Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with drupal

Convert Drupal URL's to SEO friendly

diode — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:55:27 -0800

I'm looking for an explanation of how to convert a Drupal URL to a more SEO-friendly URL. I'm likely to be asked to do updates and changes on a Drupal-based website. I'm just starting my learning curve with respect to Drupal.

I can see the website has a mix of SEO-friendly URL's (domain/general-category/specific-pagename.htm) and URL's with 'node in them (domain/node/56).

I've recommended that the pages with non-SEO friendly URL's be updated to friendly ones. So far I've found that to create a SEO friendly URL I need to alias the node, but what that process actually is I don't know.

I'm going to be queried on this process. I need the general overview so I can give some semblance of knowing what I'm doing while I get up to speed on this.

Importing to Wordpress Using Custom Fields

backwards guitar — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:15:36 -0800

When importing data into Wordpress, is it possible to put parts of that data into custom fields? I've got a (Drupal) website with about 1000 pages of content that I'd like to port over to Wordpress. The pages are essentially products, so I think they'd function well as posts.

The one snag I'm running into is that the Drupal pages have the product's content split into a few different sections of content, for example "description", "accessories", "specifications".

Questions:

1) I'm thinking the easiest thing to do would be to have these additional sections be custom fields in Wordpress. When I import the data how can I import these extra sections as custom fields?

2) What's the best format to export the data (or perhaps the better question is, what's the best format to import the data into Wordpress). I have access to the data in sql format, and could write a script in PHP to grab the data directly from the database if need be. Should I manually insert the data into the empty Wordpress database? Or use one of the import methods described in the Wordpress codex?

What's a Reasonable Hourly Rate for Drupal Work?

peter_meta_kbd — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:32:05 -0800

What's a Reasonable Hourly Rate for Drupal Work? I am interested to know what is the going rate for drupal programming now that we are semi-out of the recession.

A few more details:

Assume US citizen programmer is US-based independent contractor working on 1099 basis with modern 4 core setup, legal copies of windows, CS4, etc. Assume programmer works from home, does all own work, has been working with drupal for 2 years, overall programming for 10 years with a 4-year degree in the field. Programmer is responsible for setting up drupal internals, and also for doing some graphics work like making logo, and also css, etc. Programmer sometimes modifies modules, often makes custom themes, views in views module and php code, and formats with css, sometimes also some unix system administration is required and accomplished.

Thanks.

How do I get rid of extra options when adding Drupal content?

miriam — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 07:11:28 -0800

Drupal question: Is it possible to get rid of all those unnecessary options (Input Format, Menu Settings, Book Outline, Revision Information, URL Path Settings, etc.) that confront users when they're trying to create new content? I've created a custom content type on my Drupal site and it works fine. But I'm concerned that users who click on "Create Content" will be confused by all these options, which they don't have permission to edit anyway. Other than CSS-ing them out, is there any way to get rid of them for a certain level of user?

And please let me know if this question is confusing. Drupal seems to lend itself to mind-bending confusion.

Best CMS to handle file uploading by users?

clockworkjoe — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:34:03 -0800

What CMS should I use for a community podcast site where users can upload, tag, rate and review each others' podcasts? I run Role Playing Public Radio and we regularly record game sessions and then post them as podcasts. They're very popular and some of our fans have started recording their own games. I'd like to set up a community site where people can upload their own MP3s, have them verified by a moderator then made available to the members. The files can then be tagged, categorized, reviewed and rated by other members. In terms of structure, I imagine something like a video game mod community site.

I'm most familiar with wordpresss but that obviously won't work. What kind of CMS would work best and how would I go about setting it up?

Drupal looks like a possible candidate but I'm not familiar with it.

Drupal vs Joomla vs Wordpress vs ...?

AmbroseChapel — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 20:59:33 -0800

Drupal vs Joomla vs Wordpress vs ...? I'm a web developer with a fair bit of experience with both front- and back-end. I've done plain-HTML websites and I've done completely custom CGI websites, but I'm realising I should probably start working with frameworks.

So ... which one, for which kind of task? Does anyone have a rule of thumb, like "the site is of size X and content type Y and you want to spend no more than Z amount of time looking after it for the client, so you should choose this framework"?

My question is a little open-ended, and I realise it may turn into framework-chatfilter or even "your favourite framework sucks", but that's OK, I wouldn't mind taking part in the same kind of conversation I'd have if I was having a beer with a bunch of web developers.

