Issues

Planned Upgrade to Drupal 6.x

Alan — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 13:01:50 +0000

I'll be updating the underlying content management system of this website in the next week or so. I'll be moving it to Drupal 6.1. I know there will be a few features missing such as Similar Entries.

You'll also come back to a new look - ok, I'm cheating there, I'll be using on of the default themes while I'm waiting for contributed themes to catch up. That suits me, I wanted to change from this theme since it was looking a bit too busy.

I'll leave a maintenance message up, hopefully for only an hour or so.

Edit - I was going to upgrade today, but there's one feature I still want to have confirmed for Drupal 6.1, it's the ability to integrate with Feedburner. Currently I'm using the Feedburner module, but I've been looking at using the Path Redirect module instead. I'll probably hold off upgrade until I can happily integrate with Feedburner.

Improving the speed of a Drupal Site

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:58:30 +0000

I've had to look at a few options for improving performance on this site. I noticed that the introduction of the Feedburner module and moving the RSS feeds across to Feedburner had caused some performance issues.

As I write this, I'm making some changes to the site based on the Essential Steps to Speed up a Drupal Web Site series of articles.

The current change is to implement the Block Cache Module, so you may see a couple of pieces of content duplicated while I switch from dynamic to cached content.

Adding Feedburner

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 14:18:29 +0000

I'm in the process of swapping this site's RSS feeds over to Feedburner. It allows me to manage the feeds better and understand what readers use the feeds for. For a start, I had no idea how many of you subscribe to this site or which parts of it.

One of the many good points about Drupal is that it allows you (as readers) to subscribe to any category that you want to. You don't have to subscribe to the whole site. Currently I've only got the main site-wide RSS configured. If you want any of the others configured that way, then let me know. I don't believe readers will actually notice much difference in delivery, but if you do, again feel free to let me know.

One odd point is that the time for the initial load seems to have increased since changing to Feedburner. That is odd. Even weirder is that adverts have started appearing in the content. That's something I've avoided so far.

Looking for a New Comments Form

Alan — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 13:42:33 +0000

Leaving comments may be a little awkward for a while. I've had TinyMCE on since I started this site, but as a writer I've stopped using it. I can imagine it being awkward for users who aren't used to it and a lot of the features never seemed to work. It was never number one on my priority since readers can always leave basic messages - just don't try to do anything complicated.....yet.

Easy-to-use

I value easy-to-use above lots of functionality in this case. So I'm on the search for something better. I'll post back when I've installed something.

Suggestions

If you've any suggestions for a Drupal WYSIWYG editor, then please let me know - although that does mean you'll have to tackle the comment form :-)

Sister Site

Alan — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 14:05:09 +0000

Rather than just having a test site on a home server, I've been playing with different Drupal features over at this site's sister site at www.alancward.co.uk. I'm also using that site to host less professional articles than at this site. There may be some overlap as I put articles that may be of interest at both sites, but by and large I'll keep the articles and the sites separate with the odd article present on both sites.

Currently the two main content areas are the Cover Trail which started off as a practice place for the book module, but looks like it may live longer and articles on a linux HTPC.

Blogrush doesn't work with HTML Corrector

Alan — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 16:25:52 +0000

After adding the HTML Corrector, I noticed that Blogrush (and not that site widget alone, some of the image adverts as well) were not displaying anymore.

The way around it is to create another input format that has free html input without the HTML corrector. It's also probably best to under the use of only the Administrator and not for general release for other user profiles.

Then apply the new input format to the blocks that weren't working properly with the HTML Corrector.

Blogrush itself was easy to add, it was the update to improve the site that stopped it working on this site for a short while.

HTML Corrector

Alan — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 14:35:27 +0000

Wish I'd have found the HTML Corrector module for Drupal earlier. I've noticed some odd behaviour in a few places and so I'd restricted my articles to being mainly text-only.

Looks like the issue with the sidebar at the bottom was possibly created by the teasers not having all the html tags closed. This is something that I, as a writer, have no control of. Seems quite a basic error in coding, especially in parsing and generation. Fortunately though, it looks to be becoming part of Drupal 6 when it arrives.

Issues with contacting us

Alan — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 13:33:39 +0000

Sorry to anyone who's tried to contact us recently. Some of the contact pages haven't been showing the spam filters they should have been. So you may have tried and failed or even tried but it failed later on. If you've contacted us but haven't received anything, please try again.

I'm likely to be upgrading the filters in the next few weeks. But this particular issue was out of my control.

Unlike most posts about issues with this site, this one will appear on the front page.

thank you

Sidebar at the bottom

Alan — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 19:03:49 +0000

For some reason, the sidebar on the homepage is now showing on the left at the bottom of the page. I've no idea why this is happening. Only happens on the homepage, all other pages work well.
A good thing about Drupal is that you can easily choose which page the blocks appear on. Blocks hold small parts of the user interface, for instance the menu on the left is in a block. The banners at the bottom of the page are in blocks of their own and so on. I've tried the standard of removing any blocks which I've added recently or just hiding them from the homepage but to no avail. It doesn't help that the feature wasn't noticed for a while so can't be pinpointed.

I really should follow my own advice by applying the same professionalism to this site that I apply in the consultancy. This would involve testing any changes thoroughly - whether the change is in a process or in an ICT system. In this case, the test scripts would include checking the different type of pages (front page, blog, page, story, etc) with different types of users (logged in, anonymous, etc).

Banners and advertising

Alan — Thu, 06 Sep 2007 07:35:27 +0000

Not a Drupal issue here and to be honest, perhaps it's not an issue at all. But I can't get the Amazon banner search to show anything related to the content on this website. Maybe it'll take a day or two to work it's way through the system. We shall see.

I'm against website banners that are unrelated to what you're trying to view. I'm also against website banners and adverts that link you to stuff that the host wants you to buy because it's new or because of the commission.

I took a decision when I started this site that the only adverts should be about things I believe are worth visiting (e.g. Filmsound) or worth buying.

It hasn't *yet* worked out completely as I'd like it to. For instance, some of the Google Ads pick up on odd words. But that's all down to the algorithms. I'm happy they have the algorithms, it's now down to me to figure out how to use them properly in a way that suits the readers. It will work though, but I think I have to have some more content on the site to be able to make a better judgement of what works.