/dev/random » Drupal

Software Upgrades

mike — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:40:43 +0000

I just upgraded this site to WordPress 2.6 and MacMegasite to Drupal 5.8. Both upgrades were quick & painless.

prMac simplified my workflow

mike — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 04:23:52 +0000

A lot of the news I post at MacMegasite comes from prMac. Until now I received the news articles via email and would clean up, reformat, and post the items manually. Recently the people at prMac released a Drupal module that automatically retrieves and post news. For the last few days I’ve been having it [...]

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Drupal 6 disappointment

mike — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 23:07:38 +0000

I’m starting to get pretty disgusted with Drupal 6. I took another look at it today and the module compatibility situation is still dismal. Common modules like CCK and Views still aren’t fully compatible with Drupal 6. For MacMegasite, I would lose the buddy lists, user points, and custom home pages. The situation is even worse for WorldBeatPlanet and my2unz, where I depend on media support and custom node types.

I realize most of the Drupal modules aren’t developed by the core team, but they should make an effort to work with module contributors to ensure compatibility and officially support some of the more critical modules such as CCK & Views.

Evaluating Drupal 6.0

mike — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 03:17:12 +0000

I’ve been trying out Drupal 6.0 and it looks like this will be one of the most painful upgrades. I tried it with a local copy of MacMegasite and I found that it broke almost everything.

I don’t use too many modules, but I use some pretty basic stuff like user points, buddy list, bbcode filter, adsense, service links, and twitter. None of them are compatible with Drupal 6 yet. It’s been in development for over a year, and most modules still haven’t been upgraded to work with it.

I avoided using betas of 6.0 because of the module compatibility problems, and I find that the problem still exists in the release version. It looks like I won’t be upgrading any of my sites too soon.

Drupal 6.0 Released

mike — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 23:02:08 +0000

Drupal 6.0 has finally been released. This weekend I will probably start working on upgrading MacMegasite, since it will be a lot more straightforward than worldbeatplanet or my2unz, which depend on a lot of extra modules for content types and features.

Some of the enhancements in Drupal 6.0 I’m especially excited about include:

Simplified administration: instead of entering weight values to reorder menus & blocks, you can drag and drop to rearrange them.
OpenID support: I can allow logins using OpenID to simplify registration.
Improved theming: Themes use less PHP code, so most customization can be done only with CSS & HTML templates.
Improved security
Improved performance

Facebook app for my2unz

mike — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:56:09 +0000

I’ve created a Facebook app for my2unz. It doesn’t do anything other than let you visit and log in to my2unz, but I intend to use it for embedding playlists in facebook profiles.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Drupal 6.0 RC3 released

mike — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 01:29:16 +0000

The third release candidate of Drupal 6.0 has been released. I’ll probably try it out on my local machine this weekend. I should be able to update MacMegasite without too much trouble since it doesn’t use too many modules. WorldBeatPlanet & my2unz.com, on the other hand, use some modules that have aren’t compatible with Drupal [...]

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A new look for MacMegasite

mike — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:20:20 +0000

I switched to a new theme & logo at MacMegasite, and I also de-cluttered the sidebars. I’m still looking at more themes and working on the logo, so I may still change it if I find something I like better.

The last few days I’ve looked at a lot of WordPress & Drupal themes. Almost none of them are truly ‘ready to go’. I always find little bugs such as misaligned list items or conflicts with various modules. I also found that many of the WordPress themes that claim to be widget-ready really aren’t.

MacMegasite happenings

mike — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 02:43:37 +0000

I’ve made a few changes at MacMegasite and there will be more coming in the next few weeks.

First of all, Daniel Brusilovsky is officially a staff member! Hopefully we’ll add more staff this year. Look for a staff bio page to be added soon.

I’ve also added the mysite module, which lets users set up their own ‘my macmegasite’ page with their favorite content, on the style of iGoogle or PageFlakes.

I’ve cleaned up the user registration system to check for valid email addresses and purge any users who don’t activate their account by clicking the link in the registration email. As a result, several hundred user accounts that were never activated and never logged in have been deleted.

My MacHeist referral seems to be paying very well, and after that’s finished I will have additional paying sponsors.

Performance improvements

mike — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:05:09 +0000

I’ve adjusted the cache settings and added the Block Cache module to MacMegasite, which seem to improve the performance. I’ve also had to increase the memory & CPU for my DreamHost Virtual Private Server several times in the last few days when the load got too high. Hopefully with the cache changes I won’t have [...]

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