I'm inspired to ask partly because I've got a project coming up and I have to decide on a system, and partly because I see people discussing the frameworks on Ask all the time and I see offhand remarks like "Oh, but Wordpress is a security nightmare!" and "Drupal, Ugh! Half the contributed modules don't even work properly!" and so on, and well, every system has its fans and its haters, I'd like to hear, politely, from all sides.

Drupal structure? Help me structure my structure!

suedehead — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:12:11 -0800

I'm trying to create a magazine via Drupal, and I'm having some problems using node references. Should I be using books or taxonomies? Or can you just help me iron this problem out with what I'm doing now? I'm having trouble trying to determine the best possible structure for a Drupal 6 installation.

Some information about the site I'm making:

it's an online magazine organized into less than 10 articles grouped underneath a single issue. I don't have a use for categories for each article or each issue -- all I need is the structure.

Each article has around ten images associated with it. In addition, I need to designate a 'representative image' for each article that will show up as a thumbnail in the issue page. Also, each article will have small links to the other articles within the same issue.

So far I've been creating three node types: 1) an Issue type, 2) an Article type, 3) an Image type, using Imagefield. Each Image references the Article that it's part of, and each Article references the Issue that it's part of. Also, the 'representative image' for each Article is a node reference to an Image. I'm using custom php code to tie it all together, and it's working, albeit I'm working pretty slowly. Here's a diagram:



Issue --- Article

      --- Article

      --- Article --- Image

		  --- Image

		  --- Image

But now I'm starting to think that I'm overthinking this, and that I should use the book module. The problem with that is that the book module seems to have limited flexibility in terms of making custom themes/layout. I can't even find a good google result how to customize the Book tree that appears within the Book navigation menu.

So what should I be doing in terms of structure? Should I be using Taxonomy, or Book? Or should I just continue to customize things by using node references and hacking php code to tie everything together? Has anyone had similar experiences with Drupal and found the best possible way for this sort of website? Thanks!

How long will it take me to impliment CMS for a client?

Fuzzy Dog — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 12:10:36 -0800

How long to deploy CMS? I have STRONG web design and development skills and I have been asked to give a quote for implementing CMS for a client as part of their rebranding efforts. The catch is that someone else is spearheading the rebranding, which will include the new look for the site -- with input for me.

So hive mind how what is a reasonable estimate for how many hours it will take to develop, deploy and test a CMS (like Drupal) for my client?

For those folks who have done this already, I would appreciate any hindsight advice you might share with me.

Thanks in advance for your opinions, time and advice!

Drupal best practice?

y6y6y6 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 08:36:56 -0800

I'm starting to work with Drupal. My plan is to build several newsy blog-style sites. I think I have a good handle on learning the framework, but I'm wondering if any Drupal vets have suggestions for avoiding pitfalls or maximizing the good stuff. As background - I have a strong PHP skillset, and I plan on building some custom modules. I'll likely go with just tweaking existing themes rather than starting from scratch. And I'm hoping to run several sites from one install.

For bonus points, I plan on hosting all this on a managed 1and1.com server. Anyone have insight into Drupal hosting on 1and1?

How does adding links/menu items work in Drupal?

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:57:10 -0800

How does adding links/menu items work in Drupal? I'm writing a module which is an extension of Content Profile. There are two version of your profile - Default and Extra. You can set a field to either be 'default', 'extra', or both. If you access your profile through /user/1/edit/profile, a form_alter hook removes all of the fields that are only marked Extra before the content is displayed on the page. Similarly, when you go to /user/1/edit/profile_extra the fields marked as Extra are displayed.

By assigning the normal edit-profile link value to $items['user/%user/edit/profile_extra'] and switching on $form_id and $form['#action'] I can get the profile_extra page to show up when I visit its URL. But how do I get it to show up in all of the places that content_profile gets the Profile link? And how do I add all of those submenus that are on /user/%user/edit/profile?

anonymous thanks to bosses. mail can go to askme4635646456@gmail.com

Drupal versions & themes

Salmonberry — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:17:44 -0800

Backpedalling from Drupal 6 to Drupal 5, should I do it just to save a theme...how often does a Drupal update screw up custom themes? Another Drupal question from me. Our site was on Drupal 5 when I inherited it. Got a new host and off I went, putting on Drupal 6. Now there's no theme and the designer is saying it'll take hours to recreate everything to work on 6. Are Drupal themes generally fux0red by updates or can they be generated to easily upgrade with the latest version? Also, should I downgrade our Drupal install to 5 or are there significant security/bug fixes that came with 6? I'm a Drupal newbie so I really don't know.

