August has come and with that, comes the dog days of summer. Its good for a freelancer like me because I can acquire a couple gigs at this time. I have been spending alot of time at home cleaning my workspace and getting ready for the fall season. Rosettes and CSS shall be done by the end of the year, but hopefully sooner.
Joomla was originally going to be my choice for R&C given some of the rich extensions offered for portfolio sites. In addition, I felt it would let me get acquainted with a CMF that I have been feeling very touch and go about. Each CMF is its own beast. Each has its own motivation for its inception and each has its navigation setup for particular website types and from the creator's ideas on how layout might be best optimized.
Due to the latter, I think that is why Joomla continues to confuse me so. I have been open to learning it, as I know there will be a client who desires a Joomla site some day and I want to at least have some facts I can advise them on. Joomla has a method of its madness that I still to this day do not understand. I suppose to many people I speak to, "categories" and "sections" seem to feel like they are the same thing. This forum post shows a good example on how it confuses many not familiar with Joomla's "older cousin", Mambo. I was patient and found myself toiling over it in the last month trying to learn the interface. I cant lie and say that I wont get a client who insists on having a Joomla based website.
That said, I kept an open mind but overall found much disappointment in one of the few well written and opensource portfolio extensions. For some of you who have worried that Joomla is not the most secure CMF, you might be further convinced when I say that I found this portfolio extension to have been taken over by a spam Viagra/Cialis site. At that point, I just simply gave up and searched some more. Sorry, Joomla.
Enter ImpressCMS. It doesnt have nearly the headway that its more known counterparts have, but it is a very promising CMS. Rosettes and CSS does take the mentality of its creator, with the desire to research new solutions and support those creating a road less traveled. A small community develops around it and I am hoping to contribute whatever I can in the near future. Despite its evolution (and seperation) from Xoops in 2007, ImpressCMS has garnered some awards.
A new graphic arts assignment starts this week. A bit of extra pocket money to say the least but Im already finding some fun in the work. Hoping to post more in this blog soon. When I am ready to migrate this blog, I will surely up my blog content quality.
Showing posts with label trial-and-error. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trial-and-error. Show all posts
Cra.sh: Ready For New Submissions
Now, onto the theming portion of the website. While the live site greets new authors and submissions, Ill be theming Nista to something slightly more suited to this website's desired look and feel. So far, I have gained lots of experience on managing the back end functions of the site though. I'm also getting more familiar with errors pertaining to Drupal having a conflict with the server's php.ini settings. In fact, after 3 or so migrations, I'm getting better at doing live>staging>live server migrations. In fact, I didn't grit my teeth this morning when I took the live site and cloned it back onto my staging server.
In other news, I did get a part time job at a local confectionery wholesaler. Ill be working as an independent contractor in giving some new looks to the company's packaging. There is a diverse amount of candy that comes through there so that means lots of label design and templates. I cant wait to start work there but for now, I'm channeling new designs according to my boss' references of designs he likes.
As the winter snow comes my way, I get ready to hunker down. I dream of a snow day where I can actually get my workaholic self to break away and just study Drupal all day with the 2 books I purchased this last summer. Today I shall be wrapping presents for my family and friends. Next week, is backup time, which I must plan my work schedule around. Holiday celebrations in the 2009 Recession is getting off to a slow but fantastic start.
In other news, I did get a part time job at a local confectionery wholesaler. Ill be working as an independent contractor in giving some new looks to the company's packaging. There is a diverse amount of candy that comes through there so that means lots of label design and templates. I cant wait to start work there but for now, I'm channeling new designs according to my boss' references of designs he likes.
As the winter snow comes my way, I get ready to hunker down. I dream of a snow day where I can actually get my workaholic self to break away and just study Drupal all day with the 2 books I purchased this last summer. Today I shall be wrapping presents for my family and friends. Next week, is backup time, which I must plan my work schedule around. Holiday celebrations in the 2009 Recession is getting off to a slow but fantastic start.
Mary's Personal Summer of Code
Among a part time gig as a mascot down at the local ballpark, I am using this summer to start getting a bit back to me. Despite that I had my Drupal project get revoked (again!) I found myself a bit more indifferent to it. Other projects (some overdue) were awaiting me and I had enough of this. Besides, I did gain a contact who may be able to provide a hosting solution for Rosettes and CSS. My week long vacation looms at the end of this month so I can see using it as a time of "breaking character" and rebuilding anew upon a rested mindset.
Due to these things, personal projects are the order of the day when put up against doing work for other people. I wont lie and say that I have enough portfolio material, but I know that if I keep taking on everyone else's projects than none of my stuff gets done and this blog will continue to be stuck on Blogger vs actually having it on my own domain with portfolio.
Im finding out more quirks involved with Joomla modules, components or plugins. In K2, CAPCHA was enabled but without the reCAPCHA registration key set. Thats why stylesheets were being ignored. That still seems like a strange bug rather than human error to me but I guess K2 is that new. I mean, look at the lack of documentation in the backend's Documentation buttion within the K2 sub-sections. Seems the social bookmarking problem also righted itself.
