but that didn't work to fix the problem but logging in with FF worked.

Now that that's settled and it's installed, I'll get to working on installing modules, etc. Thanks for the help thus far, ghoti.
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torifile
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2007-09-05, 09:46

Alright. I must be an idiot but I can't seem to find the installation instructions for TinyMCE. I put it in the modules folder but it's not showing. What little info I can find tells me to extract it in the site root folder and put some code in the header of my pages. Is that right? Sounds a bit like a hack to me.

Any other WYSIWYG editors I should look at before making changes to my header file?
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ghoti
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-09-05, 09:51

No! Don't do that! The tinymce module goes into the modules directory, or better yet into sites/all/modules (create the directory if it doesn't exist). There are installation instructions for the actual tinymce in a file called INSTALL in the tinymce module directory. You have to download it from the tinymce page and then extract into the tinymce subdir of the tinymce module directory (it's confusing, I know). There are also a few more steps for the editor to actually show up, so follow the instructions very closely! But ignore any instructions from the TinyMCE page, these things are done for you by the TinyMCE module for Drupal.

TinyMCE is a bit of a pain to install, and I'm not too happy with it overall. But I've tested a few others (there are modules for five or so editors), and tinymce is still the best one for my purposes.

Also, once TinyMCE works, install IMCE for easier picture uploading and placing in articles. Drupal has a separate node type for images, but those can't be easily included within other text (they're more image gallery kind of pictures). IMCE is great for that, and makes life a lot easier.
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torifile
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2007-09-05, 22:10

Quote:
Originally Posted by ghoti View Post
No! Don't do that! The tinymce module goes into the modules directory, or better yet into sites/all/modules (create the directory if it doesn't exist). There are installation instructions for the actual tinymce in a file called INSTALL in the tinymce module directory. You have to download it from the tinymce page and then extract into the tinymce subdir of the tinymce module directory (it's confusing, I know). There are also a few more steps for the editor to actually show up, so follow the instructions very closely! But ignore any instructions from the TinyMCE page, these things are done for you by the TinyMCE module for Drupal.

TinyMCE is a bit of a pain to install, and I'm not too happy with it overall. But I've tested a few others (there are modules for five or so editors), and tinymce is still the best one for my purposes.

Also, once TinyMCE works, install IMCE for easier picture uploading and placing in articles. Drupal has a separate node type for images, but those can't be easily included within other text (they're more image gallery kind of pictures). IMCE is great for that, and makes life a lot easier.
Did I download the right thing? There's no "module", per se, in the file I downloaded. Hmm.

BTW, can you explain the concept of "node" to me? I don't quite get it.
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ghoti
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Join Date: Apr 2005
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2007-09-06, 07:08

Oh, then my explanation doesn't make sense. You need to download the Drupal TinyMCE module. Then see above

A node is the central unit of information in Drupal. Every story, article, image, etc. is a node. In object-oriented terms, node is the superclass for every content type. This makes it possible to easily extend the existing content types (e.g., the bibliography module for managing literature references) without having to do anything to include them in lists, searches, etc.

You can also create your own content types using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) or a number of other modules (like flexinode). This is useful for example for press releases, where you might want to have a field for a picture, one for a URL, and then a selection which standard blurb to attach to the end of the release. When displaying that node, the style could then use these fields differently in an overview (e.g., image thumbnail that links to release plus first paragraph) than when showing you just that press release.
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torifile
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2007-09-06, 08:52

Quote:
Originally Posted by ghoti View Post
Oh, then my explanation doesn't make sense. You need to download the Drupal TinyMCE module. Then see above

A node is the central unit of information in Drupal. Every story, article, image, etc. is a node. In object-oriented terms, node is the superclass for every content type. This makes it possible to easily extend the existing content types (e.g., the bibliography module for managing literature references) without having to do anything to include them in lists, searches, etc.

