Hank Palan's Blog

Windows 7 Launch Party Pack Unboxing

Hank Palan — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:35:00 +0000

My Windows 7 Launch Party Pack arrived today from UPS. Here is a simple unboxing of the package.

Package Arrives:

Box Open:

Windows 7 Puzzle:

Streamers:

Balloons:

Deck of Cards - Front:

Deck of Cards - Back:

Windows 7 Napkins:

Free Copy of Windows 7 Ultimate Signature Edition - 32bit and 64bit:

Windows 7 Tote bags - 10 to hand out to guests:

Misc. software advertising and promotional cards:

Everything together including poster and centerpiece topper:

There you have it the Official Windows 7 Launch Party Pack Unboxing! Maybe not stellar, but hey I got a free copy of Windows 7 Ultimate!

Rustic Red Studio Website

Hank Palan — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:09:13 +0000

Rustic Red Studio is a wedding videography business that I actually started with my wife a few months ago. It is a simple site that hosts a multitude of web features with a very heavy image based design.

There are a few things that I did with this site that I don't normally do with websites. The first being the inclusion of a number of transparent png files. Normally I can work around transparent png's with a handful of tricks to get the same effect, but in this case there was no way around it.

That decision along with a few other points lead me to not do a full compatibility check in Internet Explorer 6. I'm tired of supporting a dying browser, and I felt with the clients that I'll be targeting with the site, that there would be a very low percentage of people actually using IE6.

Besides those two things I'm using Embedded Media Field for the Video's so that I can run them through Views to manipulate them a number of ways. One of those ways that I always felt was lacking on wedding videography sites, was a good way to display a quick catalog of the videos. And why not use a method that people are used to and has proven to work very well. Copying the way Youtube displays video results, I was able to easily display my videos in a familiar way.

I'm a big fan of Captcha, not actually filling the form out but that it prevents spam. On this site, however, I'm not using Captcha or re-Captcha for the comments, I went with a Spam filter, that has so far, been working quite well. The comments go through a number of filters that individually rate the probability of spam. When those numbers are added up they produce a number that is compared against a number that you set to flag it as spam or not spam. The more the Spam filter filters the better the system gets.

Enough of the explanation, head over to www.rusticred.com and check the site out.

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Podmastr.com Website

Hank Palan — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 22:15:15 +0000

Podmaster.com is a podcasting service website that makes sure your podcast audio sounds the best it can.

Podmastr.com is the second website that I design and built. It is actually my own idea and company. I needed a website to build to practice so I thought of an idea and went with it. Needless to say it wasn't very successful because I didn't put much effort into the company itself.

This particular site was actually hand coded by myself. It is not a Drupal install. Of course it is really only a three page website, but to me it was a major accomplishment.

Design wise I'm still not sure how I feel about it. I don't think its amazing, but I also don't think that it is bad. It is definitely somewhat unique in its approach. It is very clean and simple. Yet it does an amazing job at being hard to actually read the text and understand what the site is and what it is offering. If I'm being honest with myself, I'd say that I would need to redo how the information is presented.

But hey it was only my second site design, so I guess I could cut myself some slack.

You can find more information on podmastr.com here.

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The Battalion-The Series Website

Hank Palan — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:49:46 +0000

The Battalion-The Series is an online fire fighter reality show that can be found at www.thebattalion.tv. Tule Fog Productions, LLC follows the men and women fire fighters across the nation. Currently The Battalion has filmed in San Francisco, Washington D.C., Kentland, Prince George's County, National Institute of Health, and Milwaukee.

I decided to add a section to my blog devoted to the websites that I design or build. And where better to start than from the beginning.

This particular site is near and dear to my heart, mostly because I helped to start the Series in early 2007 and mold it into what it is today. I started as a video editor on the show a few years ago as we were pitching it to networks to pick up and put on television. The networks didn't want it because we couldn't promise fires and drama. So the owner David Furtado decided that he was going to put it up on the web. He coined the phrase "webisode" because each show was to be full length TV programing.

I had never built or designed a website before, but I took the task on the best I could. A good friend of mine, TJ Shafer, pointed me in the right direction and did the development of the site. Needless to say my first design, might be just about everything wrong with most websites today. I learned a lot.

The site and the viewer base had outgrown the design of the site, it was time for something new. I read some articles about a CMS called Drupal. It seemed like the perfect solution so I dove right in. Like most people I grabbed a theme and re-purposed it for my needs. This was my first experience with Drupal. I learned a lot.

Unfortunately the site still has the same design. Hopefully I will be able to redesign it soon with a much needed and deserved fresh unique look.

When I left the Series in mid 2008 I had edited over 40 "webisodes" 10 Promos, 4 Teasers, and 4 Sizzle reels for Major Networks. I was also the audio editor mixing down on average of 45 tracks per webisode, including arranging and mixing the music tracks. I made all the graphics and of course maintained not only The Battalion website, but also all the video portals that we were on at the time. It was a really stressful job with very demanding deadlines. I learned a lot.

I left the company and set off on my own not sure what the future had in store for me.

You can find more information on thebattalion.tv here.

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Php Arguments with Views 2 in Drupal

Hank Palan — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:32:36 +0000

Php arguments in Views for Drupal can be the answer you need to getting your views to output correctly. Follow along as I go through a handful of very useful php arguments for Views.

I don't claim to fully understand Php and php arguments. I'm still learning, but what I do know I'm glad to share with those willing to listen.

I use php arguments mostly to get a view block to only show up on certain dynamic url pages. The first time I really used this technique was in one of my previous posts: Related Content with Views 2 in Drupal

Here are a few others with some explanations:

Similar Node Title:

if (arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1))) {
  $node = node_load(arg(1));
  return $node->title;
} else {
  return FALSE;
}

To use CCK Field Argument:

if (arg(0) == 'node' && is_numeric(arg(1))) {
  $node = node_load(arg(1));
  return $node->field_reference[0][nid];
} else {
  return FALSE;
}

To use the results of any CCK Field to group together you must first know what part of the CCK field you want to use. Check out this post Theming a Node in Drupal...The Easy Way. Notice in the above code the portion

$node->field_reference[0][nid]

This piece of code is what you would change depending on what part of the cck field you wanted to use. In my case I wanted the node id that was placed in the node reference url cck widget.

Even though this is only two arguments, just by changing a small piece you can get it to fit most of your needs.

If there are any arguments that you've found helpful in the past post them in the comment section below.

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Make A Custom Drupal Module

Hank Palan — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 19:28:35 +0000

Making a custom module in Drupal can be as easy or difficult as you would like it to be. For the purpose of the post we will be making a simple module in Drupal that you can use to alter forms.

