Since there is no Ubuntu package for Drupal 6, I created my own package based
on the drupal5 one. I set it up as a virtual host in Lighttpd by simply
symlinking the domain name to /usr/share/drupal6. I created a MySQL
database for the site and went through the Drupal install process. Since I'm
using a multi-site installation, I also needed to alias the /files directory
for each site.
$HTTP["host"] == "michael.gorven.za.net" { alias.url = ( "/files/" => "/home/mgorven/public_html/" ) }
Clean URLs allows one to have URLs like /about instead of
/index.php?q=about. This however requires that the web server rewrites URLs
from the former to the latter. Drupal includes an htaccess file containing
settings for Apache, but not for Lighttpd. Lighttpd does have a rewrite
module, but it doesn't support the conditions that Drupal needs
(such as checking if a file exists).
Lighttpd does however have a module which allows one to add scripts to the
request process written in Lua. A script has already been
developed which implements the required rewriting for Drupal. The following
lines in lighttpd.conf enable this for a specified site (after
enabling mod_magnet and downloading the script).
$HTTP["host"] == "michael.gorven.za.net" { index-file.names = ( "index.php" ) magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/drupal.lua" ) }
When Drupal is first installed, there is no mention of blogging as such. The first step is to enable the Blog core module1. This creates a blog content type and enables a blog for each user. (The module is designed for a multi-user blog, but can be used for a single user as well.) However, this doesn't give you all the functionality you expect from a blog engine.
Tagging is handled by the Taxonomy core module. You first need to create a vocabulary though, and enable it for blog posts. (This took me ages to discover.) In order to get nice URLs (including the date and post title, for example) you need to install the Pathauto module and configure a pattern for blog posts. You may also want to define a pattern for tags.
There is also no archive functionality. The best way that I can find is the
Views module. It includes a pre-defined "archive" view which can display
posts from a specific month, and links to the monthly pages. Even after much
investigation I couldn't get the archive to behave like typical blog archives
(i.e. /blog/2008/07/07, /blog/2008/07 and /blog/2008 for daily, monthly
and yearly archives respectively).
The Trackback and Pingback modules implement automatic linking with other blogs. (I haven't actually tested these yet.) The Blog API core module allows the blog to be managed with external clients. The Markdown module allows you to write posts using Markdown syntax instead of HTML.
Drupal enables comments for blog posts by default. The Akismet module implements spam filtering using the Akismet service. The CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA modules allows you to require users to answer a reCAPTCHA when submitting comments. (I haven't actually enabled CAPTCHAs since I haven't gotten any comment spam yet. Or real comments for that matter...)
The Mailhandler module allows you to submit posts via email. The configuration is fairly straightforward, except for the available commands which can be found here. These can be specified at the beginning of emails and in the configuration as defaults. I use the following commands.
type: blog taxonomy: [mail] promote: 1 status: 1 comment: 2
This creates blog posts and tags them with the "mail" tag. Posts are published and promoted to the front page, and comments are enabled.
The one thing it doesn't handle is attachments (such as images). There are a couple of modules2 which support this, but they aren't available for Drupal 6 yet. (Vhata has also hacked together a photo blogging system, but this isn't implemented as a Drupal module.) I don't really need this feature, so I'm going to wait until these modules are updated.
The OpenID module allows you to log into your site using OpenID. The OpenID URL module allows you to delegate your Drupal site as an OpenID by specifying your provider and/or your Yadis document.
Yadis documents are advertised with a meta header in the HTML document, but
this isn't the ideal method of doing so since the relaying party needs to
download the entire HTML file. The preferred methods are to
insert an X-XRDS-Location in the HTTP headers, or to automatically serve the
Yadis document if the user agent specifies application/xrds+xml in the
Accept header.
The former method can be accomplished with the setenv module for Lighttpd. The
second is essentially a conditional rewrite, and so requires some Lua scripting
again. The following script will do the job.
if lighty.request["Accept"] == "application/xrds+xml" then lighty.env["uri.path"] = "/files/yadis.xrdf" end
The following lines in lighttpd.conf will announce the Yadis document for the
root URL.
$HTTP["url"] == "/" { magnet.attract-raw-url-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/yadis.lua" ) setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-XRDS-Location" => "http://michael.gorven.za.net/files/yadis.xrdf" ) }
The tag block is generated by the Tagadelic module. The "Recent Tracks" block is generated from my LastFM feed by the Aggregator core module, and the list of networks is simply a custom block. The Atom feed is generated by the Atom module. The contact form, search and file upload are all core modules.
The one thing I haven't sorted out is image handling. There are a couple ways to handle images in Drupal, but none of these appeal to me (they're too complicated). I will probably just upload images as attachments and insert them manually in the body.
