Drupal-lovers

How to autopost content from my site to facebook

2013-01-29T03:04:00.002-08:00

How to autopost content from any site to facebook page.
first of all do these steps.....

1. Create a facebook page. i.e-facebook.com/abc.

2. After that create a apps in facebook which post our node to facebook page. www.developer.facebook.com. And create an apps. ie:- test and configure it looks like that...

3. After that we also configure it

4. Then save it.

5. Install fbautopost module and enable it. Install from http://drupal.org/project/fb_autopost
and configure it goto-mysite.com/admin/structure/fb
and goto stream post tab and create Facebook's Graph Explorer token and fill text box save it.

6. And create content any and enable post on facebook and give its page name and save it. That post it on facebook page .if no any mistake.

After that enjoy it.

How to create Mega Photo gallery in Drupal 7

2013-01-22T04:16:00.000-08:00

If you want to create mega Photo gallery in drupal 7 looks like below....

then follow some simple steps ..

1. First off all create a content type Gallery.

2. And add a image field configure it Number of value : Unlimited

3. Save it and add some content in Gallery content type.

4. Add this line to default theme`s template.php

function bartik_process_page(&$variables) {
drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/jquery.mousewheel-3.0.6.pack.js');
drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/fancybox/jquery.fancybox.pack.js');
drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/fancybox/jquery.fancybox.css');
$fancybox = "jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery('.fancybox').fancybox();
});";
drupal_add_js($fancybox, 'inline');
}

If this function already present in templete.php, then only add this line in between this function.

drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/jquery.mousewheel-3.0.6.pack.js');
drupal_add_js(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/fancybox/jquery.fancybox.pack.js');
drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('theme', 'bartik') . '/js/fancybox/jquery.fancybox.css');
$fancybox = "jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery('.fancybox').fancybox();
});";
drupal_add_js($fancybox, 'inline');

5. After that add custom template in template folder.Just like node--gallery.tpl.php
In this file that code are....

<div id="node-<?php print $node->nid; ?>" class="node-gallery">
<?php print render($title_prefix); ?>
<?php if (!$page): ?>
<h2 style="text-align:center;" <?php print $title_attributes; ?>>
<?php print $title; ?>
</h2>
<?php endif; ?>
<?php print render($title_suffix); ?>
<?php
$imgcount = count($node->field_image['und']);
for ($i = 0; $i < $imgcount; $i++) {
$image_uri = $node->field_image['und'][$i]['uri'];
// url
$masthead_raw = image_style_url('gallery', $image_uri);
?>
<a href="<?php print file_create_url($node->field_image['und'][$i]['uri']); ?>" rel="group-<?php print $node->nid; ?>" class="fancybox">
<img class="image<?php print ($i + 1);?>" src="<?php print $masthead_raw; ?>" />
</a>
<?php } ?>
</div>

6. Add a view its name gallery.

After that look my gallery its looks like...

Database Data Fetching using Db_query Codee

2013-01-20T20:53:00.004-08:00

<?php

global $user;

$userid=$user->uid;

$result = db_query('SELECT n.mett_score FROM {training_score} n WHERE n.uid = :uid', array(':uid' => $userid));

foreach ($result as $record) {

echo 'Your Score is:'; print_r($record->mett_score);

// or Aply This Code

echo '<br/>' .'You Score Is:' .$record->mett_score;

}

Installing Drupal on Windows with PostGRESQL DB

2012-07-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

The Downloads:

The system requirements for Drupal are given here. In short, download Apache, PHP (download BOTH the installer and the zip version), Post GRE SQL.

The Configuration:

The step-by-step instruction to install Drupal is given here and it's fairly intuitive.

The Gotchas:

There were a couple of things to watch out for:

1. PHP looks for the config file (php.ini) in C:\Windows (or the equivalent windows folder) by default and that file isn't automagically created. So we need to add the PHP installation folder path to the PATH variable. In my case, I added C:\Program Files (x86)\PHP to the PATH variable.

2. Drupal uses PDO (PHP Data Objects) to connect to a database and you should be having a PDO (which is usually a DLL) for each DB you intend to support. However, this DLL is not provided in the PHP installer; and even if you go around hunting for that DLL file in Google, you will hit nothing but road blocks. So after you install PHP using the installer, unzip the contents of the PHP zip version that you downloaded (to a different folder of course) and copy the php_pdo_pgsql.dll file from the ext folder (under the extracted PHP folder) to the actual ext folder (created by the windows installer). Then, the php.ini file needs to be updated to include the following lines:

[PHP_PDO_PGSQL]

extension=php_pdo_pgsql.dll

Once this is done and the apache server is (re)started, following the step-by-step Drupal installation instructions should do the magic.

Drupal feature Module example

2012-07-12T22:33:00.000-07:00

In this example we create an Online Videos feature. The site builder configured a lot in preparation of this feature we are currently not interested in.

Step 1. admin/build/features/export

As you can see we added a name, description and a version. Next step will be defining what this feature provides.

Step 2. Select features components.

From the "Add Components" dropdown we have to select the components the feature consists off. This is about a video node so we select "Node". From the checklist we only need the video node type.

The auto-detect functionality grabs the required building blocks node (video), content (video-field_video), modules (emvideo, features). Therefore, when we want to install the feature, we need to make sure we have installed the required modules.

Step 3. Download the feature.

When satisfied with all components, click the download button and save the tarball (in this case, online_videos-6.x-1.0-alpha1.tar.gz).

Step 4. Install and enable the feature.

Best thing to do is untar the file in your current project. As described above, features are not listed on the site/build/modules page even though they are technically modules. To keep them separate, you should consider putting all of your features in a separate directory — e.g., site/all/modules/custom/your-feature.

The feature now appears at admin/build/features. Checking the box next to the feature's name and saving page causes the features module to check for the current state all features.

Step 5. Visit admin/build/modules

When checking for the module online video module it's not there. Searching for the name would show you a dependency on online_video module. To disable such a module you have to disable the feature first.

Notes

We have said nothing about what drupal projects you need to install to be able to install our example feature.
If we had created a view this would be exported too. test it yourself.

Deploying local to remote sites drush site aliases

2012-06-19T03:21:00.000-07:00

Deploying local to remote sites drush site aliases by kiwipion

Introduction

In this tutorial we are going to deploy a copy of our current local site across to what we will term our staging server using the Drush function site aliases. For ease of use the staging server will be on the local machine as well, but you can use the same principal for propagating across to a remote server such as a shared host.

Prerequisites

For you to follow these instructions you will need the followng setup on your machine

Local environment set up ie MAMP for mac
Drush installed.

Preparation

Implement your own aliases.drushrc.php file. You can copy the example.aliases.drushrc.php from the examples directory to either your local drush root directory or into your drupal installation make sure you read the instructions at the top of this file to ensure that it gets picked up buy drush.

There are two very good articles that can be used as reference here http://emspace.com.au/article/drush-aliases-primer-live-dev-syncing & here http://drupal.org/node/670460

Go into your drush/examples folder and copy the examples.aliases.drushrc.php to a location of your preference, I'll be putting mine in the drupal installation directory and renaming it to mysite.aliases.drushrc.php.

For reference here are my aliases for @mysite.dev & @mysite.stage

$aliases['dev'] = array(     'uri' => 'myserver.myserver',     'root' => '/sites/mysite',     'path-aliases' => array(       '%drush' => '/Users/nigelhenshaw/dev/drush',       '%drush-script' => '/Users/nigelhenshaw/dev/drush/drush',       '%dump-dir' => '/sites/SQL/dumps/',       '%dump' => '/sites/SQL/sql-dev.sql',       '%files' => 'sites/drupalovereasy.com/files',      ),   );   $aliases['stage'] = array(     'uri' => 'myserver.stage',     'root' => '/sites/mysite.stage',     'path-aliases' => array(       '%drush' => '/Users/nigelhenshaw/dev/drush',       '%drush-script' => '/Users/nigelhenshaw/dev/drush/drush',       '%dump-dir' => '/sites/SQL/dumps/',       '%dump' => '/sites/SQL/sql-stage.sql',       '%files' => 'sites/drupalovereasy.com/files',      ),   );

Inform the drushrc.php file of the location of the aliases file in ['alias-path'] section.

Now check that drupal is scanning your alias file correctly and your configuration is correct by running

drush sa

You should be something like this, which will confirm that drush is scanning your alias file and the context of your alias is correct.

@self @mysite.dev @mysite default

The alias I definned is @mysite.dev

Let's see if we can backup the contents of the database by doing a drush dump, this will be the command that I will be running

drush @mysite.dev sql-dump > `drush dd @mysite.dev:%dump`

A copy of my database should now be downloaded at /sites/SQL/dumps/, which was specified in the the mysite.aliases.drushrc.php

Now I'm going to repeat the process and create alias settings for my staging server which I will call mysite.stage

Deploy

There are two steps required for migrating across to a new site location that has not yet been populated

1/ Rsync the code across

% drush rsync @mysite.dev @mysite.stage

2 / Configure the database and ensure that settings.php is aligned with it.

3/ Sql-sync the database across

% drush sql-sync @mysite.dev @mysite.stage

Your staging site should now be up and running.

Synchronization

Once a remote site has been installed you will have to consider how you will maintain the site after ie how do you manage source code and database content. Normally source is pushed up to the remote server and database content is pulled down. An example demonstrating this would be upgrading a site where that database content has been pulled down to the staging server using drush sql-sync. The source code is then pushed up to the staging server from the local dev server using drush rsync, then staging server is tested and verified. Once passed the validation criterea the remote live site will then be put into maintenance mode with the latest copy of the database sync'd back down to the staging server. The validation testing would normally be re-run and then the source code would be merged up to the live server.

This is a very light-weight example which I'm using the demonstrate the direction of source code versus database data in relation to each other, which is different from what we did with the brand new setup of the staging server that had both the source code and database content pushed to the staging server.

Final Thoughts

In closing it will be interesting to see how drush rsync and sql-sync will develop in regards with the work happening in git and dog, I have seen discussions of installing git on the live server and merging the code up but I don't yet know if it is possible to install git on a shared host without the root access. And I do find the drush rsync & sql-sync fast and simple to use.

And my final word for the day "always make sure you backup the database before running the sql-sync command".

MySql replication on same Windows machine

2012-06-10T00:12:00.000-07:00

1. First install mysql-5.5.11-win32.msi on windows machine. While installing choose custom installation and change
installation path to D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5
2. Use all the default parameter like Service name is MYSQL and port number is 3306 and setup bin path.
3. And also modify root password to mysql.
3. Now check whether your installation is correct or not.
4.Open dos prompt and type below command.
c:\> mysql -uroot -pmysql -hlocalhost -P3306;

If you get mysql command then everything is ok.
We will treat mysql 5.5 is MASTER.
Now create one database:

mysql> create database santosh;

5. Now install another version of mysql (mysql-5.1.56-win32.msi) for SLAVE. Again while installing choose custome
installation and change installation path to D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1
6. Change service name to MYSQL2 and port number to 3307
7. Modify root password to root.
8.Now check whether your installation is correct or not.
9.Open new dos prompot and type below command.

c:\> mysql -uroot -proot -hlocalhost -P3307;

If you get mysql command then everything is ok.
We will treat mysql 5.1 is SLAVE.
Now create one database:
mysql> create database santosh;

Up to here two mysql instance are running in your windows machine.

Now start the replication implementation.

1. Open D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.5\my.ini then add four options to the [mysqld] section of the my.ini file

[mysqld]
log-bin=dellxp1-bin.log
server-id=1
innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit=1
sync_binlog=1

save it.
Restart the MYSQL service from your pc. MyComputer -> Right click -> click on Manage -> Services and Application -> Services ->
search MYSQL on right side, right click on that MYSQL and click on restart.

The next step in setting up replication is creating an account that will be used exclusively for replication. We strongly advise creating a dedicated replication user be created for better security so you won’t need to grant any additional privileges besides replication permissions. Create an account on the master server that the slave server can use to connect. As mentioned, this account must be given the REPLICATION SLAVE privilege.