Step 1
Make an info file for your module call it mymodule.info and rename the "mymodule" to whatever you will be calling your module.
In the info file you can put various items, but the only thing you will need is the following:

Drupal 5.x

// mymodule.info
name = "mymodule"
package = "My Modules"
description = "Put Description Here"

Drupal 6.x

name = My Module
description = "Put Description Here"
core = 6.x

If you plan on publishing this module you can put additional information in the file.

Step 2
Make a module file called mymodule.module and once again rename "mymodule" to your module name.
This module is going to be to alter forms so we will put the following code in.

Drupal 5.x

<?php
// Hook Form Alter
function mymodule_form_alter($form_id, &$form) {
  // do stuff
}

Drupal 6.x

<?php
// Hook Form Alter
function mymodule_form_alter(&$form, $form_state, $form_id) {
  // do stuff
}

Put the two files into a folder with your module name, mymodule, upload it and enable it on your site.

More documentation about what you can do with modules can be found at the Drupal API reference site.

Include Images in your Drupal RSS Feeds

Hank Palan — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 03:39:41 +0000

Including an image with your RSS feed just got a whole lot easier. By using these easy steps you'll be on your way to stepping up your RSS feed.

Things you will need:

The Setup:
Follow the instructions for each module on how to install each one.
The following is how I went about getting images in my blog feed. Some of these settings will differ for you and some of the steps may not apply.

Add a new cck imagefield for your content type, mine happens to be the blog content type.
Make sure you remember the machine-type name you assigned to the field.
Make a new preset in ImageCache to output a reasonably size image for feed readers to handle. Mine happens to be 490px wide because I'm also using it as my blog header image.
Attach an image to your new cck imagefield in your content type and save the content.
Make a new view for content feed. Call it whatever you want.
Once you have set up the inital view, add a feed display type.
Select the RSS Feed for the Style.
Select the Media RSS for the Row Style.

Select the content type you wish to display
Select the cck field you want to display
In the Teaser/Body section select either Full or Teaser to display, but make sure you pick one of them that includes either a single picture or multiple pictures. All of that depends on your needs. I went with Full text plus pic.
Select your ImageCache preset that you set up earlier.

Save the view and check out the feed.

The first thing you might notice is that there is a media enclosure attached to the bottom of the feed. Don't worry about that, we are going to clean that up.

First check your feed in a feed reader. You might notice that the images don't appear. We are going to run the feed through Feedburner.

In Feedburner, make sure to go to the optimize tab in the feed settings. Activate the Smartfeed. Check out your feed now. It should include the image and not the media enclouser and when viewed in a feed reader everything should look perfect.

Check out my Blog Feed to see how it should look.

*Note: This is just a way to include images through cck image fields and using image cache. You can always just insert images directly into the body of your content type and they will show up in feeds as long as you have the full url for the image.

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E-mail Alias For Testing User Registration

Hank Palan — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 00:00:24 +0000

Use simple e-mailing aliasing to speed up your work flow while testing user registrations.

GMail Aliases for Testing Multiple Drupal User Registrations was a recent article I read that change my work flow with testing Drupal user registration. E-mail Aliasing as defined by Gmail: Using an address alias.

I use a slightly different technique than the one in the mentioned articles. Both technique can be used with any CMS including Wordpress and Joomla.

The Basics:

Your e-mail address is example@domain.com, you simply add a dot or period anywhere in your e-mail name. Example: e.xample@domain.com or exampl.e@domain.com.

I found this more simple and it actually get through other site sign-ups more often than the other techniques. Most sites accept the dot or period, but not the plus sign (+). This process is also not exclusive to G-mail as many other e-mail systems use the e-mail aliasing as well.

Uses:

You no longer have to have multiple e-mail accounts for testing the registration process of your CMS.
You can make as many users with all the e-mails going to one central e-mail account.
On other sites you can give them an aliased e-mail then have it sent to a specific folder or trashed.

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Would adding a Blog help my Site Traffic?

Hank Palan — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 19:08:11 +0000

Adding a blog can be one of the simplest things you can do to start generating more traffic to your site. Dynamic content is the key to breaking free from a static website and a blog is a good place to start.
Follow along as we dive into how and why a blog is a good starting point for dynamic content to your site.

Dynamic content in our case is content that changes or updates. Its a reason for people to come back to your site. If they have read all the pages your site has to offer, why would they want to come back? Lets give them a reason.

By blogging you accomplish several things in addition to driving more traffic to your site.

You let your readers know what your site/company is up to, what plans you have, and where your site/company is headed.
Your site steps out of the impersonal to the personal. A blog over at FreelanceSwitch.com says it best "clients like to know who they are doing business with...it also provides the opportunity to show you’re a real person".

By blogging in a niche that is applicable to what your company or site has to offer you can soon become an expert in that area. More people will come to your blog to read about what you have to offer.

Once you have people coming to your site via a blog, your overall site stats increase and therefor your site becomes more popular. Plus when people come to read your blog they can find other content on your site and hopefully buy what you are selling, or pay for your services.

What is Web Presence?

Hank Palan — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:58:55 +0000

What is Web Presence and why do you need it? This post is to help you understand the concept, what you can do about it, and how I can help.

Web Presence has different names such as internet presence and online presence, but they all carry the same meaning.

Web Presence is defined on Wikipedia as being "the appearance of a person or organization on the World Wide Web." And "the amount of web presence can be measured in the amount of sites a organization or individual has, which can include their own website, social network profiles, and their site's search engine ranking, traffic, popularity, and backlinks."

With that defined, you only need to ask yourself...how is your web presence? Is one website enough? Would picking out a single social site benefit me?

Web Presence is more than Search Engine Optimization or SEO. Its about where you are on the web, how good that content is and how it relates to the other pieces.

Getting people to notice you is the number one goal with web presence. And how well and effective you can do that is up to you or the job of a web presence manager.

A web presence manager does just that, they manage your web presence. Just in the same way a band manager manages a band, a web presence manager takes on the task of making and implementing decisions that effect the outcome of your presence on the internet.

Whether you use a web presence manager or manage you web presence yourself, the important thing to remember is that you need a web presence if you are to stick out in the vast sea of competition.

Check back or Subscribe Now for more Web Presence tips. Or Contact Me directly to get free consultation of your website and web presence.

Movie, Film and TV aspect ratios explained

Hank Palan — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 20:16:17 +0000

Have you ever wondered what it means when you hear 16x9, Fullscreen, Widescreen, or Pan and Scan? More importantly what does that mean to you as a consumer? I'm going to give you a few simple explanations with examples of aspect ratios.

These are the terms and ratios we are going to be covering: Widescreen, Fullscreen, Pan and Scan, Letterbox, 4x3, 16x9, 1.33:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, and 2.39:1. Now there are more ratios and those can be found over at the Aspect Ratio Wiki, but these are the most common ones.

