Episode 5 - Cool Drupal stuff.

Tom! The site is looking rad man. You are doing awesome with this stuff. You may have to go into your audio module and set up the cool little flash player. There are a whole bunch of settings in there admin/settings/audio and one of the tabs is the "players" tab, which I think should get you going.
Getting email working on your system is a bit more complicated. Essentially, drupal email is handled by PHP and then handed off to a mail agent. You can easily install a transfer agent. Keep in mind, but doing this and opening port 25 that you potentially open a security hole in your system (I know I always throw those disclaimers out).
Anyway, you could use sendmail, or postfix. I like to use postfix. So you can just do a
sudo apt-get install postfix
and let it work its magic.
You then want to check your php.ini file to make sure the sendmail path is correct. (postfix uses sendmail) So search for the line
sendmail_path = /usr/sbin/sendmail -i -t
and make sure it is uncommented, and it should look something like the above. That should get the email working for you. Let me know how it goes!
Thanks again for all of your enthusiasm, great questions, and great contributions to the site Tom.
Chad

Chad, I love the way you have your site set up. I have never tried Drupal, but I would like to set a site up just like yours, but a bit simpler.

Could you please keep a running list of your modules/themes/configs?

I really like the white text on black background with a slightly radiant color. It is how I have had my desktop and apps set up for a while now, and it is the way to go. Looks as sexy as an elf in a thong, easy to read, great contrast, and does not fatigue your eyes.

On a side thought, given this fact, it is funny how the ebook readers may the technology more difficult just so they can mimick an inferior configuration, printed paper, simply because that is what people are used to.

Song at the end of the show was the _bomb_!

 Funny you mention it thewtex. If you check out the tutorial for this week's episode I actually do give a list of the modules that I used to create the site. Now the theme is actually a pre-created one that I found over at the guys at Roopletheme and boy do they do a great job. So basically I take one of their themes, and add my own graphics, and sometimes I add a few things, like additional CSS for the code tags. Glad you like the site and thanks for signing up!
I could not agree more about the new kindle and the sony book reader. I used to hate reading online. Now I prefer it. While I wouldn't mind a computer that easily turns into a flip around book, or something like that, with nice little touch screen buttons to flip the page, I do not need e-ink technology. They can keep it.
Chad

LOL glad you liked the song. I am good at being a goof ball:)

I vote for more drupal. Build a website and let us follow along.

A note about cron, I don't think the example you gave was exactly correct. 45 * * * * would run the command in cron once per hour at 45 minutes past the hour. So it would run at 00:45,01:45, 02:45 etc. instead of every 45 minutes.

Keep the great episodes coming, and again, more drupal.

Good point, I didn't even think about that but you are right. I will mention it next episode.

I vote for more Drupal too. Lots more. I'm hooked.
 
I've installed all the modules listed in the tutorial. For the most part I have no idea what they do or what the possibilities are. Let's turn them on one at a time and run examples. That would be really cool. Get into the nitty gritty of Drupal. There's a lot of content right there. You hinted that once we learn our way around the modules, many things are possible. I so want to learn. Pick the modules apart and show us what they can do. Turn your junkies into Linux teachers. Our students will come back to learn from the source. This thing could be big. Just remember that you are way ahead of most of your listeners. Folks with your level of experience will just yawn and move on. The rest of us are waiting for the next episode.
 
Since I'm ranting and suggesting: So far the focus has been on building a test site that can be accessed through localhost. Please put us in the real world. Show us how to get our sites public, either on home machines or rented servers.
 
*Remember that we don't know what you know. Assume nothing.*
 
Do you still feel like you are running out of materiel for content? :)
 
Best,
Tom

Oh no, I don't think I could ever run out of material, but I'm a firm believer in building a foundation and letting you build the house. I'll continue doing some more Drupal, but I don't think I am comfortable telling people how to make their sites public. Every situation is different, and while I don't mind getting into networking, which I actually know more about then linux, I do hesitate to encourgage people to run their own servers from home without serious firewalls.
I will talk about a hosted solution though, maybe I should even do that next week.
The other interesting thing is, that I could never ever cover all of the modules for Drupal. I think it is more important that we get used to how to enable modules, and then how to configure them, and then once you are used to that, most modules act relatively the same. There are a couple modules that need further explanation. But if I go into them now, I will scare everyone away, because there is a bit of a learning curve.
I still kind of like the idea of doing 2 or 3 more elementary sessions on drupal, then switching gears, and then comming back to drupal in a few weeks and do some more advanced topics. However, I will take everyone's opinion into consideration, and certainly if the push is in one direction, I will follow.

I'm at Site Configuration > Audio Settings > Players
and don't see which thingy to hit to have a little player on the page. Trial and error isn't helping, yet. Am I in the right place?
 
Thanks!
Tom 

admin/settings/audio/players
should be the path. It sounds like you are in the right spot. I wonder if you should re-download the audio module? It almost sounds like you don't have the entire module? Also make sure you have all the audio modules checked off in site building modules.

"admin/settings/audio/players"
 
Hi Chad,
Under administration, I don't see "settings". Was that a typo or do I have a challenge?
 
Best,
Tom 

Thanks, Chad. That's where I was.
 
In reading the audio module docs, I found that for the player to work, I needed the getid3 module. I got it and put it in the same place as all the others. Then I tried to turn it on. I got a big red error:
 
The getID3() library was not found. Please install it into sites/default/modules/getid3/getid3.
 
I got that. It was a zip file so I unzipped it into sites/default/modules/getid3
 
The warning seemed to go away, at least on the module control page. Off to audio settings. I clicked on the "getid3" tab. Same warning. Oh well. I feel like I'm getting closer.
 
Best,
Tom 

ok, so sorry I forgot about the getid3 library. It actually needs to sit under /sites/default/modules/audio/getid3/ so essentially unzip it in /sites/default/modules/audio/ and it will make the getid3 folder for you.

Hey Chad!
Loving the show, and loving drupal. I got a lot of stuff going but i'm having some trouble with fckeditor.  I got it up and running but the text input box has adopted the same background as my page and since it is a dark background and the text is black it's hard to read what you type. Can you point me the right direction?
spikefire.com
 
David

Hey David,
I've nto had that particular problem with fckeditor. Really it should default to a white background. Did you go in and change the CSS path for fck editor under Administer-->site config-->fckeditor? I never change it, because you have to make a custome CSS file specifically for fckeditor. hmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm going to think on this one.
BTW the site is looking GREAT!

Thank you very much Chad for the info about Yale's new Open Courses. And thank you Yale for not using RealPlayer! (I reserve a special corner of my collective technological frustration to RealPlayer... somewhere in the vicinity of MS). Yale uses QT and Flash, which both have their drawbacks, but at least they offer two options. Those two formats aren't actually that bad (of course a XviD or OGG would be nice), but the important thing is they have options. Hey, it's something.

Thanks for the heads up; I'll be sure to watch those.

[RealPlayer comments refer to MIT's Open Courseware]

Man I hear that. As an administrator that has to deal with people constantly taking classes on a restricted network, I have realplayer problems all the time. Hate it! Give me a flash player any day.
Hopefully things like this will take off and we'll be praising adobe for their open source in a few years
http://opensource.adobe.com/