Open one dos windows for all MASTER operation.
c:\>mysql -uroot -pmysql -hlocalhost -P3306;
mysql> create user ‘replication_user’ identified by ‘password’;
mysql> grant replication slave on *.* to ‘replication_user’@'%’ identified by ‘password’;
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> FLUSH TABLES WITH READ LOCK;
mysql> SHOW MASTER STATUS;

Please note down this file name and position, it will use to later.

Now take your backup of your MASTER database as we have new database so this below step are not required. But when you have to create SLAVE of running database then it step must be required, so lets go these below step too.

Open new dos prompt.

Taking backup from MASTER:
C:\>mysqldump -uroot -pmysql -hlocalhost -P3306 santosh> d:\test2.sql

Now export this back to SLAVE, run below command on same dos windows.
C:\Users\sumankbi>mysql -uroot -proot -hlocalhost -P3307 santosh< d:\test2.sql

Now some change on SLAVE side:
1. Open D:\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\my.ini then add four options to the [mysqld] section of the my.ini file

[mysqld]
server-id=2

save it.
Restart the MYSQL2 service from your pc. MyComputer -> Right click -> click on Manage -> Services and Application -> Services ->
search MYSQL on right side, right click on that MYSQL2 and click on restart.

Open one dos windows for all SLAVE operation.
c:\>mysql -uroot -proot -hlocalhost -P3307;

mysql> stop slave;
mysql> CHANGE MASTER TO
MASTER_HOST=’localhost’,
MASTER_USER=’replication_user’,
MASTER_PASSWORD=’password’,
MASTER_PORT=3306,
MASTER_LOG_FILE=’dellxp1-bin.000001′,
MASTER_LOG_POS=338;

mysql> show slave status\G;
Output will come huge, among two line should be like:
Slave_IO_Running: No
Slave_SQL_Running: No

Because slave is stopped now.
Now time came to start slave.
on slave side:

mysql> start slave;
Now check slave status:
mysql> show slave status\G;
Output will come huge, among two line should be like:
Slave_IO_Running: Yes
Slave_SQL_Running: Yes

If both values are Yes, then everything are ok.

Now you can check your replication work.

Create some table in MASTER santosh database or any database (those should be there at SLAVE side) then check at slave side.

Now you stop slave again then you change of MASTER will not come but once again you will start slave then slave will get automatically updated from last time stopped pointer.

More details on http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/replication.html

Thanks:

Santosh

Drupal Site Configuration: Site Information, Triggers and File

2012-05-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

People often assume that the basics are easy to master and therefore, don't require much thought. Things are not quite so simple in reality because while a site's basic setup is, more often than not, easy to implement, the more subtle problem is in knowing what to implement, and how to implement it in the first place. Precisely understanding what you need from a site is particularly important for this reason.

Does this mean that you should not start working directly on the site unless you know exactly what is required? Not really; like most things, it's a bit of a trade-off when it comes to starting out with the development of a Drupal website. This is because it is almost impossible to determine exactly what the site will need and how its functionality should be provided until you have been working with it for some time. Often, you will find yourself modifying the behavior of a site based on feedback from the users.

In this article by David Mercer, author of the book Drupal 7, we are going to talk about the following Drupal site configuration topics:

Site information
Actions and Triggers
Shortcuts
File system

(For more resources on Drupal, see here.)

Not everything that is available in Drupal's Configuration section is discussed in this article. Some settings are very straightforward and really don't warrant more than perhaps a brief mention.

Before we start

It is sensible to make note of a few important things before getting our hands dirty. Make it second nature to check how the changes made to the settings affect the site. Quite often settings you modify, or features you add, will not behave precisely as expected and without ensuring that you use a prudent approach to making changes, you can sometimes end up with a bit of a mess.

Changes to the site's structure (for example, adding new modules) can affect what is and isn't available for configuration so be aware that it may be necessary to revisit this section.

Click on Configuration in the toolbar menu. You should see something like the following screenshot:

A quick point to mention is that we aren't giving over much space to the final option—Regional and Language. This is because the settings here are very basic and should give you no trouble at all. There is also an online exercise available to help you with date types and formats if you are interested in customizing these.

Let's begin!

Site information

This page contains a mixed bag of settings, some of which are pretty self-explanatory, while others will require us to think quite carefully about what we need to do. To start with, we are presented with a few text boxes that control things like the name of the site and the site slogan.

Nothing too earth shattering, although I should point out that different themes implement these settings differently, while some don't implement them at all.

For example, adding a slogan in the default Garland theme prints it after the site name as shown in the following screenshot:

Whereas, the Stark theme places the slogan beneath the site name:

Let's assume that there is a page of content that should be displayed by default—before anyone views any of the other content. For example, if you wanted to display some sort of promotional information or an introduction page, you could tell Drupal to display that using this setting. Remember that you have to create the content for this post first, and then determine its path before you tell Drupal to use it. For example, we could reference a specific node with its node ID, but equally, a site's blogs could be displayed if you substitute node/x (in node/ID format) for the blog.

Once you are looking at the content intended for the front page, take note of the relative URL path and simply enter that into the text box provided.

Recall that the relative URL path is that part of the page's address that comes after the standard domain, which is shared by the whole site. For example, setting node/2 works because Drupal maps this relative path to http://localhost/drupal/node/2

The first part of this address, http://localhost/drupal/ is the base URL, and everything after that is the relative URL path.

Sometimes, the front page is a slightly more complex beast and it is likely that you will want to consider Panels to create a unique front page. In this case, Panels settings can override this setting to make a specific panel page as the front page.

The following settings allow you to broadly deal with the problem of two common site errors that may crop up during a site's normal course of operation—from the perspective of a site visitor. In particular, you may wish to create a couple of customized error pages that will be displayed to the users in the event of a "page not found" or "access denied" problem.

Remember that there are already pretty concise pages, which are supplied by default. However, if you wish to make any changes, then the process for creating an error page is exactly the same as creating any other normal page.

Let's make a change very quickly. Click on Add new content in the Shortcuts menu and select Basic page. Add whatever content you want for, say the Page not found! error:

Don't worry about the host of options available on this page—we will talk about all of this later on. For now, simply click on the Save button and make note of the URL of the page when it is displayed. Then head back to the Site information page, add this URL to the Default 404 (not found) page dialog, and then click on the Save configuration button:

If you navigate to a page that doesn't exist, for example, node/3333, you should receive the new error message as follows:

In this example, we asked Drupal to find a node that does not exist yet and so it displayed the Page not found! error message. Since Drupal can also provide content that is private or available to only certain users, it also needs the access denied error to explain to the would-be users that they do not have sufficient permissions to view the requested page. This is not the same as not finding a page, of course, but you can create your own access denied page in exactly the same way.

Finally, you will need to specify how often cron should run in the Automatically run cron drop-down at the bottom of the Site information page. Cronjobs are automated tasks (of any type—they could be search indexing, feed aggregation, and so on) that should run at specified intervals. Drupal uses them to keep itself up-to-date and ensure optimal operation.

Drupal uses web page requests to initiate new cron runs once the specified interval has elapsed. If your website does not get visited regularly, cron itself cannot run regularly.

Running cron every few hours is reasonable for the vast majority of sites. Setting it to run too quickly can create a huge load on the server because each time the cron is run, all sorts of scripts are updating data, performing tasks, and consuming server resources. By the same token, run cron too infrequently and your site's content can become outdated, or worse, important module, theme, and core updates can go unnoticed, among other things.

Actions and triggers

Quite often, it happens that for specific events, it is useful to have Drupal automatically perform a specified task or action. An action, in the Drupal sense, is one of a number of tasks that the system can perform, and these usually relate to e-mailing people or acting upon user accounts or content. There are a number of simple actions that are available as well as a few more advanced ones that can be set up by anyone with sufficient permissions.

To configure actions, navigate to Actions in SYSTEM under the Configuration menu in the toolbar:

Default simple actions cannot be modified, so we will ignore these for the moment and focus on creating a new, advanced action. Set up a new Send e-mail action by selecting it from the drop-down list and click on the Create button, as shown in the preceding screenshot. This brings up the following page that can be set according to how this specific action will be used:

It should be clear that the intention of this e-mail is to notify the staff/administration of any new site members. The Label field is important in this respect because this is how you will distinguish this action from the other ones that you may create in the future. Make the description as accurate, meaningful, and concise as possible to avoid any potential confusion.

Also notice that there are several placeholder variables that can be inserted into the Recipient, Subject, and Message fields. In this instance, one has been used to inform the e-mail recipient of the new user name, as part of the message.

A click on the Save button adds this new action to the list where it can be modified or deleted, accordingly:

So far so good—we have set the action, but this in itself does absolutely nothing. An action cannot do anything unless there is a specific system event that can be triggered to set it off. These system events are, perspicaciously enough, called triggers and Drupal can look for any number of triggers, and perform the actions that are associated with it—this is how actions and triggers work together.

Triggers are not part of the topic of Drupal configuration. However, we will discuss them here for completeness, since actions and triggers are integrally linked.

Triggers are not enabled by default, so head on over to the Modules section and enable the Triggers module. With the module enabled, there will now be a new Triggers link from the Actions page. Clicking on this brings up the following page:

Triggers are divided into five different categories, each providing a range of triggers to which actions can be attached. Assigning a trigger is basically selecting an action to apply from the drop-down list of the relevant trigger and clicking on the Assign button.

To continue with our example, select the USER tab from the top of the Triggers overlay and, in the TRIGGER: AFTER CREATING A NEW USER ACCOUNT box, select the newly defined action, as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on the Assign button, and the newly assigned action will show up in the relevant trigger box:

In the same way, a large number of actions can be automated depending on the system event (or trigger) that fires. To test this out, log off and register a new account—you will find that the New User Alert e-mail is dutifully sent out once the account has been registered (assuming your web server is able to send e-mail).

Drupal 7

Create and operate any type of Drupal 7 website quickly and efficiently

Read more about this book

(For more resources on Drupal, see here.)

Shortcuts

Shortcuts are a new feature of Drupal 7 and allow administrators (or anyone with sufficient permissions) to create sets of links that can be accessed by others using the shortcuts bar—directly below the toolbar menu. By default, Add content and Find content are the only two links that are provided, but you may change these regularly depending on what you are working on at any given time.

For example, it may be useful to create a set of shortcuts that involve theme-related links for quick access when it's time to theme the site. By the same token, adding links to views and displays might be more useful when working on content.

The overlay system is integrated with shortcuts, making it easy for the administrators to add links to their shortcuts. For example, let's say we wanted a set of configuration shortcuts so that all the main configuration tasks are readily accessible at a moment's notice.

To do this, we need to first add a new shortcut set. Go to Shortcuts in USER INTERFACE under Configuration, and click on the Add shortcut set link, to bring up the following page:

Now go to your account, and select the Shortcut tab. Select the new Configuration option and save the changes by clicking Change set to ensure that you are viewing the correct shortcut set. Now click on Edit shortcuts in the shortcuts bar to bring up the list of links contained in this set:

Nothing too exciting yet. In fact, this is exactly the same as the default shortcut set. We can add new shortcuts to this list manually by clicking on the Add shortcut link and providing a name and path manually:

Clicking on the Save button shows the new link added to the list and it is also now available in the shortcuts bar on the top of the page.

The other, easier way to add links is simple; click on the plus icon next to the overlay name. A small popup appears to the right of the icon while hovering over it. Take note of this because it indicates which shortcut set the link will be added to.

The new shortcut will appear along the top of the page with the rest of the links.

Anyone with sufficient permissions can create their own set of shortcuts and use them as they choose. The shortcuts system also provides a block that can be added to the site like any other block. Making effective use of shortcuts can help you cut down the wasted navigation time—just remember to select the most relevant set from your account because it is only possible to view one at a time.

File system

How you deal with the file system settings really depends on what type of content you visualize your site using. If you know that most files should be available for anyone to download, then leave the Default download method as Public. By the same token, if you want some control over who can access the files then use the Private method.

