Learn By The Drop

Adding Fields With CCK

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 18:51:05 +0000

This drop shows how to add extra fields to existing content types (such as blog posts) using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module in Drupal 6.

Quicktime/iPod/iPhone Video

You can purchase an extended, high resolution version (QuickTime, 1024x768) of this lesson for only $2.99 here.

Taxonomy Overview

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:28:35 +0000

This video provides an overview of the taxonomy features in Drupal. Taxonomy allows you to categorize, tag and organize the content on your site.

Quicktime/iPod/iPhone Video

You can purchase a high resolution version (QuickTime, 1024x768) of this lesson for only $2.99 here.

Understanding Input Formats

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 19:28:14 +0000

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.

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.
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.
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.

Top Ten Drupal Contributed Modules

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 17:56:20 +0000

Here are the latest statistics on the top ten contributed modules that people are downloading from Drupal.org. Project usage statistics is a relatively new (and very welcome feature) on Drupal.org. The very latest stats can be be found at http://drupal.org/project/usage.

Project	Oct 12	Oct 5	Sep 28	Sep 21	Sep 14	Sep 7
Drupal	84,984	84,653	78,530	76,568	74,221	72,516
Views	38,867	39,072	34,965	33,775	32,572	31,631
Content Construction Kit (CCK)	33,867	33,998	30,115	28,937	28,119	26,813
Token	32,279	32,479	29,103	28,275	27,114	26,176
Pathauto	26,332	26,877	23,597	22,722	21,973	21,211
Update Status	20,742	20,638	19,987	20,312	20,329	20,141
Image	20,632	22,275	19,057	18,554	18,292	17,888
IMCE	15,539	15,113	14,512	13,728	13,380	12,900
FCKeditor - WYSIWYG HTML editor	14,959	16,104	13,174	12,892	12,260	11,884
CAPTCHA	14,897	14,115	13,213	13,179	13,058	12,548
Poormanscron	14,779	13,722	13,356	12,832	12,374	11,775

You will notice that this list has eleven entries because Drupal core is the number one download in the list.

Building Your Video Community

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:40:57 +0000

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.

A Quick Hosting Primer

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 12:13:13 +0000

I spend a good amount of time hanging around the Drupal forums and the question of Drupal site hosting comes up on a fairly regular basis. I'm always amused to see the wide variety of responses where people advocate for the hosting company that they think is the best. What Drupal site builders, especially new ones, need instead of cheerleading is a good explanation of the basic options for hosting a Drupal site.

There are four basic choices that you have when considering hosting for your Drupal site.

Shared Hosting
Virtual Dedicated Server
Dedicated Server
Hosted

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting accounts are by far the most popular type of hosting for small website builders. The value present in shared hosting is based on the low cost and general ease of use. You're likely to be paying $20 or less for a shared hosting account per month. Shared hosting also eliminates any responsibility when it comes to managing the web server.

Shared hosting has a downside in that cost and ease of use is sacrificed in favor of performance. That's because your website sits on a server with many other websites and must share resources with all of those websites. So if a site on your server gets popular then it may slow the overall performance of your site when it needs to be delivered to a user on the web. I see a lot of people talking about how Host A is fast and Host B is slower.

The truth is that there are many factors that determine the speed of delivery of a website. Some of them are related to how your site is configured or the types of files you are serving up from your site instance. Some speed issues are related to the web browser that the person visiting your site is using or the speed of their internet connection. There are so many factors involved in site performance that I think it's very difficult for anyone to really know that one host is faster than another. Web hosts may certainly make claims that their hardware is bigger and faster than other hosts. But I would take those claims with a grain of salt. After all, they want you as a customer.

Most of you will want to start out with shared hosting. I think that the most important things to look for when considering hosting for Drupal is the Linux operating system, PHP 5 support and a simple way to create MySQL databases. See the detailed Drupal install requirements here. Some hosts offer "One Click" or automatic installs of Drupal to your hosting account. These services should definitely be considered. If a host does offer a one click install then be sure to inquire about how they handle upgraded versions, as well as any limitations that might exist in your Drupal installation.

Virtual Dedicated Server

Virtual dedicated servers (VDS) are a step up from shared hosting in both price and performance. These types of plans store your website file on a large shared server but use software to allocate dedicated resources to your block of hosting. So you're guaranteed to have access to a certain amount of memory and processing power no matter what happens to other sites on the server.

