Just came across this – Drupal Gardens - http://www.drupalgardens.com/ Like Ning, but using Drupal. More like WordPress.com really, but using Drupal. Many people have a free website for their personal blog or business. Generally they opt for WordPress.com, Blogspot.com, Google Sites or just make do with a Facebook page these days. Drupal is an open source content management system that is very popular amongst web developers as it is easy to install, easy to learn and highly configurable. Like WordPress.org, you can bolt on modules (like plugins, add-ons etc) to enhance the site. If installed on your own domain it is a very powerful CMS. With Drupal Gardens there is a choice of themes, all the usual Drupal features – pages, stories, forum, plus gallery and comments. At the moment you cannot install extra modules. It seems a good place to build a free site, if you are into that sort of thing. I set up an experimental blog here: http://howtoloseweight.drupalgardens.com/ It took me about 30 minutes to set that up, although most of the time was spent writing the first blog post (and yes, I know that it has not been proof read and is full of grammatical errors). In fact, I wrote a [...]

Just spent the last few days trying to get clean urls to work on my Ubuntu apache2 server, and finally found a thread on a Drupal forum. It turned out that you have to activate mod rewrite in Apache before any of the settings in the .htaccess file will take place. Also need to remember to modify /etc/apache2/sites-availabe/default to AllowOverride All in the server settings for your domain. Once this is done, then this command gets Apache doings its mod rewrite thing: sudo a2enmod rewrite Simple as that. Restart or reload Apache, and now mod rewrite / clean URLs will work on your Ubuntu Drupal CMS installation. Suggested Reading:Rock and Roll! .htaccess is runningFinally got Apache 2.2.3 set up with virtual hostsLinux Apache MySQL PHP Server aka LAMPInstalling ApacheInstalling PHP on Ubuntu

OK, I attempted a Drupal upgrade as soon as I made a test area for my Drupal CMS installation, and managed to get it wrong from the start. So, to recap, here are the upgrade instructions from Drupal (after backing up): Log on as the user with user ID 1 Place the site in “Off-line” mode Disable contributed modules and switch to a core theme (Bluemarine or Garland). Remove all of the old files and directories from the Drupal installation directory. Unpack the new Drupal files and directories into the Drupal installation directory. Copy the backed up “files” and “sites” directories to the Drupal installation directory. If the original .htaccess or robots.txt files have been modified, copy the backed up versions of these files to the installation directory as well. Verify the new configuration file to make sure it has the latest and correct information. Re-install contributed modules. Run update.php by visiting /update.php When I just attempted to upgrade, I leapt into step 6. So now starting again, following the above process Suggested Reading:Restoring a Drupal MySQL Database using phpmyadminHow To Backup and Restore a Drupal InstallationMod rewrite / clean urls for Drupal on Ubuntu Apache ServerJoomla Installation Using Putty [...]

I have recently been playing around with Drupal, which is a free open source content management system. At first glance Drupal looks rather complicated, as there are many standard modules, even more optional modules that are developed by other users, plus a vast array of configuration settings, all of which make Drupal very customisable, but also complex. However, one of the great things about Drupal is that fact that once the files are uploaded to your server, it is very simple to get a basic website up and running. Drupal offers several content styles within its standard package, such as blogs, forums, stories, pages and books, plus the ability to import RSS syndicated feeds, to create new content automatically from other websites. Community and Collaborative Websites What makes Drupal special is that it is really geared for community and collaborative web sites. By default there are three user levels – Admin (by default the first account created is the admin account), Authorised (i.e. anyone that signs up / registers for the site) and anonymous (anyone viewing the site with no account). For each of these user levels access rules can be granted, for specific categories of content, and for specific [...]