Public files can be accessed directly through a browser without having to go through your Drupal website. So, if someone liked a video you posted, they could reference it from their own website, allowing their visitors to see the video using your bandwidth to serve it—obviously not ideal.

You need to keep an eye on this and find out if your host service provides some sort of hotlinking protection to combat this.

Assuming you want to make your download method private, you will need to specify a directory that is not directly available over the web—in other words, it is outside the document root folder.

The same technique is used for the temporary files folder that Drupal requires in order to properly handle any files you or the site users might deal with.

On your development machine, you might end up with something like the following screenshot (Public file downloads):

To make this private, create a folder outside of the web root (but still within the web server folder), add it to the Private file system path option, and click on the Save configuration button, as shown in the following screenshot:

With the new absolute path to the private folder specified (in this case, privatedrupalfiles) there will now be an additional Default download method available for selection, entitled Private local files served by Drupal.

The Default download method is the default behavior. Individual download methods can be set on each file type field added to any content type.

Before continuing, let's confirm that we can specify a download method for any file without problems. Go to Content types under Structure, and click on the manage fields link next to one of the content types, say blog entry. Add a new field of the File type and save the changes. You will then be able to select Public files or Private files in the Upload destination section on the following configuration page, as shown in the next screenshot:

The important point here is that each file uploaded to the site can be controlled on a field level basis, and more importantly on a field level per content type basis. This is a vast improvement over Drupal 6 which forced either all files to be public or all to be private.

How Drupal controls what type and the size of the files that can be uploaded is a matter for the content type specific configuration page shown in the preceding screenshot. It is not really sensible to allow any type of file to be uploaded to the site. The first thing that will happen if you do this, is that someone will upload a malicious executable file that does something nasty when it runs on the users' machines, in turn, causing them to say or do something nasty to you.

For example, you might know that for a particular content type, the only type of file that should be uploaded is a small text or .txt file. In this case, you would have something like the following settings:

In this case, we have specified that only 'txt files' of less than 50 KB can be uploaded to the blogtext sub-directory. The decisions you ultimately make should be dictated by the needs of the individual site. When in doubt, follow the tenet:

Provide only what is absolutely necessary, and no more!

The actual settings themselves are easy enough to implement, but I suggest you do not add any file extensions that you know the site will not need. Remember that it is possible to cloak nasty software within other file types, so the more variety you allow, the less secure things become.

We can test all of this out by posting a new blog and trying to upload files. Try a range of files, not just 'txt' files to see the results. For example, attempting to upload an image file gives the following result:

However, uploading a new file that does meet the criteria set, meets with success and we can check to ensure that the file is present in the proper sub-directory of the file system, as shown next:

As you can see, the site has correctly uploaded the blogtextfile.txt file in the blogtext subdirectory, as specified earlier. The field-based system for file handling in Drupal 7 represents a huge improvement over previous Drupal milestones.

Summary

This article has covered a fair amount of ground in terms of setting up the site. We began by looking at some general configuration settings, like Site information, that are important in terms of getting the nuts and bolts in working order. Many of these settings will need to be revisited as the site develops.

While triggers aren't necessarily part of a discussion on configuration, we learned that they are inextricably linked to actions that can be configured to automate many common site tasks or chores. Again, coming back to actions and triggers every once and a while can help reduce the number of repetitive tasks that have to be completed manually.

Next, we gained the ability to control file uploads and file handling using Drupal 7's new field-based paradigm. Having fine grained control over how various files are accessed is a great improvement over past incarnations of Drupal.

Workbench: Managing Content Management-1

2012-04-24T22:37:00.002-07:00

This screencast is a part of the Workbench learning series. You can find more at the following links:
* NodeOne Drupal Learning Library: nodeone.se/learn-drupal
* The Workbench overview series: nodeone.se/node/1021
* The Workbench main project page: drupal.org/project/workbench

30+ Essential Drupal Modules

2012-04-19T09:53:00.001-07:00

The Big Three

"The big three" are important enough that they deserve a category of their own. Most drupal modules worth using have integrated with one of these three. Their importance simply can't be stressed enough.

Content Construction Kit (CCK) - Part of drupal 7; still a contrib in drupal 6. Allows you to define new content types (e.g. blog entry, event, or employee record...) and add "fields" to them. A field could be plain text, an image, a flash video, or whatever. You can also adjust how these fields display in the live view. No drupal install should be without this module.
Views - Broadly speaking, this module empowers non programmers to build dynamic streams of content displaying any number of fields. The content may come from nodes (a.k.a. content types and fields), users, system log entries, etc. You can display this stream in any number of formats including RSS feeds, tables, or just the vanilla view for a content type. You can also create pages or blocks -- its very tightly interwoven with drupal. Nearly every drupal module worth using is integrated with this module. Extremely powerful when used in combination with CCK.
Panels -

I believe Panels + CCK & Views is a hint at what drupal will look like 3 years into the future. I had to change my pants after the first time I witnessed it. At a very simple level, you could think of it as a layout manager. Create a 1,2,3 column layout. Or a 3 column layout with a full width footer and header, and plop pieces of content in them -- say a view, a block, or a node. That description, however does not do it justice. Since version 3, its positioned itself as a replacement for drupal core's clunky block system. It can now override a node page, and can be used to place content all over the place. It also introduced a concept of contexts, selections rules, and relationships. These are concepts that deserve a series of blog posts, but lets just say its solving some of the weirdest, mind numbing, bug creating problems found in advanced websites. Ironically, I used to hate this module, but after version 3 I will defend its awesomeness to the death!

For Administration Sanity

Admin Menu - Quick Dropdown menu to all admin areas. Makes any setting only a click away, instead of 3 to 6 clicks away.
RootCandy - A theme specially designed for administration. Drupal 7 comes with an admin theme included, but this is still highly recommended in drupal 6.

Content and SEO

Pathauto - Automatically create human readable URLS from tokens. A token is a piece of data from content, say the author's username, or the content's title. So if you set up a blog entry to use tokens like [author-name]/[title] then a blog entry by "Phil Withersppon" titled "my great day" will be rewritten example.com/phil-witherspoon/my-great-day.
Printer, email, and PDF Versions - There are still people out there who prefer to print out content to read later. This module does just that, and also lets them send your content via email.
NodeWords - A very poorly named module that's great at letting you edit meta tags.
Page Title - Lets you set an alternative title for the tags and for the
tags on a node.
Global Redirect - Enforces numerous well thought out SEO rules, for example since I don't use this module you could access my content at "http://www.nicklewis.org/node/1062". This module however will search for the alias and 301 to the proper URL http://www.nicklewis.org/40-essential-drupal-6-modules. (thanks Jeff!)
Path Redirect - Simple idea: make it easy to redirect from one path to another. Does a good job at it.
Taxonomy manager - Makes large additions, or changes to taxonomy really really easy and painless.
Node Import - Made it shockingly easy to import 2000 csv rows, tie rows to CCK fields (or locations), and even will file it under the right taxonomy terms in hierarchy so long as you plan ahead.

Navigation

Menu Block - Lets you split menus into separate blocks based on depth. Say you have a top level menu link "Articles" with sub menu links "Politics", "Technology", "lifestyle". This block would let you show the sub menus in the right sidebar, and the top level "article" as tabs in the header.
Taxonomy Menu - Automatically generate menu items for categories. Handles syncing between taxonomy and menus, and is ready to be used in conjunction with views or panels.
Custom Breadcrumbs - Set up custom breadcrumb paths for content so that every page doesn't just have a breadcrumb back to "home". (note: i've used menu_trails a lot too.)
Nice Menus - Drop down menus (for people who are into that kind of thing).

WYSIWYG Editors + Image Uploading

WYSIWYG API - The standard integration module.
CKEditor - Currently my favorite WYSIWYG editor. WYSIWYG API only supports CKEditor on its dev version (at the time of this writing). For the time being, I use this module instead of WYSIWYG api. Regardless, the rest of the world probably uses WYSIWYG api.
IMCE - File browser / image inclusion for WYSIWYG editors. CKeditor is integrated out of the box, WYSIWYG API implementations require a bridge module.

Video and Image Handling

Filefield - Base CCK file upload field. Useful on its own, but also required by other essential modules.
ImageAPI, ImageCache, Imagefield - These three work together. ImageAPI handles low level integration with server side image processing (e.g ImageMagick). ImageCache allows you to set up presets for automatic resizing, cropping, and a host of other operations you'll probably never need to use. ImageField then provides an upload field to a piece of content, which you can use imagecache presets to resize in the display. Imagefield is very well integrated with Views and CCK. The paintings on the right show a bunch of images automatically resized using this technique.
Lightbox2 - If you've set up your imagefields, lightbox2 lets you add another layer of options. For example, display image resized at 300px wide on the page, but blow it up to full size when clicked. Like Imagefield, lightbox 2 is well integrated with Views and CCK. Very powerful combination.
Embedded Media Field - Embed video and audio files from dozens of third party providers ranging from youtube, to services you've probably never heard of.

User Profile, Ratings & Notifications

Content Profile - The core profile module sort of sucks. This turns profiles into nodes allowing you all the options of views and CCK.
Voting API + Fivestar - The standard voting widget of Drupal.
Notifications - Provides the ability to send emails when someone comments, or replies to a comment. Has a host of other features.
Captcha + Recaptcha - Standard Antispam system. In use on this very site.

Stuff Marketers Will Love

Webform - We all know visitors love filling out forms. This module lets your marketing team create custom forms, and collect whatever info they want.
Google Analytics - Simple integration of drupal with google Analytics.
Service Links - Easy "share this" links for content. Supports digg, facebook, delicous and a bunch of other social web 2.0 services.

Events and Calendars

Date - CCK field for handling dates, and date ranges.
Calendar - Integrated and controlled by views.

Location and Mapping

Location - Standard API for collecting addresses and lat/long. Integrated with Views and CCK. Somewhat difficult to use, but its a somewhat difficult problem it solves.
Gmap - Display locations in GMap.

Ecommerce

Ubercart -- All ecommerce in drupal should use this module. Has its own universe of hundreds of contribs for some of the really weird stuff.

For Developers

Devel - Offers an enormous amount of information for developers, including: theme template variables, and overrides, browsable data structures, and datasets for performance-tuning. Just the debug function dsm(); makes it worth the download.
Backup & Migrate -- Greatly eases the pain of moving changes from your local development environment to the live server and vice versa.
Drush - Its actually not really module, but a "Swiss army knife" set of tools that are run from a command line. One example command is "drush dl views": running it will automatically download the latest version of views and place it in the right drupal folder. 1 second command instead of a 1 minute process of downloading from drupal, uploading via FTP. There's many other commands that are just as useful.

Conlusion

Lists like this can be outdated within six months. Always be on the look out for better and better modules.

How to Mirror Your WordPress Blog to Blogger

2012-04-01T22:47:00.002-07:00

Creating a mirror of your blog is a good way to backup your content. In the event that your blog/web host/domain went down, you know that there is another site that is still running, and serving the exact same content.

This tutorial shows you how to mirror your WordPress blog to Blogger.

Why Blogger?

There are plenty of free blog services out there, why choose Blogger? The reason is because Blogger is free and is owned by Google. In term of reliability and stability, it is the best. Since you are backing up your content, isn’t it logical to get it on the most reliable platform around?

Migrating your existing WP blog

The migration from WordPress to Blogger is easy. Log into your WordPress dashboard as Administrator. Go to “Tools -> Export”. Export all your WordPress posts/categories and settings to an xml file.

Go to WordPress2Blogger site. Convert the wordpress.201x-xx-xx.xml to blogger-export.xmlfile.

Login to your Blogger account and go to “Settings -> Import Blog“. Upload the blogger-export.xml file and Import your whole WP blog in.

If everything goes well, all your previously published posts should now be imported into Blogger.

Update Blogger whenever you publish a post

Now that you have imported your previously published posts into Blogger, it’s time to configure your Blogger’s blog to auto-update itself whenever you publish a post in WP.

First, in Blogger, go to “Settings -> Email & Mobile“. Create a new secret email address. This will be the email address that you mail to publish your post. Remember to check the box “Publish emails immediately”. Once done, click “Save Settings”.