It is however possible to run a blog without the Blog module. ↩
Mailsave and Mobile Media Blog. ↩
Since there is no Ubuntu package for Drupal 6, I created my own package based
on the drupal5 one. I set it up as a virtual host in Lighttpd by simply
symlinking the domain name to /usr/share/drupal6. I created a MySQL
database for the site and went through the Drupal install process. Since I'm
using a multi-site installation, I also needed to alias the /files directory
for each site.
$HTTP["host"] == "michael.gorven.za.net" {
alias.url = ( "/files/" => "/home/mgorven/public_html/" )
}
Clean URLs allows one to have URLs like /about instead of
/index.php?q=about. This however requires that the web server rewrites URLs
from the former to the latter. Drupal includes an htaccess file containing
settings for Apache, but not for Lighttpd. Lighttpd does have a rewrite
module, but it doesn't support the conditions that Drupal needs
(such as checking if a file exists).
Lighttpd does however have a module which allows one to add scripts to the
request process written in Lua. A script has already been
developed which implements the required rewriting for Drupal. The following
lines in lighttpd.conf enable this for a specified site (after
enabling mod_magnet and downloading the script).
$HTTP["host"] == "michael.gorven.za.net" {
index-file.names = ( "index.php" )
magnet.attract-physical-path-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/drupal.lua" )
}
When Drupal is first installed, there is no mention of blogging as such. The first step is to enable the Blog core module1. This creates a blog content type and enables a blog for each user. (The module is designed for a multi-user blog, but can be used for a single user as well.) However, this doesn't give you all the functionality you expect from a blog engine.
Tagging is handled by the Taxonomy core module. You first need to create a vocabulary though, and enable it for blog posts. (This took me ages to discover.) In order to get nice URLs (including the date and post title, for example) you need to install the Pathauto module and configure a pattern for blog posts. You may also want to define a pattern for tags.
There is also no archive functionality. The best way that I can find is the
Views module. It includes a pre-defined "archive" view which can display
posts from a specific month, and links to the monthly pages. Even after much
investigation I couldn't get the archive to behave like typical blog archives
(i.e. /blog/2008/07/07, /blog/2008/07 and /blog/2008 for daily, monthly
and yearly archives respectively).
The Trackback and Pingback modules implement automatic linking with other blogs. (I haven't actually tested these yet.) The Blog API core module allows the blog to be managed with external clients. The Markdown module allows you to write posts using Markdown syntax instead of HTML.
Drupal enables comments for blog posts by default. The Akismet module implements spam filtering using the Akismet service. The CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA modules allows you to require users to answer a reCAPTCHA when submitting comments. (I haven't actually enabled CAPTCHAs since I haven't gotten any comment spam yet. Or real comments for that matter...)
The Mailhandler module allows you to submit posts via email. The configuration is fairly straightforward, except for the available commands which can be found here. These can be specified at the beginning of emails and in the configuration as defaults. I use the following commands.
type: blog
taxonomy: [mail]
promote: 1
status: 1
comment: 2
This creates blog posts and tags them with the "mail" tag. Posts are published and promoted to the front page, and comments are enabled.
The one thing it doesn't handle is attachments (such as images). There are a couple of modules2 which support this, but they aren't available for Drupal 6 yet. (Vhata has also hacked together a photo blogging system, but this isn't implemented as a Drupal module.) I don't really need this feature, so I'm going to wait until these modules are updated.
The OpenID module allows you to log into your site using OpenID. The OpenID URL module allows you to delegate your Drupal site as an OpenID by specifying your provider and/or your Yadis document.
Yadis documents are advertised with a meta header in the HTML document, but
this isn't the ideal method of doing so since the relaying party needs to
download the entire HTML file. The preferred methods are to
insert an X-XRDS-Location in the HTTP headers, or to automatically serve the
Yadis document if the user agent specifies application/xrds+xml in the
Accept header.
The former method can be accomplished with the setenv module for Lighttpd. The
second is essentially a conditional rewrite, and so requires some Lua scripting
again. The following script will do the job.
if lighty.request["Accept"] == "application/xrds+xml" then
lighty.env["uri.path"] = "/files/yadis.xrdf"
end
The following lines in lighttpd.conf will announce the Yadis document for the
root URL.
$HTTP["url"] == "/" {
magnet.attract-raw-url-to = ( "/etc/lighttpd/yadis.lua" )
setenv.add-response-header = ( "X-XRDS-Location" => "http://michael.gorven.za.net/files/yadis.xrdf" )
}
The tag block is generated by the Tagadelic module. The "Recent Tracks" block is generated from my LastFM feed by the Aggregator core module, and the list of networks is simply a custom block. The Atom feed is generated by the Atom module. The contact form, search and file upload are all core modules.
The one thing I haven't sorted out is image handling. There are a couple ways to handle images in Drupal, but none of these appeal to me (they're too complicated). I will probably just upload images as attachments and insert them manually in the body.
It is however possible to run a blog without the Blog module. ↩
Mailsave and Mobile Media Blog. ↩