From time to time people will ask me questions about problems they are having with content not displaying properly in nodes. Site developers may have problems displaying images, javascript, flash and php code. The problem is usually related to the input format chosen when publishing the node. The following video provides a very detailed look at how input formats work within Drupal.

Quicktime Video

Input Format Basics

There are three "out of the box" input formats for Drupal. These formats can be found on your site at admin/settings/filters.

1. Filtered HTML - This format allows very basic text input and some HTML. This is a good format for comments and user generated content since it limits the ability of the user to add malicious code to the node.
2. Full HTML - This format allows the full range of HTML tags including <embed> codes that are typically used for inserting widgets or embedded videos. This is my preferred format as a site administrator for creating all nodes and blocks on my sites. You can open this up to site users but it's recommended only for logged in users that have accounts at your site.
3. PHP Code -  This format allows the posting of PHP code. This is used to customize the nodes on your site. There is a gallery of PHP snippets on Drupal.org where you can find examples thay may help extend the features of your site. This is a format that should only be available to admin users of the site. Opening up the PHP format to users jeopardizes the security of the site. So take great care when using this format.

The input formats in Drupal are highly customizable so you're not stuck with the exact formats that come standard with Drupal. Since these input formats greatly effect how and what content is posted to your site it is definitely a worthwhile investment of time to get to know them better.

I receive a fair amount of inquiries from people who are in the process of building out video based communities on top of the Drupal platform. The most important questions center around the functionality related to uploading, transcoding and storing video. What modules or techniques can be used to fully integrate community submitted video to a Drupal site?

The Basics 

It's important to note that there are three basic functions that need to take place in order to have a fully integrated video community built on Drupal. Users will need to upload videos. Those videos usually get transcoded to Adobe Flash on the server so that they can be presented in a web based player. The video then needs to be stored and delivered on demand from a server.

There's no one single way that Drupal supports the three functions required to power a video based community. So it's on the site developer to do some research and testing to figure out the method that will work best for them.

Budget Makes A Difference

I think that the method you will use to accomplish the development of a video based community will depend greatly on  the budget you have set for building the site. The most expensive option would allow you to simply hire a Drupal-savvy developer to code a custom module that will assist with uploading, transcoding and transporting the video to a content delivery network or CDN. Less expensive options would include utilizing existing Drupal modules or integrating with a video service that has the ability to plug in to Drupal via an API. No matter what you budget I believe that your first step will involve researching the options available today. I accent the word today because the world of Drupal is ever changing. So if the module or API you need doesn't exist today it could very well exist tomorrow.

Tackle Storage and Delivery First

As far as I'm concerned it makes the most sense to figure out your video storage and delivery provider first. One reason this is so important is that your storage and delivery will greatly affect the performance of your site. And if your site is slow or frequently unavailable chances are users won't spend too much time there. Another important issue is cost. Storage and delivery of video can be very expensive. So shopping around for a reasonable deal is very important. 

If you decide to handle storage and delivery yourself you will either manage your own servers, contract with a CDN, or do a combination of both. The other option is to plug in to a service that is already geared towards the storage and delivery of video. Such a service might also handle transcoding to Flash as well.

Dealing With CDNs

A CDN will assist you with storing and delivering your content to users on the web. A true CDN will spread your content among multiple servers around the world in order to facilitate the most efficient delivery of your media. Some CDNs focus on delivering downloads, while others focus on web streaming. Some do both. In creating a video community you will want to focus on a company that specializes in streaming content over the web.

You're going to need a lot of time and patience when researching CDNs. There are many (list on Wikipedia) that exist today and the field is growing. Growth is good as it helps to expand the feature set and force down the price. But there's also a risk as smaller, newer services could fail and cause you serious problems later if that happens. Prices and service features vary widely as well. I've been involved in discussions with reps for CDNs and in some cases nailing down a price is near impossible. Prices will be based on the amount of content stored and delivered. Prices do vary widely so it would be worth your time to log quotes that you receive and compare them to see who is offering the best deals.

