Drupal 7

I decided to give Drupal 7 a try. The new version of Drupal was released  in January 2011 and after 9 months I hoped any issues where worked out. It incorporated several independent modules from Drupal 6 making them more easier to use.

Unfortunately there more than few commonly used Drupal 6 modules have yet to be updated to Drupal 7. That is part of the problem with open source development when the author of a module is no longer maintaining it, you need wait for someone to take over. Which could mean you.

To gain a quick understanding of Drupal 7, I took the 20+ online video courses Getting Started with Drupal 7 Tutorials from leveltendesign web site. They do an excellent job of  helping a newbie to Drupal, learn how to use this CMS.  Anyone looking to get started using Drupal 7 should watch them.

Add ons

Rate  seems to have all the options

Choosing a CMS

I have been looking for a CMS for a new site that will be repository of software with user ratings/reviews. So far I have been using WordPress to catalog the software as posts.  I bought into the idea that WordPress is a great tool for using it as a CMS but have not seen the results I am looking for. It is \a blogging tool first and a CMS second.

So I tried Drupal 7 and found many features I am  looking for but not all of them. I will need spend more time in using Drupal 7 to determine if it meets my needs.

So decided to do a search on “choosing a cms” and found some helpful articles.

How To Choose The Right CMS (2009) - WDD by Jason Mosley does a very good job of summing up what my thoughts on choosing a CMS and identify some CMSes that I have yet to try.

Ten Simple Rules for Choosing the Perfect CMS + Excellent Options (2009) by Cameron Chapman. This article has many of the same suggestions as the one above by Jason Mosley.  She lists 10 CMS to consider.

8 features to look for when choosing a cms - Posted on Sunday 1st June 2008 by Drew McLellan. Handy list of features to look for.

There are probably more articles that will help but this is the best i found after 30 minutes of searching.

MajorGeeks.com Check See

MajorGeeks.com is a large repository of new and old freeware/shareware for Windows and Macintosh. It offers direct downloads from vendor sites and their own file servers. This site has been around for a long time so if your looking for some old discontinued software, this site might have it.  It does not games. It has editors, diagnostics, patching, tuning, and all sorts of geek software.

After downloading the latest versions of Ultimate Boot CD (dos\linux) and UBCD for Windows, I took a look at the popular downloads and found a few I will be checking out.

Patch My PC 1.1.2 – Portable app that checks for updates for free software on your PC.

Dolphin Text Editor Menu 2.4  - Adding features to Notepad, Wordpad and others

Google Chrome Portable 11.0.696.77 – portable version of Chrome

Screenshot Captor 2.95.01 – automatic thumbnail creation might be handy

Speccy – detail system info include temperature for components

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 06.07.2011 – Boot cd to fix viruses

 

 

 

Free Domain Name Providers

I started developing web sites on a free web host providers. They offered a unique web address I could use on my web site. However, when I switched web hosts, I could not use the web address at my new web host because the previous provider owned it. I might of been able to purchase it but I was switching providers for reason. When you change the web address of your web site; search engines, personal book marks, and web links from other web pages would still be pointing to the old address. There are ways to redirect your old web site to your new site name but the old site needs to exist for that to happen else your old visitors will end up on your previous providers generic pages.

To prevent this, purchasing a domain name for your web site provides you control over which web host your domain name points to. When you switch a web host you just configure your domain name for the new host.  Domain names are purchased from domain registration providers.  Most providers charge $10 to $20 a year. You will own that domain long as you continue to pay the yearly subscription.

Finding Free Web Hosts

I have been using free web hosts for a long time. They offer the opportunity to learn how to create and maintain websites using a variety of technologies while sharing information with others on the internet. Finding a reliable free web host can be challenging. Searching the internet resulted in my finding two articles that provide a good list of free web hosts to consider.

Call of Duty 2 Reinstall

Call of Duty 2 was giving me issues. Many of the multiplayer maps were being reported as corrupted and I needed to delete them before they could be replaced. COD2 does not have an easy way to remove multiplayer maps which are downloaded while joining an online multiplayer game.

