I want to add a subscription block to my Drupal site.
I found these two module: subscription and simple-subscription.
I installed subscription (the first one) and put its related block in blocks section to right sidebar region but no block is shown.
Is this module reliable and where can i find a documentation for this module?
My guess would be permission problems.
If you are not logged in as user 1 and don't change default permissions, it probably won't show up.
In answer to your second question, one thing to determine if a module is reliable is to see how many other sites use it and how actively it is being worked on. If you see quite a few sites using the module and recent responses in the issues queue, then there is a good chance that it is a quality module or at the very least, being developed into a quality module.
I haven't used subscriptions, but it looks like it is maintained by quality developers and is used in many places. Here is some documentation http://drupal.org/node/344030
You have to configure display settings rightly in admin/settings/subscriptions
Related
By checking the WordPress stats we get the idea that how many times a WordPress plugin is downloaded. But this is not the number of how many users for that plugin, right. Same user will download the plugin when a new version releases.
So do we have any tools or stats to get the total number of unique users for a WordPress plugin??
I did a research on the matter. And the answer is no.
Quotes from Otto comments in this 2010
article
about the stats charts in every plugin's page.
[...] the download count includes direct downloads as well
There is no “raw count” anywhere on that version number chart. The raw count is not data that will be made available.
For your own plugin, you can use tracking as #PeterVanDerDoes points out.
Curiously, the plugin I used as example in the research, WordPress SEO by Yoast, is the same that does this kind of tracking. And here's a nice discussion about it.
I'll reproduce the relevant part of the plugin development official guidelines:
7. No "phoning home" without user's informed consent. This seemingly simple rule actually covers several different aspects:
No unauthorized collection of user data. For example, sending the admin's email address back to your own servers without permission of the user is not allowed; but asking the user for an email address and collecting if they choose to submit it is fine. All actions taken in this respect MUST be of the user's doing, not automatically done by the plugin.
All images and scripts shown should be part of the plugin. These should be loaded locally. If the plugin does require that data is loaded from an external site (such as blocklists) this should be made clear in the plugin's admin screens or description. The point is that the user must be informed of what information is being sent where.
In general, things like banner or text link advertising should not be anywhere in a plugin, including on its settings screen. Advertising on settings screens is generally ineffective anyway, as ideally users rarely visit these screens, and the advertising is low quality because the advertising systems cannot see the page content to determine good ads. So they're best just left off entirely. Putting links back to your own site or to your social-network of choice is fine. If the plugin does include advertising from a third party service, then it must default to completely disabled, in order to prevent tracking information from being collected from the user without their consent. This is the method commonly known as "opt-in".
Note that if you do include what we consider to be "advertising spam", or attempt to game somebody else's advertising system, then we will not only remove your plugin, but also report your code to the advertising system's abuse mechanism as well. We do not react kindly to spam. Don't try it.
The only way I can think of that you could track something like this is by having the plugin phone-home with some stats to your own server.
Just make sure users can select to opt-out of tracking.
I'm not entirely sure how to properly ask this, so please bear with me.
I have an idea for a site I would like to build, which would basically be a site for members to create some data and have it housed in my database. I would like to offer a value-add to the site which would allow people to spin off their own website via my own "website builder" tool (probably some sort of CMS). Their website would be able to communicate with my master database to display their data.
Getting down to the crux of the topic, I'm looking for architectural advice/ideas/etc. regarding what services I could use to do this. I'm not looking a 100% automated solution, but something along these lines (which may not be completely correct, I admit):
Customer puts in an order to create their own site, using my tools.
I setup a separate domain for them, roll out the CMS foundation to the site, and the customer has full editing control of the CMS to design it however they would like.
The CMS would have some customizations so that it includes functionality to call APIs located on the master site, which would return the relevant data.
In the research I have done on SO, I've seen a lot of mentions of Umbraco which honestly looks like a good start. I'm just worried that when I go to upgrade a version, I have to deal with overwriting my custom API functionality. I'm guessing this is the nature of the beast, and requires me to accept/plan for it.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Some high-level starting points? Thanks!
I've been thinking about this same issue for my customers.
It is not hard to automatically roll out a stock cms such as Wordpress or Joomla. This sort of thing is done all the time by "1 click installers" that DreamHost and others have.
Including custom widgets or plugins for the CMS that can connect to your main app is also not hard.
For dns, you can use Amazon Route 53 or other DNS services that include a good api at the dns management level.
I suggest that you focus on using a CMS that is very popular (eg Wordpress or Joomla) rather than something less well known such as Umbraco. Using a more popular system will drastically reduce your training costs--remember that if you supply the CMS to your customers, then they'll also expect you to supply the support for it...