Some people will use Amazon S3 for storage and delivery of the media from their Drupal sites. It is imporant to note that while the Amazon service is an attractive one in terms of pricing and ease of use, it is not a true CDN. The good news is that Amazon is working on a new content delivery service that could be a game changer in the CDN space.

Powering Video Via API

An Application Programming Interface or API will allow your Drupal site to connect with a third party service that can perform transcoding storage and delivery of your media. These APIs simplify to process of building a video community but they may also come at a cost. You probably won't have control over the quality of video that is transcoded. The final videos may also have video advertisments included unless you agree to pay for the service. This is an option to consider if you have a small budget and want to get started quickly.

The new YouTube API allows for video to be submitted from third-party sites. A module has been committed for Drupal 5 and there are a number of discussions on the topic over at Drupal.org. So while there appears to be no locked in solution for Drupal and YouTube at the moment, integration can be accomplished if you work with a developer who knows Drupal pretty well. 

A company called KickApps offers a single sign on (SSO) module for Drupal 4, 5 and 6. According to KickApps the SSO module allows you to create a seamless experience, which theoretically will allow users to upload videos to the KickApps service then display them on your site. The KickApps service is free if you allow advertisements but you can also pay them to "buy out" the advertising inventory.

Brightcove is one of the larger players in the online video services space. They offer integration services that can assist you with connecting Drupal to their video platform. Brightcove helps major corporations manage, store and deliver internet video so expect the price tag for integrating with their system to be on the high end. But if you have the money to spend my experience with Brightcove has been that they have got first class tools to help you manage a video community.

A Drupal Solution

If you're on a budget or are planning a smaller community that doesn't need the power of a third party service then you can build a video based community with Drupal. Check out the following modules.

FlashVideo - Travis Tidwell has built a module called FlashVideo that handles upload, transcoding and storage of video. The module is supported on Drupal 5 and 6. More recent versions allow video to be shipped off to Amazon S3 for storage and delivery. Travis has posted a very detailed tutorial on the setup and usage of this module.The module appears to do many things that video community builders will want so it is definitely worth a look.

Media Mover - This module assists with some of the background work related to storing and processing video. The most notable feature is that it will transport a video from your server to the Amazon S3 storage service and insert the proper link into your site.

Twistage - This module provides for integration with the Twistage video hosting service.

Video - This is an older module that handles upload and presentation of video files. The module also includes very basic play count statistics. This module will embed a video in your site but does not transcode the video to flash prior to doing so. A demo of this modules functionality can be seen here.

There's More

This post isn't intended to cover every tool, technique or module that can help you build a video community with Drupal. My hope is that those looking for a place to start or some direction will find this helpful. Your links to other tools and services or general suggestions about building video communities with Drupal are welcome in the comments.

On many sites communities begin with comments. And the comment features found in Drupal are deep enough that they can help you turn a website into a community.

Drupal not only contains many comment related features but also settings for each content type contained within your Drupal install. So you can have different comment settings for blog posts and pages for example. The screenshots below show the standard comment settings for Drupal.

Comment Settings

The standard comment settings contain many options to help you customize the experience for your users. You dcomments can be  threaded discussions or flat. When comments are flat each comment always appears after the previous one. Threaded discussion allow users to reply to specific comments and those replies are grouped together.

As of Drupal 6 comments are searchable. So when users search your site the returned results may include information contained in the comments. You can also provide a field that allows people to enter a title for their comment, which makes the comments have the feel of a forum. If you allow anonymous comments you can also choose to require that commenters provide contact information.

Protecting Comments

The access controls within Drupal give you the option to only make comments available to those who have registered for an account on your site. This feature provides you a certain amount of protection against malicious comments. Limiting comments to registered users can reduce the amount of comments you receive. You also have the option of editing the overall permissions for commenters so that all posted comments (or only those posted by anonymous users) will be held for approval. An example of the comment management queue is shown in the picture at left.

You can allow anonymous comments and still be protected if you add comment protection modules like Akismet or Mollom. Both of these modules call back to a central server to prevent comments that they think might be spam. I've tried both and they work well and can help keep your site protected.