VDS is a helpful middle ground between shared hosting and dedicated servers as it will allow you to provide better performance at a cost that will still fall into the budgets of a lot of people. You can expect to spend $50 to $150 per month on a VDS plan depending on the amount of disk space, memory and processing power you need for your site.

In general, VDS hosting plans will require a bit more technical saavy on the part of the maintainer of the site. So when considering this I think it is best to inquire about the type of interface available to allow you to manage your sites and MySQL databases. I also like to look on the website of the hosting company to see if they have a demo of their web based interface for managing hosting accounts.

Dedicated Server

If you plan on using Drupal to power some sort of a web application or have site that you know will get thousands of visitors per day then you will probably want to consider a dedicated server. Dedicated servers offer much more flexibility, control and power than shared or virtual plans. The cost in dollars and needed technical experience increase as well.

A dedicated server is a machine that hosts only your website. You typically get to pick the different features that are installed on the server as well as options for processor, disk space, memory and bandwidth. What you pay will generally be based on the features that you choose. You are likely looking at costs anywhere from $100 to $500 per month. You also have to factor in the additional cost of needing to have someone monitor the server. If there are problems like major traffic spikes then most of the time you will be responsible for finding the problem and fixing it. So you really need to know what you're doing with respect to server administration before you launch a site on a dedicated server.

Hosted

There are some companies that offer a hosted version of Drupal. The term "hosted" basically means that you don't have to install anything. A true hosted option should be as easy as selecting a domain name and going straight to configuring your Drupal install. Setup of a database or uploading of files should not be necessary.

Hosted installs of Drupal will work best for beginners who don't know much about creating databases or those who want to get their feet wet in Drupal with minimum effort. You're likely to pay more for a hosted plan than on a shared account but less than VDS or dedicated server hosting.

There are two potential drawbacks to hosted Drupal installs. The first is the fact that a hosted install will be on a shared server so you have the same potential performance issues as with a shared account. The second is that hosted installs typically have limitations on the types of themes and modules that can be installed. So if you're thinking of paying for a hosted type plan be sure to research what restrictions may exist.

Building Community With Comments

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 00:41:57 +0000

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.

Upgrading Drupal

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 17:25:20 +0000

This video provides step-by-step instructions on upgrading Drupal core.

You can purchase a high resolution version (QuickTime, 1024x768) of this lesson for only $2.99 here.

Quicktime/iPod/iPhone Video

Image Gallery Options

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 13:29:02 +0000

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.

Drupal Scaling And Performance

Robert J. Safuto — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 00:44:29 +0000

The following presentation was created and delivered by Adam Kalsey from WorkHabit at the June 2008 LA Drupal Users Group meeting. You can download a pdf version via this link. A video of the available presentation is available on Blip.tv.

Drupal Media Management

Robert J. Safuto — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 00:51:11 +0000

I conducted this interview a few months ago at DrupalCampNYC. Arthur Foelsche from Civic Actions talks about the future of Drupal modules that assist with the publishing of rich media. Arthur is the lead developer of the Media Mover module, XSPF Playlist, FLV Media Player and others that greatly assist with the publishing of video on Drupal sites.

Sharing Posted Content

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 00:44:34 +0000

Once you've begun to post content on your Drupal site it is likely that you will want to provide visitors a method for sharing that content with other people. Thankfully there is no shortage of services that allow you to facilitate the process of sharing content you've posted to your site. Each node can have one or more links that make it simple for visitors to bookmark or forward content to others. Allow me to present you with a few options for sharing that I frequently implement on my Drupal sites.

Service Links

The Service Links module is very simple to implement. The module provides a variety of settings that allow you to choose the appropriate services, while controlling how or when the links to those services display. You can choose from a wide variety of content sharing sites. On this site I've chosen to offer Del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon as options for sharing each node.

The images at left show examples of the settings and implementation for the service links module.

Forward

The Forward module allows site vistors to email posts to other people. The module adds an email this link to each node that allows the user to send a link to the post, plus a personal message to one or more email addresses. The module includes a variety of settings that allow site builders to customize the experience, including html email templates. Forward tracking allows administrators to know which posts were shared. A most emailed block lets you share popular content with your site visitors.

The image to the left shows an example of the form presented to the user when they choose to email the post.

