Posted by bob_irving on January 7, 2009 at 7:48pm
I'm on chapter 6 of Bill's book. I've successfully created 2 students (Helen and Lucy). They have created blog posts. The links between the posts are working, but the conversations block ("What links here")says "No backlinks found."
I double-checked the links from post to post, and they work correctly. I also went back through setting up the conversations view and I believe I did it correctly.
Any ideas?
I'm really enjoying setting this up and would love to get it rolling in the next week.
Comments
URL alias culprit?
I've experienced this same problem. I haven't investigated it, but I wonder if it works only when the path to the node is /node/#. In other words, is backlinks not smart enough to decode a URL alias?
Erik Britt-Webb
drupal@ebrittwebb.com
Has cron been run?
The backlinks view is triggered off the search index, which gets built when cron runs. Setting up cron jobs is covered in the Maintenance chapter, and in the handbook at http://drupal.org/cron
To trigger cron manually, go to http://example.com/cron.php (with example.com being the url of your site) -- it helps if you are logged in as UID1
RE URL alias -- that shouldn't matter.
Cheers,
Bill
EDIT: also, re: "the conversations block ("What links here")says 'No backlinks found.'" -- edit the "Empty text" within the view. Deleting the empty text will make it so the block only appears when there are backlinks; customizing the empty text allows for a less generic message. Editing the Empty Text is covered on pg. 152; triggering cron jobs to build the search index is covered on 154.
FunnyMonkey
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I just deleted the view and
I just deleted the view and redid it all.
I had run cron manually, and the second time I did delete that text for the Empty text field.
Still got the same result however. Hmm.
Could it possibly be conflicting with some other module? For instance, when I ran the cron job, it got some RSS feeds that I had set up with Aggregator. I also noticed I had the Book module activated (from your tutorial on doing a portfolio). I also had the Tapestry theme active, so I went in and set it to Garland.
I'll keep banging away at it. Thanks for the suggestions.
Bob
What happens when you use
What happens when you use the core, unmodified backlinks module that comes with Views?
FunnyMonkey
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nothing happens
I enabled the default backlinks module with no changes, then deleted the conversations view (since I couldn't disable it, which puzzles me).
Same result: nothing.
It's not a deal-breaker, since I doubt that most of my students will go to the trouble to make links back to another post, but will instead just use the comment function. But I do like the functionality and would love to see it work.
On to chapter 8: podcasting and images!
Update -- solved!
Thanks to Bill F for volunteering to log in to my site and see what the problem was. As near as we can figure, I think I modified the block display on the view, but didn't change the default display. This is all new territory to me, and I am very grateful for everyone's help here.
Glad to see others making their way through the book
It's good to hear that others are working their way through Bill's book. I'm just finishing off chpt.13 Tracking Student Progress.
I'd love to see what other people have done when their sites are up and running.
I would also love to see these sites --
Really, that would be great -- on a personal level, I would love to see that.
People could add them to this wiki page.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
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Same Problem
I also had the same problem, I am following the book and get no backlinks. I am using Drupal 6x, thus I had to get the backlinks from the Search module.
Any help will be appreciated.
2 questions
Have you run cron on your site?
Do you get any backlinks when using the default, unedited backlinks view?
Also, in the book I recommend pulling the empty text so that the block will not appear when there are no backlinks. However, it can be useful to leave empty text in place while building the view, as you will then see the block whether or not there are any backlinks present.
Cheers,
Bill
FunnyMonkey
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backlinks problem
No, I have not run cron
I didn't try using the unedited backlinks view. I left the empty text "no backlinks", so I would always see the block with the message "no backlinks"
what is the solution?
Is your solution running cron? I am not sure what do you want me to do.
thanks
Run cron
The search index is built when cron is run. If cron has not been run, there is no search index, and therefore no backlinks.
FunnyMonkey
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FunnyMonkey
Cron
So every time a post occurs, I have to run cron?
Thanks
Yes, but cron isn't designed
Yes, but cron isn't designed to be run manually. You should configure cron to be run automatically by your server. For example, on most of my sites, cron runs every hour. You can find more information on cron and instructions on setting it up here:
http://drupal.org/cron
Jeff
My site without reading the book!
Hello All,
I created this site as my thesis/project and would like our group members to give me feedback. I have not read the book but hope to get my own copy soon.
you can visit my site at httP://research.poly.edu/~epoly Once you log in, please navigate to the CP 900 course.
You can use two credentials,
1)
Login: student
password: student
2)
Login: instructor
password: instructor
For each type of role you will have two different set of course tools as you navigate through the 'CP 900" course. Any comments and suggestions are welcome.
Moved this discussion
In order to not hijack the original thread, I moved this to here: http://groups.drupal.org/node/18121
FunnyMonkey
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FunnyMonkey
filter_format_allowcache($node->format)
The search_index() function does a check on filter_format_allowcache($node->format), where $node is the linked node. If the check returns false, the link will not be indexed.
Troubleshooting:
Find the line of code in search.module where this check happens, and add "|| TRUE" to bypass the check. Re-index your nodes (in Site configuration > Search settings), and run cron. If it works now, you are one step further. I assume there is a reason for the check, so I don't know if it is safe to remove it. But for troubleshooting it's a good idea.
The problem is reported here,
http://drupal.org/node/205202#comment-2618298
but probably deserves its own bug report.
URL aliases
Hi DonQuixote,
I've tried this - against a personal preference of modifying core modules - with no benefit.
I have found however if the URL path that I add in the page that is doing the linking gives an absolute path name rather than a URL alias then backlinks seems to work.
In order to make the
In order to make the backlinks view available, you need to enable Drupal's core search module. The reason for this is that the backlinks view works off of the search indexes.
The creator of GLOOLS. www.glools.com
@donquixote: [#664124]
@donquixote: http://drupal.org/node/664124 "{search_node_links} entries are not created if the target is uncachable (e.g. PHP input format)"
backlink not working
I ran cron job, I enabled Drupal's core search module, but the backlink example from Bill's chap6 still does not work.
It did not work when I first tried about 6 months ago. I reinstalled Drupal 6 and tried again, but it is not still working.
bob_irving, could you tell me exactly what you did to make it working?
thx