Important Notice!

This blog has been archived and is not maintained anymore. Visit the new Drupal support blog and similar posts here www.jeromeesperanza.com

To get support on Drupal web design and development, web hosting, e-commerce, training or other services, please visit iBuild.PH Web Solutions and Services, Philippines.

A Drupal 6 Seminar, Ortigas, Pasig... more details at TPCEvents.Org

Drupal Seminar (Web Content Management System)
Date: Aug 23, 2009 - Sunday
Time: 9:00am - 1:00 pm
Speaker: Jerome A. Esperanza
Description:

Introduction

· Overview of Content Management Systems (CMS)
· Apache, MySQL and PHP Services as Requirements to Drupal
· Installing WAMPServer or XAMPP
· Brief Overview of Drupal

Drupal Proper

Installation

· Basic configurations (Frontend)

· Database

Administering the backend

· Content Management (comments, content types, settings, RSS publishing, taxonomy and categorization
· Blocks (content appears in your site\'s sidebars and other regions)
· Menus (navigation menus, primary links and secondary links, etc.)
· Modules (default and installation of added modules)
· Themes (installation of new themes and basic customization)
· User management (administering access rules, permissions, roles, user settings, users and user groups)
· Site configuration (Actions, Administration theme, Clean URLs, Date and time, Error reporting, File system, Image toolkit, Input formats, Logging and alerts, Performance, Site information, Site maintenance
· Reports (Recent log entries, View \'access denied\' errors (403s), View \'page not found\' errors (404s), Available updates of installed modules and themes, Status report)


Back-ups, Recovery, and Restoration

· Files and folders
· Database

Other Topics (Optional Topics, depending on time availability)

· Basic Search Optimization and Other Tips and Techniques
· Dreamweaver, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Drupal: Basic Tips and Techniques
· Firefox Add-ons and Other Tools for Drupal and Web Developers
· Web Analytics: Drupal and Google Analytics
Venue: Roofdeck 23 Capinpin Place Capinpin St. San Antonio Village Ortigas, Pasig, Philippines

More details at TPCEvents.Org

Google Analytics in Joomla and Drupal

Here's an article I posted for http://www.joomlaexperiences.blogspot.com/ relevant also for installing Google Analytics script or code in Drupal. Tried the different Joomla google analytics modules but instead of trying to figure out how each works or is configured, I opted to try the manual, classic way of installing Google Analytics script in Joomla (or Drupal, and other opensource CMS) which is more foolproof. In one Joomla 1.0 project, I did the ff:

1. Registered the site in my Google Analytics account (your personal account can host multiple sites each with its own unique google analytics script generated and provided after successful signup).
2. When code/script was generated, determined which template the site uses.
3. In the template's index page (.../site/templates/templatename/index.php), I inserted the generated Google Analytics code/script provided for this site account just before the body closing tag.
4. After inserting the script in Joomla's template index page, go back to Google Analytics > Analytics Settings > Profile Settings for the site concerned > then click check status (somewhere in the upper right corner of the page).
5. Notice will be displayed if ga script was installed successfully, hence a "receiving data" status is given. One should just wait for the statistics to be generated then. 24 hour period should be sufficient waiting time.

Enjoy! Hope this helps!

P.S. the same should work with Drupal and other dynamic CMS templates irregardless of versions (just always make a backup copy of the template's index page for easy restoration if something didn't quite work).

"Reported Attack Site" displayed by Firefox

As one ‘developer’ of a site that has been labelled by Firefox’s latest rigid updated version of 3, I think this is unfair as this is commonly of no fault of the site developer/webhost.

We have all been great fans of Firefox for many years now, but I’m very disappointed with their automatic display of this warning. It just scares people off (useful) websites
unnecessarily that have potentially become infected through no fault of their own.

Other browsers don’t show this degree of ’sensitivity’ (nor, insensitivity!!!) that this latest FF 3 3 update does; it simply is too much caution!

I don't know, but personally I think leave the security issues with the host, leave out the inconvenience from the users. We urge FF to disable this damaging and reckless feature.

To manually disable this:

Go to Tools > Options > uncheck "Tell me if the site I'm visiting is a suspected attack site"

Suspected attack site??? Come on! I rest my case...

Sitemap online collaboration tool

Came across a useful online site map creator called WriteMaps Site Tool (http://writemaps.com) , which provides shared online collaboration among users. Cool! Simple, straightforward...

Screenshots below:

XAMPP or WAMP (WampServer) ?

I've been using XAMPP ever since and have followed it's development from one release to the next. Have experienced first-hand the bugs, errors, and fixes of 'em all. And presently, the latest version seems to work fine for me.

Am trying out WAMPServer and hopefully will find anything more useful or more convenient than XAMPP or other one-packaged installers.

Browsing through forums, can't find anything concrete on the pros and cons of one over the other. User preferences seem to be thing here :D

Background check (WAMP vs XAMPP) forum links:

• http://www.webdeveloper.com/forum/showthread.php?t=119408
• http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35923

Anyway, will post if anything comes up!

Keep AMP'ing everyone!

Chat module for Drupal

Tried chat rooms and chat box modules, but somehow they don't provide the instant messenger look and feel desired. Functions a bit more like forums.

Further search and the ajax-based phpfreechat module for drupal takes the trophy.

Resource:

phpfreechat module
http://drupal.org/project/phpfreechat