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April, 2008

Drupal: Basic Terminology

Submitted by Wyatt on Tue, 04/29/2008 - 11:21

I need to take a quick step back in my process and make a brief note about Drupal Terminology. Almost every other Drupal instruction set I have read include a significant amount of time devoted to terminology. From a general perspective I don't like doing this because I would rather use terms people understand. But, the world of Drupal has it own language regardless of what would be easy for beginners. In the grand scheme I think it  is good. The language and terms used by Drupal are very exact and as a result, once understood, it is very helpful.

Here goes. I may add to this as I run into terms that are critical to a new section of lessons. All descriptions are given as they apply to Drupal. I have tried to organize them as they need to be understood from most basic general to more in depth and Drupal specific.

Drupal: A web based Content Management System. Translitteration of the word Drop in Dutch (Druppel). Originally a misspelling of the Dutch word Dorp, which means community.

Content Management System (CMS): A system where data can be stored in a standardize format on a server. The data can be viewed, created or edited through a styled or themed user interface. In the case of Drupal it is also expandable to allow for numerous types of data or methods of alteration.

Core: Refers to the basic Drupal package downloaded from drupal.org. Core includes the basic application code as well as included expansion modules and themes. Everything included in core is highly tested and tends to be very stable.

Module: An extension to Drupal used to add functionality not included in the basic CMS. Examples of core modules include blogs, forums, polls. Users can add functionality to Drupal by creating new modules. The number of user contributed modules is enormous. I will discuss individual modules later in the book.

Theme: The appearance that the user of Drupal sees when accessing or editing content. Several basic themes are included in Drupal core. However, to give a website a unique look a feel a new theme (or sub-theme) will be required. The Zen Theme is designed to be easily changeable and upgradeable.

Node: The broad Drupal term to describe a piece of content. This content could be text, images, audio files or even a page of other nodes. Nodes can be created, edited and reorganized and manipulated by users or  modules. Comments are an exception to this rule, they are not nodes. 

Taxonomy: Drupal organization. Taxonomy allows tagging and structure to be added to Nodes so they can be easily sorted and organized. Taxonomy is broken into two parts or levels first vocabulary then terms. For a simple example, on my site I have a vocabulary "post_type" and terms like "Woodworking", "Cooking", "Family" and "Drupal". I can then organize my content using these terms so when you click on the woodworking page you only get woodworking.

Path: what appears in the URL location when you are looking at content. Using the Clean URL features changes these from something rather convoluted like "www.yourdomain.com/?q=node/4105" to something pretty like "www.yourdomain.com/how_to_do_this".

For now I think this will do. It is not comprehesive I just want to make sure I don't use a term that is completely foreign.

 

MP3 update

Submitted by Wyatt on Mon, 04/28/2008 - 12:58
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So, I resolved my MP3 player dilemna and so far I am happy. I ended up buying a 4GB Creative Zen. It can do most of the things you would expect, plays audio video and photos. But for all intensive purposes I just wanted an MP3 player for my audio books. To that purpose I have discovered it is quite a lot better suited than my Sandisk Sansa C250 was. Given, my Sandisk was only $40, but compared to my new player it was pretty rough around the edges. The Zen has a really nice bookmark feature which allows me to stop a book and switch to music or a lecture and return to my place in the original book later. When you plugged the C250 into a PC it effectively reset the player resulting in losing your place in the file when you unplug, the Zen does not share this problem. Speaking of PC interface I was pleasantly surprised to find that the PC interface was not bad as many reviewers had stated. While Creative players do not allow the PC to treat their memory like a flash drive they do, at least on new versions, allow you to drag and drop content from your music or video folder directly to a folder on the player. II understand Creative is just simulating this behavior but so far it has worked seemlessly. I also started using the Zencast software that came with it and so far it seems to work great. I am excited to start getting regular audio and videocasts when I plug my player in to my computer. Overall I was surprised at how seemless the interface is and I am very satisified. In general this is a fine player and certainly serves all of my purposes. At $88 from Buy.com after $10 off for google checkout it appears to be a great deal.

Wyatt

Drupal: Now a Basics Book

Submitted by Wyatt on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 21:03

I have now implemented the Book module in order to capture my writing on Drupal Basics. My plan is to introduce Drupal as an idea. Then, as I learn to use it, I will add pages to my book passing along my experience. I have found that as I have learned to use Drupal the documentation is largely aimed at user at a much high knowledge level then me or perhaps it is just very difficult to find. My goal is to give a  basic working knowledge of Drupal such that you can set up a site and use the elements of this CMS that I have experience with. We will see how it works.

