This blog was born for one purpose and one purpose only: serving the requirements of a course in–you guessed it–PHP Site Management and Theming. I’m not much of a blogger, so this place wouldn’t be around otherwise. Admittedly, however, it makes sense to keep track of one’s journey through learning and practicing the intricacies of web development and to keep up with the findings of others in the same scenario. So here I am and here you are.
Week 15 – Version Control
Version control (also revision control, source control, source code management). It’s the first time I’ve ever the term, but I’m certainly not new to the concept. Many, many times I have created new versions of a document–particularly when designing–when I make even the smallest changes to the original, but don’t want to replace it. From what I’ve read, this is version control in it’s most basic form. With bigger projects and larger teams comes a greater need for organization, and that’s why there is version control software. It shouldn’t surprise you to find out that there seems to be different versions of version control: the distributed revision control (DRCS) of the peer-to-peer approach and the centralized system of the client-server approach. What this means, exactly, I’m still learning, but apparently programs such as CVS and Git will differ as a result of the different approaches.
So the question at hand is: do I need a version control system? At the moment, probably not. I’m the only one working on my projects, and it seems that a version control system is more needed with large teams and vast projects. Will I need it in the future? Possibly. If things grow to a much larger size and more people are incorporated, I might very well indeed need to introduce a version control system. So though the priority for the moment might be to simply get my site up and operational, I realize that I should keep my mind open to version control systems. And though fancy (geeky) it might sound, essentially it is all about organization and communication, which are essential to be big projects.
Blog Week 14 – Role Model
Some time ago I came across an announcement on the Drupal home page. It was a case study on HeadlinerCreative, the work of Tevi Hirschhorn. The site serves as both a blog and a portfolio to promote his business and offers helpful articles, currently one tutorial, and even a customized Drupal package. In light of this assignment, all of these help effectively market his site and services.
The blog element brings a friendly, personal element to the site/business which helps peers and potential clients alike connect to the designer. With the world wide web becoming an ever more social place, I think this is an important connection to make. Offering tutorials and gifts (the Drupal download) shows that the person is interested in helping other hopeful designers achieve that which he has achieved. I find this very admirable in people and I do believe it would inspire confidence in clients, considering that essentially, it’s the opposite of greed.
HeadlinerCreative offered me a glimpse of what is possible with Drupal from a designer’s point of view, rather than a developer’s, which was and is inspiring. I eagerly look forward to any further tutorials Tevi has to offer on designing for Drupal.
Blog Week 13 – Back up & Restore
Super simple, super smooth. I was able to follow this MySQL Tutorial to export and import my files. I did not run into any problems when I did so.
Though I have not tested yet, my host does provide a backup tool . It allows me to download my entire site or particular portions of the site. I can restore the files on the same page; the user interface is pretty easy to follow. In addition, they have provided a video demonstration.
Therefore, I’m pretty confident I will be able to move the site should the need arise and handle backups and restorations. I’m sure I’ll run into a stumbling block at some point, but at least I know how and where to go.
The next step was to figure out how often a site should be backed up. Depending on the importance and size of the site and how much time is spent working on it, backups could be a daily or weekly event. There seems plenty of sites who have their say on the matter: One, Two, Three.
Blog Week 9 – Altering a Theme
Ah, this will be a short post. (Surprisingly) My alterations were done as quickly as possible–perhaps that’s where the frustrations came. At one moment I would be like, “Oh! I can do this! I’ll use that!” and dive into old files and Photoshop, only to remind myself a moment later that I need to keep it simple for time’s sake. When it came to dealing with the code, I just stuck to playing around with CSS. Perhaps somewhere down the road I’ll better know how to create flexible themes that make full use of what Drupal has to offer.
I guess I’ll post before and after pictures sometime in the near future. For now, this is it.
Er, I did, though, manage to somehow mess up my local installation of Drupal after I designed the theme. The reason for this continues to elude me. At first I thought it was because I changed the file names, but I changed them back and nothing happened. I even removed the files, and still nothing. It’s still all, WSODing. I imagine I’ll have to reinstall it. Bah!
SEO Steps & Plan
I have installed another module called Pathauto which should set me on the right path (haha) to a more SEO friendly site. I’ve noticed that it is also recommended that I download the Path Redirect module in addition to Pathauto, so I will certainly be considering that (still need to figure out what it is and why I need it, heh). It would appear that it just creates an update link in the event an update to your URLs is needed.
