Drupal and the CMS Project

Lesson Learned #1• Keep your modules updated, especially

when there are security concerns in the update notes

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• From: <drupal-admin@yoursite.com>Date: Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 3:39 PMSubject: New release(s) available for <Your Site Name>To: kolafson@uwaterloo.ca

There are security updates available for one or more of your modules or themes. To ensure the security of your server, you should update immediately!

See the available updates page for more information:http://www.yoursite.com/admin/reports/updates

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Update Status Email

Update Status Report

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Lesson Learned #2• Set up a cron job or Windows

scheduled task to hit cron.php on your Drupal installation at regular intervals

• Usually every hour

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The Drupal /sites folder• When you install Drupal, the /sites folder contains

2 directories, “all” and “default”

• You can host additional sites by making new directories in the /sites folder with the name of the site and copying the settings.php file there from the default directory

– For instance, /sites/krisbase.com

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The Drupal /sites folder• Modules and themes you want available to every

site go in the /sites/all/modules and /sites/all/themes folders

• Modules you only want available to a specific site go in that site’s modules and themes folders– ex. /sites/krisbase.com/modules

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Lesson Learned #3• Don’t modify the Drupal Core files

• (Don’t touch anything outside of the /sites directory)

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The End of the Road

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Hooks in Drupal• foo_bar()

– “foo” is the name of the module– “bar” is the name of the hook

• uwblogs_block()

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Theme Developer Module

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Lesson Learned #4• There is a module for that!

• Most common needs already have one or more modules built to address them

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Linodef + • Linodef Taglists + • Linodef WYSIWYG + • WYSIWYG

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Image + • Image Assist + • WYSIWYG + • TinyMCE

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Imagefield + • Imagefield Assist + • Imagecache

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Imagebrowser (v1) + • Image + • ImageCache + • FCKEditor

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Imagebrowser (v2) + • WYSIWYG + • ImageCache + • Views

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Inline

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Insert + • WYSIWYG + • ImageField + • ImageCache

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Media + • Styles + • WYSIWYG + • CKEditor

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Nodereference Explorer, + • Insert + • WYSIWYG

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• Prosepoint Modules

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• WYSIWYG + • CKEditor (js) + • WYSIWYG Image Upload

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions• WYSIWYG + • CKEditor (js) + • CKFinder

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Drupal Inline Image Solutions

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Module Description

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Bug and Issue Queues

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Project Information (good)

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Project Information (yikes!)

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Sometimes modules don’t play nicely together

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Now what?

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Lesson Learned #5

• Contributed modules go in the /sites/all/modules folder

• or /sites/<sitename>/modules

• not in /modules folder with the core modules that ship with Drupal

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Enabling Modules with Drush• Navigate to one of your Drupal sites in the shell

• drush dl <module_name> downloads the most recent production version of the module

• drush en <module_name> enables it

• You can also disable modules with drush, which is handy if you have a WSOD and can’t access your admin menu

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Drush .make Files

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Drupal Commons

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Managing News

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Open Atrium

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Blog Requirements• Bloggers should be able to tag their posts

– Should be simple using the Drupal Taxonomy module

– Tags should have auto-complete functionality and bloggers should only see the suggestions that they previously entered

• Blogs should share some taxonomies

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Blog Requirements• Bloggers should be able to use a

WYSIWYG editor so they can style their posts without HTML knowledge

• Bloggers should be able to upload photos and place them where they want in their posts

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Blog Requirements• Users should be allowed to comment on

blog posts if the blogger allows it

• Users should be able to login with CAS

• The Blogger’s real name should appear beside their posts, not their username

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Blog Requirements• The blog must meet accessibility standards

• Blog owners should be allowed to customize their banner image

• Blog owners should be able to add pages to their blogs (ex. About Us)

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Blog Requirements• Blogs should be allowed to have more

than one blogger

– For instance a blog for a research lab may have several people posting to it

– The blog owner should have the ability to moderate these posts

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Approach #1Drupal Core Blog Module

• Drupal ships with a module that is described as a “multi user blog”– Each user can create a blog under their own

username

– A block is created that shows recent blog posts

– The Blog content type can be extended to meet some of the requirements that are not met

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Approach #1Drupal Core Blog Module

• It only provides one blog per user

• It doesn’t meet our requirements, let’s try something else…

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Approach #2Organic Groups

• Allows users to create and manage groups that can have subscribers

• Each group can have more than one moderator

• Each group can have a different theme

• Blog posts can be tied to organic groups

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Approach #2Organic Groups

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Approach #2Organic Groups

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Approach #2Organic Groups

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

• Content Construction Kit

• Lets you extend nodes with custom fields– Text, Links– File and image uploads– Links to taxonomies– And much more!

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

• We will make 2 custom content types– Blogs and Blog Posts

– Blogs are tied to the users who are allowed to post to them with a User Reference field

– Blog Posts are tied to Blogs with a Node Reference field

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Lesson Learned #6• Internet Explorer freaks out if you link

to more than 31 CSS files!

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Lesson Learned #7• If the changes you make aren’t

appearing, be sure to clear your Drupal cache

• (and possibly the browser cache as well)

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

For a specific post:• http://blogs.uwaterloo.ca/kris-blog/2010/12/17/my-blog-post-name

For all posts in December:• http://blogs.uwaterloo.ca/kris-blog/2010/12

For all posts in 2010:• http://blogs.uwaterloo.ca/kris-blog/2010

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Approach #3: Custom Content Types and Node Relationships

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Conclusion• Contributed modules will often get you

90% of the way there, but that last 10% can be a killer

• It is worth the effort to use Drupal so we can get our content into one place and do fine grained searches on it

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