Terms

Fullscreen - This term comes from when there were no 16x9 HDTV's all TV's were a 4x3 square image. Companies made the decision that people didn't like that when they watched a movie, it didn't fill up the entire screen, it had black bars on the top and bottom, so people wanted a "fullscreen" image. In order to accomplish this, each frame of the movie is looked at and decided up what portion of the original image is going to be cropped.

Widescreen - This is a semi loose term. It basically covers anything wider than full screen or a 4x3 ratio.

Pan and Scan - Unlike Fullscreen where a frame is completely cropped, pan and scan actually shows you the entire original frame, but it pans across the frame to fit within the full screen ratio. This always creates a blurred look, or artifacts showing when it is accomplished.

Letterbox - This is a way to keep the original ratio on a 4x3 television. It adds black bars on the top and bottom of the frame to fill the screen but keep the ratio.

Ratios

Ratios are simple numbers that let you know how the film was shot.
For example a 1.78:1 means that for every unit of 1.78 wide you need to go 1 high. So if we are using inches the ratio is 1.78 inches wide and 1 inch tall.
A more practical example would be a 50" HDTV which has a ratio of 1.78:1. This would mean that the viewing size is 43.57 inches wide by 24.50 inches high.

Below are examples of different ratios based on an original image* ratio of 2.39:1. You will see the ratio within the 2.39:1 ratio.

4x3(1.33:1) -This is the standard Full Screen square TV size. Notice how much image is lost to cropping.
Example of 1.33:1 ratio:

16x9(1.787:1) - This is the standard for HDTV programing which relys on a resolution of 1920x1080 or 1.78:1. Film can still be cropped to fit on a 16x9 HDTV.
Example of 1.78:1 ratio:

1.85:1 - This is a standard ratio for a lot of movies you see in the movie theatre. Its only slightly wider than 16x9.
Example of 1.85:1 ratio:

2.39:1 - This ratio is also used in a lot of movies, usually the bigger budget movies as the film stock costs more.
Example of 2.39:1 ratio:

There are various other ratios that movies are filmed. The highest ratio that has ever been filmed was 4:1 called Polyvision. To accomplish this three 35 mm 1.33 images projected side by side. It was used only on Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927). (ref Aspect ratio (image))
Example of 4:1 ratio:

*The image provided was shot by myself in the Philippines on the island of Davao, Island Garden City of Samal.

Drupal used for good

Hank Palan — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:25:29 +0000

A few days ago I saw a tweet from Rob Feature saying that he had posted over at Geeks & God that they had just launched a new website called Free Mission Websites.com.

After reading the post I headed over to Free Mission Websites.com to see what it was all about. In a nutshell its a site that is dedicated to making free websites for missionaries who are out in the field. Anybody who wants to contribute just has to sign up and start helping.

Drupal is going to be used for the sites for many reasons:

Once a template install is figured out, it will be fairly easy to drop into new site configurations.
Most of the people working with the project are already experienced with Drupal so time is minimized.
The huge community behind Drupal has proven usability, functionality, and security so why re-invent the wheel.
Each site can be customized to fit the mission's needs without taking too much time.

These are just some of the reasons behind why Drupal will be used.

If you are tech savvy, a good designer, or just good with ideas and want to help out, head over to Free Mission Websites.com and sign up!

Theming Drupal User Profile

Hank Palan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:12:57 +0000

Theming a Drupal User Profile is actually much easier than you think. Follow these few simple steps and you will be on your way to a fully customized user profile for your Drupal site.

This article assumes that you know how to theme a node, if not, first read Theming a node in Drupal...The Easy Way.

There are two main ways to get custom field into the user profile, content profile or using the core user profile that ships with Drupal. If you just want simple fields the core module is the way to go. For the sake of this article I will be using the core user profile module.

Using 6.x go to http://www.yoursite.com/admin/user/profile, there you can set up a couple of fields to your liking.

Next make a new document called user-profile.tpl.php similar to the node-custom.tpl.php this overrides the user-profile.tpl.php that is found in the core user module. The benefit being you won't be editing the core module file.

Once you have that file made copy this code into the document:

<pre><?php print_r($account)?></pre>

Also similar to the custom node override you are printing the field information that you just set up in the user profile.
Save the document and upload it to your server. Check out your account at http://www.yoursite.com/user
You will now see a print out similar to this.
Similar to the node override you will print the fields that you want. For example:

<?php print $account->profile_name ?>

That will print the field Name that you set up in the User Profile. Continue this until you have successfully printed all your fields then use css to position them to your hearts desire.

Soon I will post an article on theming an advanced user profile. Subscribe now to make sure you don't miss it.

Follow Drupal in Real Time with NowPublic.com

Hank Palan — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 17:07:57 +0000

Have you ever wanted to know what people are doing with Drupal in real-time and where they are? Well now you can with NowPublic.com.

I first stumbled across this on SocialMedia.biz. I was so impressed that I thought I'd share it with you.

NowPublic.com uses aggregation from several sites like Twitter and identi.ca, then allows you to scan them in real time.

What sets NowPublic apart from following most Twitter apps is the integration of a world map. So you can not only see what people are doing, but where as well.

Bookmark Drupal-scan to stay in the loop of what's going on in the Drupal world.

Good Design in a Website

Hank Palan — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 16:50:14 +0000

Everybody thinks they can design. If they really put their minds to it, maybe they could. Here is what sets a truly good designer apart from the crowd.

Although there are a handful of people that are naturally gifted at design, the rest of us have to really work at it. One would assume that good design means a lot of education, experience, and knowledge. But really those only add to a good design and are not required by it. What good design really comes down to is editing and refinement.

Simplicity
Some people I've worked for want everything on their site, Big Bold Colorful Titles, Bright Images, Text in ALL CAPS, and the list goes on. I try to convince them otherwise, but remember they know what is best, because of course that's why they hired a professional designer. I do what they ask, and every time they ask me why it looks bad, why it looks cluttered, and why the things that aren't supposed to stand out, stand out!

The reason behind that is, good design is simple. Even a well designed website that appears complex, is truly simple in nature.

When you have everything important in Bright Red Text, it becomes less important. When you have all your Images or Text Flashing "Click Here", people do the opposite. The way to have people navigate the way you want them to, is not to keep adding more and more, its to strip it all down and design easy to navigate options.

Editing
My first design is never my final design. Is it because I'm not a good designer, maybe. I like to think that I'm improving on my first initial ideas. The best ideas are ones that have been refined and processed. Don't get discouraged if your first idea doesn't turn out that great, go back and change something, keep tweaking it into something amazing.

Don't always depend on yourself for constructive input. Ask around to friends, family, and co-workers. Take what they say into consideration, because your ideas aren't always right or the best for your client.

Remember edit, edit, edit.

Cutting your Design for the Web

Hank Palan — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 20:50:14 +0000

Cutting your design for the web involves more than simply cutting, saving, and uploading. Follow along as I take you through steps to improving your workflow and loading time.