Next, I am going to assume that you are using feedburner.com to manage your WP feed, and you have activated the “Email Subscription” option. What you need to do is to subscribe yourself to your own mailing list (preferably with a Gmail address) so that Feedburner can email you whenever you publish a new post.

The last and final thing is to setup your email account to forward the feedburner mail to your Blogger Publish email. In Gmail, this can be done by setting up a forwarding email address and a filter.

That’s it. Whenever you publish a new post in your WP blog, it will be auto-updated on your Blogger blog as well.

What other ways do you use to mirror your WP blog to Blogger?

-------------------------

Instructions

Ever wanted to move your WordPress blogs over to Blogger? This site can aid in the process!

Instructions

Login to your WordPress account and navigate to the Dashboard for the blog that you'd like to transfer to Blogger.
Click on the Manage tab below the Blog name.
Click on the Export link below the Manage tab.
Download the WordPress WXR export file by clicking on Download Export File.
Save this file to your local machine.
Browse to that saved document with the form below and click Convert.
Save this file to your local machine. This file will be the contents of your posts/comments from WordPress in a Blogger export file.
Login to your Blogger or create a new user.
Once logged in, click on the Create a Blog link from the user dashboard, and then click on the Import Blog Tool
Follow the instructions and upload your Blogger export file when prompted.
After completing the import wizard, you should have a set of imported posts from WordPress that you can now publish to Blogger. Have fun!

NOTE: This hosted application will only allow downloads smaller than 1MB.

Creating a New Vocabulary for Drupal Taxonomy

2012-03-30T03:23:00.001-07:00

It is important to note that content can belong to several vocabularies at once. Also vocabulary relations can be modified dynamically as new content or new vocabularies are added. This saves the trouble to manually update the relationships each time.

The taxonomy module in Drupal allows multiple lists of categories for classification. It offers the possibility of creating thesauri (terms with horizontal relationships) and taxonomies (terms with hierarchical relationships). Basically, the taxonomy deals with a hierarchy of information and the thesaurus deals with relationships between terms. Taxonomy is what affects how exactly the content is organized.

Settings for the taxonomy module can be found at Administer >> Content Management >> Taxonomy.

With a fresh Drupal installation no vocabularies will be shown in the list.

You can add a new vocabulary using the "Add vocabulary" button.

In the next video we will show you how to create a new vocabulary.

Custom Search Module for Drupal

2012-03-30T00:35:00.001-07:00

The Drupal core provides a Search module which is great for many sites. However, it doesn't provide some of the more sophisticated features that some sites need. The Custom Search module is a good alternative if you want more control over what gets searched, who gets to search, and what results you see.

The Custom Search module adds layers of control and sophistication to the core search module. It's easy to install and understand, and will give you more control over the search functions on your site. It also integrates with other search modules and APIs.

The core search function and the Custom Search module

The basic elements of the core search module are:

A block for front-end display. There is very little configuration available for this block. I've named this one "Core Search Block" to make it easy to distinguish from the customized one We'll be creating.

Advanced search is available on search results page. If a user clicks Advanced Search on the results page, a form opens up so you can refine your search. (When using the Garland Template).

This gives you a sophisticated search, but little control over how it's implemented throughout the site. A good way to expand on this is to add the Custom Search Module. Here's a summary of the added options.

Basic options:

Select which content type(s) to search,

Select which specific module search to use (node, help, user or any module that implements search),

advanced criteria

Advanced options:

change the default search box label,

add a default text in the search box,

add advanced search criteria,

change the default submit button text,

use an image instead of the submit button,

change the order of all the elements,

include some elements in a popup block,

add a filter to the results page,

show/hide basic and/or advanced search in the results page,

show/hide meta data in the results page,

multiple search paths

Step 1. Download and install the module

Download and install the Custom Search module from http://drupal.org/project/custom_search.

Step 2. Enable the module and its sub-modules

There are three included sub-modules:

Custom Search Taxonomy: taxonomy options for the search block.

Custom Search Blocks: provides additional search blocks, with different settings.

Custom Search Internationalization.

Step 3. Set Permissions for users and administrators

The confirmation message will have a link to the permissions. Click it to go directly to the permission settings.

Set user and admin permissions for two modules. I wanted everyone to be able to search so I gave anonymous users and authenticated users permissions by checking the boxes

You have four sets of permissions to set.
- Custom Search
  - Admin
  - User
- Custom Search Blocks
  - Admin
  - User

Step 4. Configure the module

Return to the Modules page and click Configure. You can also get to the configuration screen by going to Configure > Custom Search

When you land on the configuration page the selected tab will be highlighted. You will be going through all the tabs to complete the full configuration. So when you complete the first page, choose another tab and continue

I'm not going to go through every single configuration step. The choices are easy. If you have a need to create refined searches, they will make sense to you. If not, trial and error is the best way to get familiar with them. In this demo I'm going to enable everything.

There is one section that may need a little explanation - the Search Blocks tab:

Select the number of blocks. One of the great things about this module is that every block can have it's own configuration settings. Suppose you wanted a block on the home page that searched the entire site, but not the forum. On the forum page you want a block that only searches the forum. In that case you would create two blocks. If you wanted anonymous users to be able to search just some forum topics, and registered users to have more option, you would create 3 blocks, and control which one shows by who's logged in.

I'm just going to create one for this demo. Once you decide on this, add blocks to your site.

Be sure to save before moving on.

Step 5. Add blocks to your site

Go to Structure > Blocks.

Step 6. Assign blocks to regions

The custom search blocks you created will be visible and numbered.

Choose the regions for the blocks.

The new block is added.

The original block created by the core is still there. It's default label is Search Form. I can't think of a reason why you would want both of them on the same page unless you're writing a tutorial, so you can remove the original if you want.

Be sure to Save Blocks before you try any configuration.

Step 7. Customize the blocks from the front end

Here are both blocks, the original core search block and the one I just added. Compare the look of the Core one with the first image. You'll see that some custom features have been added. The first picture just shows an entry field and a search button. Now we can search tags and forums. This is because the new module makes those capabilities available to all the modules.

It also makes customization very simple. When you are viewing the module from the front end, mouse over the title and you will see an icon that looks like a cog from a gear.

This will give you access to the configuration for this particular module. It makes it much simpler if you are going to have multiple search boxes with different types of search. You can define each one while you are on it's page. It saves time and prevents mistakes.

Step 8. Configure Visibility

Clicking Configure will allow you to change the visibility and normal block function.

Clicking Custom Search configuration will give you access to define the search box itself.

Step 9. Configure each block to have custom features

From here you can configure what's include and what type of search you want.

Result

Above you can see what the original search block looks like after I've configured some additional elements to show. This will allow you to present a highly customized search experience to your the public and authorized users.

Multiple Categories with the Drupal Contact Module

2012-03-30T00:32:00.001-07:00

The Drupal Contact module is often replaced by the Webform module. However, it can be useful in some situations. For example, image that you have different departments and you want each of them to get a different contact form on your Drupal website. If you're willing to keep it simple, you can do everything you need with the core Contact module and won't have to install anything else.

It all depends on knowing how to create categories and blocks.

Step 1. Make sure the Contact module is enabled

Click Modules

Click Save configuration.

Click Configure next to Contact.

Step 2. Add and edit categories.

Click Add category to add a new one.

There is a default category called Website feedback that you can use as well, but we are showing you how to add extra ones. You can edit the default category later if you need to.

Step 3. Configure the category

Give the category a name.

Specify the Recipients

Create an Auto-reply message.

Set Selected. Yes means it will be the default contact form. Since this is a new category, you probably want this to be No. You can only have one default.*

Be sure to click the Save button.

*Selected: When a visitor clicks on the link to the contact form, the categories will show in a drop down list. Whichever one is chosen with a "Yes" will show automatically If you want your visitor to be forced to choose a category before submitting the form, make all of these fields "No"

Continue repeating the process until you have all the categories you want. A "category" can be a different department, a group or individual.

Step 4. Enable the menu link

Jump to the Menus administration page by clicking the blue link in the instruction paragraph. Alternatively you can get their via the admin menu and clicking Structure then Menus.

Step 5. List the links

A Contact menu item (disabled by default) is added to the Navigation menu, which you can modify on the Menus administration page. Click list links next to Navigation.

Step 6. Enable the link

This menu link will go directly to the site-wide contact form. You will see a Contact menu item that is disabled. You can use this one as a guide for creating other menu links.

Step 7. Configure the link

Edit the link title if needed.

Enable the link so it appears on the menu.

Choose the parent link if you want it to be different from the default "Navigation".

Step 8. Add a block with instructions for the user

Go to Structure > Blocks.

Step 9. Add a block

Step 10. Add the block information

Enter a Block Description. This will not be seen by the public.

Enter a Block Title. This will be seen by the public.

Write your instructions. This will also be visible to the public,

Scroll down the page.

Step 11. Set the visibility settings by assigning it to the Contacts page

Choose "Only listed pages". The only page we want to have these instructions is the Contact page.

Write "contact" in the text field.

Save the block.

Specify pages by using their paths. Enter one path per line. The '*' character is a wild card. Example paths are blog for the blog page and blog/* for every personal blog.is the front page.

There are other parameters and settings on this page, but for the purpose of this tutorial we only need the basics.

Step 12. Enable the block

You will be returned to the Blocks page. You will find the block you added in the Disabled list with the title you created. To enable it, choose the position from the drop down box.

Choose Help.

This box lists all of the regions available on the template you are using. On the Bartik template, the Help region is right where we want it. You may have a different idea or location on your website.

Step 13. Final configuration then save.

As soon as you choose the region, the block title will now be visible at the top of the page that shows the enabled modules. The will be grouped by region, so this one will be under Help.

Remember to Save - scroll to the bottom of the page

No changes will be saved until you click Save blocks.

Your result

If you followed all these steps you will have a contact form that looks something like this.

There is a link on the menu to the form.

The instructions are in the Help Region in a block you added.

The correct email address shows. (this will change to the right one when the category is selected).

There is a drop down list with the categories you created.

Getting Started With Drupal's Webform Module

2012-03-30T00:31:00.001-07:00

Webform is the module for making forms and collecting information from users in Drupal.

After a submission, you can send users a thank-you email as well as sending a notification to administrators. Results can be exported into Excel or other spreadsheet applications. Webform also provides some basic statistical review and has an extensive API for expanding its features.

If you need to build a lot of customized, one-off forms, Webform is a more suitable solution than creating content types and using the CCK or Field modules.

Download the Webform Module

Go to this url http://drupal.org/project/webform, and download the Webform Module.

There are some additional modules that add some functionality and make some operations easier. You can download the optional modules as well. To keep things simple, we'll use the basic module and show you how to create a simple survey of registered users.

Options Element Module - http://drupal.org/project/options_element

Select (or other) - http://drupal.org/project/select_or_other

Date - http://drupal.org/project/date

Mollom - http://drupal.org/project/mollom OR Catpcha - http://drupal.org/project/captcha

Webform Validation - http://drupal.org/project/webform_validation

Arrange Fields module -http://drupal.org/project/arrange_fields

Download the correct version. They may have changed since we wrote this, so be sure to check.

Install the Webform Module

Enable the module

Go to the Modules page and scroll down to Webform and click the check box. Click Save configuration.

Access the form fields

Go to Structure > Content types

Scroll down to Webform and look the right for the links to edit and manage fields and the display.

Click Edit

If you are familiar with CCK in Drupal 6, or Fields, which is now part of D7 core, you will see a familiar interface for adding and managing new fields.

This is not the place where you will be creating forms. Editing here is exactly the same as editing Fields in Content Types, which is a way to make fields available to this content type. From here you can edit fields, manage existing fields, the display and the comment functions by clicking on the appropriate tabs. But creating the actual form is done by adding content in the same way you would add an article.

You won't need to do much here but review all your choices and see if there is anything you feel you must change. The default values will work for the purposes of our demonstration. After you create your first form and understand the module you might want to revisit the configuration.

