Drupal

Some our our sites that feature free classified ads (amadorable.com, goatseeker.com, and bunnytrade.com) have been hit with a few recurring spammers trying to plant ads for various off-topic products (like cell phones, etc.) I guess this is a good sign; our sites are visible and spammers feel it is worth their time and trouble to post an ad (and no, as far as I can tell, these are not bots - they're human-generated spam.)

In reviewing the referrer logs, I've noticed that in nearly every case, spammers use search engines to find sites that have been spammed previously using known keywords - or just sites that offer free classified ads or open posting capability. For example, I find these google searches in my logs, just prior to the spammer creating an account and attempting to deposit the spam content.

When using event.module with JSCalendar (part of jstools module), you might experience problems with event times being stored incorrectly. This appears to be due to an obscure configuration requirement when using JSCalendar - apparently, the event module must be configured to use 12 hour format. (This one bit me in the behind today, so I thought I'd jot this down somewhere...)

Be sure to set event.module time notation to 12 hour format:
administer >> settings >> event >> "Time Notation Preference" = 12h

Related info:

This posting on angrydonuts.com (merlinofchaos' excellent site) shows how to customize the placement of the 'read more' link on your site. Most excellent!

Why can't a Drupal user edit a node they created?

Symptoms: An authorized Drupal user loses "edit" access to nodes they've created, even if they have appropriate node (or other module) access permissions. Or, user cannot edit a node that should be editable by them, based on access control or node access settings. No errors or warnings are presented to the user. Nothing in the Drupal watchdog log.

Possible Cause: The user does not have permission to use the input filter currently assigned to the node. (An administrator or other privileged user may have changed the input filter settings, or, input filter permissions may have been changed to exclude the node author since the node was created. As a result, the user never had, or no longer has permission to use the input filter associated with the node.)

This excerpt from Drupal node.module node_access() function tells the tale:

I've been granted maintainer status for the orphaned Directory module. (The project page is new; previously there was no project page on drupal.org for this module.)

I've checked in a few fixes/improvements - please visit the project home page or the module documentation for the latest information.

View fully-functional live demos at: RoadCarvin.com, amadorable.com or bunnytrade.com (all running Drupal 4.7 and latest stable version of this module.)

How do I keep my Drupal 4.7 site(s) backed up?

There are several modules to help you:

• backup.module Creates an on-demand tarball backup of your database and site files, and downloads them to your browser.
• Database Administration module Allows interactive backup of database tables (among other things.)

I've created a simple classified ads module for Drupal 4.7 and Drupal 5. It is now in use on a large number of Drupal-based sites.

Background

My classified module creates a new node type ('ed_classified') and associates an expiration time stamp with all nodes of that type. Borrowing from the image.module image gallery scheme, it creates and associates a custom taxonomy with the classified ads. Site administrators then need to create child taxonomy terms for each classified ad category. As with any Drupal taxonomy, ad categories may be nested to arbitrary depth.

When using multi-site configurations in Drupal 4.7, and you want to use URL rewriting in .htaccess to force 'www.' or non-'www.' subdomain access, the rewrite rules used in the standard .htaccess file may be problematic.


# If you want the site to be accessed WITH the www. only, adapt and uncomment the following:
# RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
# RewriteRule .* http://www.example.com/ [L,R=301]

#
# If you want the site to be accessed only WITHOUT the www. , adapt and uncomment the following:

I'm working on an alexa API module that will allow your Drupal-based site to provide embedded Alexa site ranking information.

As of now, this module provides a number of useful features:

• Generate img tag url for Alexa charts - embed Alexa charts in your site pages
• Query Alexa toolbar data and return it in XML format
• Caching of queried data