Before you start cutting your design, look for where you can use css instead of an image. After seeing how you can use css to replace some images, you can start to see how you can improve your site design from the ground up.

Below are some examples of how you can cut your design more effective and efficiently.

For Example:

Using an Image
File Size - 220 bytes

Using Css - 1 line w/compression
File Size - 76 bytes

Of course when you do need to use images make sure you are either using good compression or index the image to a specific number of colors.

Examples:

Jpeg Image at Full Quality
File Size - 16.7KB

Jpeg Image at Lower Quality
File Size - 6.7KB

Png not indexed
File Size - 2.67KB

Png indexed
File Size - 1.07KB

There isn't really a rule of thumb of when to use a png, gif, or jpg. When ever I'm not sure if I should index and use png or gif or if I should compress and use jpg, I try them both to see what the file size difference is. Which ever one is smaller I use that.

The last thing I'm going to cover is CSS Sprites. I'm not going to go into detail in this blog about how to do sprites, I'm just going to give some examples. Subscribe to my blog and I will be covering CSS Sprites in detail.

CSS Sprites
These are mainly used for menus and image hover links, however, you can use them to consolidate small images to reduce file sizes.

Example:

Actual Image

Hover over image using Sprites

By using css instead of images you also reduce the number of http request and thus reduce the load time of your site dramatically. Check back for updates and other related posts.

Little Steps to Life in the Clouds

Hank Palan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 15:03:49 +0000

Two simple programs to get most of your data safe and accessible from anywhere. Living life in the clouds is something that I've been doing more and more. Its convenient, reliable, and safe. Here are two programs that I recommend for day to day use.

Dropbox

URL: http://www.getdropbox.com
Description:
Dropbox links your computer with your account online. Both in Windows and Mac Dropbox is a simple folder. You put content in the Dropbox folder it stores locally on your computer and syncs with its online counterpart.
Convenience:
Not only can you sync and store your own data, you can share folders with other people and/or make folders and files public. No need to e-mail massive files anymore. For collaboration and work purposes, just drop files back and forth with others. iPhone has some capability with Dropbox and other mobile solutions are in the works.
Reliability:
Because Dropbox isn't online only, you have the convenience of local storage, but it is also backed up online. When something is deleted with in the Dropbox folder, it is deleted, however you can restore its online counterpart, which would restore your local file as well.
Safety:
How safe are your files? All syncing is done over SSL and all data is encrypted with AES-256 before being stored on their backend. I'd say its pretty secure.
Overall:
I use Dropbox every day for work purposes and to back up some of my smaller client files. I've never had a problem with it since I've been using it, and the features are only getting better.
As of right now, you are limited to a 2Gb account and can only link one account with one computer at a time. You can have separate accounts on separate computers and share folders between them to get your storage increased a little bit.

More information over at http://www.getdropbox.com/faq

I was initially going to post about how I use Google Docs, but in researching a bit I came across several articles including this one: Privacy issue: Google Docs seems to not delete but only hide documents when the trash is emptied. They all were pointing at security flaws and bad practices on Google's part. I took all my content off of Google Docs and looked for better services.
After much research and some testing, I came to like this website/program for a productivity suite in the clouds.

Zoho

URL: http://www.zoho.com
Description:
Zoho is an web based productivity suite including these applications: Mail, Calendar, Documents, Desktop, Writer, Sheet, Show, Meeting, Wiki, Tasks, Notes, Links, Contacts, and Notebook.
Convenience:
Having most or all of your documents online to access and edit anywhere is a convenience I would have liked to have had a long time ago. Using Google Gears you can sync your documents as an extra backup to multiple computers.
Reliability:
All of your documents are backed up on your computer as well as online. If something happens you can always recover. You can edit and access your documents from anywhere, including web able phones.
Safety:
Zoho has options to always connect to a secure server, only allow specific ip address to connect to your content, and you are able to see the sessions that have accessed your content.
Overall: I'm glad I decided to write this post because it forced me really look into Google Docs. Which in turn gave me a wonderful alternative that is leaps and bounds beyond Google.

These two sites/programs are a good beginning to living in the clouds. Backing up your entire computer or data collections is not what this post was intended for, that will be in a later post.
Check back for updates on new or better solutions.

Porn Free Internet, just around the corner?

Hank Palan — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 17:13:02 +0000

In order to view porn when not on the internet, one would have to get it from a separate billed channel on cable or satellite TV. One would have to go to a special section in certain video stores, order a magazine subscription, or go to a gentlemen's club. Why then has it taken us this long to figure out that we need to separate porn from the rest of the internet?

In a recent article by ars technica named Still hope for the FCC's smut-free broadband plan? They talk about a wireless internet that the FCC is putting out that would be a free national broadband plan, with content filtered out.

I wouldn't be happy with a free filtered internet provided by the government. Now of course I would use it, but a part of me would be wondering what else they are filtering or watching as I cruise around their free internet.

This really got me to thinking, there are a slew of internet domain extensions that are becoming popular so why not section one off strictly for porn. ".org" has always been known for non-profit organizations, ".gov" for government sites, why would it be so hard to mandate that porn get a separate extension? This way little children wouldn't stumble upon porn for the first time accidentally, and those that wanted it would know exactly where to go.

All existing porn sites would keep their existing extensions, but would have a redirect to their new extension with a warning before hand that they are being redirected to a porn site.

Porn filters would actually work and parents could finally be happy. The porn industry wouldn't loose too much money in the grand scheme of things. They are already sectioned off in every other part of society, with all the technology advancements we strive to make, why can't this be one of them?

The 120Hz HDTV truth manufactures don't want you to know

Hank Palan — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 17:49:59 +0000

The reason 120Hz HDTV's came about was to reduce motion and blurring in LCD TVs. However, the technology isn't widely available to consumers yet to support this feature and in the end, it makes the picture look cheesy and is a disgrace to the very picture it is trying to reproduce.

*Note: This post on the negative sides of 120Hz only effects movies, or content that is shot at 24fps.

Technical
Hertz (Hz) is a measure of frequency or cycles per second. See Hertz for more information. So in this article fps and Hz will be used together because they both operate at cycles per second.

Most film is shot at 24fps but all TV's display at 30 or 60Hz. So the solution was to do what is called a 3:2 pull down, more information can be found in this article: DVD Benchmark Part 5 - Progressive Scan DVD. Basically it takes 4 frames and converts them to 10 interleaved frames.

This wasn't really a problem until HDTV's came out and went from 480i to 720p and 1080p which introduced progressive scan.

With progressive scan, the same 3:2 pulldown takes place but every two frames of the 10 is put back together and the third is thrown out. But when doing the progressive scan you actually see those few frames getting dropped this is called jutter.
At first manufactures decide to just increase the display of the 3:2 pull down from 30Hz to 60Hz. Ideally though the perfect solution would be to have the film content displayed at 72hz (every frame shown 3 times, 24x3=72hz). This would eliminate the jutters because no frames are dropped.