You can also create your own content types using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) or a number of other modules (like flexinode). This is useful for example for press releases, where you might want to have a field for a picture, one for a URL, and then a selection which standard blurb to attach to the end of the release. When displaying that node, the style could then use these fields differently in an overview (e.g., image thumbnail that links to release plus first paragraph) than when showing you just that press release.
I swear to god I'm not a complete idiot. Really. I'm not. I read through that page a hundred times yesterday but I never scrolled all the way to the bottom. I just clicked on the "Download" link in the first part of the page... Duh.

Ok, maybe I *am* an idiot.
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ghoti
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2007-09-06, 09:26

That page is confusing. It does help to read more than the first two paragraphs, though

Overall, the Drupal documentation is far from perfect, but it is much better than many other CMS's. You can also ask questions in the forum and get good responses quite fast - and no "RTFM, nooob!!!1" either, because they have all spent hours looking for information themselves.
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torifile
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2007-09-06, 17:45

Quote:
Originally Posted by ghoti View Post
That page is confusing. It does help to read more than the first two paragraphs, though

Overall, the Drupal documentation is far from perfect, but it is much better than many other CMS's. You can also ask questions in the forum and get good responses quite fast - and no "RTFM, nooob!!!1" either, because they have all spent hours looking for information themselves.
Well, in all fairness (to me ), it does say to download the module from this page which is the wrong thing to download.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Drupal Page
INSTALLATION: Installing the TinyMCE module is a TWO STEP PROCESS. Users must download and copy the TinyMCE folder into the module directory as part of the installation process. This module only enables the TinyMCE editor to be used with Drupal. The TinyMCE editor itself is maintained by Moxiecode Systems AB and is used by many content management systems. A browser compatibility chart is available at the TinyMCE website.
But the directions are wrong because that's not the proper thing to download. Oh well. That should sort that problem out. Thanks for the help. I'll post back with more questions later, I'm sure.
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torifile
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2007-10-18, 10:54

I've got the site up and running in a functional way. It's not too shabby (except for the awful color scheme they chose). I can't figure out the contact module. It works just fine when I'm logged in but I get an access denied message when I'm not. I'd like for non-registered users to be able to contact them, too. Any ideas?
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ghoti
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-10-18, 11:28

In admin, under user management go to access control, and there you will find a heading for the contact form where you can click on "access site-wide contact form" for anonymous users. Access control is always a good idea to check when something works for you but not for anonymous users.
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ghoti
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2007-10-18, 12:31

Oh, and while you're at it, upgrade to 5.3 (came out yesterday). They fixed a ton of security issues, and the upgrade is very painless. Also, if you don't already have it, install the update status module, which keeps you informed (via email, if you choose) of new releases for all your modules.
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torifile
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2007-10-19, 21:29

Quote:
Originally Posted by ghoti View Post
Oh, and while you're at it, upgrade to 5.3 (came out yesterday). They fixed a ton of security issues, and the upgrade is very painless. Also, if you don't already have it, install the update status module, which keeps you informed (via email, if you choose) of new releases for all your modules.
Will it break my theme? I don't think I made any changes to the core files but I don't know... Upgrades always make me nervous....
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ghoti
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Charlotte, NC
 
2007-10-20, 09:39

You should definitely upgrade. It's quite painless (like an OSX upgrade ), the only file you have to be careful about is sites/default/settings.php (unless you made a directory under sites for your site). Definitely back up your files and your database (you probably have access to phpMyAdmin somewhere, that has an export function) before you do it, but it's really not a big deal. And get the update status module, you really want to be up to date and not have some script kiddie deface your site because you're too lazy . Also, register a user at drupal.org, then you'll get an email when a security update comes out (that only happens every couple of months).

Your theme will not be touched unless you modified an existing theme in place (i.e., didn't copy it to a new directory).
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torifile
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2007-10-28, 18:53

Any modules that allow for foldable menus/lists? I've tried installing scriptaculous without any luck. I'm sure I'm doing something wrong but it'd be easier if there some plug in I could use. TIA.
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