I am working on a project for a client that started out as a simple CMS with pages, posts, and a directory. The client is constantly expanding the scope of this project with requirements for customization of just about everything. As a single developer, I am having trouble keeping up with the clients time-table. I have googled for software packages that might already exist that proved the features my client needs but I have not found anything. Does anyone know of any pre-built software that allows for the following customization or at least better words to describe this type of package?
Here are some examples of the customization that is requested:
A page or directory listing needs to be formatted from an admin-defined template. Within this template there needs to be admin-defined sections that contain admin-defined data types. (This is so the look and feel of the site can be maintained while users can easily build content, add listings, and etc.)
Advertising-tiles need to be able to be defined and populated globally and at page level.
All user generated content, pages, posts, and directory listings need to be associated with user and have flexibility to show all other user generated content for inter-linking between same users content.
Site would need billing/e-commerce system for premium listings, premium posts, advertising tiles, and etc.
Approval system for all user added or edited content (pages, posts, directory listings, etc.)
(asp.net and mvc are definitely preferable)
Site would need billing/e-commerce system
This is the number one reason you should not roll your own. Find an established CMS and take the time to learn to use it.
My dear friend, I've read your question & I may suggest that you should try some open-source CMS software with your own which can generate, display admin-generated templates & other stuffs. You should use the
Pre-bulit CMS software for keeping track of pages.
Your own small customized cms for maintaining templates.
osCommerce (open-source) for eCommerce support.
I've not had a change to use it, and I'm not sure if it will provide for you all of your demands or not, but I've heard a lot of great things about the project. Have you tried the open source project Drupal?
I recently stumbled upon Etherpad, it's a collaborative writing tool
http://code.google.com/p/etherpad/ - main project page
online Examples:
http://piratepad.net/
http://ietherpad.com/
http://typewith.me/
I want to add this engine somehow to my wordpress and let people collaborate their posts,
I'm wondering if it has been done before and/or does it take more than
shared hosting (that is what I have) to do it [server capabilities or what-not] ?
In general, I think this is a complicated way to go about it. Also, Etherpad allows some very basic font formatting but no images and such things you might want to include in a blog. Instead I suggest looking for some Wordpress plugin for collaborative writing, and you might find something less "real-timey" but perhaps good enough.
Or if you really want to try with Etherpad:
Etherpad needs lots of memory (RAM) to run. A typical configuration is 1 GB, but it might be possible to get by on 128MB dedicated to Etherpad. This means you'll need at least 256MB in total for a first attempt. Your shared host also needs to have a Java server installed (typically Jetty) and some proxying server (typically nginx). All in all, you have some work ahead of you in just getting Etherpad up and running. After that, integrating into the Wordpress blog editor. If/how this can be done, I don't know. I'd probably do a client-side javascript-hack to get the Wordpress textarea or richtext editarea to update from the Etherpad readonly view, which is the only place where you can get the contents of a pad as more-or-less raw source text.
A simpler solution would be to just add an Etherpad page through an iFrame. See this post for example - http://www.knowledgepolicy.com/2010/02/embed-etherpad-into-blogpost-or-on-any.html
In theory it's possible to replace Wordpress' editor with an Etherpad Lite iFrame. Etherpad now allows image/font editing and table support as plugins.
Java is no longer required for Etherpad, NodeJS however is.
Here is a plugin that is in development that does what you want - however development seemed to stop in early 2012.
http://participad.org/ seems to be the best solution in this space to date. I haven't tested it on my own site, but they have an at least partially-working demo online.
Yes! It is possible. WordPress now has a plugin. The plugin has three modules which enables an Editor in dashboard and let you edit via front-end.
You can find more details on their FAQ page.
Which do you use and why? Does one provide any clear advantages over the other?
I use admin_menu for administrators and developers who need quick access to administration functions, but I use admin for everyone else.
Admin's main weakness for administrators, that it only shows you one section of the menu at a time, is also its main strength for content creators and maintainers who would be overwhelmed by all menu options. The fact that you can have a sidebar with just Create content is great for data entry.
A big plus of admin is its ability to be tucked away into one corner instead of taking up the entire top of the website. In my user testing, people don't seem to think they're editing the live site when the site has a toolbar attached to it: before switching to admin, I would frequently get questions asking how they could see the live site when logged in.
I find them both slower than just using the default system, they both add to page load times and it's very easy to get to the admin page you want using Firefox's url suggestion feature.
Be careful using admin menu, for sites with lots of modules it's buggy, in my experience. It disappears without reason. I've been developing websites on Drupal for 5 or more years and admin_menu was one of my favourites admin tools...
For small sites, I recommend it. For sites with lots of modules I wouldn't recommend it. See the admin_menu isssues, search "disappear" and you will find people complaining about it. Some patches have been submitted, in my case the bug persists.
Be careful with this module on D7.
Admin menu provides a quicker way to get to many of the core admin functions rather than going via admin. It is part of D7 but in D6 is has been known to be buggy and slow.