The wise to be manufactures decided that instead they would just show you the 3:2 pull down four as fast so you wouldn't see the jutter because now each frame is being shown at 1/120th of a second. Its too quick for your eyes to see the juttering. One problem, now it has a rather weird side effect, in my terms "It looks like crap".

Explanation
If you are here in the United States you are used to a format called NTSC which displays video at 30fps. Over in Europe there standard of film is 25fps so their tv format called PAL displays at 50fps. So, whenever you see a show that was filmed over in Europe it looks odd because of the conversion between frame rates. 120Hz TVs look similar to that, except worse.

If you have ever looked a 120hz display in a store, you will notice that when you see a movie being played that it looks kind of like the behind the scenes footage of the action scene. This is because of the 120hz conversions that are going on.

Solution
With all of that negative said, 120hz makes gaming a dream. It enhances and looks better then ever. So my solution is to have multiple refresh rates based on the content that it is displaying.

If your TV is displaying a HD movie at 24fps, display at 72Hz. If you are gaming, 120hz. Or manufactures could get on board and support true 5:5 pulldown and it would solve everybody's problems.

Additionally, 120Hz was a solution to a problem within LCD displays, there is almost no benefit in have a 120Hz refresh rate in a Plasma TV. Do not be fooled by marketing into getting something that is considerably more expensive because they say it looks better. You won't be able to see the difference.

Increase Traffic to your Drupal Blog Site

Hank Palan — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:40:29 +0000

Want more traffic to your Drupal blog? Here are some very useful modules to get your site moving up the ranks of search engines.

This blog assumes that you have already read Increasing Traffic to your Blog Site, which is helpful for any general blog. This gets specific to what Drupal can do for your blog if you have a Drupal site already.

Path: This is a core module and only needs to be enabled. Path allows URL aliasing, this provides clean URLs for your content to be found easier.

Pathauto: This module expands upon the Path Module and adds automatic URL aliasing. This can be based on node type in conjunction with Tokens.

Ping: This also is a core module and only needs to be enabled. The Ping module pings key sites to let them know that you have updated content. One of those sites is Ping-O-Matic!.

Technorati: This module allows you to manual tag or tag by category and send those tags to Technorati. This will help your rankings with other blogs. I found this information first over at Problogger.net.

Trackbacks: Trackbacks is a module to allow trackbacks between sites. A must if you want to start linking back and forth and get out on the web. For more information check out Problogger.net

Google Analytics: If you want to track what people are doing, where they are clicking, how long they are staying, etc., you need some sort of analytics. This module incorporates Google Analytics for easy tracking.

XML Sitemap: If you want your site to be indexed correctly and often, this is the module for you. It creates a sitemap that is submitted to search engines. It updates whenever you make a new piece of content. This saves you from hand making a site map every time you make a new blog.

Twitter: Twitter module posts your blog or other content to Twitter, this is helpful if you have a large following or if you just want your blog title out in the general Twitter feed for people to find.

As I play around with other modules and how they function I will be updating this blog. Check back soon!

If you use Drupal you are Lazy

Hank Palan — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 21:53:23 +0000

I have often been accused of being lazy for using Drupal for the basis of my sites. Or have been asked if Drupal hinders my ability to make websites. To both I would say, you have underestimated Drupal.

Drupal is a tool, a tool for simplifying, enhancing, and promoting new creative websites. By using Drupal as my core for my websites, it free's me up and allows me to concentrate on the design. I also allows me confidence to know that it is thoroughly tested and very secure. I don't have to worry about a developer not turning in his projects in on time and making my reputation suffer because of it.

Drupal is not only helpful, it is reliable. I know that when I start a Drupal site, I can say with confidence to my clients, that the project will be complete and done on time. Time and time again, Drupal has proven itself to me through the use of complex modules and slick integration.

Drupal has expanded my experience and leveled the playing field with many of the bigger company sites. Drupal is seen more and more by professionals as a useful tool in their bag. To prove this, check out this link: 45 Drupal Sites Which You May Not Have Known Were Drupal Based.

Why re-invent the wheel, when we can all come together and make it better for everybody?

Increase Traffic to your Blog Site

Hank Palan — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 17:03:59 +0000

Want to increase traffic to your site or blog? Follow these few suggestions and steps and soon you will see your numbers start to rise.

Content Tips

Post good and often, nobody likes useless posts or posts that only come once in a while. If you want to be successful, you have to work hard at it.
Make your content unique, add your own style to your blog. Make readers want to comeback for more.
Link to the content you are talking about. This helps your readers by providing useful links and can factor into your SEO as see over at ProBlogger.net

Your Blog Site

Your blog is only as good as the design of your site. Are you still using the default Garland Theme? Make your site stand out by customizing the theme and Nodes.
Don't clutter your blog site with link after link on the sidbars, try spacing stuff out, removing some unimportant links, and use small images instead of text as seen here.

Webtools and Sites

Google Analytics: Use analytics to track your users and see which methods are working.
Google Webmaster Tools: Submit a sitemap and control search engines pinging you site.
Ping-o-Matic!: Ping a slew of sites all at once when you update your blog.
Technorati: This might be the most important site that you need to register and maintain. Register and claim your blog, add Technorati tags to your blog to get better coverage, and ping when you get new content.
Twitter: Post that you have a new blog posting on Twitter. Its a good way to get some eyeballs looking at your blog. More can be read on one of my previous blogs : Leveraging Twitter for your personal blog.
brightkite: Similar to Twitter, get people to follow you, then post your posts to brightkite. An added benefit, you can syndicate your brightkite content to Twitter, so you could post once to brightkite and have Twitter covered as well.
Facebook: Still in its prime, you must use Facebook to publish your posts to people you know and to other potential people.
Myspace: Although this is a dying site, it still have a large userbase. Create a profile and syndicate your blog content.
ny good Social Site: I mentioned both Myspace and Facebook, only because they are the large of the social sites. Take part in any and as many social sites that you can manage, then syndicate your stuff there. However, nobody likes spammers, so make sure your content is good and worth people's time.

Add Your Social Connections to Drupal with Icons

Hank Palan — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 02:03:13 +0000

Want to add your social connections to your Drupal site with icons? Follow these simple steps and you can be on your way to social simplicity.

Views
CCK
ImageAPI
Imagecache (optional)
ImageField (depends on other modules)
Link

Make a new content type and name it whatever you want. Add a url field and an image field for your icon.
Make a new node-custom.tpl.php instructions can be found here. Add this piece of code to your node-custom.tpl.php:

<pre><?php print_r($node)?></pre>

This will enable you to see what code you need to put into your node-custom.tpl.php. Save the file and upload it to your server.

Create new content for your new content type. For the image upload you can make your own icons, or you can simply grab the favicon from your social sites. Make sure that they are files you can actually use. I ran mine through Photoshop just to make sure they were small file sizes and the correct extension.

