DinoSpace
Throughout this book, we are going to create our very own social networking web site using Drupal. This web site is called DinoSpace , and it is aimed at the owners of pet dinosaurs yes, I know, nobody really owns a pet dinosaur .it would be too expensive and impractical to interact with one another. In particular, the web site aims to Connect owners of pet dinosaurs and allow them to build and maintain friendships with other users Allow owners to share stories about their pets Help in...
User settings
From here, we can configure the registration requirements of our users, email templates used for new accounts and so on, and users' picture settings. We can determine what security precautions should be taken when a new account is registered. New accounts Can only be created by an administrator Can be created by a visitor, but require administrator approval Can be created by a visitor without administrator approval and in addition to the previous two, require user email verification User...
Collaborative writing
Drupal's book module is designed for creating structured, multi-page content on our site, for things such as Since our site is a social network for owners of pet dinosaurs, a suitable use for this module would be to allow our users to create and contribute to a book on looking after a dinosaur throughout its lifetime. Of course, as our site grows, it would be better to have more books related to specific breeds, which is something we can accommodate as our social network starts to grow
packtI
With a feature which reveals such detailed information about our users' usage of the site, it is important that we give them the option to opt out of having their activity logged. This can be done via Administer Site configuration Activity Settings. We should check the Allow user privacy opt-out box to ensure that our users can opt out of the feature, and maintain a higher level of privacy when using our site. Select the number of activity records to show on activity pages such as this one....
Installing WampServer 1
Once downloaded, we need to install the software. First, let's open the file we have just downloaded. We may need to agree to some security dialogues before Windows allows us to install the software. You must be logged in as an administrator to install WampServer. The first window to be displayed warns us that we shouldn't try to upgrade from a previous version of WampServer and that we need to uninstall the older versions if any. Now, let's click on Yes so that the installation can continue....
Planning
For our Dino Space site, we want to facilitate discussions on So let's break this down into categories which we might want to group these forums into Health and Care containing forums for health and care Out and about containing forums for places to visit, dino-friendly hotel reviews, and a general forum for other things related to getting out and about with your dinosaur General containing general dinosaur-related discussions, and discussions not necessarily related to dinosaurs
Moderators
Moderators need the ability to edit and delete content other than their own. So, we would provide the following permissions, in addition to those of the authenticated user role Blog module delete any blog entry, edit any blog entry Comment module administer comments Forum module delete any forum topic, edit any forum topic Node module delete any book content, delete any page content, delete any story content, delete revisions, edit any book content, edit any page content, edit any story...
Install and enable the module
The file we have just downloaded is a ZIP file, which needs to be extracted using a program such as WinZip, or the built-in application for handing compressed files , to the sites all modules folder within our Drupal installation. The modules subfolder may not exist, so if prompted, allow your decompression program to create this folder. Because we have just placed the modules files within our Drupal installation, the modules should be picked up by Drupal so that we can enable them. We need to...
Configure the module
There are two areas within the administration tools where we can configure this module, the first is within Administer Site settings FeedAPI settings. These settings allow us to set which HTML tags are allowed in the feed elements that are posted. The second group of settings are in Administer Site building Content types Feed. These settings define when the items from the feed are updated, including whether a feed should be refreshed when it is created, whether existing feed items should be...
Sitewide contact form
The site-wide contact form enables our users to get in touch with us the site administrator, or someone else who is assisting with the running of the site. When a user completes the contact form, they must select a category that their enquiry is relating to. We can then route the email to a different person depending on the category selected. To configure the module correctly, we need to Create a number of categories for the contact form, and set up the email addresses which they should route...
Comments within Dino Space
Comments are clearly a fundamental communication feature for any site which facilitates user interaction. However, these features can be easily abused by spammers. To help protect against spam, we should only allow logged-in users to post comments. But all logged-in users should be allowed to do this. Allowing only logged-in users to post comments isn't a solution to spam. We will cover more effective methods to protect against spam later in this book. By requiring users to sign up and log in...
Creating our relationships
Relationships are defined and managed within the User management section Administer User management Relationships . Relationships Add type AdddeFault Settings This page lets you setup user relationship types. Relationship Types Name Plural Implies Type Requires Approval Expiration Operations In the above screenshot, we can see the Relationships in our site we currently have none , add types of relationships, default relationships, and settings for the module. Let's click the Add type tab, and...