Now that the module is installed and the configuration is checked, you can begin building your survey form.

Create your first webform by adding it as content

Go to Content > Add Content > Webform

Don't get confused over Poll vs Webform. We are creating a form with various types of questions, not taking a Poll. Poll is another content type that is similar, but restricted to multiple selection fields and gathering the statistics on the responses. Webform is a form submission module, and collects the actual responses and stores them in a table for you to review. You can collect almost any type of data using Webform.

Create the basic form details

Give it a title and make the decisions on all basic options. Save this with the save button at the bottom of the page.

Add form components

Now you will see the controls for creating and editing the rest of the form elements. Start adding Form components on the WEBFORM tab.

Give the component a label, choose textfield and then click Add.

We're surveying registered users, so we are going to automatically fill in their username. A name is basic text field, but we want our registered users to show up on the textfield, so we're going to make use of Tokens. Using Tokens is just an optional feature.

Enter the token %username in the Default value field.

This will pull the username from the data base and fill it in automatically.

If you don't see the TOKEN VALUES, you probably don't have the Token module installed. You only need Token if you want to fill in the default values taken from the data base. If this is going to be a blank field that the user will fill in when they visit the page, you can just leave the Default value blank. I used Token here to illustrate the possibilities available to you.

If you need the Token module you can download it here http://drupal.org/project/token

Scroll down the rest of the page and make any configuration selections you need then click Save Component at the very bottom of the page.

Create a "Select" field

Fill in a new label and choose the Select options type from the drop down. Click Add and complete the options on the next screen

Create the list of options

Go to Options and create Key Value Pairs. These pairs consist of a machine readable key and a plain language value separated by a "|" - This character is called a "pipe" and you can find it by holding shift while pressing the backslash key "\" key on most keyboards.

Key-value pairs MUST be specified as "safe_key|Some readable option". Use of only alphanumeric characters and underscores is recommended in keys. One option per line.

Save the Component.

Repeat this step for the flavor of the jelly and type of peanut butter.

When you are creating lists, the default type is radio buttons. If you want check boxes or a listbox the choices are farther down on the page. You can also set the field as mandatory or optional. If you click the "Multiple" check box at the top, the list will appear as check boxes. If you choose "Listbox" under DISPLAY you will have a drop down box. Selecting "Multiple" and "Listbox" will allow users to make multiple selections from a dropdown box.

When you create the Jelly type, add Other as a choice. Then add a text field so people can write in their suggestions.

Add a Text field

You can add a text field, or a textarea. A text field is for short entries like names. A textarea will be a large area for entering more extensive written responses.

Other field types you might want to add for your purposes are an E-Mail field or Date Field. You can choose thees types from the dropdown "Type" box.

You can choose other field types from the Type drop down.

Add a preset field type

There is a convenience feature you may want to use. You can create pre-built option lists and add them to your form. The module comes with several default lists. Add one for States if you want to see how this looks on your form. Label it State and then choose the Select Options type and when you get to the next screen, make your selection.

Choose US States from the drop down.

Check your form

At this point your form will look similar to this. You can change the locations of the descriptions by clicking the WEBFORM tab and editing each item and making different configuration selections. Once you have the form ordered the way you like it and all the questions and fields correct. Go back to the WEBFORM tab EMAIL tab and set the EMAIL options.

You can use drag and drop to move form elements to different positions.

Configure the E-Mail options.

Go back to the WEBFORM tab and look for the E-mails sub-tab. Fill in an address and click Add.

Set the email address if you want to receive an email when the form is submitted. You can add multiples.

There are lots of choices to make. Be sure you check every one of them so they are correct for your form. Be sure to save the changes.

Configure the Form Settings

From the WEBFORM tab Click the Form Settings sub-tab at the top of the page. Check and modify settings as needed. Save your changes.

Now you can publish your form exactly like you would publish any other content item on your site. After you've had a chance to collect submissions, you will see the results when you are logged in as a user with the correct permissions.

Click Content > Find Content and select the form from the content list and you can find the results tab. This will allow you to see the collection of data you have as well as give you some simple analysis.

How to Use the SEO Checklist for Drupal

2012-03-30T00:29:00.001-07:00

The SEO Checklist for Drupal is a very useful module to help with your SEO efforts.

The SEO Checklist module doesn't perform any SEO functions, but it will guide you through the process of optimizing your site and it will recommend best-of-breed modules. After installation the checklist will take you through a list of recommended changes made by the experts at Volacci.

Step 1. Before We Start: Planning

The SEO Checklist is going to recommend a lot of potential modules for you to install. To help clarify things, I've divided those modules up into separate lists. You should start with the Base Modules list and then move on down to the others.

Base Modules

Optional Base Modules

Essential Working Modules.

Anti-Spam Modules. There are several possibilities but you only need to choose one.

Nice if you want them, but not really needed

A note of caution before we begin: not all of these modules have stable releases for Drupal 7. Please use of all these on a test site before using them on a live site.

Step 2. Before We Start: Register for Webmaster Tools

Before you start you are going to want to do is register for Google, Yahoo and Bing accounts and sign up for their webmaster tools. You will need the verification files, tracking codes and other identifiers provided by these services.

Save the verification files to your hard disk.

Write down all account numbers.

Have your username and password to each account handy.

Every SEO program I've tested has needed this information, so if you're serious about SEO, start with signing up for the webmaster tools.

Step 3: Before We Start: The Quickest Workflow for the SEO Checklist

The SEO Checklist will recommend a lot of modules for you to install, so here is one way to approach the installation:

Go to Modules > Install new module. You're going to be doing a lot of this. Install the first module on the list.

Browse for a downloaded module, choose it, then click Install.

Click Enable newly added modules.

Normally what you would do is find the module you just installed and click the check box in the Enabled column, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save to save the changes. Then you would see if there is a configuration link and fill in the details.

But you've got a lot of these to do so you might want to consolidate the tasks.

My actual work flow:

Installed all the modules

Enabled them in small groups

Ran a status report to check for errors

Corrected any errors

Got everything working before I configured them.

What I actually did to make this quicker was skip the Enable step, and go back to the top of the page and click Install new module again and installed another one. I kept installing until i was done.

Then I returned to the page and enabled them in bulk. If you do this, don't try to enable all of them at the same time. It stresses the system and you'll get errors. Enable a group and come back several times until they are all enabled.

Go to Reports > Status Report and check for errors. Just do the minimum amount of work you have to do to get rid of any errors.

Many of these modules are going to need configuration. I'll go back and consider the configuration as I go through the SEO Checklist. That's what it's for. It's going to take a lot of time and study if you're not already an SEO wizard to figure out the perfect configuration for everything.

Now we can click run cron manually and check for errors

Just running cron will clear up some errors. You might have to take action on others.

Be sure to read the cautions too, and take action. The Status report will give you a good idea on what you need to do to fix things.

Step 4. Install the base modules

Now let's get started with the installation. These modules are used by many other modules, and you may already have them installed. If not, you should install them now. They aren't really needed for SEO, but as you go through the checklist and try to install subsequent modules, you'll have to back up and install these too, so you might as well start here.

Ctools http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Context http://drupal.org/project/context

Token http://drupal.org/project/token

Clean URLs Turn it on (part of core, just enable it)

The SEO Checklist Module - don't forget this one - http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist

Step 5: Install the Optional base modules

The modules below are strictly optional and not absolutely essential to SEO. You can always skip these and come back to them if you don't think you need them now. But if you are going to want them, your life will be easier if you install them at this stage, rather than wait until they appear on the checklist.

HTML Purifier
HTML Purifier is a standards-compliant HTML filter library. HTML Purifier will not only remove all malicious code (better known as XSS) with a thoroughly audited, secure yet permissive white list, it will also make sure your documents are standards compliant, something only achievable with a comprehensive knowledge of W3C's specifications.

This is a standalone component that strips improper HTML from entries. You need to download the entire compressed file and get special instructions on installation. It's an improvement on the filtered html core module, and isn't 100% necessary to optimization. It just depends on what level of optimization you wish to achieve.

To install this you are going to need.

The program http://htmlpurifier.org

HTML Purifier module http://drupal.org/project/htmlpurifier

Libraries API http://drupal.org/project/libraries

il18n - Internationalization
If you are only developing in English you can skip this. This is a collection of modules to extend Drupal core multilingual capabilities and be able to build real life multilingual sites. It has some requirements and it has some recommended add ons. If you are going to have a multi-national site be sure to read this:
http://drupal.org/project/i18n

Step 6. Install the Essential Working Modules

Now we come to the modules that actually do the optimizatin. If you've installed Ctools, Token and Context the rest should go pretty fast. The best and quickest workflow is to download, install and enable them, then configure them later as you go through the SEO Checklist.

Page Title Module http://drupal.org/project/page_title

Pathauto Module http://drupal.org/project/pathauto

Global Redirects http://drupal.org/project/globalredirect

Redirect Module http://drupal.org/project/redirect

Google Analytics Module http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics

Google Analytics Tokenizer http://drupal.org/project/ga_tokenizer

Google Analytics Contact Form http://drupal.org/project/contact_google_analytics

Context Keywords http://drupal.org/project/context_keywords

Meta Tags Quick http://drupal.org/project/metatags_quick

Scheduler Module http://drupal.org/project/scheduler

HTML Purifier Module http://drupal.org/project/htmlpurifier

Site Verification Module http://drupal.org/project/site_verify

XML Sitemap Module http://drupal.org/project/xmlsitemap

Site Map Module http://drupal.org/project/site_map

Search 404 Module http://drupal.org/project/search404

SEO Compliance Checker http://drupal.org/project/seo_checker

Read More Link http://drupal.org/project/read_more

AddThis http://drupal.org/project/addthis

Service Links Module http://drupal.org/project/service_links

AddAny Module http://drupal.org/project/addtoany

Facebook Social Plugins Integration http://drupal.org/project/fb_social

Follow http://drupal.org/project/follow

Step 7. Choose and Install an Anti-spam Module

You only need one of these. If may already have one installed. If not, you can choose any of these based on your preference.

Mollom http://drupal.org/project/mollom

Captcha Module http://groups.drupal.org/captcha

Antispam Module http://drupal.org/project/antispam

Step 8. Nice if you want them, but not really needed

Administration Menu http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu

Elements http://drupal.org/project/elements

Security Review http://drupal.org/project/security_review

Boost Module http://drupal.org/project/boost

Now let's get started on the module itself.

Step 9. Access the SEO Checklist

Go to Configuration in the menu bar. Now that everything is installed it's time to start working the checklist.

Scroll down the page to the Search and Metadata section and click on SEO Checklist.

Move through the tabs on the left and check a box and Click Enable if you haven't enabled them yet.

The picture above shows what the list looks like before I installed the Token and Page Title modules. The download link actually takes you to the download page so you could download the module now, and then enable it. If you do it this way you will be working all day. Try the mass installation first.

After I installed the Page Title Module you can see there is now a Configure link. If everything has been installed you will only need to work on configuration as you go through the list.

Each time you complete a task, click the check mark, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Save button.
If you don't Save, it won't record your your check marks, and you won't have a record of what you did.

Keep going through all the tabs. Click the check boxes as you complete a task. Remember to save.

Result

When you're all done you'll have a list of all the completed tasks, time and dates, who did the work, and quick access to the configuration so you can make changes.

This module will:

Help you keep track of what needs to be done.

Check for installed modules give you some basic information on them.

Provide a list of things that need to go on your to-do list.

Time/date stamp each item and record who completed it.

A Introduction to the Drupal 7 Media Module

2012-03-30T00:27:00.000-07:00

The Media Module is one of the most hyped new modules for Drupal 7. It is often talked about as the best option for handling images, video and audio files in Drupal 7.

However, available information about the Media Module is long on 90 minute conference presentations and short on quick, practical guides. So, in this tutorial we're going to get right to the point. We're going show you how to set up the Media Module, what it does and how to use it to add YouTube videos to your content. Let's go ....

Install the Media Module

Head over to http://drupal.org/project/media and download the Media Module. You will also need the latest version of the CTools module from http://drupal.org/project/ctools.