Speaking of K2, 2.0 is officially out. I already was tweaking with the July release and found it to make me feel that much better about using Joomla as my portfolio's site. Stepping outside my comfort zone is important to me, and blogging with Joomla is that much easier with K2 around.
Joomla sure is a different animal. I have done at least one re-install/recovery due to human error. Lots of clunkyness to someone with my background of other programs that I have learned. Joomla must represent a different way of thinking that seems convuluted to other people. It seems that you have to use the Menu system to set what loads in the Front Page (if you dont want to use the standard "load newest article" method of creating the dynamic front page content.
So, all going very well. I have yet to work on a template but I figure Ill do that once I get time in my workweek to put some blog entres there and start on my portfolio. I imagine with Joomla's quirks, that Ill be surprised/confused again and again until I reach the peak of the experience.
Due to these things, personal projects are the order of the day when put up against doing work for other people. I wont lie and say that I have enough portfolio material, but I know that if I keep taking on everyone else's projects than none of my stuff gets done and this blog will continue to be stuck on Blogger vs actually having it on my own domain with portfolio.
Im finding out more quirks involved with Joomla modules, components or plugins. In K2, CAPCHA was enabled but without the reCAPCHA registration key set. Thats why stylesheets were being ignored. That still seems like a strange bug rather than human error to me but I guess K2 is that new. I mean, look at the lack of documentation in the backend's Documentation buttion within the K2 sub-sections. Seems the social bookmarking problem also righted itself.
Speaking of K2, 2.0 is officially out. I already was tweaking with the July release and found it to make me feel that much better about using Joomla as my portfolio's site. Stepping outside my comfort zone is important to me, and blogging with Joomla is that much easier with K2 around.
Joomla sure is a different animal. I have done at least one re-install/recovery due to human error. Lots of clunkyness to someone with my background of other programs that I have learned. Joomla must represent a different way of thinking that seems convuluted to other people. It seems that you have to use the Menu system to set what loads in the Front Page (if you dont want to use the standard "load newest article" method of creating the dynamic front page content.
So, all going very well. I have yet to work on a template but I figure Ill do that once I get time in my workweek to put some blog entres there and start on my portfolio. I imagine with Joomla's quirks, that Ill be surprised/confused again and again until I reach the peak of the experience.
K2 Extension for Joomla
Yesterday I got an answer in the Joomla forums that recommended K2 as a solution for the personalized blog aspect ot my site. The demo video on the K2 site got me intrigued. It had all the kinds of things most blogs need such as socialbookmarking, tag clouds (although not as nifty looking as Joomulous), and commentary complete with CAPCHA. Overall, K2 acts like a mini-Joomla inside Joomla.
Speaking of that, it was nice that the categories I could set for my blogs could be seperate from the sections/category madness of the original in-the-box Joomla. Overall, it helped me decrypt some of the logic behind the Joomla interface that drives me crazy. Yes, Drupal spoiled me with how changes for something are always in one single place.
I am still left with a few questions and things to troubleshoot:
Speaking of that, it was nice that the categories I could set for my blogs could be seperate from the sections/category madness of the original in-the-box Joomla. Overall, it helped me decrypt some of the logic behind the Joomla interface that drives me crazy. Yes, Drupal spoiled me with how changes for something are always in one single place.
I am still left with a few questions and things to troubleshoot:
- Can I promote featured K2 items to the front page? Where does the category template "blog" comes from? How do I add more? (see screenshot below)
- Glitch: Social bookmarking symbols dont show up even if I have enabled them
- Glitch: Clicking on a K2 item's individual page leaves me with an entry devoid of a stylesheet. This happens no matter which of the Joomla starter templates that I use. (see screenshot below)
Still want to give this extension a chance. It might be the closest to blogging Im going to get.
Project - Drupal In Oberlin: More Than One Way To Skin A Cat
Note that as a cat owner, I really hate this expression. I need to find some cool geeky phrase to replace this. However, it is the truth of the matter when it comes to Drupal. Often times, when I find myself looking up info on how I might achieve a type of function or get one thing to interact with another, a few different projects pop up from the module project area of Drupal.org.
The same can be said for when you are just tweaking around with various things that don't necessarily have to do with choosing and installing a module. Last week is when I found myself experimenting with a migration of a site on a new install.
Migration Install Method 1
I would be importing the database from the file that Tom sent me. I had changed the first few lines of the SQL file so that it would create a db with a different name. In my case, it would be 'inoberlin', his of 'tom_inoberlin' seemed too lengthy. Of course I created a database specific user for this.
Tom also let me have his site files (images that appear on the events calendar, logo, INC files, PHP, etc..), so I copied almost all of them over to the new folder that I had set up on localhost for this install. Part of me was skeptical that by copying these files, that Drupal install might be more apt to errors and be quite a "dirty" installation. Still, sometimes you gotta try.
With the Drupal install chowned and chmodded appropriately, I ran an install. After entering in the database name, password, and username, I pressed on. That is when Drupal gave me an error:
I chose to merely run the update script and see what happened. Of course, this means I got the access denied error since my settings.php file always has $update_free_access set to FALSE (secure). Changing it to TRUE I ran the update script again.