Custom Javascript

Every social bookmarking site that's worth a damn will provide a bit of javascript that you can insert into your templates. Digg is by far the most popular content sharing site on the internet today. You can use Digg tools for webmasters to add code to your Drupal site that allows for submission and display of the number of Diggs for the post. I've implemented this within a block on the right side of this page. Del.icio.us is another very popular content sharing site. They offer a couple of very basic save page buttons that you can add to your site as well.

Some services exist simply to provide a wide variety of sharing options for your content. Add This and Share This offer very similar services to site builders. They provide a bit of javascript that presents the user with a variety of options for sharing or bookmarking website content. I've taken advantage of the Add This service by adding the code to my node templates that presents the Bookmark Post link at the bottom right corner of each post.

Administrators that are not comfortable editing templates should also consider adding these codes to blocks in the sidebar of pages they want to share. Follow this link to see an example of a page that utilizes the Share This service code in the right sidebar to simplifying the sharing of a blog on a Drupal powered website.

Creating Activity Streams

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:29:33 +0000

Have you ever wanted to gather content you publish on different websites and pull it in to your Drupal powered website? This could be content that is published by one person or by many people. This content could include blog posts, pictures, audio or video. The content could come from sites like Flickr, YouTube, Delicious, personal blogs or any site that offers an RSS feed for published content. If you've thought of doing this then you'll be happy to know that you can accomplish such a task by using Drupal.

The final result of gathering content from other sites is called an activity stream. An activity stream is merely a list of content items that have been posted to the web, typically in reverse chronological order. Activity streams created by a single person are also called lifestreams. If you're a member of different websites that allow you to publish or bookmark content, you might want to create an activity stream to make it easier for people to keep track of what you are doing. The stream allows you to have all of your recent web activity summarized on one page with links to all of the original items. You can also use activity streams to create an online content network that gathers feeds from a variety of different sources related to the same topic.

Activity Stream Module

The activity stream module simplifies the process of creating an activity stream. This module can pull data from Del.icio.us, Digg, Flickr, Last.fm, Twitter, and any other site that provides a feed. The streams are published based on settings in each user's profile. So you'll need to have the core profile module enabled in order for activity stream to work properly.

Individual users on your site have a stream at 'http://example.com/stream/{your-user-id}'. The entire site also has a stream at the address 'http://example.com/stream'. Activity streams are updated each time cron is run. Content items that are captured by this module are also added to your site as nodes, which means that they can be found using the core Drupal search function. It also means that the captured content items can have comments and be manipulated using the views module. Access to the nodes via views also means that you can create a single RSS feed for all of your published content. The activity stream module also generates a block that lists recent activity.

Activity stream displays the favicons from each website next to content items. The favicon is a good visual cue for that provides the reader with an idea of the source or type of content being published. At this time activity stream has an official release for Drupal 5 and a dev release for Drupal 6. See all activity stream releases here.

The images at left show the user settings, an example of a block and an example of a page generated by this module.

FriendFeed Module

The FriendFeed module allows you to present an activity stream that is powered by the FriendFeed service. This is accomplished via a connection to the FriendFeed API. Like the activity stream module, FriendFeed uses cron to schedule updates to your stream. Unlike activity stream, the items displayed are merely linked and not captured to your site as nodes. This approach offers less flexibility (not searchable, can't create views or feeds) in managing the content items, but it also takes much of the burden off of your server.

The FriendFeed module does not provide a page view at this time. The resulting stream can be integrated into a page by either dropping the block into a content region or adding a snippet of code provided by the module developer to a new page. The picture at left shows an example of what the FriendFeed block looks like.

The FriendFeed module is still in the development phase, with releases available for both Drupal 5 and Drupal 6.

Other Options

Activity Stream and FriendFeed are relatively new modules. There are a number of contributed modules that have been around for a while that might be worth checking out if the two mentioned here leave something to be desired in your implementation. I've listed some of those options in an earlier post titled, Options For Importing Content.

Techniques For Publishing Video

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:40:10 +0000

Many people want to use Drupal as a platform for distributing video. Drupal is a great tool for video distribution because there are so many ways to get it done. And Drupal is a pain in the neck because there are so many ways to get it done. It all depends on your perspective I guess. With this post I'll offer some solutions that can help you choose between some of the more reliable options for publishing video.