Understand the Media Module

Go to Structure > Content types > click Manage fields next to a content type.

You'll see that a new field option called "Multimedia asset" is now available.

This field type will allow you to upload a variety of file types. Click Save and you can decide that those file types are:

If you create a "Multimedia asset" field for you content, the image below shows what it will look like when you go to add content.

Click on "Select media" and you can upload new files.

Most importantly, you can also browse a Library of all the files that you've uploaded.

This Library feature is the real reason for using Media. As explained on the Media FAQ page: http://groups.drupal.org/node/19746

"The Media module provides an engine that can be used to manage files and metadata. Individual Media module plugins, as well as the modules they integrate with, will handle media display."

So the only thing this field can do at the moment is upload files to the library. If you want to actually show the files, you'll need to rely on extra modules. Let's see how that works.

Go to Structure > Content types > click Manage fields next to a content type. If you choose to add a File field you'll now have a Media file selector option.

If you choose to add a Image field you'll now have a Media file selector option.

Here's what the Image field will look like when you go to add content.

You'll be able to browse your new media library and insert an image just as you would do normally.

Adding Video to Content via the Media Module

Adding external videos to the Media module relies on the Embedded Media Field module: http://drupal.org/project/emfield.

That module allows you to hook into all sorts of external sites, provided you have the appropriate module. In this example, we'll use YouTube so install this module as well: http://drupal.org/project/media_youtube.

Install and enable both of those modules.

Go to Structure > Content types and add a Multimedia asset field.

As you choose the settings, make sure to check both the Video and youtube boxes.

Save that new field.

There is one important thing you must now do to make sure that the videos display. Click on Manage Display at the top of the page.

Normally settings for the video field would be available but in this case I had to click Save before they appeared. Then you can click the cog on the right-hand side, next to the video field.

Set the File view mode to Small, Large or Original and click Update.

Click Save so that your changes aren't lost.

Now you can go to Add content and use the new video field.

Once you've inserted the YouTube URL and clicked Submit, you should see a video thumbnail as in the image below.

Save the content and your video will be showing on the page.

YouTube is a simple and popular example. If you want to use other sources for video or audio, head to http://drupal.org/project/emfield and you'll see a list of all the options and the modules that they require.

A note of caution: Media is under heavy development. There isn't yet a stable version of Media. As of mid-February, there is a Release Candidate 3 but not yet a stable version.

An Introduction to Drupal's Display Suite(DS)

2012-03-30T00:25:00.001-07:00

One of the rites of passage for beginner Drupal users is to learn Panels. It's a useful tool for laying out pages and redesigning content pages without any code knowledge.

However, not everyone is a fan. Panels is sometimes criticized for being hard to use and for having performance issues.

In this tutorial we're going to introduce you to a powerful alternative: Display Suite. We're going to show you several ways in which it can make designing your content fun and pain-free.

Why Display Suite?

We're going to use Movies as our example. In the image below, we created a Movies content type and added several fields. We added a a Movie Poster, Director, Stars and the Length of the movie.

So far, so good. However, the vertical layout seen above is ugly. In contrast, the image below is Titanic as seen on IMDB.com. That site has a two column layout that makes the content much more attractive.

The goal of Display Suite is to allow us to move from the layout above to the layout below.

Getting Started with Display Suite

To start working with Display Suite, you just need two modules:

Display Suite: http://drupal.org/project/ds

Chaos Tools Suite: http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Download and install both modules. Make sure to enable all of the Chaos Tools Suite modules that you are able to in order to get as the full benefit from Display Suite.

Go to Structure > Display suite so to see the options available. We're going to start by clicking Layout.

You'll now see a list of all the things that you can redesign with Display Suite. You can create new layouts for Comments, Nodes, Taxonomy terms and User pages.

Get started by clicking on the content type you want to redesign.

You'll now see all of your fields. This screen can also be accessed by clicking Manage Display when you're working with a particular content type:

You'll now see your normal Manage Display option as in the image below:

The extra power of Display Suite can be seen at the bottom of the page. Click Layout for movies in default and you'll see some layout options:

In this example I chose Two column stacked and then clicked Save.

The Ajax-based drag-and-drop wasn't working for me, but I was able to use the Region dropdown to place each of the fields into different parts of the page:

When it was done, I had a layout that appeared close to IMDB. The Movie Poster was on the left and the other information was on the right:

One note of caution here: the are several view options available in the top-right corner. Make sure that you are redesigning the layout for Full content if you want to control the normal content pages.

If you've created your layout once, it is easy to re-use it for others by using the Clone layout option.

The end result can be seen below. I was able to divide my content into two columns:

If you need to get more sophisticated with your layouts, you have two options:

You can add Panels to your site and use the Custom layout feature to add more options.

You can use template files to change how existing layouts work. In the image below, I've highlighted how Display Suite helps with this.

View Modes

View modes is a very useful Display Suite feature that makes working with Views easier and more flexible.

Starting by going to Structure > Display Suite > View Modes > Add a view mode.

We're going to create a new View Mode called Sidebar which will add a layout for Nodes in our Sidebar. Go ahead and choose the settings below.

Now you can go to Structure > Display Suite > Layout > Manage display and enable your new view mode for the content type you're working with.

Click Save and it will appear as an option in the top-right hand corner:

Go ahead and set up your design the sidebar content. Choose the layout from the bottom of the page and then add your fields. Click Save when you're done.

If you haven't done so yet, go ahead and install Views http://drupal.org/project/views and create a View. Once your View is ready, click Fields under the Format label.

Usually you will have only Content and Fields as options but this time Display Suite will also be an option.

Choose Display Suite and click Apply (all displays). Then choose your new Sidebar View Mode.

The image below shows how my block turned out, using the Sidebar View Mode that I created. This View Mode can now be reused across as many Views and Blocks as you wish. You can make one update from inside Display Suite and automatically update all of those Views and Blocks.

Styles for Regions

The final feature we're going to look at is Display Suite's Styles for Regions feature. To start using it, go to Structure > Display suite > Styles.

I'm going to be subtle. I'm going to create a style for one of the my content regions called Big Ugly Border:

When I go back to my Manage display page, it's possible to apply that new style to any of the regions.

With some CSS added to the theme file, we can target that region accurately. Here's the CSS:

And here is the big, ugly border that resulted:

Summary

We have wanted to recommend Display Suite for over year. It is a far more user-friendly alternative to Panels for many layout option. Panels will still be a better option for designing individual pages such as your homepage or an important landing page. However for working with content types, we're now recommending Display Suite, particularly to beginners. Mediacurrent have a good blog post on when and why using Panels still makes sense.

One note of caution: we have held off from recommending Display Suite until now because bugs were still being worked out. The Fields feature still contained too bugs many for us to recommend yet, but the rest of the Display Suite core worked perfectly during testing.

Using the Views Slideshow Module in Drupal 7

2012-03-30T00:20:00.000-07:00

Slideshows are one of the most popular things that people want on their website and the Views Slideshow Module is the most popular way to create slideshows in Drupal.

So, it's no surprise that Views Slideshow is one of the most popular Drupal modules.

Creating a Views Slideshow isn't too difficult, but there are a quite a few steps to go through. If you're a beginner, this will be a complete installation guide.

In this tutoirial we're going to build a slideshow that will show rotatings testimonials in a block on our site.

Step 1. Install the necessary modules and files

To start, you're going to need the following 5 or 6 modules to use Views Slideshow. Install and enable all of them.

Views

Views Slideshow

Chaos tool suite

Libraries

Link Field

Token (optional)

You'll also need to install jQuery which will make the slideshow work.

Be sure the Libraries Module is installed.

You need to install the jQuery cycle .js file.The process is a little different than a module installation. Start by saving the file from here: http://malsup.com/jquery/cycle. Click the download link on the site and it will open the actual file. Save the file to your computer.

Now create another folder inside /libraries/ called /jquery.cycle/. The full path to this folder will be /sites/all/libraries/jquery.cycle/.

Copy or upload the file jquery.cycle.all.js to the same folder. The full path will be /sites/all/libraries/jquery.cycle/jquerycycle.all.js.

Step 2. Create an image style for the thumbnails

Go to Configuration > Image styles > Add style.

After you click Add style you will be prompted to give the style a name. Name the new style testimonial_thumbnail.

Choose Resize from the Effects menu. Click Add.

Set the size of the testimonial_thumbnail. Make it small, 75x75 should work. Click Add effect.

Step 3. Create a new content type

Go to Structure > Content types > Add new content type.

Create a content type called Testimonials. Click Save and Add Fields when you are finished.

Step 4. Add an image field

Add a new field named Testimonial Image.

Add the field name testimonial_image.

Choose Image as the type from the drop down,

The form element will select itself.

Click Save three times until the field is created.

Step 5. Add a link field

Add a new field named Testimonial Links.

Add the field Name testimonial_link.

Choose Link from the dropdown.

The form element will select itself.

Click Save.

You can repeat these last two steps step for as many fields as you want to add to the Testimonial Content Type. I'm going to add one more called Signed. It will be a text field where I can put the name of the person who left the testimonials.

Step 6. Manage the display of the fields

Click Manage Display to edit the way the fields are displayed.

We're going to specify the image style to be used with this content type.

Adjust the positioning of the fields as needed using the drag and drop method.

Click the cog icon on the Testimonial image row.

Select the image style from the dropdown menu.

Choose testimonial_thumbnail. This is the image style you created back in Step 2.

Choose the link destination. (in this picture it's hidden below the style drop down.) You probably want it to link to the content.

Click update.

Make any other changes to other fields you want.

Click Save at the bottom of the screen.

Step 7. Define the elements that make up the teaser

Look for the Teaser button toward the top right of the window. Click this to set the length of Teaser text and other details.

The Teaser settings show you that only 600 characters will be used for the teaser text. To change it click the cog icon.

Also, make sure the fields Signed, Testimonial Link and Testimonial image are set hidden in the teaser.

Click and drag the plus sign next to Testimonial Image.

Move it above the Hidden Field label so it will be part of the teaser.

The hidden fields will show in the full testimonial, but not in the teaser.

Now you have finished creating the fields and display for the Testimonials content type. Now we need to go and work with Views to complete the slideshow.

Step 8. Add the View

Go to Structure > Views > Add a new view.

Enter the settings below. Make sure to define the view as a block.

Name it Testimonial Slider.

Check Description and give it a description.

Choose the to Show Content and then the content type you want to show.

Uncheck Create a page.

Check Create a block.

Type Testimonial Slider into Block Title.

Choose the Slideshow Format made up of teasers.

Decide the number of items to show on the page. Use "0" if you want to scroll through all testimonials. Otherwise it will loop through 5 of them.

Click Continue & edit

Step 9. Edit the View

Click on None under Block Settings.

Give your block a name.

Click Settings under FORMAT and next to Slideshow.

Scroll through the options and make changes. From here you can add classes, choose the transition type for the slides and and Internet Explorer tweaks. Take some time to look at all your choices. This is where you will control the look and performance of the slides. Be sure to save any changes you make.

Step 10. Publish the block

Go to Structure > Blocks.

Your new block will now show in the list of disabled blocks, and you can add it to a region like any other block. Add it to the region of your choice. I added it to Sidebar second.

Step 11. Add some testimonials

Now let's create some content and try it out. Get some sample images to use for the thumbnails and create some testimonials.

TIP: if you want to quickly create sample items with Lorum Ipsum text, you can use a module called Drupal Ipsum, which allows you to just check a box to fill the article with dummy text when you create it. That's what I used here.

Go to Content > Add content.

Choose Testimonials and create several so you can get a good idea of how the scroller and the block appear.

Step 12. Go to your homepage and look at the result

Your block should now show on your site.

Step 13. Edit the slideshow

Now that we can see the block in action, we may want to make changes. Here's how to make them:

Mouse over the corner of the block so the gear appears.

Click the dropdown arrow.

Click Edit view

Step 14: Edit the slideshow settings

Choose Settings next to Slideshow.

In this example, we're going to change the speed to 700 so that slideshow operates more quickly.