After you hit save you should now see your icon with your URL beside it and then a bunch of code below it similar to this.

Your going to grab the code to pull the url for the image and url for your social site. Mine happened to be field_url[0]['url'] and field_icon[0]['filepath']. If you want hover text grab the url title as well, field_url[0]['title'].
Place them in your node-custom.tpl.php like this:

<a href="<?php print $node->field_url[0]['url'] ?>" title="<?php print $node->field_url[0]['title'] ?>"><img src="/<?php print $node->field_icon[0]['filepath'] ?>"></a>

*Note that I placed a forward slash "/" before the print in the img tag. That is there to make sure it goes to your root directory. Otherwise your icon won't show up.

Delete the code you used to print all the functions and save the file and upload to your server. Refresh your content's page and you should have just an icon that links to your social site.

Display: Block
Filter: Node Type
Style: Grid - I used 6 horizontal columns, you can use what fits your block.
Row Style: Node - Uncheck all options.
Add other options to taste and save.

Go to your Blocks page and add your new block to the area you want and volia!

If you have other uses for this or tweaks to what I have done, I'd love to hear your ideas.

Google and Facebook Connect the end of Drupal?

Hank Palan — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 02:46:24 +0000

Both Google Friend Connect and Facebook Connect have come out at the same time, offering similar capabilities. But what does this mean for Drupal? Will making Drupal social site be a mute point now?

In my humble opinion, this can only make Drupal stronger and here is why.

First and foremost, Drupal is not just for social communities. So there isn't a direct competition between Drupal and then new "Connects". However, tapping into Facebook's and Google's registration and marketing channel could be the best thing for Drupal.

As of now the functionality as far API goes, with both Connets is limited. What this would mean for somebody wanting to fully utilized the Connects is that you wouldn't get user information, you probably wouldn't be able to get their e-mail addresses. In short, its a lack of control on your own site.

Although Drupal's capability for a social site is there, it is somewhat cumbersome and hard to set up user-profiles and relationships which are the core of a social site. The Connects make it very hard not to slap one on a Drupal site, just to get more traffic.

If the Drupal Community can embrace this new step, and the Connects open up a little bit, this could be the beginning of a very beautiful thing.

Top 10 Must Have Drupal Modules

Hank Palan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 07:36:27 +0000

When starting a new Drupal site, I almost always install a handful of modules first thing. Here are my top 10 and why you should use them.

*Modules listed below are in no particular order

Pathauto: Drupal Core ships with a URL aliasing function, however this module expands upon that and adds automatic URL aliasing. This can be based on node type in conjunction with Tokens.

Adminmenu: This module does nothing for your site, it is strickly for navigation of admin menus. This module however has increased my work flow dramatically because I spend a less time waiting for pages to load to get to the page I want.

Content Construction Kit: This is the future of Drupal. This module allows custom fields within a node. By having this node you can turn your nodes into any piece of content that you want. Tie this in with customizing your node display and you have a unique site with little effort.

Views:This module allows seamless and effortless custom displaying of content. This is not to be confused with a custom node display. This, rather, would display multiple pieces of content. For example: a most recent comment display or popular content display. The uses for this module are limitless.

Poormanscron: This module simply runs the cron upon a certain amount of page views, which you configure. This is great for sites that have large amounts of content that need to be updated on a regular basis.

XML Sitemap: If you want your site to be indexed correctly and often, this is the module for you. It creates a sitemap that is submitted to search engines. It updates whenever you make a new piece of content. This saves you from hand making a site map every time you make a new blog.

CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA: These two modules go hand in hand. The CAPTCHA module adds a layer of security to parts of your site that you don't want spam. This could be your contact page, comments for anonymous users, or any other part of your site. The reCAPTCHA module adds to the CAPTCHA module by utilizing a system that uses successful decodings to helps digitise books for online use.

Token: Tokens are small text place holders that can be used for automatic URL aliasing and countless of other applications. Example for automatic URL aliasing would be if you wanted the alias for your blog to be yoursite/blog/titleofblog you simply use tokens in pathauto for your blog to be blog/[title-raw] in which the [title-raw] is the token.

phpass: This module stores password hashes securely. It just add an additional level of security to your passwords. It accomplishes this by stores the hashes in a secondary table using phpass, and removes the insecure MD5 hashes in the user table.

SpamSpan: This moudle obfuscates email addresses to help prevent spambots from collecting them. Once again just another level of security.

More information can be found by clicking on each module link, which will take you to their respective project pages.

Drupal Redesign Voting and Reviews in Theme Categorization

Hank Palan — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:07:55 +0000

As a preface, this discussion goes along with this wiki page over at the Drupal Redesign Group: Improve Theme Categorization

I've been pondering a voting and a review system for the themes for a while now. For many reasons really, but here is my quick conclusion: it won't work the way most voting systems work. Here is why...

Simply put the reason a voting and review system won't work easily is because of change.
Lets say there is a really good theme, everybody votes for it and makes good reviews. Well the next version comes along and it is broken in every way possible, then the maintainer leaves. People who are trusting the voting and review system are in a bad place. They install the theme only to find it has problems, then they submit an issue, and get frustrated because there is nobody there to answer it.
That was an extreme example.

Although a voting and review system is a good idea, its only a good idea when things are constant. Themes as well as modules all can change daily.

With all that said, there could be a few ways voting might work.

If you could only vote or give reviews on actual releases, not dev's, alphas, or beta's.
Voting and reviews only follow that version, new version new set of votes and reviews. However, if the previous version had good reviews and good number of votes, it might automatically get some sort of something that would set it apart. Lets say if it reaches a certain amount of votes, they get a star or something, then that star doesn't go away unless they get voted down alot.
The reward system, aka the star, would keep those who do good constantly in the higher ranks, so they don't have to start at the bottom everytime a release comes out.

If you are interested in this discussion please check out both the wiki page and the discussion. I think it could be very beneficial to not only those looking for themes, but it would keep people from just throwing themes together, rewards are good incentives for quality work.

Drupal and Twitter

Hank Palan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 16:00:00 +0000

Multiple Drupal users posting on a single Twitter Feed. That was my goal. And here is how I accomplished it.

There are many reasons why somebody would want to do this. My reason...to draw traffic to my client's site.

A Drupal 6.x Site
Drupal Modules:

A Twitter Account
A TwitterFeed Account
A Tweetburner Account or various tinyurl site if you want to include a link back to your site.

Ok, now that you have those up and running here is what I did.

