Weekly update #12

Days worked this week: 4

- Aligning search box/menus on the Home page, as well as adding and removing some panels/graphics to tidy things up in time for the launch.

- Upgrading Panels 2 to Panels 3, (along with Chaos Tools, which is required to do this). Panels is one of the main modules I use, and upgrading to the new version was recommended to me. However, I was uber careful about doing this, as I gathered from the page on upgrading from Panels 2 to Panels 3 (http://drupal.org/node/515140) that doing so can be buggy. So I backed up absolutely everything, as I wasn't sure which data was stored in the database. For example, some of my panels just contain HTML code, so I carefully copied this out from each panel and pasted into a text editor. The update went pretty smoothly as it happens, and HTML panels required no effort on my part.

The only things that did change were:

• the css must be different for some things in Panels 3, as certain things on my homepage moved around and lost their styles. This was easily fixed having investigated what had happened using Firebug, and I changed my css code to reflect these updates
• The slightly annoying thing about Panels 3 (which, like Panels 2 uses the 'Pages' interface), is that the interface now tries to fit into the width of my website (which has a fixed width). This width isn't wide enough for the Pages interface to display some of my panel pages when I'm editing them, so I have to switch back to the Garland theme before I can edit things in Panels.

I also found a bug when clicking on the dates in the 'Events' section I have on my homepage. Googling this shows many others have had the same problem since upgrading Drupal core, and it relates to comments. This is the error I was getting:

user warning: Unknown column 'u.signature_format' in 'field list' query: SELECT c.cid as cid, c.pid, c.nid, c.subject, c.comment, c.format, c.timestamp, c.name, c.mail, c.homepage, u.uid, u.name AS registered_name, u.signature, u.signature_format, u.picture, u.data, c.thread, c.status FROM comments c INNER JOIN users u ON c.uid = u.uid WHERE c.nid = 87 ORDER BY c.thread DESC LIMIT 0, 50 in...

Fortunately, some kind person named 'maximum' has shown how to fix it. It goes as follows:

• Run update.php
• This includes a dropdown menu entitled 'Select versions'
• From this dropdown, select 'System module' then '6051'
• This has fixed the error for me, and many others

Weekly update #4

[Days spent on website this week: 4]

- I've set things up so that, when a News story is added, an image can be uploaded to go alongside it (as per the Web Visuals). Using the ImageCache module, this then resizes the image to the correct thumbnail size that I want for the home page, as well as producing a larger version of the image that fits nicely on a page.

- I think I'm finally getting to grips with Views, one of the most important Drupal modules. I managed to get the view for the News items (thumbnail, title, and summary of content), working unaided. A breakthrough for me!


The updated News view

-I've added the Pathauto module (http://drupal.org/project/pathauto) which is one of the most popular Drupal modules. This automatically creates a friendlier-looking URL when you add a new News or Date item, by incorporating some of the text from that item.

So, for example, prior to installing Pathauto, if I'd added a News story with the title 'Will it add 'news' to the url this time?', the URL for this story would end up as something like this:

http://www.sns/hackey.sch.uk/node/60

With Pathauto, it becomes this:

http://www.sns/hackey.sch.uk/news/will-it-add-news-url-time

Which shows both that it's 'news', and some of the title of the story.

Why is this useful? Well, aside from being a more 'human' thing to read/remember, it also makes our website more friendly to search engines, a la Google.

- Having set up my Taxonomy terms last week (allowing someone writing a News story to say which subjects it's relevant to, e.g. 'Mathematics'), I've worked out how, using Views, to display News items only relevant to Mathematics on the Mathematics page. I'll eventually get round to doing this with dates too, so that each faculty page has its own calendar.


News with the 'Mathematics' tag appearing in the Mathematics section

- I've added a fuller list of Taxonomy terms (all faculties/departments are now on there). I'll need to figure out at some point what else will require taxonomy terms. This shows the options available when adding a News item now:


New Taxonomy terms added for faculties and departments

- Added the Menu Breadcrumb module (http://drupal.org/project/menu_breadcrumb) which has fixed the slightly odd behaviour of breadcrumbs with the 'out of the box' version of Drupal:


Breadcrumbs now reading correctly

- I've created a favicon for the site (the little logo you see in your browser next to the site's URL). This required getting an extra plugin for Photoshop (which can't otherwise save .ico files, those required for favicons, out of the box). I used this link to help create it:

http://www.revolutionwebdesign.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=8B1F9EB1-D1B9-61C4-09F428DC29AF6230


Favicon

- Upgraded Drupal Core to version 6.12

Weekly update #2

[Days spent on website this week: 4]

What I've added to the site this week:

• Added a Search box to the Navigation menu (which was in the original site map, but not shown on the web visuals). This works, but I may well have to tweak it at a later date to give simpler search results for a user - at the moment it shows too many irrelevant details in each search results.
  
  
  Search results
  
  
• Tweaked the navigation menu layout using CSS
  
  
• Recoloured the wiggly lines in the header and added in correct Bird logo
  
  
• Reduced height of the header - was too tall
  
  
• Spent a good few hours correcting an error that meant that Dates shown on the homepage were still appearing even if they were in the past (which I don't want showing up there). This turned out to be an error with the 'Date' module, which was fixed by upgrading to their latest dev version, and creating the View for the upcoming dates again.
  
  
• Created a number of Users and Roles. A 'Role' might be something like 'Editor' (I can create as many different Roles as I like), and I can define what an Editor can and can't do on the site. In this case, an Editor can moderate News and Dates items, and set whether they can appear on the site. A 'User' (e.g. John Smith) can be given one or many Roles.
  
  
• Added a new content type: 'News'. This allows a signed-in user to post a News item to appear on the 'Home' and 'News and Dates' pages. When the user has saved this item, it goes into a content queue which someone with the 'Editor' role can then view and decide whether the content should be published. When it is published, it has been set up to automatically appear on the 'Home' and 'News and Dates' pages. I've also set this up so that a signed in user can start writing their News item, save it as a draft, log off and come back to it later.
  
  
  News items on the Home page
  
  
• Using Actions and the Trigger module, I've set this up such that when a News item is submitted, this sends the Editors (i.e. probably just me!) an email letting them know that this has happened, so that they can log into the website and choose whether to publish it. It also gives the author of the News item a message to say that their content us under review.
  
  
• Added a 'Moderate content' menu to users given the 'editor' role, and set it up so that moderation can be done as a batch process (using the 'Workflow', 'Workspace' and 'Views Bulk Operations' modules).
  
  
  The Moderate Content menu
  
  
• Upgraded Drupal to the latest version (version 6.11). This is required when Drupal release a new version due to fixes/new features they've added, and is essential to do as soon as possible due to any possible security features (much in the same way you might need to upgrade other software).
  
  
• Discovered I've done something, possibly by changing the name of the content type 'events' to 'dates' (to keep it in line with the text in the rest of the site), that has messed up getting dates to appear on the Calendar. I'll have to fix this next week, but I've learnt an important lesson - don't change the name of a content type once you've started using it!