Good Drupal Modules

OMG, I haven’t left the house in two days! I have got a lot done tho, it has been completely worth it.

I have got a site that seems to be doing what I want it to and I got it looking kinda sweet too! (By the way – I decided to use a more developed theme to help me get it to look good, I know that I wanted to do it on my own but it seemed so daft when there are such good themes out there!)

Here is a list of the modules that I have uploaded and why-

Actually before I do – just in case I didn’t explain properly before (and to help me understand it more) I better just explain what modules are. Basically the modules in drupal are the functions that it can perform, sort of. They are activated within the administration menu and then after that more menus will appear in the admin menu and the website will be able to do more stuff.

So for example one of the core modules that comes with drupal, is the ‘poll’ module which allows you to put a poll or question on the site and then people can vote. Also there is a module for user login and search. Like, all the things you want to have on the site will be a module. And a lot of these modules will be contributed modules which means that they are made by contributers, who then allow us all to use them. So they all fit with drupal but they have to be downloaded separately from the drupal.org site. The contributed ones can be really great and I think most people do use them.

I have downloaded the following so far –

Image – This is the first module I downloaded and I did this so that I can add images to my blog posts and pages in the site.  I have later downloaded another image module. (tho not sure if it was the right thing to do yet)

Image Cache – this is the other image module that I downloaded and I did this because on Learn by The Drop it was recommended and he did a video showing how to make an image gallery by using this module.  I have not managed to get this to work tho….  but thats another story.

Image Field and Image API are another two that I got to go with image cache. It seems to be quite normal for contributed modules to work together and so you have to download one or two at a time.

Mollom – this is a security module that will protect from spam.

Path Auto – I got this to help with naming the urls for the site so that they are nice names and not node/7 or whatever.

Wysiwig – This is a ‘what you see is what you get’ module that means that I can now write blog posts and make bold and italics and stuff without using code. Makes it easier I think.

IMCE – I am not really altogether certain about this one, I downloaded it while I was doing a video tutorial and I thought it had something to do with uploading photos within the wysiwig but I am not sure now as that part of it doesn’t seem to be working terrible well.

Google Analytics – I got this so that when the site is up and running I will be able to track it well and see how it is doing.

Views – This is the module that lets you make different views like galleries I think.

Token – To be honest I can’t remember why I got this one but I think it works with another one.

Skinr – I had to get this when I got my new theme.  More about that later

Lightbox2 – I think I got this for the Image cache module but as I said thats not working so good at the moment.

Filefield – I think this goes with Image Field.

Ubercart – wow this module is sooo amazing!!!  It is like a fully set up shop!  Everything is there all ready to be customised. There are catalogues for the products, product pages where all the info is filled in, upload images, delivery prices, checkout, different payment methods. And the whole thing has real good admin with it too for all the orders and the tracking and all that. Its going to be soooo awesome – My site already looks like a shop and I haven’t even really started yet!  I love this one so much!

So yeh – those are my modules and as you can see there are a few issues that I am having so I hope to have these ironed out over the next few days or weeks or whatever.

Feels good to have made some progress.

Reading About Drupal

Well Christmas is over now and its time to get back to the challenge!

Christmas day was good apart from the hayfever (New Zealand doesn’t get a white Christmas!)  We ate a lot and sat about so now I am feeling ready to hit it hard and get his website conquered!

It was quite good to have a break and then to look at it with fresh eyes and a new sense of vigour.

I couldn’t decide whether to try to get the theme to look how I want it to or to get the site to work how I want it to and then to worry about how it looks later. I am still not really sure but I have decide to get the content and the functionality all sorted out first because I am not really 10% sure how it should look.

Also as I am creating a website for my boyfriend as this test site, then I fugure that he may have some ideas of how he would like it to look and I will not be able to deal with those comments until I have the site in better working order.

So I am working through the tutorials at Learn By The Drop, which have really helped me and also made me feel like I am still relaxing a bit coz its kinda like watching tv.

I think what I have to figure out is what I would like on the front page and then decide whether we would like to try selling from the site as that will add in another whole load of things I need to think about and I would rather do it now than do it later when the site looks great and it would be a hassle to add anything.

So I am looking through Google to see how others have created e-commerce sites with Drupal and also I have been looking out photos and content for the site coz it won’t be much of a site if there isn’t anything on it!