Made a new node, with automatic nodetitle set to autogenerate and hide title, and no comments.
Go to Maxlength under admin/settings/maxlength and set your node body length to 117 if you want the entire message plus the tinyurl to show up in the 140 limit in Twitter, otherwise just some other number if you want only part of the message to show in Twitter and then people have to click the link to your site to see the whole thing.
Set up a new view with a feed and a page display. Make the page display however you want and the feed is just a standard feed.
Log into your TwitterFeed Account, add a feed and select your options.
If you are using a url in your twitter make sure to select an appropriate website to generate the url. I went with Tweetburner because it displays your url on its own page...just another place for potential traffic to your site.
Sign into your Twitter account, make a new entry for your twitter node and volia!

Now you can also syndicate your Twitter feed back into your site instead of making a views page by using the drupal FeedAPI or by using:

<div id="twitter_div">
<h2 class="twitter-title">Twitter Updates</h2>
<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul></div>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js"></script>
<script text="text/javascript" src="http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/username.json?callback=twitterCallback2&count=5"></script>

Replace the username.json with your username and you are good to go.
As I go along tweaking this whole set up I will leave updates for all to read.

Views Taxonomy Argument for RSS Feeds

Hank Palan — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 17:35:47 +0000

Use Views to generate feeds for your content based on its taxonomy and vocabulary. This tutorial is assuming you are familiar with Views, if not there are some good tutorials here.

Follow the steps below to get your feeds generated automatically.

Start a new views, name it what you want, and choose a node type
Set up a feed view with the settings that you want. Then follow the steps below:

Feed path: path/%/feed
Argument:

Taxonomy: Term
Title: %1
Validation:

Validator: Taxonomy term
Picked the Vocabulary I wanted
Argument: Taxonomy name or synonym

Case: Capitalize first letter
Transform spaces to dashes in URL - This option was not actually working at the moment, check out this issue.

Now you don't have to keep making new view every time you make a new category.

Leveraging Twitter for your personal blog

Hank Palan — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:21:15 +0000

You want traffic to your blog, but trying to be seen on a search engine is a daunting task. You need to aim at a smaller tighter crowd first, this is where Twitter comes shines.

Twitter is a simple microblogging tool that can be used in unlimited ways. Driving traffic to your personal blog is just one way. If you don't have a Twitter feed of your own I would suggest starting one before you read farther.

Now that you have a Twitter feed all you need to do is syndicate your blog feed to Twitter. Wordpress and Drupal both have plugins or modules that easily integrate into you blog to syndicate your blog to Twitter.

When you create a new blog now, you simply send it over to Twitter and let Twitter do the rest of the work.

If you have compelling or interesting blogs people will be coming to your site faster than you think. If nobody comes at first try writing a few blogs specific topics that people might be following. Be unique and compelling and they will come.

Once you start getting traffic to your blog, you become more noticeable in search engines.

Apple crosses a line

Hank Palan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:48:44 +0000

Apple crosses a line with their recent "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials "Bake Sale" and "Bean Counter". Usually quite funny, Apple's commercials use humor to poke fun at Microsoft. Those commercials serve one purpose only, to make Microsoft look bad and Apple look good.

In the past the commercials have been comparing how Microsoft does something bad and Apple does something good. Most people can accept that, its competition. But as of lately, Apple hasn't been saying anything about their product, what improvements they've made or what an amazing company they think they are, they are just bashing on Microsoft.

The commercials themselves are still humorous, but they have crossed a line at direct rude unprofessional behavior. Not only are they attacking Microsoft for things they do themselves, they are not mentioning anything about Apple They have run out of great amazing things that they have to offer and have resorted to name calling.

Grow up Apple.

Netflix Seals the Deal

Hank Palan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 00:28:27 +0000

Netflix has not only smashed the competition, but set the tone for the future of watching movies. Other movie rental companies have been playing catch up ever since Netflix came into existence. They have trying to come up with their own schemes to win back their customers. But Netflix has finally sealed the deal.

Netflix has for sometime had the option to stream movies over the internet for sometime now, but its crutch has always been on how to view those movies. Most people watch the movies on their small computer monitors. Then there are the lucky few who either have the knowledge or the equipment to watch the movies on their TV's.

Recently Netflix stepped it up a notch and worked with a company to make a dedicated piece of hardware that was capable of streaming movies straight to your TV without a computer. The downside, its only purpose was to stream Netflix movies. That is a big risk to consumers if Netflix goes away or changes something to their policy, they are left with a piece of hardware that does nothing.

So, when they recently announced that they were going to be working with Blu-ray players to be able to stream their movies through the players, now they were on to something.

By incorporating the streaming capability into something that already serves a purpose, they have accomplished two goals:

Made it easy for consumers to finally be able to stream movies to their TV's
Made it easy for themselves by attaching to something that already, or will soon sit in a lot of people's homes

Blu-ray players aren't the only ones getting this capability, Xbox 360 and I'm sure the Playstation 3, will be getting software updates to support Netflix streaming.

So for all those other movie rental places out there still renting DVD's and VHS's good luck staying in business with your current business model.

Drupal Podcasting...The wait is over

Hank Palan — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 01:37:59 +0000

When you hear Drupal content management, you would assume that Drupal would be king at podcasting. But, until just recently, it has been hard, and not very future proof.

Podcasters listen up! The time is now to have Drupal be your podcast management system.

I am assuming that you have some knowledge of Drupal and know how to install modules. If not check out this handbook first.

Drupal 6.x (the current version at time of writing is 6.4)
CCK
Views 2
FileField Podcaster
FileField
getid3
jQuery Media or SWF Tools
Feedburner (optional)

Each of those modules have documentation on how to install and troubleshoot if you run into problems.

This podcast from Mustardseed Media here covers most of the installation of the Filefield Podcaster module.

The Filefield Podcaster module takes a different approach in that it is a CCK Field an thus integrates into the future of Drupal.

The part that the Filefield Podcaster doesn't cover are some extra tags like multiple categories or other things that may or may not make it into your audio id3 tags.

Check you feed out over here to see if it is iTunes compatible. Or if you just want to make sure it is a valid feed check here.

If you find you are really missing some tags you wish you had in your podcast but don't know how to include them. This is where the Feedburner module comes in.

If you send your feeds through feed burner, you can make sure they will be more iTunes compatible and you get excellent statistics of all your feeds.

If you don't want to use Feedburner and just want to have good id3 tagging you can do this by iTunes itself or by alternate Mac options like dBpoweramp or MediaMonkey. There are many options out there to correctly set up your id3 for your audio.

Make sure you detail each audio file as much as possible before adding the other tags via Feedburner. Use Feedburner as a compliment to your id3 tags because once the audio leaves its feed for a listeners computer, it is on it's own and must retain all the information you need it to.

Final and last point. What if you have several podcast on a single site? How can you set up feeds based on the category they are in?
This will be covered in my next blog titled Views Taxonomy Argument for RSS Feeds.

Theming a Node in Drupal...The Easy Way

Hank Palan — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:52:00 +0000

This is a step by step instruction with code on how to theme your Drupal node-custom.tpl.php files. Theming a Node in Drupal is the number one way to set your Drupal site apart.