Image-heavy CMS: is Drupal the right choice?

xiaolongbao — Sun, 03 May 2009 19:13:03 -0800

Drupalfilter: Image-heavy CMS with specific functionality - your thoughts on the best option? I am developing a site using Drupal with a custom template. Drupal is well-suited, I think, to the CMS. The functionality is to be:

- store and display many images with many tags. images must be zoomable, which I believe can be accomplished with jQuery
- manage a few disparate user types who will need to see different forms of the site
- handle form entries which will be collected and stored in a database
- payment processing
- bookmarking system

If you have a better suggestion than Drupal for these requirements, shoot.

I'm using Webfaction to host, and I like it thus far, though I do worry a bit about bandwidth if we grow, particularly since we are image-heavy. I'm using MAMP for local development. I can elaborate on details to some degree as needed, so ask away.

Big question: I also need to - and this is the challenging part, in my view - swap out different color samples for the images. We won't have images of all the pieces in each color, so we're trying to engineer a system to show samples. So if I have a bag in a blue fabric, I need to overlay an orange, green, red, or etc. or different patterns - polka dots, stripes, paisley, etc. These will be for different things than just bags, but the functionality desired is similar to this. This loads slowly, however, IMO. Wrinkles in fabrics makes this kind of hard.

I'm wondering if we could contract out for someone to create this part, and then do the rest myself. I looked at the oneybags code and it seems complicated. I think they are using image overlays - can someone maybe elaborate on what's going on there? If we contract it out, what would you say is reasonable to pay for this functionality? Or, should we have someone do the whole site?

Your thoughts are very much appreciated.

Drupal migration

Salmonberry — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 11:44:01 -0800

We have a drupal site. Had to move to a new host. Drupal is all gibbled now. I don't know drupal, I have inherited the site maintenance. Any chance someone knows wtf I did wrong? Our old host (Bryght) is shutting down so I got a new host. Bryght gave me a backup and I moved everything over.

Our Bryght site is still up so I wanted to test on our new site which is currently http://www##.ourhost.com/~ourname. The content is there but the CSS is not. It keeps claiming index.php doesn't exist if I try http://www##.ourhost.com/~ourname/drupal, but if I pop in http://www##.ourhost.com/~ourname/index.php it shows up (albeit without CSS or drupal template).

The links keep wanting to go to http://www##.ourhost.com/linkedpage instead of http://www##.ourhost.com/~ourname/linkedpage.

Basically it's finding the tables and the content, but nothing that makes our site look like our site and I can't move from page to page.

What did I do wrong? How can I set this up so it works? I'm out of my league here, I think.

Sending emails through a nonprofit's website

acridrabbit — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 09:47:54 -0800

How to set up a way for my non-profit's supporters to send letters to the editor and to elected officials online? I'm looking for a way to set up an online letter-writing campaign. Ideally, a supporter would be able to visit our website, select from a list of recipients, customize the body of the email, and hit send.

My non-profit group's website runs on Wordpress and Drupal, but I haven't been able to find a plug-in or module-based solution through either of those platforms. Is there a stand-alone solution or an easy way to implement this?

Could the new google analytics be causing my SSL to be insecure?

TrueVox — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 04:01:06 -0800

Anyone familiar with making SSL work with Google Analytics and Drupal? I'm currently working on a website for work. I have my SSL cert installed, but when I try to connect securely, it keeps complaining that a part of the site is insecure. I finally think I've narrowed it down to the Google Analytics code we're using (it's the new, supposedly self switching code, not the old manual code). Is it possible that it's causing trouble because I have it in the "footer" section of my Drupal UI? If so, how else do I install it? Or am I WAY off base, and it's actually an issue some where else?

The site, for reference, is www.mailritevt.com.

Thank you in advance!

Drupal 6 CCK hook mysteries

soma lkzx — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:10:21 -0800

In Drupal's CCK, how do I add additional global settings to fields? Disclaimer: I'm a Rails developer who is plenty familiar with PHP, but Drupal's learning curve is a little steeper than one morning. Pointing me to the right hooks or a module that does the same type of thing as I'm doing should be just as good as spelling out what to do.