Host Your Own

There are plenty of modules that can assist you with creating your own 'DruTube' if you will. I will warn you that there are some pitfalls to this approach. If your site is hosted on a shared server you could slow down your entire site if your video gets popular. Hosting your own video on a shared server can work fine if you have light traffic. So don't be disuaded by my disclaimer.

The video module (Drupal 5 only) handles upload, display and basic statistics for videos. With this module you have the choice of uploading a file or linking to a file that is already on your site. It's important to know that if you're uploading files greater than 7MB you might need to adjust the php.ini file on your web server. This method works for QuickTime (.mov), Windows Media (.wmv) and Flash (.flv) formats.

FLV Media Player with XSPF Playlist (both Drupal 5) is an option for publishing Flash video files. This option integrates with Jeroen Wijering's excellent flash player to provide flash video playback withing nodes. If you use this method you will need to convert your files to Flash format prior to uploading to the site.

The Flash Video module (Drupal 5 and 6) aims to provide a soup-to-nuts 'DruTube' like solution that allows for upload, conversion to Flash and display of video. For more detailed information see the flash video tutorial created by the module developer.

Utilize YouTube

You can let YouTube do the heavy lifting for you and embed the flash video back into your Drupal site. I recommend reading my previous drop titled Many Ways To Do YouTube on Drupal to find out more about this method. One shortcoming of a pure YouTube approach is that you can't make your published videos available as a downloadable podcast via iTunes or other podcast subscription software.

Hybrid Approach

The hybrid approach is very simple. You host your videos elsewhere and come back to your Drupal site to post videos (and maybe even link directly to a download file) within a node on your site. This approach takes a little more work because it means you publish twice. First you upload to your video hosting provider. Then you come back to your Drupal site to include your video in a post. Some video hosting sites (like Blip.tv for instance) allow you to cross post directly from their sites over to your Drupal site.

There are a few notable benefits to the hybrid approach. The load from delivering the video won't affect your site since the media is hosted elsewhere. Transcoding of the video from your source format (probably QuickTime or Windows Media) will be handled by your video host. You also usually get a nice flash video player that you can embed on multiple sites.

Test Before Commiting

Before you commit to a particular approach I highly recommend that you do a bit of testing. Try out different methods and video hosts to see if they are going to work for you. For example, YouTube encodes video in a relatively small player. So if you want your videos to show in a large player then the YouTube approach probably won't work for you. Most third-party video hosts add their own branding to the player that they provide you. So the hybrid approach might not work if you really need a non-descript or even custom player for the flash version of your videos.

It can hurt to get very deep into the development of a production site when you find out that your video process just won't work. Consider the time and effort you put into experimenting an investment that will yield a video publishing solution that works for both you and the visitors to the site you're building.

Statistics On Your Site

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 00:38:04 +0000

One of the nice features of Drupal is the fact that the core statistics module can show you basic, but important information about visitors to your site. The stats module helps you to answer questions like these. How many people are viewing your nodes? What sites are your visitors coming from? What are your recent visitors looking at?

Other Statistics Options

If you need more information or would like some charts then you should consider one of the other contributed modules that can provide you the data you need.

Google Analytics - allows for easy integration with the free Google Analytics service
BAWStats - Provides support for displaying the AWStats website statistics engine.
FireStats - Provides integration with the FireStats website statistics engine.

The images below show examples of how the core statistics module data is provided in the administration panel.

Combining Drupal With An Existing Site

Robert J. Safuto — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 01:13:32 +0000

Question: Can i design a website in dreamweaver and have only certain pages that will go to a drupal area which will use some of the social networking components OR do i have to have the entire site built as a drupal site?

Answer: You can build a static website and then link to Drupal as another section of the site. Let's say you build 'www.mysite.com' in Dreamweaver and you want to add a community function. You could always load the drupal files into a sub-folder called community and have your community located at 'www.mysite.com/community'.

The key to pulling this off and doing it well is to have the two sites styled in an identical, or at least very similar manner. You'll probably want to understand how Drupal themes work so you can skin the Drupal portion of your website to look like the existing site. So I recommend that you review the Drupal theming guide and also have a look at the Zen theme which is a very clean starting theme that you can alter via CSS.

Options For Importing Content

Robert J. Safuto — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:04:46 +0000

The ability to import content (also know as aggregation) from other sites is one of the great features of the Drupal platform. So while you can create content directly on your Drupal site you can also import and display content from other sites that contain RSS feeds or APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) that allow you to access their content.