Summary

There are a wide variety of possibilities and options available to you with Views Slideshow. You might now want to go back and change anything from the image styles, to the fields, to the content, to the slideshow settings.

This tutorial hasn't taken you in depth with any of those, but hopefully you now feel confident enough to start to build your own slideshows. You now know where to edit the image styles, fields, content and slideshow settings.

From here, it's a question of practice and we're sure you'll build some great slideshows.

Creating a Photo Gallery in Drupal 7

2012-03-30T00:19:00.001-07:00

This tutorial will show you how to create a photo gallery in Drupal 7.

It won't create the world's flashiest or most impressive gallery, but it will work. This tutorial is designed for beginners so that they can understand the key concepts behind creating a gallery in Drupal 7.

If you're still using Drupal 6, we have a tutorial for you also.

Step 1: Install Modules

You will need to install and enable the only modules listed below:

CTools: http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Views: http://drupal.org/project/views

Step 2: Create a content type

First, we're going to set up a photos content type. Go to Structure > Content types > Add content type and create a new content type to use for the photo gallery.

Step 3: Add a Photo Field

Now we're going to add an image field to our new content type so that we can actually upload photos. Go to Manage Fields and create a field using the Image data type.

Step 4: Upload the photos

There's a variety of ways to to upload enough photos to fill a photo gallery.

You can go to Add content > photos and upload them all manually.

You can use the Devel module to automatically generate images: http://drupal.org/project/devel.

You can use one of Drupal's import modules such as Feeds: http://drupal.org/project/feeds.

Step 5: Create the View

Go to Structure > Views > Add new view and let's set up the view:

Give your view a name such as Photo Gallery.

Choose to show Content of type Photos.

Check the create a page box.

Choose the Grid display format and choose fields.

Choose a number that will work well in a grid: 12 is the example used here.

Click Continue & edit.
Scroll down and you'll see a preview of your photo gallery. The only thing missing? Photos.

Step 6: Improve the View

Let's go and add the photo to our view. Click add next to Fields.

Search for and select the photos field that you created earlier.

Click Apply (all displays) twice. Now your preview at the bottom of the page will look like the image below. The only thing wrong now is that the images are all different sizes.

Step 7: Resizing the Images

Drupal comes with a way to automatically resize images. Let's see how.

Go to Configuration > Image styles > Add style.

Enter a name of your new resizing option.

Click Create new style.

You'll now see a preview of the image resizing. Currently nothing is happening.

At the bottom of the page, choose Scale and crop.

Click Add.

Choose how wide and high the photos will be. In our example we have four photos across the page, so we'll choose a width that will allow us to fit four photos in. Click Add effect to finish.

You'll now see a fresh preview of the image resizing.

Now let's go and apply the resizing to our photos.

Go to Structure > Views > Photo Gallery > edit.

Click Settings next to your photos field. You can now go to Image style and choose the style that you just created.

You might also want to uncheck the Create a label box so that the field name doesn't show.

Click Apply (all displays).

Click Save to finish your view and go to visit it on the front end of your site. Voila! Your Drupal 7 photo gallery is complete.

Creating a Photo Gallery in Drupal 6

2012-03-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

This tutorial will show you how to create a photo gallery in Drupal 6.

It won't create the world's flashiest or most impressive gallery, but it will work. This tutorial is designed for beginners so that they can understand the key concepts behind creating a gallery in Drupal 6.

You will need to install and enable at least the five modules listed below. Several of these do depend on other modules so your final list of installed modules will be longer.

SimpleViews

Views

Image Field

Image Cache

Step 1: Create a content type

Go to Administer > Content types > Add content type

Create a new content type called Photo Gallery.

Step 2: Add a Photo Field

Click Manage fields next to Photo Gallery and we're going to add a photo field.

Label: Photo

Field name: photo

Type of data: File

Form element: Image

Click Save twice to create the field.

Step 3: Upload the photos

Go to Create content > Photo Gallery and upload the photos you would like in your gallery. Each photo will be it's content item.

Go ahead and upload at least four photos so that we have something to work with.

Step 4: Creating the View

Go to Site building > Simple views > Add view.

Enter the following settings:

Title: Dog Photo Gallery

Path: dog-photo-gallery

Display: Photo Gallery posts

Sorted: Newest first

As a: List of titles

Click Submit when you've finished.

Step 6: Improving the view

Go to Site building > Views > click on Edit next to your new view which will be called simpleviews_1 if this is your first time using Simple Views.

Make sure to click Page on the left-hand side as in the image below:

Click on HTML List under Basic settings:

Choose Grid and click Update:

Set the number of columns to 2 on the next page.

Now we're going to add the photo and caption. Click the plus icon next to Fields:

Check the box next to Content: Photo.

Click Add.

Set Label to None and set Format to Image:

Click Update.

Click the plus icon next to Fields once more.

Check the box next to Node: Body.

Click Add then you'll see a Label field. Remove the text in that field.

Click Update.

Click Save at the bottom of the page make sure your changes aren't lost.

Click View "Page" in the top-right corner to visit your Photo Gallery. It will look like the image below:

Those photos are clearly too big. We'll need to fix them. That is why we also have the ImageCache module installed ...

Step 6: Resizing the images

Click Add Resize enter the maximum height and width that you would like for the images on the main page of the photo gallery.

300 pixels wide and high might be a good choice to start with.

Go to Site building > Views > click on Edit next to your new view. Make sure you click Page on the left-hand side.

Click Save and visit your Photo Gallery. It will now look like the image below:

Step 8: Resizing the individual images

You can also create presets for individual photos so that they will not go over the edge of the page, no matter how big they are.

Go to Site building > ImageCache > Add new preset.

Create a new preset called individual photo.

Click Add Scale and set both the width to 700. That means that no photos will be wider than 700 pixels but they can be as high as necessary.

Click Save Preset.

Go to Content management > Content types > manage fields next to Photo Gallery > click Display fields at the top of the page.

Click on the Full node dropdown and choose the individual photo image that you just created. That will apply the 700 pixels maximum width to all of the photos when they are shown individually.

Click Save.

Migrate Drupal 6 to Drupal 7

2012-03-30T00:15:00.000-07:00

Changing from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 is not just a simple update. The steps seem straightforward, but there are major changes in the way Drupal 7 works and stores data. So a move up across major version numbers is really a "migration" as opposed to a simple update or patch.

If your site is fairly simple, with good backups, and you use the right approach, you can accomplish the migration without too much trouble.

The more complex your site is, the more complex the migration will be.

Doing a migration involves several steps. You might want to review these related tutorials.

Step 1: Backup your site's database

* It is wise to try an update or upgrade on a test copy of your site before applying it to your live site. Even minor updates can cause your site's behavior to change.

There is a handy tool called Backup and Migrate, which helps simplify the backup process, which you can download from this page http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate. Note: it only works with MySQL, and is still under development. You should also do a manual backup of your database using phpMyAdmin. We show you how to do this in this tutorial.

Step 2: Backup all your folders and files

You have several ways to do this, and you might want to do it more than one way for safety

You can download all the files to your local computer

Copy the files to another directory on your server

Use the backup facility that is probably built into your hosting control panel

You can't be too paranoid about having extra copies.

Step 3: Double check to make sure you can complete the upgrade

Check on the Drupal 7 status of your contributed and custom modules and themes.

See http://drupal.org/node/948216 for information on upgrading contributed modules and themes.

See http://drupal.org/node/895314 for a list of modules that have been moved into core for Drupal 7, and instructions on how to update them.

See http://drupal.org/update/modules for information on how to update your custom modules, and http://drupal.org/update/theme for custom themes.

Step 4: Check for the latest version of Drupal 6.x

You can't skip versions when you upgrade. For instance you cant go from 6.0 to 6.2 in one step. You also can't upgrade directly from 6.0 or 6.1 to Drupal 7. You have to have your Drupal 6 installation at the latest level.

How do I know which version of Drupal I'm running?

Go to Administer (or Administration) >> Reports >> Status report.

You will see your version number if you have Drupal 6.0 or later. In Drupal 5.x and earlier, the path to go to is Administer >> Logs >> Status report.

Where do I get the latest version of Drupal 6? http://drupal.org/project/drupal

Step 5: Take the site off-line

Go to Administer >> Site configuration >> Site maintenance.

Select "Off-line" and save the configuration.

Step 6: Change the theme to Garland

Go to Administer >> Site building >>Themes

Click the check box to enable the theme, and the radio button to make it the default. Scroll to the bottom of the page and save changes.

You need to use the basic theme. If you are using a template, check with the designer to see if there is an updated version, and you can do that upgrade after the site is working with Garland.

Step 7: Disable all non-core modules

Go to Administer >> Site building >> Modules.

You can expand the categories by clicking on the category name and see what is enabled. If you added an additional modules to your site, there will be additional categories. Expand them and uncheck the boxes next to the modules

Step 8: Clear all optional module check boxes

It is possible that some modules cannot be immediately disabled, because others depend on them. Repeat this step until all non-core modules are disabled and all check boxes are clear. Be sure to scroll to the bottom of the page and save the changes.

Step 9: Remove unwanted modules

If you know that you will not re-enable some modules for Drupal 7.x and you no longer need their data, then you can uninstall them under the Uninstall tab after disabling them. The Uninstall tab is at the top of the modules page.

Step 10: Remove sites/default/default.settings.php

On the command line or in your FTP client, remove the file /sites/default/default.settings.php

Step 11: Delete all your other folders and files except /sites/

Empty your Drupal files directory except for:

/sites/

any custom files you added elsewhere.

If you made modifications to files like .htaccess or robots.txt, you will need to record those changes and re-apply them after the new files are in place.

Step 12: Remove unwanted module folders

If you are abandoning any modules because they are not compatible with Drupal 7, remove them from the directory
sites/all/modules

Step 13: Download and extract Drupal 7

Download Drupal 7 if you haven't already. http://drupal.org/project/drupal

You can extract the files on the server and copy them to your main directory. Alternately you could extract them on your local computer and use FTP to move them to your sever.

Don't worry about overwriting the files in the sites folder. Only the files that need replacing will be replaced.

Step 14: Reapply any changes to your .htaccess file or robots.txt files

Re-apply any modifications to files such as .htaccess or robots.txt. Use a text editor to make changes.

Step 15: Make your settings file writable

Make your settings.php file writable, so that the update process can convert it to the format of Drupal 7.x. settings.php is usually located in sites/default/settings.php

Normally this would best be set at 444, but it needs to be writable so 644 or 666 if you are having trouble will be the correct setting. BE SURE YOU REMEMBER TO COME BACK AND RESTORE THIS SETTING AFTER YOU ARE FINISHED with the migration.

Step 16: Run update.php

Run update.php by visiting http://www.example.com/update.php (replace www.example.com with your domain name). This will update the core database tables. Click continue and follow the steps.

If you can't access update.php make a change to your settings file:

If you are unable to access update.php do the following:

- Open settings.php with a text editor.

- Find the line that says:
$update_free_access = FALSE;

- Change it into:
$update_free_access = TRUE;

- Once the upgrade is done, $update_free_access must be reverted to FALSE.

Step 17: Backup your new database

Using the same procedure you used before, make another database backup. Save it with a different name or to a different location than your original backup. You may still need that one.

Step 18: Upgrade your modules to their newer versions.

You've gone through the core upgrade, but now each module has to be upgraded. Then you can update and re-enable your non-core modules by following these steps:

Check your notes, and the UPGRADE.txt files inside each module, to see if any special upgrade instructions apply

Fully remove the old module directory inside sites/all/modules/ (if you haven't already)

Download, unpack and move the new module directory to sites/all/modules/

Enable the module

Run update.php again (you should have run it once already when upgrading core) and check for any message output.

Back up your database and files again, between each module update, so that if there is a problem, you can revert to the most recent update.

If you have errors when you run the update.php script:

Note any error messages you see.

Restore your site to its previous state, using the file and database backups you created before you started the upgrade or update process. Do not attempt to do further updates or upgrades on a site that had update problems.