I'm working with Content Profile and need to add a(n integer) setting for every field that's created under the Profile content type. Let's call it Priority. It'd be like the "Maximum length" setting in terms of numerality and globalness, but I need to add it via a module. hook_field_settings looks promising, but I can't figure out how to get in there on top of an existing field type - there are plenty of articles out there that show me how to do this if I was making a whole new field type, but I'd rather attach this to all of the existing ones.

Bonus points for getting this value to appear as a column on the top level 'Manage fields' page. Even more bonus points for the go-to (e)book for Drupal development.

I can haz developer???

spicynuts — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 09:33:30 -0800

Does this person exist, relatively cheaply: drupal, PHP, Flash, CSS developer? All rolled into one. I am tired of paying time and materials to outsource new dev/maintenance of our ecomm website. We are a start up and the costs of continued development now look to be about the same as the cost of hiring an in house resource, depending on whether my estimate of salary for this kind of person is accurate or that a single individual that can do all of this exits.

So here is what I would need this single person to be able to do:

1) implement new drupal templates for design of new pages on site
2) write new functionality that uses drupal/php to access database and manage data, users, products, etc
3) our site is an integration of Flash and CSS using a drupal engine - I want someone who can develop/optimize/fix the functionality that uses communication between the Flash customer facing stuff and the back end for transaction management, customer activity, non-transactional features, etc
4) handle day to day changes to pages on site based on promotions or testing of 'stickiness' to see how customers respond..so, like swapping out banners, areas of content, moving content around, etc
5) develop better interfaces for product and content management into drupal and the MySQL database - we use a stupid excel file now and drupal falls apart easily...I'd like to be able to develop some kind of web-based interface that uses php or something to directly into the product database and do our inventory and product management.

Is this completely unrealistic? For example, is this a team of three people rather than one person? If it is one person is this someone who should be earning 150K/annum due to the skill set or is it a lower level salary? Can anyone help me understand what's possible here better?

How can I build a homebrew online music store?

serial_consign — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:30:19 -0800

What are some open source/inexpensive e-commerce solutions for developing a homebrew online music store? I've been charged with designing the site of an independent record label and the only concern I have is their desire for an online record store. They want to sell both physical media and dowloads.

Ideally I'd like to use Drupal for this site as that is my platform of choice. However, I don't have much experience with the e-commerce or ubercart modules and I don't anticipate connecting cart functionality with a music player/browser would be much fun.

Beyond Drupal, I'm curious as to if there are any open source or affordable music oriented e-commerce/cms solutions out there. Since the store will be one of the central features of the site - it may be worth choosing the e-commerce solution first and reconciling the rest of the site design with the limitations of that platform.

Any suggestions as to platforms to investigate would be greatly appreciated.

Can I use htaccess to deny certain non-existent directories to avoid going through my Drupal site?

kosmonaut — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:12:00 -0800

Can I use htaccess to deny certain non-existent directories in order to avoid going through my Drupal site (which requires connecting to my database)? My Drupal site was hacked, though my content was not touched (which is why it went unnoticed for a while). I eventually noticed and cleaned up several extra directories that had had thousands of subdirectories with spammer linking content. The whole site is fresh and fixed but now I am getting a huge amount of 404 errors from all over the world, with people trying to access these old spam directories. In Drupal, each time this happens, the 404 page is generated and the 404 error is logged, which means accessing the database, which means my database is straining just to issue all of these 404 denials.

I just want a simple apache 404 page instead (but only for these spammer urls!).

The former pages and subdirectories were all contained within three base directories (I'll call them spam1, spam2, spam3), and so I would like to use htaccess to simply deny any request for (e.g.):

mysite.com/spam1/
mysite.com/spam1/item34/spam.php
mysite.com/spam2/item23/item5/anotherspam.php
...

And any other permutation.

I don't know how to do this when the directories don't actually exist. That is, I can recreate an empty folder called "spam1" and deny mysite.com/spam1/ requests with Apache, but this wouldn't deny any of the thousands of subdirectories -- as I said, Drupal steps in and takes over the 404 duties when the directory does not exist.

Is there some way to do the kind of denial I want, to pre-empt Drupal and the database connections? I do not control the server so htaccess may be my most powerful option.

(Otherwise, maybe I have to reconfigure Drupal in some way?)

Why Oh Why, YUI?

fourcheesemac — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:22:26 -0800

DrupalFilter: I need help configuring YUI Rich Text Editor so that it appears in specific non-body fields in a specific content type [CCK-created bio page] while also appearing site-wide in all body fields. I love YUI text editor. With default settings enabled (both "paths" and "IDs" left blank), it appears in all the usual body fields (across quite a few specific content types), such as in stories, events, etc.