As of now I have a simple description of what Drupal is and what it can do. I have also add a section on how to install drupal and cover a few of the easier to resolve but more common problems that you may run into.

I appreciate your feedback so feel free to leave comments.

Drupal: A Basic Introduction

Submitted by Wyatt on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 08:39

I have built my site using Drupal an open source content management system (CMS). This basically means that the data shown on my website is stored in a database and displayed on demand to you, the happy viewer. A CMS is kind of the alternative to using a program like frontpage to make a webpage using HTML. Perhaps it is best described as a blog on steroids. A blog is just a very simple CMS. In blog you type in a story add pictures and the system puts the post on the front page. In a big kid CMS like Drupal or Joomla you write stories and add pictures and then you decide where to put the content and how it will look and feel.

In addition to stories and pictures Drupal does all sorts of other stuff. You can think of it as a computer. You buy a computer and it comes with notepad and a few other programs. It can only do really basic things. But, if you add an internet connections, a flash drive, some other programs, a camera and a printer, your computer can do all sorts of things. The same is true in Drupal, in addition to allowing you to write stories Drupal also allows you to create static pages, polls and all sort of other content. You can add a real blog feature to allow other people to have blogs on your site or forums to let people share information and have running conversations. You can also add things like picture galleries to share photos. But really this is just the beginning. You can add more underlying features to make the webpage look and behave the way you want it to. Such is the power of Modules.

The last thing for this summary is just a brief hit on appearance. Drupal is also designed to be fairly easy to make look good. It uses themes which are basically general appearance modifiers to make your website look how you want it to look. As you can see from my page I am no expert. I will be learning themes and then writing another article about how to make your webpage look really cool. I suppose this all assumes that I can accomplish my goal of having a not ugly website. 

For more information visit the drupal.org webpage, lullabot.com, a drupal educational site, or look at the recent lessons at learn.awakenedvoice.com.

One last comment in parting. As I am brand new to Drupal if any big kid Drupal people read my lowly site correct my errors. This is really just my best understanding of how Drupal works. Hopefully I will be able to impart some useful information to beginners in such a way that more people will use Drupal for basic websites. Thus advancing the Drupal goals of world domination.

 

Drupal: A Basic Installation

Submitted by Wyatt on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 08:38

So there are a bunch of really good examples of how to install drupal on the web. Do a google search for "drupal install" and you will get a bunch of screenshot laden instructions. For instructions I will do it in text and only for a specific example: that of installing English Drupal 6.x to a hosted domain on the web from a Windows based PC. I am going to assume you have a basic knowledge of getting around a PC and understand general PC terminology. There are a few things required to complete the installation:

  1. A webhost and a domain. Your domain needs to support PHP4 or PHP5 and let you create MYSQL databases. These are offered by most decent hosts. I use 1and1 hosting.  They have a cheap hosting plan that gives plenty of storage 600 emails and 10 MYSQL Databases. This is more than enough for a first website. Cost is 3.99 a month + your domains.
  2. You will need to create a MYSQL database. This is usually something you can do from your hosting administration page.
  3. You need an FTP transfering tool - I recommend Filezilla. It is free, very easy to use and flexible. You should take note of your FTP login. This is available on your hosting administration page.
  4. You need to download Drupal from the Drupal website. I will assume you are using Drupal 6 because it is what I know.
  5. You should have a program to decompress .tar and .gz files. I recommend 7zip. Again it is free and works well.

Once you have all of these things prepared getting your Drupal site up and installed only takes a few minutes. You will start by extracting the drupal files to your computer. Then, open Filezilla and login to your domain (once you have logged in once you can login quickly by clicking the small arrow next to the Quickconnect button and select your login). A view of the file structure of your PC is on the left and your web server is on the right. Navigate to you drupal folder and and select all the files and folders from the directory and drag them to your webserver location associated with your domain (you do not want to copy the drupal folder to your server or it will install drupal at www.yourdomain.com/drupal/ rather than www.yourdomain.com). Now you are ready to install.