Step 19: Upload your Drupal 7 compatible theme

Make sure everything works in the Garland theme before you switch over to your Drupal 7 theme.

Step 20: Go to Reports and run a Status report

16. Go to Administration >> Reports >> Status report. Verify that everything is working as expected.

Step 21: Set update_free_access is set to false

Ensure that $update_free_access is FALSE in settings.php.

Go to Administration >> Configuration >> Development >> Maintenance mode.

Disable the "Put site into maintenance mode" check box and save.

Scroll to the bottom of the page to save the configuration.

That should be the last step in your successful migration from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.

Related Tutorials:

Planning for a Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 Migration

How To Put Drupal 7 In Maintenance Mode.

Migrating Drupal 6 CCK Data To Drupal 7 Fields

How to use the JCarousel Module for Drupal

2012-03-30T00:13:00.000-07:00

JCarousel is a useful module for creating Drupal slideshows. It uses the JCarousel plugin from http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel/and makes it easy to use via integration with Views.

Here's a simple example of how to use the JCarousel module.

Step 1: Install the modules

Make sure that you have these three modules installed and enabled:

JCarousel: http://drupal.org/project/jcarousel

Views: http://drupal.org/project/views

CTools: http://drupal.org/project/ctools

Step 2: Create content with an image field

In order to show images, you will need content with images.

You can use the default "Article" content type if you wish. Go to Structure > Content types and make sure that you have a content type with an image field attached as in the image above. Then go to Add content and use that content type to create several content items with images attached.

Step 3: Create a view

Go to Structure > Views and click Add new view.

The important part of the view is "Create a block". Choose the JCarousel Display format and then click Continue & edit.

The image below shows the settings you will need. If you followed our instructions when setting up the view, the only thing you might have to change here is the Fields. Click Add and add the Content: Image field to your view.

Click Save to complete the creation of your view.

Step 4: Place the block

Go to Structure > Blocks and place your new JCarousel block somewhere on your site.

Once the block is live, it will look like the image below:

The JCarousel project page on Drupal.org warns:

"You will almost certainly need to do custom CSS in your theme in order to use this module. The default CSS only supports 100 pixel square items. A basic understanding of CSS is therefor required to use this module."

As you can see, the output here is 100 pixel square images.

You will need to add some CSS for JCarousel to your theme in order to change this width. The original CSS is in /sites/all/modules/jcarousel/skins/default/jcarousel-default.css

The width is being controlled by:

01..jcarousel-skin-default .jcarousel-item {

02.padding: 0;

03.width: 100px;

04.height: 100px;

05.overflow: hidden;

06.border: 1px solid #CCC;

07.list-style: none;

08.background: #fff none;

09.}

You can modify that and place it in your theme's CSS file.

How to Create Dropdown Menus in Drupal

2012-03-30T00:09:00.000-07:00

No matter what CMS we're teaching, when we come to talking about themes and designs, one question always comes up quickly: "How do I make a dropdown menu"? Here's the answer to that question in Drupal.

First, we are going to show you how to get your menu set up correctly. Second we're going to give you three different options for showing that menu to your visitors.

Setting Up the Dropdown Menus

Go to Structure > Menus. Click list links next to the menu you'd like to use.

Click Add link and then create your link.

Pay close attention to two options further down the page:

- Enabled. Check this box.
- Parent link. If you want this link to dropdown under another, here is where you choose the top-level link. In this example below, the link will drop down from under Home.

When you're done, you'll see that the sub-links are indented under the top-level links.

If you're going to put dropdown links under existing menu links, don't forget to also open up those existing links and check the Show as expanded box.

Option 1: Using a Theme with Dropdown Menus

One thing that confuses some Drupal beginners is that not all themes have dropdown menus. In fact, none of the default Drupal 7 themes do so Bartik, Garland and Stark would not be the right choice in this case.

For example, the main menu bar of the default Bartik theme will always look like the image above. And if you try to place the menu in a block, you'll only get an indented link as in the image below.

To get an easy-to-use dropdown menu you'll need a theme such as Marinelli: http://drupal.org/project/marinelli. Each theme will be slightly different in how the dropdown menus are setup but Marinelli is a good example.

Install Marinelli and make it the default theme on your site.

Under the Apperance tab, click Configure next to Marinelli and scroll down. Under Primary Menu Settings, select Mega Drop Down.

Now when you check your site, you'll have working dropdown menus as in the image below.

Option 2: Use a Module

A second way to get dropdown menus on your Drupal site is to use a module. Nice Menus is very common choice and then one we'll use in this tutorial: http://drupal.org/project/nice_menus. Another very popular choice is Superfish http://drupal.org/project/superfish.

Install the Nice Menus module and enable it.

Go to Structure > Blocks and place one of the two Nice Menu blocks into a region of your site.

You can also click Configure next to one of the Nice Menu blocks and you'll be able to take some control over the menu settings.

Once the menu is live on your site, it will look like the image below.

You might not want the menu in the sidebar as in this example, so check to see which regions are available to you in current theme. Go to Structure > Blocks > Demonstrate block regions and you'll see your choices:

Option 3: Change the Code of Your Theme

Finally, if you have some coding knowledge, you can modify the theme that you're using to include dropdown menus.

The quickest way to do this would be to take advantage of one of the modules mentioned in Option 2 such as Nice Menus or Superfish.

Here is one step-by-step example of how you can add a Superfish dropdown menu to the Bartik theme: http://drupal.org/node/1073298.

How to Set Up Drupal Multi-sites

2012-03-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

Multi-sites is a Drupal feature that makes managing many websites easier.

The idea with multi-sites is that you can use a single codebase for more than one website. When you update that single codebase, you update all of your Drupal sites. Each site can still have its own theme, modules and content.

With multi-sites you can have many sites with one database, or many sites with different databases. In this tutorial we will chose to have multiple sites, each with their own database.

We're going to set up one core installation, and share those files with two sub-sites. Each sub-site will share those files but have its own URL and its own database. In this tutorial I'm going to set up two sub-sites with different URLs:

Master site: http://easywebupdate.com

Sub-site 1: http://edandrea.com

Sub-site 2: http://edsparty.com

Setting up multi-sites is not an easy task for beginners. To make it easier, we're going to show you how to use your hosting account with cPanel to get this done more easily. If you aren't using a commercial host with cPanel, your setup process will be slightly different.

Step 1. Choose your master domain name

Your first step is to hoose the URL that will host your main site. As we mentioned, in this example, our main URL will be http://easywebupdate.com.

This doesn't have to be an important URL. Unless you decide you want it to, this one won't be used by anyone but you. It's only going to hold the master copy of your Drupal installation.

It is worth nothing however that this site might be visible if one of your sub-sites fails. So it would be a good idea if your master site had a page with your contact information and a message.

Step 2. Start out by creating databases for all the sub-sites

Go to MySQL in cPanel or use the database wizard to create databases for each site you want to add.

Be sure to add database users with full privileges to each database. If you want to maximise security, create a new database user for each database. In the example below, I named the databases the same as the URLs. This is recommended on a live site, but it does makes it easy for me to refer to them in the tutorial.

Step 3. Install Drupal in your master URL directory

Install Drupal in your /public_html/ directory.

Visit the URL (in this case http://easywebupdate.com) and step through the Drupal installation.

Use the master database connection information when the install script asks for it.

Step 4. Create a sub-folder for each sub-site.

Create a folder under public_html/sites/subsite.com. Substitute the URL you are going to use.

Create one folder for each sub-site.

Now copy default.settings.php to each one.

CHMOD those files to 644 if they aren't already.

If you are doing multi-sites for Drupal 6, you should also create an additional folder called "files" and make sure it's CHMOD 755.

Step 5. Upload or copy default.settings.php to the new folders

You now need to add default.settings.php to your new folders. The image below shows how file structure looks in Filezilla that makes it a little more obvious.

If it is Drupal 6, create a files directory with the path sites/domain.com/files/. You don't need this extra directory here for Drupal 7.

Copy or upload default.settings.php to the folder.

Rename it to settings.php.

We are now finished with the Drupal master site. The next part is more complicated because we have to make sure the domain names are correct. Luckily cPanel can do this easily for beginners. We'll show you that method first. There is a manual method, but it involves making changes in Apache files and this is probably beyond beginner-intermediate skills required of this tutorial.

Step 6. Return to cPanel

On the main cPanel dashboard, find the Domains section and click Parked Domains.

Step 7. Add the domain

Park the domains on top of the master domain.

When you park a domain, the domain needs to be pointed at the DNS servers for your hosting account. If you don't know how to do this, the proper place to get information is from the domain name registrar. If you don't know who your registrar is, you get that information your hosting company.

Step 8. Go to your browser and visit the URL

In your browser address bar, type the url to your second or third site.

Install Drupal by following the prompts.

Step 9. Connect to the proper database

When prompted, enter the database information for this specific site.

Result

Three sites, each with their own theme, each with their own modules, all on the same hosting account. To create another site, I just repeat the process. Using cPanel's parking feature, I was able to avoid the need to make changes to Apache, and the need to make symbolic links or redirects in the .htaccess file.

There is another way to do it that is almost as simple, but if you want to try it you will learn a little more since it involves creating a symbolic link. We'll give you the code to paste into your site and walk you through it.

Option 2: Quick ways to set up Drupal multi-sites with cPanel Sub-Domains

Go through Steps 1 through 3 of this tutorial. Everything is the same up to that point. In Step 4 you take a slight detour and so Option 2 starts from that point on.

Option 2, Step 4: Create directories for each domain with the convention subdomain.domain.com

Create folders for each site you want to create.

Create the folder names with this convention subdomain.domain.com.

Upload or copy default.settings.php to each directory.

Change the name of each copy to settings.php.

Return to cPanel home.

Option 2, Step 5: Create subdomains

Go to the Domains section and click Subdomains.

The correct directory structure is pictured below:

The directories created by cPanel.

The directories created by you.

Option 2, Step 6: Write a simple php script to create a symlink

In a script editor create a file called mysymlink.php and put the following code into it.

 <?php
symlink( '/home/cPanel_User_Name/public_html/', 'subdomain' );
?>

In my case the file would look like this

 <?php
symlink('/home/myuserdirectory/public_html/','edandrea');
symlink('/home/myuserdirectory/public_html/','edsparty');
?>

Option 2, Step 7: Upload the symlink script to the main directory

To run it go to your browser address bar and type in your url and the name of the file.

http://example.com/mysymlink.php

If all goes well you will see a completely blank page. If you made a mistake in the file you will see error messages.

Option 2, Step 8: Add redirection to your .htaccess file

Open your .htaccess file in a script editor

Find the line # RewriteBase/ and remove the # sing.

Add the following line and save the changes

 RedirectMatch 301 ^/subdomain/(.*)$ http://subdomain.yoursite.com $1

Here's what my .htaccess looked like when finished:

 RewriteBase / RedirectMatch 301 ^/edandrea/(.*)$ http://edandrea.easywebupdate.com/$1 RedirectMatch 301 ^/edsparty/(.*)$http://edsparty.easywebupdate.com/$1

This redirection will make it so the site can be accessed in two ways.

http://easywebupdate.com/edsparty and http://edsparty.easywebupdate.com will both be redirected to the same site.

Option 2, Step 9: Visit your subdomain and complete the installation

If you did everything right, you can visit your subdomain and you will now be asked to install Drupal in your subdomain.

More on Drupal Multi-sites

What you've seen in this tutorial is just the beginning of the possibilities with Drupal Multi-Sites. There are many optional ways to arrange the code and the data:

Multiple domains or vhosts using different databases.

Multiple domains using the same database.

Multi-site setup using a single Drupal instance.

Same codebase, completely different content and users.

One security concernt to note is that Drupal's multi-site feature is normally used in situations where the administrators for all of the sites are highly trusted. The reason is that anyone with full administrative privileges on a Drupal site can execute arbitrary PHP code on that site through various means, even without FTP access to the site. That arbitrary PHP code could be used from one site to affect another site if the two sites are in the same HTTP document root and share the same Drupal codebase. For more information: http://drupal.org/node/476544 and http://drupal.org/node/1244642.