However, we have one particular content type on our site -- an expanded user bio linked to the user account with a bunch of CCK fields -- where I need YUI text editor to appear in just one of these fields (where the user writes a biographical text) in addition to appearing in all the usual body fields in other content types.

Presumably I need to put the field ID into the "IDs" field in YUI Editor Settings. But I don't understand the syntax of the field ID. Looking at the source of the CCK output, I see something called:

id="edit-field-bio-0-value"

Presumably this is the "ID" of the field that YUI needs to know, right? What syntax do I use to specify this field in the YUI IDs settings field?

By the way, in my "Paths" field, I have the following:
node/add/*
node/*/edit

(and this seems to work to make YUI available in body fields sitewide)

Thanks very much in advance. This is non-profit stuff and I'm not a developer, so maybe it's more obvious that it seems, but I cannot find documentation of the YUI Rich Text Editor Settings interface, or its integration with Drupal, anywhere. YUI RTE works beautifully elsewhere throughout the site -- by far the best solution I've tried. But this is frustrating me. I'll monitor the thread and answer any questions.

Search Drupal by User and Category

Chanther — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:14:46 -0800

Is it possible to do a search on a Drupal site for only those posts/nodes that are from a specific user and which have specific tag/taxonomy term? Something like "user:33 AND category:14"? I have a Drupal installation for my language arts class. All of the kids' posts are tagged (categories) by the name of the assignment. All of the kids have their own user accounts. I have some recurring assignments, and it'd be convenient to be able to search for all instances of that assignment for a particular kid. Something like "user:Joey AND category:journal".

Can't seem to find anything that'll do it, but wondered if there's a good module out there? Current installation of Drupal is 6.7. I'm comfortable installing and configuring modules, and have a bit of experience with php (though writing my own module is beyond my skills).

So close!

yoyoceramic — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:38:58 -0800

I have a question on how to change the CSS and other formatting of a web page that I don't know the location of. Warning, we are talking more drupal! Screenshot inside... I am running drupal 6.1, and the modules related to this question are TinyMCE with the IMCE browser. Everything works properly! Woohoo, except, I would like to make a few formatting and display changes to the image browser (what I will refer to as the "blue background")

Once the image browswer opens, it takes the CSS from my blue theme, which I do not want. All I want is a grey backround. I would also like the new window to have scroll bars, and for some text to be removed --> see the screenshot.

Basically, I don't know the location of the "blue screen" you see in the following screenshot - this is what prevents me from editing it.

What are your thoughts or suggestions?

The screenshot is here

Botched Drupal Update... how to restore?

yoyoceramic — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 15:06:46 -0800

I deleted my entire drupal installation after a botched upgrade attempt. I have the /sites folder and the SQL database both backed up.... how do I restore my Drupal installation to how it was? I was following the update directions (I think I was upgrading to version 6.6 from version 6.4, but I am not sure), and something went wrong. After deleting my entire drupal installation like the directions said, I uploaded 6.6, uploaded my /sites folder, then I ran update.php. AFter this process appeared to be complete I tried to browse around the control panel of my site and all of the pages came up 404....

ANYWAYS, to make a long story short, now I am left with an empty directory, my /sites folder, and my SQL database backup...... can you please give me some guidance on how I can restore my drupal to how it was?

Thanks so much - I am in big trouble on this one.

How do I access the drupal admin panel.

BoldStepDesign — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 14:56:44 -0800

Three drupal questions 1. I disabled the log in form on the main page, now how do I get to the admin panel? (Please note, I have a local install of drupal, php, MySQL and Apache for Dev purposes.) 2. How can I create drop down menus? 3. Is there a way I can change the layout for a certain page? Such as I want the main page to be two columns while others to be one with tables or something to that effect for grid data. How can I do this?

Why aren't my images showing up on my (drupal powered) RSS feed?

serial_consign — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:38:23 -0800

Why aren't images showing up in my blog RSS feed? (Drupal CMS question) I'm using the Drupal image module for a blog project. No images are showing up in my RSS feed. I know this module creates a separate node for each image and "attaches" it to the related post.. is there a drupal (6.x compatible) image module that will allow users to upload images AND have them included in the post/node proper (and in turn, my RSS feed)?