(A note to 1and1 users and other who find problems with Memory or clean URLs not working. There are a couple of kind of geeky things you need to do in order to enable some critical features. You will need to create a file call php.ini. Open notepad with a blank file. Add the following two lines of text

register_globals = off
memory_limit = 32 M

Save this file as php.ini in your local drupal folder using the Save As... command. This will tell the PHP server to give allocate you 32MB of memory and disable register globals something you need for clean URLs.

You will also need to modify you .htaccess file in order to enable clean URLs.  Navigate to your Drupal folder and open the .htaccess file using wordpad. Move down about 2/3 through the file and find # Various rewrite rules. Insert the following the lines of text in between the "#Various rewrite rules." and "</IfModule>"

RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /

Save the file and close Wordpad. These changes will enable the server to run the clean URL code. The last thing you need to do is upload these two files using Filezilla. Both files should be placed in your main domain directory. Filezilla will prompt you to overwrite the existing .htaccess file click Yes/OK).

Time to install...Open your web browser and navigate to your domain. You should be met with a pretty drupal install.

  • Select "Install Drupal in English".
  • Drupal will do a server verification to make sure all is well.
  • Enter the appropriate information about your MySQL database from your MySQL setting on your hosting administration page (for 1and1 and some other hosting services you will need to click the advanced settings and enter the database host)
  • Drupal will install for a few seconds
  • Enter your websites Name and enter the email address you want associated with the account. It is probably a good idea to create a special email address or alias under your domain to use. Perhaps admin@yourdomain.com or webmaster@yourdomain.com
  • Next you create the master administrator account. "admin" is probably a good user name any email will do but perhaps admin@yourdomain.com is best. Create a good password more than 6 characters include a number and a symbol
  • Last enable clean URLS if it is not grayed out.
  • Press OK and see your new website.

Get ready in my next post we will choose a set of features and determine how to set them up. We will talk about a few contributed modules that can quickly enable some really neat add-ons.

I will soon add some new information about GoDaddy.

 

Quick Melting Pot Review

Submitted by Wyatt on Wed, 04/23/2008 - 11:51
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Sarah and I went out on a date last night. Without Peter... three cheers to Katie and Ed for taking care of Peter for us.

We decided to head for Bellevue and have a little dessert at the Melting pot. We spent a while window shopping at the various new shops in the new mall downtown. We went into the container store and we mentioned the Melting Pot. The guy at the counter mentioned they have a great happy hour in their lounge. So we monkeyed around for another half hour and then headed off toward the Melting Pot. The walk took another 15 minutes and we arrived at about 8:45. Happy hour started at 9:00. We went in sat down and started browsing the menus. The bartender came over in about 5 minutes and said the happy hour was started. We ordered Dark Chocolate Fondue, A Honey Almond Brie Cheese Plate and a couple drinks (Sarah getting her's virgin).

To start I need to step back. I haven't been to the Melting Pot in years, almost 9. Then it was the Seattle store and the ambiance was dark warm and kind of unfinished. The ceiling was just open to the ventilation and it didn't feel quite as nice as the price would indicate. The Bellevue shop is decidely different from that experience. It was very classy and felt very finished. The seats were comfortable although I have to recommend the chairs to the benches. Sarah was on a bench and the back was very steep and a little uncomfortable.

The drinks were great. The pacing of service was perfect for an evening out (but might have been a bit slow if we had been on a schedule). They brought out the Brie which was quite delicious although not really my favorite style (sitting in a pool of honey). The serving of Brie was very generous and tasted of high quality for an appetizer that was only $4. The cheese was accompanied with crackers, apple slices and grapes. They all went very well with the Brie. Just after we finished off the Brie our chocolate fondue came out.

The chocolate was great. It was served with a variety of fruit, cookies and cakes and marshmellows. The strawberries in particular were delicious as was the pound cake. Rice Crispie treats were a new addition from the last visit to the Melting Pot and were a welcome addition. Both Sarah and I thoroughly enjoyed the variety of food that was presented.

Speaking of presenation... Both the Brie and Fondue plates looked delicious. It is always a pleasure to have food served in a stylish and elegant manner. It made the whole dessert feel a little more special.

In conclusion - It has been a long time since our last visit to the Melting Pot but this experience has made a new favorite. I am sure we will be returning soon to try the other types of Brie and perhaps a cheese fondue. Overall this made for a great night out and was overall a great value.