If you understand basic HTML, CSS, and PHP then you are already most of the way there, if not, then try to follow what I'm going to say.

I first stumbled across an amazing piece of code by watching a podcast from Mustardseed Media Inc. I'm going to just expand on what he said and go into a little more detail here and there. I would recommend watching a few more of his podcasts as he does a really good job showing you how to do basic Drupal things.

First make a dummy node entry for the type that you will be modifying, we will use it later.

Then make a new node template for the node you are trying to custom theme. This is done in two ways:

Copy the existing node.tpl.php file (if you only want to move a few things around) and rename it to node-custom.tpl.php, the "custom" part is the machine readable name you gave your node.
For example: a blog entry would be node-blog.tpl.php
The other way is to simply make a new text file on your computer and name it node.tpl.php, this will give you a completely blank canvas to work with.

Once you have your new file made, put this piece of code at the bottom or if you started new then simply paste this code into your node-custom.tpl.php:

<?php print_r($node) ?>

Either just save your file or upload it to your ftp, depending on how you are working on your site.
Refresh your browser on the dummy node entry you made earlier. Notice now that after your content a bunch of other stuff now shows up. That is what we will be referencing later.

To use the code that is displayed on your node entry properly you must understand what it is doing.
These are php functions that we will call to our template and then manipulate to our hearts desire. Lets take a simple piece to start out with. I've set up a demo node with a node-demo.tpl.php you can find HERE. In the node-demo.tpl.php file, all I have printed is

<?php print_r($node) ?>

The text in the [brackets] are the functions that we are going to be using.
Starting off with something simple:

<?php print $node->content ?>

I want you to notice a few things here all the php coding we will be doing will all include:

<?php print ?>

We are simply printing the desired functions. The next part $node is referencing that we are working with a node type. and finally notice that the first level of the function isn't in [brackets]. If you use the rest of the function they will need to be enclosed in [brackets] like this:

<?php print $node->content ['body]['#value']'?>

Make sure you use 'apostrophes' around the text in the [brackets], unless it is a number.

To print the content that you want. First, find the field that you want and then find the appropriate children or layers below that field until you get to the actual text, image, or other content. For example if you look again at the demo page HERE.

If I wanted to print the custom cck text field I made for the node. I first find the [field_custom], that is the machine readable name I made when setting up the cck field for the node. Note that there are actually two of these, you want to find the one that is not under the [content]. Then I find either the array above the final function or the final function itself. In this case I find the array [0]. Then I find the final function [value].

Now you put the php code together like this:

<?php print $node->field_custom[0]['value'] ?>

Now that you can print the functions you want, you can simply re-order them to suite your needs or change the css to fit your needs.

You can customize the style.css file also found in your theme's folder.
For example:
If you want a 1px black solid border around your content you make a new id in your style.css that looks something like this:

 #contentbox {
    border: 1px solid #000;
    }

And then on your node-custom.tpl.php put this:

<div id="contentbox">
   anything you want in this div goes here
 </div>

Update your online or offline files and see the change.

These are the basics for customizing a node from the php to the css. With this knowledge go out and make great sites that look great, function better, and fit you specific needs not the default needs of all Drupal sites.

Advice for New Drupal Users...or those interested in Drupal

Hank Palan — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 07:05:15 +0000

I first became aware of Drupal when I was working as a video editor for The Battalion-The Series. The company produces a weekly online video series about the men and women firefighters around the United States. In order to get create revenue for the series, the site needed more people coming to the site and staying longer. This is when I turned to Drupal.

The company and I decided to make the site a social site, a very specific social site, one for firefighters and enthusiasts. Since the company was on a low budget, I obviously could not hire a whole team of developers to create my vision. I scoured the web for solutions. Drupal came up over and over again and I took the plunge. At this point I knew almost no coding and very little design.

As a new Drupal user I was eager to understand all I could. As of today, I am still a long way off. I remember reading some where that it would take at least 6 months to really get a grasp of Drupal. I quickly laughed that off, because I'm smart and quick to learn right? Wrong. It took me all that to go from nothing, to quickly navigating and implementing what I wanted. So there it is...my first piece of advice for Drupal users. Be Patient.

Being Patient
Drupal like most web development is not easy, and can sometimes be downright hard. Drupal makes hard things easier though, much much easier. Make it a point to be a humble "newbie" for a while until you really start to understand things. Read as much as possible before making a comment or posting a question. Read, read, read.

Understand that Drupal is open source and a community. Most of Drupal developers do what the do for free...yup you heard it FREE. So before you complain or harass somebody for not fixing a bug or not porting a module that you just "have" to have, take into consideration that they are working on their own time.

Once you have overcome your "newbie" stage, start helping out where you can. At first this will be testing out modules or trying new themes and providing valuable and helpful feedback. Point number two...Give Back.
Giving Back
Even though you think your not ready or you don't know enough at this point, giving back can be done in several ways:

First and easiest is feedback. Two people working on an idea is better than one, and a multitude can accomplish amazing things. Try out a module and give constructive feedback, report bugs that you may encounter and be very detail. The more the developer knows about the bug, the faster and easier they can fix it for you and everyone else.

Ask for Features. Maybe you thought of something the author hasn't yet. No idea is a bad idea, stupid or not practical maybe, but not bad. Fresh input is always welcome if done correctly and thoughtfully.

The next step could be providing documentation. This is the last thing that a developer thinks about and one of the easiest ways you can help out. Contact the author and ask if you can help out. Provide easy and concise steps on how to install and other various tidbits of information about the module.

Once you are comfortable enough, help answer questions in the issues and support forums. Then move on to helping the developers write code or come up with practical solutions. Wait did I just say write code? In fact I did and coincidentally that is my next point. Learn Code.
Learning Code
This is a broad topic, but can be quite easy. Drupal is a tool to help you achieve your end goal. But like any tool, you must know how to use it. Or if the tool doesn't quite fit the purpose you must modify and change the tool.

In order to accomplish your end goal you must modify Drupal and in the end that means with some piece of custom code somewhere along the way. Whether this is overriding a theme or modifying a module, nine times out of ten, you are going to have to write code.

You don't have to be an expert or know all the coding languages. Just start with the basics and expand from there. Go buy a coding book or do research online. Search engines will be your new best friend with learning code. Try out the code, and if it doesn't work try to understand why it doesn't work. But you must remember point one, be patient. Don't get frustrated when something doesn't work the first time. There is always a reason why it doesn't work, take some time and trace the steps and you will come out with a solution.

Pick a side, modules or themes. They both interact with each other, but can be considered completely different. You may be better at one then the other or just understand one better. This is not to say that you must not try to understand both as mentioned before they work together.

To sum it all up, Be Patient, Give Back, and Learn Code. Who knows you could be apart of something really big!