Drupal Contributed Modules ( Drupal 6 Introduction - Part 3)

/*--- holy mAcar00ns!! --- */

Quick and dirty notes for:

BUILDING ONLINE COMMUNITIES WITH DRUPAL, PHPBB, AND WORDPRESS, 2006 Douglass et al.
==================================================================================

Chapter 4 - Adding Contributed Modules
======================================

Useful modules:
- Flexinode
- TinyMCE
- Event
- Location
- Organic Groups
- Spam
- Devel
- Database Adminisration

Installing Modules
-------
- ALWAYS back up database before installing especially if module modifies database
- update database schema with the mysql file that comes with the module
- mysql -u user -p drupal < module.mysql (for example)
- if using prefixes, may need to update database defnition file directly
- apply needed patches

Tpyical files in a module:
- update.php -- can be used to update from one version to newer version
- .patch -- if any patches needed

TinyMCE Module
------------
3 wysiwig editors available to drupal
- tinymce
- htmlarea
- fckeditor

TinyMCE is recommended
- integrate well with Image Assist, Upload modules

Installing tinymce:
- two parts
- module
- project itself (sourceforge)
- module will tlel you which sourceforge file to download
- make sure they are compatible, reada carefully

Instrux:
- install module ot the directory
- backup site and datbase
- follow direx in install.txt for approipriate copy of project
- put sourceforge tinymce folder into modules/tinymce
- end up with modules/tinymce/tinymce
- enable

I think it's pretty stupid tha they don't include tinymce in the module. why download spearately??? it must be tinymce's requirement ot somering. because it does'nt make sense. thats wher eyou end up with incompatibilities.

yeah read the installation instrux. it gives instrux for spellechekcinig etc. wehich we'll ingore for now.

wonder if it did break my site because it's not loading anymore. it's timing out.

well non admin pages seem to be working fine. but admin is stlaling

so it doens't work anymore the admin section breaks. so i removed it. and may try again. i'll also drop the tables in the database.

trying a fresh install of the devel version. let's see if it works.

nope it just doesn't work. it times out. something is stuck. doens't work. the whole admin page times out.

maybe rhe version of drupal i have is unstable or needs to be updated

this is terrible because we need this module. this is an important module.

we were able to install it one time. i mean sort of we were able to enable it as a module at one point. and then we added the other files that wer supposed toimprove performance. and at that point i think it crashed all the admin pages. and then we removed it.

and now if we try to put it back in it breaks all the admin pages.

damnit.

maybe we need a fresh install of drupal???

i thik i'll do a fresh install and copy the theme over.

a fresh install of drupal

just did a fresh install of drupal and installed tinymce module into it. this time admin doesn't time out or anything but the tinymce isn't showing up on any of the input areas.

i guess for now it doesn't work. i guess the wya oyull get formatting inside of the post is to use raw html. upload your picture and set to don't dispaly then use the url you're given to input into the body of thepost.

obvioysly normal users won't know how to do all this.

so tinymce is improtant.

and it doesn't work so what do we do? i think the rest of hte chapter sort of dependds on it.

but why isn't anybody else complaining? maybe i'm doing somehtign wrong??

what coudl i be doing wrong?

is there anything else you need to do to get it work?

maybe the version of tinymce i downloaded is somehow incompatbiel with the plugin?

that's what i'm trying now, the older version of tinymce version 2.1.3 instead of the version 3.0.7

still doesn't work.

okay now it shows up. you actuall hav eto configure it.

http://localhost/drupal2/admin/settings/tinymce

you need to createa profile on that page

let's go back and see if we can install it to the old drupal installation

no it doesn't like it for some reason. it's like something must have happend the first time itinstalled and i removed it. that must have broken something or somethign rather. i dont' know. but can't put it back in. wonder hwat traces have been left. is hould have backed up the database as they instructed.


so basically fine. let's do all the tinymce stuff in this book in the second install of drupal. that'll be fine.

on p101 he talks about having to create an input format for use with tinymce, which is strange. dont' know if tht's true or not. it's not mentioned in he intallation.txt file.

you have multitude of css options p105

ignore for now.

Image Module
----------
- configure your galleries and stuff. read the instrux
- images are nodes
- grant permissions
- uses GD by default (comes with drupal)
- install imagemagick ifyou want
- cron to clear out your temp files occasionally

Image Assist
------------
- backup database before installing

always read install.txt

not workign right now. can't get it working yet. it doesn't isnert the picture into the post.

you need to configure each of the input filters so that they will accept inline images. it's a checkbox on their config page

still not working though.

and totally does not work in IE7

can't get it to work. nope.

so we'll skip it for now and come back. maybe we'll need to do a fresh install later.

let's move on to flexinode

Flexinode
----------
- create your own nodes with their own fields
- guess this differs from regular nodes in that regular nodes don't come with their own fields
- virtually any info collected online can be modeled with flexinodes

last release is from feb/2007 for version 4.7x of drupal. i think this is probably obsolete now.

i think it has been repalced by CCK

CCK for drupal 6 is not yet ready

skip the whole flexinode section then and wait for CCK for drupal 6.

Event Module
-----------
currently version for drupal 6 is still in development

maybe i shouod have used drupal 5

so skip this section too then for now until a version for drupal 6 is ready

probably should have used drupal 5 then we would have versions for eerything.

Location Module
--------------
likewise no version for drupal 6. still in development

Organic Groups Module
----------------
version for drupal 6 still in develompent

so later we'll have to install drupal 5 so we can use all this stuff.

skip it for now

Spam Module
------------
again looks like no version for drupal 6

wow, so remember when you depend on modules always install the older version of core.

Database Administration Module
-----------
skip it

Devel Module
----------
skip for now


yeah basically the thing to do is to go do a fresh install of drupal 5.x and use that for all the tuts and stuff. and probably for deployment too until the modules for drupal 6 come out.

but you can use drupal for very simple sites right now. where you dnt' need a lot of the outsid modules then you'll be fine with the newest drupal.

but not if you need older stuff.

Labels: cms, drupal, drupal6, php

all your bases ar--