Happy Hour specials included reduced price beer (3.50 or 2.50)and wine (6.00)as well as premium well drinks (4.50). Select Cheese Fondue or Chocolate Fondues were $8 Select Salads or Brie plates were $4.

 

About Us

Hi! My name is Wyatt Erickson. I have been trying to get a family website up and running for quite a while. Finally I think I have built more or less what I want. It has grown from a basic Wordpress blog to a simple but growing Drupal site. Here is a little about the folks you see in the picture on the upper right and in the gallery.
  • Wyatt Erickson - I am an electrical engineer and work in the server backup industry. In particular I work on tape backup libraries with Quantum Corp. This may sound pretty dry but most recently I got to design a pretty cool multiple axis robot picker. It is pretty cool stuff. I am married to a wonderful wife Sarah, have a 2 year old and also a Bun in the oven. My wife is one amazing cook.
  • Sarah Erickson - I am a formal biologist turn mother. I love cooking and gardening and look forward to sharing my thoughts on these subjects. I am involved with MOPS (Mothers of Preschoolers) and BSF (Bible Study Fellowship).
  • Peter - I don't say much but I love Legos, Hoses and small appliances with cords. I love working in the shop with Dad. I am excited about my baby brother who is coming soon.
  • Luke - Is just a wee Bairn. He is healthy and getting big way to fast.
 

What to name Number Two (the Unknown)

Submitted by Wyatt on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 10:59
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So you would think that naming a child would be pretty easy. We named Peter and it sure was. We looked through some books and found Peter both Sarah and I loved the name it worked really well. Settled... Number Two has not been nearly so easy. The story begins before we were even pregnant. We found out my uncle (actually my 2nd Cousin) was sick with Cancer. It turned out to be terminal and truly truncated a wonderful man's life. Prior to his passing away Sarah and I decided that we would either his first or middle name as the middle name of our next child. We talked it over with him and he wanted us to use his first name, Dale. So when Sarah got pregnant we figured we had smooth sailing, we were, after all, half way there. Unfortunately for us, no name jumped out of the books. We looked and hunted and instead of one name we got a bunch of names. You can see the list in the poll at right. So we are seeking feedback. What should we name our next little dude. ______ Dale Erickson.

What should we name our new baby boy? His middle name is already chosen as Dale.

Submitted by Wyatt on Mon, 04/21/2008 - 10:46

My MP3 Player Dilemna

Submitted by Wyatt on Fri, 04/18/2008 - 17:38
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Well my site has been up for all of 4 or 5 days and I have not made a post so it is about time. So you may or may not know that I am completely addicted to listening to books on my MP3 player. I love Librivox. If you have never checked it out it may be one of the coolest things on the Internet. Basically it is a community site devoted to the recording text from the public domain into MP3 format. Currently there are about 1500 books recorded in English and several hundred others in other languages. It is amazing. For obvious reasons (copyright being the big ) there are no modern books but there are a ton of classics, basically anything written pre-1930 is fair game. So, over the last year and half since I discovered librivox.org I have listened to somewhere on the order of 100 books. It is definitely worth checking out. Back to the topic at hand. So I listen to these books on my Sandisk Sansa C250. Until last week. Now for the third time my player has failed. I lost output to my left headphone. This is the same way the first one failed 3 months after I bought it. The warranty replacement failed almost out of box for a bad battery connection. The third failed after 6 more months. Now I need a new MP3 player and I am no longer under warranty. So, I don't think I can, in good conscience, buy another Sandisk player. As an electrical engineer I disassembled the player I had and found the problem (poor PCB layout). Then I looked at disassembly pictures of a Sansa Clip and saw the exact same connector. I did note that the Sansa Fuze has a much better connector and mounting scheme but I don't think I can bring myself to buy another Sansa after this experience. So I am switching over to who... IPOD is very MAC everything is proprietary and it is not very compatible with open DRM (like for library audio books or Audible.com). The Creative products are fine except that they don't treat the device like a drive so moving media is tricky. iRiver products have a good PC interface but the low end products get bad reviews. The Cowon products appear to be great but they start out of my price range (<80). So what do I do. updated: This morning I made a trip to Circuit City and got to hold on to a couple of different players. I decided I liked the new Creative ZEN. Unfortunately CC only sells the 8GB version and it is $150. When I got home I found the 2GB version for $69 on Amazon. What a deal. I ordered one. Now I am just trying to decide if I should have gone with the 4GB version. I guess I can always add space with the SD slot.