Why Aggregate?

You might want to give the visitors to your site a bit of variety. If your site is about sports you may want to pull a feed containing sports news from Yahoo! Sports. You may be interested in creating your own network of blogs or podcasts. In that case you would pull updates from all of the sites in your network into your Drupal install. Or perhaps you're a prolific web publisher and want to create a lifestream to help people keep track of everything you publish. You can do all of these things using the Drupal platform.

Your Options

Drupal has lots of options for aggregating content. That's a good thing because it means people of different skill levels can get more of what they want. In general there are two types of aggregation modules for Drupal. One type captures content as nodes on your site. This means the content is searchable and will have a unique link. Another type displays a stream of content without importing as a full node. This type is not searchable and will link back to the originating site.

Aggregation Without Nodes

Aggregator is a core module that imports and displays content on your site. Aggregator powers the Mets News and Mets Blogs sections on my I Heart Mets site. Also, check out my recent Feed Aggregator Setup video.

Simple Pie can be used as a standalone php script where you copy the code into a Drupal page. SimplePie also works along with a couple of other Drupal modules that parse feeds into nodes. See Simple Pie in action via my lifestream on a Drupal 5 site.

FriendFeed is a contributed module (D6 only) that utilizes the FriendFeed API to display updates from a particular account on the FriendFeed site. See an example of what this looks like on my sandbox or via the screenshot below.

Aggregation With Nodes

FeedAPI is a contributed module that utilizes Simple Pie as a feed parser. FeedAPI has releases that support Drupal 5 and 6.

Activity Stream is a contributed module that aggregates information from a variety of social services. This is generally regarded as a lifestreaming module, providing functionality that is similar to FriendFeed. Activity Stream currently has a release that supports Drupal 5.

Aggregation is a contributed module that imports items from RSS and Atom feeds. Aggregation currently has a release that supports Drupal 5.

Choosing A Module

Your choice of aggregation module really depends on the needs for your site. Start with your Drupal version. Most aggregation modules support Drupal 5 but only a couple currently work on Drupal 6. Also consider whether or not you need to import items as nodes. If you are importing merely to provide news items as variety for your visitors then aggregating without nodes may work for you. If you want to create a searchable lifestream or network then aggregating with nodes is probably the way to go.

Also Consider

However you choose to aggregate it will also be very important to get to know Cron, which will assist you with automatically checking feeds for updates.

Feed Aggregator Setup

Robert J. Safuto — Sat, 24 May 2008 17:46:58 +0000

This video shows you how to display content from RSS and Atom feeds on your site by using the core aggregator module. Includes instructions on how to display imported feed items in a block.

Quicktime/iPod/iPhone Video

Understanding RSS On Your Drupal Site

Robert J. Safuto — Fri, 23 May 2008 00:59:40 +0000

One of the best features of Drupal is the fact that the system generates many RSS feeds. RSS is great. It allows your visitors to subscribe to new content on your site in any number of ways. But sometimes the RSS capabilities of Drupal are a bit confusing to users. In this drop I'll do what I can to simplify the issue for you.

Front Page RSS Feed

Each Drupal site has a front page RSS feed that can be found at yoursite.com/rss.xml. This feed reflects items that have been promoted to the front page of your site. You can change the setting for this front page feed by going to admin/content/rss-publishing. Once there you can control the number of items in your feed. You can also change the setting for the RSS content by selecting Full Text, Titles or Titles Plus Teaser. Another benefit of the front page feed is the fact that current Internet Explorer and Mozilla browsers will auto-discover the feed when visitors arrive at the front page of your site.

Taxonomy Generated Feeds

If you categorize items on your site via the core taxonomy module then you will have a feed for every category that is active in your system. You can see how this works by clicking on any category in the sidebar or in the body of posts. The page you arrive at will display the name of the category at the top and a list of posts that include that category. Most themes will include an icon at the bottom of the page that links to the rss feed for the category which will look something like yoursite.com/taxonomy/term/17/0/feed. How the content in that feed is displayed is determined by the settings mentioned in the previous paragraph.

Views RSS Feeds

You can generate a wide variety of custom RSS feeds by utilizing the views module and views RSS. Creating RSS feeds from views may be a bit complicated for users new to the platform. But if you're looking for more control of exactly what gets published via RSS then this is the way to go. I recommend that you take a look at a Views RSS video tutorial that I created a few months ago to learn more.

