I run a nascent citizen journalism site, itsyourtimes.com, that runs on Drupal. I'm running into problems and don't have the personal technical or staff resources to dig deep into code to fix them. I need plug-n-play, WYSIWYG tools. I'm running 4.6 on a shared server and have run into php memory issues that prevent me from using very many modules. I want a dedicated server but that's not going to happen any time soon. I'd like to be able to do simple things like wrap text around a photo, embed flash or video, enable greater communication with users, and otherwise visually perk up the site to draw more people who will, I hope, generate more content and draw more people ... The better my audience, the more I can argue for more resources, etc., but I have to start somewhere. And I do this as an adjunct to regular FT print reporting, so time is a factor as well as everything else. I'd appreciate any and all suggestions on how I can improve this effort. Feel free to contact me offline if your suggestion seems inapplicable to the wider audience. No help is beneath me, you can't insult my intelligence on this topic. I'm a content guy and need help with the tech.
Thanks
pswider@sptimes.com
Comments
Some things that won't require modules
Looks like you're already off to a good start! Here are a couple of things to consider (apologies if I start technobabbling):
Start playing around with the templates in your themes/bluemarine directory (after saving copies somewhere). Besides changing colors, you can reduce the width of one or both of the sidebars via the sidebar styles in style.css (by default, they both have the same width; you'll have to split the single line of style into two if you want different looks for them) - this'll give you more room in the center column for actual content.
You can embed video and Flash by hand if you already have the code for them (I'm thinking here of the "embedded" code you can get from YouTube). As admin, you'll need to change the filter on your node-creation form from partial to full HTML. Actually, use that filter as well if you want to wrap text around a photo, something like this:
<img src="/graphics/photo.jpg" width="125" height="100" style="float:left;margin: 3px 10px 10px 0px;" />The numbers create spacing between the four sides of the photo and the surrounding page; they go clockwise from the top.
Looks like
there´s some database problems too:
user error: Duplicate entry '1881076' for key 1query: INSERT INTO accesslog (title, path, url, hostname, uid, timestamp) values('Tampa Bay', 'aggregator/categories/1', 'http://www.itsyourtimes.com/?q=aggregator/categories', '200.122.10.161', 0, 1169758318) in /includes/database.mysql.inc on line 66.
on: http://www.itsyourtimes.com/?q=aggregator/categories/1
Anyway, the folks here are right, you should:
Once you´ve done that :-) you could try FCKEditor.Module.
Cheers,
Rosamunda
Buenos Aires / Argentina
www.ligadelconsorcista.org
Strange
That's strange. The error occurs on every page.
It means that the {accesslog} table keeps assigning a duplicate 'aid' for each entry. ('aid' being the only unique index for that table.)
Typically, in auto_increment tables, this error:
Means that the table has run out of keys to assign.
But the {accesslog} aid should be an integer, so it has a limit higher than 1881076 records. (See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/4.1/en/numeric-types.html.)
Here's the original 4.6 install SQL:
--
-- Table structure for table 'accesslog'
--
CREATE TABLE accesslog (
aid int(10) NOT NULL auto_increment,
title varchar(255) default NULL,
path varchar(255) default NULL,
url varchar(255) default NULL,
hostname varchar(128) default NULL,
uid int(10) unsigned default '0',
timestamp int(11) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
KEY accesslog_timestamp (timestamp),
PRIMARY KEY (aid)
) TYPE=MyISAM;
So perhaps the {accesslog} table has been altered?
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http://ken.therickards.com/
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http://ken.therickards.com/
Some ideas
First, upgrade to 5.0 as soon as possible. Trust me.
As for PHP memory, have you read http://drupal.org/node/31819?
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http://ken.therickards.com/
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http://ken.therickards.com/
php memory
I've read about changing memory, but I'm stuck on a shared server off-site and the host won't upgrade the php memory just for me, so until I get a whole server, I'm stuck on that one. Unless there are other options?
So changing the value in
So changing the value in settings.php doesn't work b/c the host doesn't allow local override of the default. Yeah, get a new host.
--
http://ken.therickards.com/
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http://ken.therickards.com/
I second the Drupal 5 suggestion, also get a better host
If you don't have content that depends on user contributed modules, now is the time to upgrade. Drupal 5 give you a much improved interface for user submitted content and a better theme structure to build on.