A simpler option for protecting comments involves presenting a visual riddle to ensure that the poster is a human and not a machine.The captcha and recaptcha modules will add such a riddle at the end of your comment submission forms. Users must type in the correct word presented in order to successfully submit their comment. It's worth noting that captchas are not fool proof and some users get annoyed when presented with a captcha.

Extending Comment Functions

Drupal has plenty of modules that can help you add features to make comments more compelling. Comment RSS provides an RSS feed of comments for your site and for individual nodes. Comment Closer lets you shut down the comments on a particular node after a given amount of time. Comment Notify allows users to be notified automatically via email of follow up comments on a node.Comment Subscribe offers similar features to Comment Notify but allows you to only subscribe to direct replies of a particular comment.

A relatively new service called Disqus offers the ability to totally replace the Drupal comment system with a comment system manage on their servers. The Disqus module allows site owners to make that switch. Spam protection is then handled by Disqus but you also lose the ability of Drupal 6 to index the comments so that they may appear in your search results.

Tools For Site Administrators

There are a few different tools that can help a site adminstrator to stay on top of comments. By subscribing to the previously mentioned Comment RSS module you can stay abreast of recent site comments in your RSS feed reader. You could also use the comment RSS feed to create a widget (using a site like Widgetbox) that can be posted on another site or social network.

In Drupal 6 You can set up triggers and actions to generate an email each time a comment is posted on your site. The Subscriptions module appears to provide similar functionality. The Watcher module (currently only Drupal 5) allows node authors to receive notificatons of new comments via email.

Administrators also have to option of placing a recent comments block on their site. The recent comments block is a standard option in the block administration view for a Drupal install. When activated, the block will display a link to the ten most recently posted comments on your site in reverse chronological order.

Image galleries are a favorite feature of many social networks, blogs and personal websites. So it's no surprise that many Drupal users want a solution to integrate images into the sites they are building. There are many ways to accomplish this using Drupal but I'm going to point out two that have worked well for me.

Basic

You can create a very good, basic image gallery by using the image module and taxonomy. When you add the image module a link will be added to your administration menu called image galleries. That link will allow you to define galleries that you can add your photos to. You will also see a new content type called image that allows you to upload images one at a time. You can add a description to each image and add it to a gallery that you have created. You can see an example of this basic type of gallery by going to http://learnbythedrop.com/image. The image module also provides settings that allow you to define image sizes so that you can have automatic creation of thumbnails and preview images.

I've kicked my basic image galleries up a notch by adding the very simple Lightbox2 module. Lightbox2 adds a script that allows images to be overlayed on the page when clicked. This adds a very slick effect that makes it easy for site visitors to browse your images. The Image Assist module which makes it easier to add gallery images to your posts is also very helpful.

Advanced

If you're looking for image gallery functionality with stronger features then I suggest checking out the Gallery module. Gallery is different from other Drupal modules because its main purpose is to integrate your Drupal install with another piece of software. The software that you're integrating with is the open source Gallery photo organizer, which needs to be installed on your web server before you add the Gallery drupal module. The process of combining Drupal and Gallery is a bit complicated. But once the integration is complete you get some serious features that allow you to create an excellent photo gallery for yourself or an entire community of people.

I have integrated Gallery on a private family site for myself that is powered by Drupal. I do not recommending getting started if you are in a rush. You will be most successful if you follow directions and take your time. Gallery is a system in itself and you'll want to spend time learning and exploring Galleries add on modules too. You can see a Drupal/Gallery integration in action over on the Drupal Gallery Demo Site.

Custom Gallery Creation

If you're looking for something that is truly custom then you always have the option of creating your own image publishing process by using a variety of modules. You can use Content Construction Kit (with ImageField) to create a special content type for adding images. You can use the Views module to handle the display and organization of uploaded images. The ImageCache module can take care of post-upload processing tasks like thumbnail creation. You can find a very helpful  custom image gallery recipe on Drupal.org. The post is titled Create an image gallery using only CCK and Views.

Flickr Integration

Flickr is a hugely popular image publishing service. So it's very possible that you may want to use Flickr to power the gallery on your Drupal site. There is a module called Flickr that eases integration and allows you to embed photosets and create photo blocks on your Drupal site.