I’ve also watched a screencast on using Pathauto and Views to create indexed aliases, or in other words hackable URLs. The video seems pretty straight forward, but I won’t know for certain until I jump in. Since indexed aliases increase usability, I would imagine that it would help search engines. Whether or not it does, the better accessibility that should come of hackable URLs seems worth while.
Blog Week 7 – SEO
Search Engine Optimization.
Wikipedia offered a lot of information on the topic. Did you know that you can hire people to optimize your site for you? Okay, yeah, well I didn’t. Apparently they are known as SEOs (search engine optimizers) and come with different titles depending on how they work. Black hat SEOs and white hat SEOs. Black hat SEOs use deceptive and malicious practices to get desired results, failing to follow SEO guidelines. When search engines become aware of these practices, they can ban sites that have implemented these techniques from their listings. Opposite of the black hat is the white hat SEO, who works on making the site more accessible to spiders (a computer program used to collect data for search engines). White hat SEOs comply with SEO guidelines and basically, SEO the good way. And wouldn’t you know, they also come grey-hatted. These SEOs may use certain risky techniques such as purchasing links in attempt to get more traffic. So they run the thin line between using desired and undesired SEO methods. Google has provided an article to help identify a good SEO, should you decide to hire one.
Otherwise, the best way to optimize your site for search engines is to create an organized, semantically correct website and include a site map. There are nifty site map generators (such as http://sitemapdoc.com/) to help you create mappings of your site.
Blog Week 6 – “Hacked”
So we had to research an incident that involved some sort of hacking, whether that site was taken down, databases corrupted, and/or information was stolen. The first thing that came to mind when I read the assignment were the incidents involving Avid Gamers–2.0, specifically. I never fully understood what had happened, but the result ended in corrupted databases. All sites through AG2 were sent back to their last operational state, which was several months back. All recent data–users, forums and forum posts, polls, alterations to the site layout, articles, and so on–was lost, though they did try to regain lost information for the paying customers (whether or not they were successful I don’t know). I have no other information on this particular incident other than my own experience, unfortunately, and after a long while of smooth operation AG2 started going down frequently before altogether disappearing. Everything, gone. I never heard anything about what had happened, and during the frequent downtime the admin was no where to be found (in fact, he hadn’t logged on for almost a year–though moderators were still active). So I’m left with no research to do on the topic, as searching “Avid Gamers” yields no results.
In other news (and if that ^ story does not count), I did a quick search on this wonderful subject and found a very recent incident involving e-mail addresses that end in @hotmail.com, @msn.com, and @live.com. According to articles on Examiner, BBC News, and Neowin the login information for these e-mail accounts was stolen, likely through a phishing scam, and posted up on a public website. This included some 10,027 address beginning with letters A and B (most of which are from Europe). Since this recent news, Microsoft is still in process of investigating.
Week 4 – Modules Galore
So. After returning to UberCart to search for the right image handling module I discovered that they listed exactly what I needed on the Installing UberCart page and that I needed not just one module, but 6 to handle images. I also installed Views and might install Google Analytics. I have no idea what the appropriate amount of modules for an e-commerce Drupal site is, but right now I feel like I have a lot.
Update: I also looked at Case Studies on Drupal and researched the modules mentioned to figure out what I needed. I also did some more researching when it came to discovering the best modules for search engine optimization. It generally came down to reading their descriptions on the Drupal’s website.
As for the forums in Drupal, I have yet the need to ask there, but I’m sure it will be so in the future.
Sorting Content, Figuring the Layout
Figured I should update.
After realizing I couldn’t follow the tutorial I found (because I don’t want to use Drupal 5) I went off, yet again, searching. I found this. It looks promising. I shall see if I can follow it.
In the meantime, I’ve been trying to figure out how I’m going to put up my content. I won’t lie, Drupal’s way of creating content is confusing to me. I plan to continue researching, starting here and lynda.com. Once I figure out how to organize my content I will post for anyone who is also interested in learning to arrange data the Drupal way.
Modules!
Ah, so I’ve been doing plenty of reading up on modules. So much, in fact, my head hurts. At this point I have UberCart, Token, and CCK installed. In addition I’m looking to download Views, Panels, and an image handling module. I feel I need to figure out what I can do and how I can organize content before I actually figure out what all I’m going to add. This puts me in a weird place as far as course assignments go… I should have my content-to-include figured out already, regardless of how it will be displayed, right? Well, yeah… that’s easier said than done as far as I’m concerned. : (
