Abdullah’s Blog

Yesterday , Drupal version 5 has been release. it sounds promising release. however if you have run over some development on version 4 you might get angry since your development wont be any longer valid and you need to make it compliant with 5.

Actually I didn’t do too much development on 4.7 , but I have some simple modules and I have to look for straight steps to use them to convert but unfortunately I couldn’t find anything yet, what I find only this too much talk about the changes which is not easy go through. So I might write my own steps and post them here to so you benefit from them.

As I started using Drupal to built content websites, I paid attention to some contributed modules which are very useful and very intelligent and here I’m listing some of those modules so it will save time of anyone who would like to start using Drupal:

• CCK: Use it if you would like to create a new node type with extra fields more than just a title and body, a very important module, if you start using this module 85% of your development for your website will be dropped.
• Contemplate: Most likely it came because of CCK, after you create a new content type using CCK, you will need to implement a view template for it ( since you have extra fields more than just a title and body) , so it will allow you to display the content as you wish.
• CCK Field Permission: Oh, this is a very smart module , if you want this field of this type of content not to be seen by any role of users , you will be able to do it using this module. Example: a module called telephone directory, you would like to display all fields to everybody except the email and only registered people can see the email. so what you need in this case is to use this module.
• Aggregator: It’s by default shipped with Drupal 5!
• Image: To manage Images, Attached image to your article, to make multiple galleries. ( nice to make thumbnails ).
• Views: The Second Most powerful modules , in conjunction with CCK you might not need any more coding to build most of your needs in content websites. Views is a kind of a modern querying interface to generate block , or list of nodes that match certain criteria, like All last post of type News ordered by Creation date.
• disknode: a nice tool to attach files to any kind of node.
• Taxonomy Access(Category Access):
• TinyMCE: Drupal comes with Simple Text Area to type your text for you posts, but the modern way is to use WYSIWYG so you can paste from MS Word or any Word processing application. and You can manage your post without taking care about HTML.
• Actions: Nice for Drupal developers who would like to develop something and need to give the administrator the control to apply the actions at a certain time or certain condition, but you will need to program the action itself.
• Workflow: Very intelligent module, if you would like to flow the steps for a kind of nodes until they get published, then you will need a work flow. Example: an Article for a magazine, will be inserted by an editor. then it needs to be verified from a person so the article wont be published with some lack in language, then it has to go to the manager to approve it , and finally it’s published!. if you would like to do so, then use workflow.
• Upload: a standard module ,it allows you make it possible for any node type to have upload attachment file.
• Profile: Your registered users might be required to fill some extra information more than just a username and password, example: full name , age , location etc.. and it’s up to you to put what you would like to keep.
• Print: Adding Print-Friendly capability , and.
• Path: Adding a direct make to any node.
• Default Filter: Adding the ability to set the default input filter for each role of users
• HTML Correcter: since you are going to user teaser in your website still need to close all html tags that’s been open ‘correctly’ in the original text.

and Since Drupal 5 is released today I will be posting another post about what is new in Drupal 5, and what is good over all in Drupal.

Since I started using Drupal as my CMS engine for any website needs to be developed, I started trying to collect some template( in drupal called theme). and I found this website http://theme.drupaler.net/ it contains a good number of themes , however those themes does not work Right to left yet.

I selected some of them and inshallah soon I will past theme there and here too.

here are some of I selected,

• arcmateria
• spread Firefox spread firefox website theme.
• Multi Flex
• Connections
• blix a porting of wordpress theme.
• summer Holiday nice even it’s too narrow.
• Mollio a very nice template.
• meta
• andreas01  nice for official websites and very simple to change the logo to something interesting.

Some poeple like to have a module called front_page , to have different template for their front page. I found a simple way to do so, if you are interested to this subject, keep reading

first of all, I suggest to you to use PHPTemplate Engine. since it’s simple and no need for any learning curve if you know how to write simple scripts in PHP.

in your Theme Directory, create a file called template.php, this file is used to control any variable just before it’s passed to the template files.

And paste this code in it,


function _phptemplate_variables($hook, $vars = array()) {
switch ($hook) {
case 'page':
if ($vars['is_front']) {
$vars['template_file'] = 'front_page';
}
break;
}return $vars;
}

and create a file named front_page.tpl.php and start use this file to template your front page.