Suddenly I found myself at the front page sans all styling information and header/logo images. The front page read "Page not found". It was quite scary and I feared the worst. My suspicions that this install method was too dirty seemed to be confirmed.
Migration Install Method 2
At Tom's suggestion via email, I tried to do this with a cleaner method this time. There was a bit of trickery thrown in since I created a fake database with a chintzy username/password, granting that dB user with just privileges specific to that database.
Using that empty database, I did a clean Drupal install, which was successful. Back in the SQL, I would end up dropping the fake database (and user). Then I imported Tom's database again, creating a database-specific user as seen before in Method 1.
Inside settings.php I would make more changes, both to the database settings and to the $update_free_access section, changing that to TRUE again. I ran the update script, changing $update_free_access back to the secure setting of FALSE when done.
The same problem came up with the missing styles, theming, and prescense of header logo image. I figured there had to be something wrong with it beyond just a "dirty install" so I did a bit of research, finding this jewel of info. I did as instructed, running this command in PHPmyadmin: UPDATE system SET status=1 WHERE name = 'garland'; then UPDATE variable SET value='s:7:"garland"' WHERE name = 'theme_default'; TRUNCATE cache; It worked so I breathed a sigh of relief.
Another thing that was tugging at my suspicions is that the cause of the "page not found" on my front page was that Tom set his front page to something different than the default "node". Since I had not installed any of the modules yet (I wasnt that ballsy), it was likely that if this was the case, it would be set to a page that was specific to one of these not-yet-installed modules. Sure enough, it was set to "upcoming_events" which I knew was tied to a calendar module that I had on my "modules to install" screencap provided.
The night was filled with an install of 15+ modules and a couple themes. It got daunting since I had a few module projects that had recently been updated. I was up for the challenge. At some point, I would periodically check the site after a bit and see how the site was coming back together, now being able to actually call up the database tables created for that module. I even installed the theme that InOberlin uses called Acquia Marina. The site was pretty much ready to go. I cant wait to finally theme some stuff. Not sure which theme set I should base mine on but people are all aflutter about Zen and Studio.
The same can be said for when you are just tweaking around with various things that don't necessarily have to do with choosing and installing a module. Last week is when I found myself experimenting with a migration of a site on a new install.
I would be importing the database from the file that Tom sent me. I had changed the first few lines of the SQL file so that it would create a db with a different name. In my case, it would be 'inoberlin', his of 'tom_inoberlin' seemed too lengthy. Of course I created a database specific user for this.
Tom also let me have his site files (images that appear on the events calendar, logo, INC files, PHP, etc..), so I copied almost all of them over to the new folder that I had set up on localhost for this install. Part of me was skeptical that by copying these files, that Drupal install might be more apt to errors and be quite a "dirty" installation. Still, sometimes you gotta try.
With the Drupal install chowned and chmodded appropriately, I ran an install. After entering in the database name, password, and username, I pressed on. That is when Drupal gave me an error:
I chose to merely run the update script and see what happened. Of course, this means I got the access denied error since my settings.php file always has $update_free_access set to FALSE (secure). Changing it to TRUE I ran the update script again.
Suddenly I found myself at the front page sans all styling information and header/logo images. The front page read "Page not found". It was quite scary and I feared the worst. My suspicions that this install method was too dirty seemed to be confirmed.
At Tom's suggestion via email, I tried to do this with a cleaner method this time. There was a bit of trickery thrown in since I created a fake database with a chintzy username/password, granting that dB user with just privileges specific to that database.
Using that empty database, I did a clean Drupal install, which was successful. Back in the SQL, I would end up dropping the fake database (and user). Then I imported Tom's database again, creating a database-specific user as seen before in Method 1.
Inside settings.php I would make more changes, both to the database settings and to the $update_free_access section, changing that to TRUE again. I ran the update script, changing $update_free_access back to the secure setting of FALSE when done.
The same problem came up with the missing styles, theming, and prescense of header logo image. I figured there had to be something wrong with it beyond just a "dirty install" so I did a bit of research, finding this jewel of info. I did as instructed, running this command in PHPmyadmin: UPDATE system SET status=1 WHERE name = 'garland'; then UPDATE variable SET value='s:7:"garland"' WHERE name = 'theme_default'; TRUNCATE cache; It worked so I breathed a sigh of relief.
Another thing that was tugging at my suspicions is that the cause of the "page not found" on my front page was that Tom set his front page to something different than the default "node". Since I had not installed any of the modules yet (I wasnt that ballsy), it was likely that if this was the case, it would be set to a page that was specific to one of these not-yet-installed modules. Sure enough, it was set to "upcoming_events" which I knew was tied to a calendar module that I had on my "modules to install" screencap provided.
The night was filled with an install of 15+ modules and a couple themes. It got daunting since I had a few module projects that had recently been updated. I was up for the challenge. At some point, I would periodically check the site after a bit and see how the site was coming back together, now being able to actually call up the database tables created for that module. I even installed the theme that InOberlin uses called Acquia Marina. The site was pretty much ready to go. I cant wait to finally theme some stuff. Not sure which theme set I should base mine on but people are all aflutter about Zen and Studio.