Feeling quite relaxed as I am not really doing anything difficult right now. I know it will get bad again tho as soon as I start to actually DO SOMETHING and stop reading… 😀 he he

First Bad Day

So I have just had the first sh*t day.  I feel really annoyed!

Basically I was feeling quite good about it all after creating the layout and I added firebug to my firefox and decided that I would set about adding a banner to the top of the page and changing the colour of the background. But it wasn’t that easy!

I got myself a bit confused. I actually got really really stressed out coz I couldn’t find where the html file was! I know – it seems so stupid now but I was going through all the folders for ages looking for this file ending .html or .htm. But of course there isn’t one! I feel so dum and frustrated about how much I don’t know and also a bit annoyed that I had to Skype my brother to ask him about it >-(

It was ok tho – he was real nice about it and explained a few things to me that I didn’t really know before so I guess I benefited from swallowing my pride and asking him and I guess I will have to do it again about a million times because I’ve set myself such a mammoth task!!

What he explained to me in simple terms, was that php is just a scripting language and that erm… it sorta has rules in it like “if this happens, then this happens” I think. And so there is no physical html file, there are just these php files that tell it what to do and also there are the css files. So he then explained that if I was to make changes to the site I will have to make changes to the .css files and that these are in a sort of heirarchy with certain files over-riding others so its important to be careful about where the changes are made. So for example I should not be making changes to the base.css file as it is (as the name says) the base. There are other files such as the style.css file that I should be looking at to make my changes. It does of course say this in the READ ME file within the themes folder but I didn’t think to read that!

So that might be a bit of a problem as I jumped in there as soon as I had firebug installed and I played about with a whole load of things in the base.css file.  Ooops

I have to tell you tho that the first thing I did was to make the changes in firebug and believe that I had changed the website, that was until I watched this video tutorial on it and realised that it only shows you what the changes would look like and I have to go manually into the file to actually implement them. I liked that video actually, it was real easy to understand. Its great that there are so many resources out there for people like me who need to learn a lot!

I realised yesterday that I am so excited to have the internet in my home and to have the time and energy to try to do something really difficult because it is giving me so much opportunity to learn and opening my eyes to what is out there! Its just amazing really. An the best thing is that even if it doesn’t work out I will still know more at the end that I do now. I kinda wish I started to get interested sooner but then I would have missed out on many hours of tv and partying 😀   There is a time and a place for everything and I think now might just be my computer time…

For a moment there I forgot how mad and frustrated I am!

I am tearing my hair out!!

Coz after all that and realising that I had been changin the wrong file, I also realised that my subtheme folder that I made seems to be in the wrong place. It is inside the themes folder but not inside the genesis theme folder. But the other sub-themes are inside the genesis folder. So I think mine is wrong.

So I just dragged it into the genesis theme folder and now its lost everything and the website is completely blank. Just a white page.  Hmmmmm

Time for that backup already?….

First Layout Attempt

So now that I have chosen my theme its REALLY REALLY difficult and I dunno really what I am doing!

I have it sorted into a layout with a sidebar on either side – just followed the instructions on the drupal site, well I say JUST, it was a long and difficult process. And then adding information in to a whole load of different pages took ages and I didn’t really know what to write in them. Some people use lorem ipsum I think but I dunno even what that is, so I decided its better to write sort of what I want in each page. Then at least I have thought about each one. So after all that effort, I think it took me about 3 days to go from downloading the theme to now, I had great expectations for how I would feel about the site and how I would be able to see the potential in it by now. But I can’t really it still looks rubbish. I mean its layed out ok but its not nice and I don’t know how to get it to look good. I actually don’t have the first idea.

I only just worked out how to get an image into the site yesterday! (I had to download a module from the drupal site – I was surprised at that, I thought it would have been one of the core modules)

Here it is anyway –

I had an idea tho! I am going to get firebug so that I can see what is goin on with the html and css and hopefully that will make it more clear for me about what makes it look how it does…

Oh and in case you didn’t know – firebug is an add-on for firefox (the browser) it shows up at the bottom of the browser window and shows the code for each element as you hover over it with the mouse!  How cool is that! I have high hopes!

Choosing a Theme

I decided from the start that I would get a theme as that will be the only way that I will be able to do this!

I have already got a sketch of how I think I want the site to be laid out and what it should contain so I reckoned that if I could get a theme that is close enough to what I want then it will be simple to modify it to just about right. I’m not aiming for perfect – I am not that ridiculous!