The only option I know of is to  delete them manually yourself. In my case after the deleting about 6, I decided to guess and delete a bunch of old ones. This caused an issue and I decided to uninstall COD2. This gave me more issues so I tried to uninstall it manually, which turned out to be bad idea. I got COD2 cleaned off but during the reinstall, I could not install patch 1.3.

During the patch 1.3 install, I got the error I “Error: 1612 The installation source for this product is not available. Verify that the source exists and that you can access it.”

SFC Requiring Windows XP Home edition Service Pack CD

I was having trouble on my PC running Windows XP Home edition so I decided to try the SFC command. I ran it from a command window using “SFC /SCANNOW”. It prompted me for a Window XP CD so I loaded my Gateway Windows XP Home installation CD. After a bit, it asked me to “insert your Windows XP Home edition Service Pack CD now”. I do not have one. So I downloaded Microsoft’s ISO image for a Windows XP SP3 and created a CD with it. I inserted it and it did not like it.

So time for me troubleshoot using the internet. I found a post that suggested slipstreaming SP3 with my installation CD. I have done this past when creating a UBCD for Windows.

DNS Failure

Recently, I had trouble at home with PC’s trying to connect to the internet. All PC’s with wireless connections were failing except the one wire PC I have. It drove me crazy until they all started working again around 12:30 AM. The next day I checked my providers help forum and found they were having DNS issues and then I remember my wired PC uses  OpenDNS while the other PC’s use the ISP provider DNS. What a pain.

DropBox

DropBox offer free 2 GB of space on the internet for file backups, sharing between PC’s, file hosting and 30 day backup of deleted or updated files.  Email Registatation is required, small program installation, and a folder named MyDropBox.  To use,  just put your files in the My Dropbox folder. You can create sub-folders in it. The size of the file size must be smaller than the size of your account. So it needs to be 2 GB or less until you increase your account’s size.  There seems to be several ways to accompish this, the most common it referring people that open an account. Students get 500 MB with their EDU email account. Everyone else gets 250 MB for referral. The maximum additional free space is at least 8 GB.

To share you files between PC’s, log onto your other PC’s, connect to your Drop Box account at the DropBox site, and install the program. The process is quick and painless. It will start right away replicating files onto your new PC.  Besides Windows, DropBox supports Linux, Mac OS and Mobile Devices.

When I originally heard of DropBox I had two issues to overcome.

First being required to put everything in one folder named MyDropbox. After using if for a while I found this as benefit. You never worry about which folders are being backed up and its easy to remember. Its icon in system task makes it is easy to find on your differrent PC’s.

My second issue is the size of 2 Gb, my approach is not to worry about it. When I hit the MAX so be it. Until then I have easy access to files that duplicated. I have not hit the maximum size.

If your looking for an easy way to host or share folders/files over the internet, this tool makes it very easy to use for both you and your vistors.  Don’t worry about your private files, only the files and folders you want to share will be accessible by others over the internet. Only you have full access to your files. Do not forget the 30 day backup in case you want undo a change or bring back a file.

I continue to look for a valid alternative to DropBox but have not  not found one. All the others have file size limits or difficuties in backing/retrieving files. I am currently using mine for portable applications, docementation, and web site development.

Additional Link(s)

• Re-examining Dropbox and its alternatives by Woody Leonhard

Bookmarking Web Pages

After many years of using Linkagogo, I decided to look for an alternative. I will probably keep my account for creating an online backup for my bookmarks but I will no longer be using it to actively add bookmarks. Since I started using Linkagogo, social bookmarking has really taken off. There are so many online bookmarking options now.  To get a handle of these options, I created this post which identifies that various bookmarking sites I have looked into to meet my requirements. This is by no means an exhaustive list of available options.

My Requirements

• Access from multiple browsers
• Access from multiple computer
• Option to keep them private by default
• Support 1000′s of bookmarks
• Organize in directory format
• Export/import option for  multiple browser formats
• Tags are optional
• Reliable