RSS Related Modules

These are some interesting RSS related contributed modules that you can add to your Drupal site.

Clean Feeds - This module cleans all the HTML tags from RSS Feeds that you provide on your site.
RSS Remote Enclosure - RSS Remote Enclosure allows a user to attach a remote resource link to any node.
Admin RSS - The AdminRSS module creates RSS feeds for the administrative information for Drupal websites.
Feedburner - Integrates Drupal with the services provided by FeedBurner.

It is worth noting that unfortunately none of the modules listed above have been ported to Drupal 6 yet. But they all have versions for Drupal 5.

Podcast RSS Feeds

Yes, you can create a podcast with Drupal but there are limitations. If you upload a files using the core upload module then the first file that you upload will be included in the RSS as an enclosure. The present of the enclosure tag in the RSS feed allows people to download files automatically if they subscribe in iTunes or any other pod-catching software. It is worth noting that Drupal does not natively generate all the necessary iTunes tags that allow you to be listed in the iTunes podcast directory. Your best bet for adding the iTunes tags is to create a special feed using FeedBurner that you only submit to iTunes. This will help you get a listing in the directory but you can still include the original Drupal feed on your site.

Another option for generating an iTunes feed in Drupal 5 is the contributed Views Podcast module which I haven't tested but might be a better choice if FeedBurner is not an option. If podcasting with Drupal is of interest to you then I recommend reading a post I wrote elsewhere which is aptly titled, Podcasting With Drupal.

Moving Drupal

Robert J. Safuto — Tue, 20 May 2008 00:30:51 +0000

Ear Drops #3

In this drop I talk through the steps required to move your Drupal site from one domain to another.

The Steps

Take your site offline.
Download the entire site to a local directory.
Export the site database to a local directory.
Create a new MySQL database if necessary
Edit sites/default/settings.php if moving to new database.
Upload site files to new domain. Don't forget .htaccess.
Login and test.
Bring site back online.

Your comments and feedback are welcome.

MP3 File

Taking Your Site Offline

Robert J. Safuto — Sun, 18 May 2008 16:13:10 +0000

From time to time you may need to perform maintenance on your Drupal site. That's why the administration section of your site includes site maintenance settings.

Found at 'admin/settings/site-maintenance' these settings allow you to restrict access to the site and present a configurable message to users.

You will definitely want to use this feature when upgrading to a newer version of Drupal. It's also a good idea to use this when you are adding new modules to your site. By doing so you can ensure that the you maintain the continuity and integrity of your data. In the case of module upgrades you can protect your users from potential bugs and incompatibility while you take some time to test the module changes.

Using Google Tools To Extend Site Functions

Robert J. Safuto — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:59:22 +0000

Over the last couple of years I've come to rely on free tools from Google to assist with functionality on my Drupal powered websites. At first I just used Google's site search tool. Since then it seems that every couple of months Google has either released (or acquired) tools that can enhance your Drupal site.

Here is a list of the Google tools that I've used in conjunction with my various Drupal-powered websites.

Custom Search - Allows you to replace the built in search functionality with one powered by Google. Integration with Drupal is simple due to the Google Custom Search Module.
Site Statistics - Provides detailed visitor statistics for your website. Google Analytics is easily added to your site using the Google Analytics module.
Feedburner - Allows you to enhance existing site RSS feeds, including statistics and the addition of enclosures for podcasts. The FeedBurner module (Drupal 5 only) makes integration simple. Alternatively you can manually adjust theme files to point to the new FeedBurner feed.
Documents - You can't use Google to have your users upload documents. But you can embed presentations into pages on your Drupal site. You can have visitors submit information to spreadsheets via embeddable forms. You can even post documents to your blog via XML-RPC.
Adsense - Those who are inclined to earn some money from their Drupal site can integrate Google Adsense. Adding to the site can be as simple as cutting and pasting code into a block. Site builders can get more control over Adsense by using the Adsense module.

All of the tools mentioned above are free. The custom search feature does include Google Adsense links in the search results. And some developers have concerns about sharing their site activity with a giant technology company. If you can stand sharing your data (I know I can) then some or all of the tools Google provides can be used to enhance the experience on your Drupal site.