I began to look for themes on the drupal website, and I spent probably about 2 hours looking through them and thinking about them, comparing them to what I wanted but I couldn’t really see anything that matched. So annoying!

So I started to look at other sites similar to the one I want to build to see what they look like and whether there is a layout that appears often, which is like one of the themes. I suppose I was looking for inspiration although it seems to me like I just wasted a whole day looking at websites and not achieving anything! I am grateful for it tho because I do have a better idea of what I want and I have made some changes to my ideas.

The thing is that what I want is not really like any of the themes and I am also not sure that the theme will let me do what I want. So I am going to try a different tactic – that is to use one of the themes that is really customisable. I didn’t realise this before but some theme developers use other themes as a base for their theme. So if they can do that then I should be able to too!  😀

So I have chosen genesisand it is downloaded and saved into my themes folder now. I have also followed the instructions and copied the sub-theme folder into the themes folder and given it a new name so that its my very own sub-theme. This is what I will customise.

The instructions were all on the page but it was still pretty hard!

Installing Drupal – the first hurdle

This for me was the first huge hurdle! Its just not like installing other programs. I thought it would be easy – just like download the program and then drag it to the Applications folder. (I use an iMac by the way)

But it wasn’t that simple!

And in fact, I had already been through the whole process once before about 6months ago with my brother telling me step by step what to do. So I felt super stupid when I couldn’t do it for the second time.

Also to use drupal you will need MySQL database and also PHP and FTP (I was soo confused at first!). MySQL is the database that stores all the information and PHP is what allows drupal to use code on your website, or at least that is how I understand it. And the FTP is the ‘file transfer protocol’ which you need to upload the files to your website and get it online.

Because I use a Mac, and also because I want to work offline on my website before introducing it to the world, I downloaded MAMP for my PHP and MySQL. I would love to talk to you about how I did this but it happened 6months ago with my brother tutoring me so I have forgotten!  ooops he he (off to a good start!)

MAMP is still good to go after all that time but drupal has been updated so I had to upgrade, so I downloaded the new version and read through the update read me file. It basically has everything in there that you need but I found it easier to follow this video tutorial as it is just so much easier when its there being done in front of my eyes! There is also a video tutorial there for installing the program from scratch.

I found it on the site Learn by the Drop which also has a guide for beginners, but to be honest I was kinda stuck by about page 10! The videos are better than the book I think personally. Still its a great site and now I wrote about it here I remembered about it again and I think I will go back there later today as there are some more things I have issues with.

So yeh basically now I have it set up so that I am working on the website using my computer as a local host and then when I am finished I will upload it to the internet. Every day I open up MAMP and then I open firefox and I have the address to my site (which is http://localhost:8888/drupal/ because its on my computer – when its finished it will be the web address) in my bookmarks. I just get to the site, use my username and password to log in and then the fun really begins.

To be honest today I am not really enjoying it, its just got really hard  😦

WHY?

Why would I try to use drupal to create my own website when I have no experience of ANYTHING website-creation related at all? Why would I not get someone else to do it for me or at least use an easier process?

Why am I trying to do something that is so time consuming and so mind-boggling and evil? Why would I do that to myself?

Well basically I gotta, coz my brother can and if he can do something then I should be able to do it too. Otherwise he will be better than me at somethign and that is NOT GONNA HAPPEN.

Except that it already has coz he has already created a website for my parent’s business using drupal, and his own website using wordpress and a whole heap of other geeky internety things.  And I have done nothing.

This is all about to change, however, as my parents have asked me to update their website for them as super-brother hasn’t got time. This is my chance to prove myself – to show that I too am capable of great geekiness!

So yeh – thats the WHY explained in general terms and I think after writing it down it is confirmed again in my mind and I feel stronger again. So all good….

But it doesn’t really make me feel any better coz I am still unsure of what I am doing, frustrated out of my mind and about to scream at the computer with extreme and unbridled RAGE!!

I am trying to learn html, css, theming and all sorts of other things that I don’t even know what they are, and its slowly killing me. I feel stupid and useless.

And yet – it can lift me u as well, its sort of addictive that feeling when something goes right. Its not like a normal victory, its a huge victory every time that something goes right! I feel great, I feel like I could take on the world. I want to do more! 

I AM the Geek, I am the drupal warrior!