When trying to keep web site content clean and on-topic, the site administrators often face monumental challenges from spammers.

Mollom.com is an alternative to using the Spam or Akismet modules. It's in beta at present, and it is free of charge at present. It is expected to remain free for low-volume users (for details, please refer to the mollom.com web site - link below.)

I've set up a new site, http://gigs.exodusdev.com, as a way to showcase my Drupal Classified Ads module. All Drupal consultants or developers are welcome to sign in and create ads for their services. If you are looking for a consultant, there's a category for that, too.

I want to put the classified ads module through its paces, so, if you offer or need Drupal services, please drop in at http://gigs.exodusdev.com and give it a try!

I've committed the classified ads module to the Drupal.org CVS - it's now available for download as an official release package.

You can find the official project page (and the official downloads) at http://drupal.org/project/ed_classified.

This page on drupal.org shows how to use checkboxes and option boxes instead of the drop-down selectors for taxonomy terms when submitting content. read more »

I've created some Drupal-specific OpenSearch plugins for Firefox (and IE7, too!). They provide Drupal.org and api.drupal.org search integration in browsers supporting the OpenSearch search plugin protocol.
They are useful when searching for Drupal API routines or other Drupal development subjects. Install them as you would any other OpenSearch plugin...read more »

I've created a simple MyBlogLog module for Drupal 4.7. This module provides the following features:

• Inserts the MyBlogLog tracking javascript into generated pages - no need to hand-edit your template's page.tpl.php file, or manually create a block to inject the tracking javascript.
• Provides the "Recent Reader" widget block
  (includes configuration options - color, width, # rows, etc.)

• Disable visitor tracking for Administrators and other users on a per-role basis (prevent skewed stats due to admin or other roles' visits.)

... and moreread more »

When I'm viewing Drupal administration pages, like referrer logs or other time-sensitive pages, I like to know the time of the last 'refresh' (and therefore how stale the page content is).

So, here's a quick and dirty Drupal block definition. (The javascript is not very idiomatic, but it'll do for now until I can update it. In fact, I plan on making it a pure client-side javascript widget, but that's another post for another day.)

It will display the date and time the page was last loaded, and the 'age' of the page in seconds - it uses a javascript interval timer to update this every second.

In order to use this on your drupal site, create a new block, paste the code into the block content text field, configure it to use the PHP input filter (so the php code can be interpreted by Drupal), position it in the left sidebar area of your theme (you can place it wherever you wish), and set it to be shown only on admin and admin/* pages.

Here's the code:

<div style="float:right; border: red 1px solid;background-color:orange;color:yellow;text-align:center;padding:.5em;">
<?php
// todo: make this all client javascript!
// but, for now, I use the php/Drupal format_date() function to simplify the process of getting a local date/timestamp
$t = time();
echo 'Page generated on ' 
   . format_date(time()) 
   .  '  <span style="color:white;"> <br/%gt;(<span  id="page_render_age">0</span> seconds ago)</span>';
?>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var page_render_time=new Date().getTime();

function page_render_format_interval(now,start)
{
   return parseInt((now - start)/1000);
}
function page_render_update()
{
  var now = new Date();
  var et = page_render_format_interval(now.getTime(), page_render_time);
  var elem = document.getElementById('page_render_age');
  if (elem && elem.textContent) elem.textContent = et; // ff/mozilla
  if (elem && elem.innerText) elem.innerText = et; // ie compatibility
}
window.setInterval("page_render_update()", 1000);

</script>

Here's a useful Drupal module that tweaks a node's body or teaser to insert an inline AdSense ad, when a node is rendered on a full page or teaser list.

This allows site administrators to enable automatic insertion of an AdSense ad into the page without the content editor having to insert inline [adense] filter tags, or having to edit a site's template.php (or other template files.) This offers a big advantage, as you can change the ad format, group, and channel on the fly without hand-editing each node (which is the only way I can think of doing it if you are using inline filters). Another advantage is that you can enable/disable the inserted AdSense with just a click of the mouse - no need to edit each node. read more »

On Christmas Eve day, several of my sites were 'visited' by what I presume to be a bot, all from the same source IP address.

The attack consisted of attempts to register many new user accounts, each having a username containing the term 'DVD':

Soccer DVD, DVD Immature, Underworld DVD, Adult DVD, Enigma DVD, DVD shrink, Blues DVD, Trick DVD, Portable DVD Player, DVD Decryptor, Federation DVD

The email addresses were all unique of course - since the bot attempted to register multiple user names on each site. The sites were configured to include a text field user profile, so that users can share interests, etc. read more »

Here's a standalone module to provide the customization described at AngryDonuts.com. You can see it in use on this site.read more »