My second suggestion is to change hosts. You don't need a dedicated server to run Drupal well. I've run sites loaded up with modules at ANHosts (http://www.anhosts.com/) for $9 a month. Hosting is cut throat, low margins business. There is no reason to stay with a host that has PHP memory issues... unless of course that host is the internal IT group running sptimes.com... then I'll have to side with my fellow IT brothers and sisters and confirm there is absolutely nothing they can do. It would be a violation of the IT vows of secrecy to tell you that a $700 Mac Mini has all the processing horsepower you need and plenty of disk space (unless you go video crazy) to run a full blown Drupal site with several hundred active users.
I'll contact you directly with my email, but I've got a deal for you...
If you send me your database export I'll upgrade it to Drupal 5 for you and send it back. Depending on your DNS situation, I could even help you move the site to a new host. I'll even host the site temporarily on my development server and do a little design clean up so you can see how things will work with Drupal 5.
This won't cost you any $$, but it isn't going to be free either. In exchange for my technical help, I would like you to talk to some of the journalism graduate students and faculty who are going to launch a Drupal driven site in March focussed on environmental journalism in the Tahoe area. I'd like them to hear about the type of issues they're likely to run into managing a site driven by user contributed content from someone (other than me) who is actually doing it.
Deal?
Kevin Reynen
Integrated Media Coordinator
Reynolds School of Journalism and
Advanced Media Research
University of Nevada, Reno
Wish I'd known ...
... you were having problems; I was in SPB Tuesday and we could have had a cup of coffee before I split town. Come to think of it, I was in a meeting with Christine and could have given her a hard time about not getting you a real webserver. :-)
I have to agree with all the comments here except perhaps the urgency of moving to D5. The img_assist module is the dead simplest way to support image embedding and it's not yet been ported.
Your memory problem is just bullheadedness on the part of your hosting provider -- it's not an issue of how much memory is installed (since Unix makes available whatever you need through page swaps), but rather how much memory PHP is allowed to use. And it's set too low for this application.
As for the error messages, you might just want to turn off access logging (including display of reads) until you have a chance to move to a more robust server.
When to upgrade?
My recommendation to upgrade was based on the fact that Paul isn't using many (any?) modules at this point. From what I can tell, this as basic as a 4.6 site could get.
Right now Paul's sending their users to textamerica.com to create photo galleries. Those could be done with Drupal, but I'm not sure the value it adds to the site would be worth the issues user contributed images create considering the limited technical support he seems to be getting.
If they were using img_assist, I'd still recommend looking at TinyMCE or FCKEditor with IMCE. IMCE can be implemented in a really clean, basic toolbar for the average user as well as being part of a more advanced set of WYSIWYG tools for advanced users. The TinyMCE/FCKEditor/IMCE combination can also be used add Flash, QuickTime, and other rich media assets to pages from a consistent user interface.
Paul has done a great job creating what seems to be a very active community on itsyourtimes.com without many of the bells and whistles Drupal is capable of. The fact that he didn't implement a lot of modules makes upgrading MUCH easier.
Paul did get the OK from his management to let me help him with the upgrade to Drupal 5. Hopefully he'll be able to work out the memory issues with his host (or get a new one) and we'll get itsyourtimes.com updated soon.
Working together
I think it's just incredibly great that this forum is bringing you guys together to collaborate!
I haven't tried IMCE. Does it work if the rich text editor is disabled? Most of our users actually prefer the simpler interface, so we've made TinyMCE optional.
Oh, by the way, since you're at Reno, give Donica Mensing my regards. Back at the dawn of time she was an intern on my staff in Minneapolis.
IMCE migration
OK, I've looked at IMCE and I'm sold. Now the problem is to figure out how to migrate data marked up in img_assist format.
Exactly.
Think of all the time Paul is going to save having put off adding image uploads until now. It almost makes the case for building a site/community without features like that. For every whiz-bang feature you add, you're going to have to figure out how to update it to whiz-bang 2.0, whiz-bang 3.0. The more content you have in the site, the more content types you support, the more complex your taxonomies, Views, CCK, etc... the more difficult the site is to upgrade.
Upgrading to Drupal 5 will give itsyourtimes.com a fresh look, but sticking with the core modules will ensure Paul an easy upgrade to 6, 7, etc. There have been a number of complaints from start-ups sites that launched sites on 4.7, did a lot of custom work, and now find that code isn't compatible with Drupal 5. Even extremely popular modules like Gallery and LDAP have lost their lead developers. You really have to put some serious thought into which modules you absolutely need before you tie your project's future to them.
I like TinyMCE and IMCE and I'm using it in my projects, but I'd never be able to code at the level of the Moxiecode or Ufku folks. If they walk away from these project before Drupal 6, I might find myself looking for a way to move IMCE images back to img_assist :)