Great Drupal CMS Modules for Building a College Community Website
May 19, 2009 by Srikanth AD Tips and Tricks
Drupal, an open source server based content management system (CMS) and which we have mentioned here (built in PHP/MySQL technology), can support a wide range of web designing including blogs, community, promotional websites and many more.
Drupal provides easy tools with the help of which various sites can be easily developed. Its minimum requirement and easy installation makes it even more user friendly. Various modules available with Drupal.org further enhance the scope and usability.
Here we are presenting a few modules which can come extremely handy while building a college community website based on Drupal.
Enable users to create and manage their own ‘groups’. Each group can have subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves.
This module will be helpful in creating groups for members like teachers, students etc. You can even group students according to their class. The advantage of this module is that, we can have group posts that are only visible for those group members.
See the Organic Groups module in action here.
This module will display any views date field in calendar formats, including CCK date fields, node created or updated dates, etc. Switch between year, month, and day views. Back and next navigation is also provided for all views.
You might find it useful for posting college events and other stuff to be shown on the calendar.
Sphere: Related Content
Tags: cms, college, community, content management system, drupal, modules, mysql, php, website
K2 for Joomla! – create custom content types (items) for your Joomla CMS websiteW
May 6, 2009 by Mircea Goia Tips and Tricks
Sometime ago we’ve introduced Seedling, a pre-configured Joomla package plus extensions and modules.
Now we have another tip for you: K2 (and that’s not the mountain).
What is K2 and for what can you use it?
K2 is a content construction component which lets you create custom content types (aka items) for your Joomla! website. Having this component installed on top of your Joomla! web software allows you to transform your website to a news site with author blogs, product catalogs, work portfolio, knowledge base, download/document manager, directory listing, event listing and more…all these packed together in one single component.
If you are familiar with Content Construction Kit (CCK) for Drupal content management system then you will become familiar very fast with K2 for Joomla!.
The component is very flexible, you can add as many content fields as you want and create category-specific content items, e.g. article, blog post, product page, directory listing.
The standard offer are nested-level categories, tags, comments, item image (useful for articles/catalogs), videos, galleries, user profiles, attachments, ajax-based frontend editing and more.
Here is a demo for you to try: http://k2.joomlaworks.gr/demo/
If you have already a Joomla! CMS website and want to use K2 you need to convert your content to K2. There’s no easy way to do it but Jeremy Wilken found a way and built a piece of software which does that. Checkout his K2 Converter.
K2 is a product of JoomlaWorks, a Greece-based web development company (since 2006) specialized in developoing Joomla and Mambo content management systems components.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: content construction kit, content management system, drupal, joomla, joomlaworks, k2, k2 converter, software, web development, website
Open source content management system Drupal 6.10 and 5.16 – security fixes
Mar 12, 2009 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
The Drupal security team released security fixes and some bug fixes for Drupal, version 6.x and 5.x.
One of the security release is critical and it is recommended you upgrade ASAP.
Download Drupal 6.10 here and watch the installation video guide here.
Download Drupal 5.12 here.
The upgrade instructions can be found here.
Drupal is a very powerful open-source content management system built in PHP/MySQL/PostgreSQL (other database are supported too).
It runs best in an Unix/Linux/Apache environment and it has implemented a caching mecahnism which makes it quite scalable.
It has lots of features including multilanguage support, templating, caching, blogging, administration, community features and it is used by sites like Warner Bros, The New York Observer, Fast Company, Amnesty International, SpreadFirefox.
Many hosting companies offers this software as an easy instalable package so you can start right away. Drupal site is also rich in informations and tutorials. It has an active forum too where you can find support and even developers if you need them, not to mention books written about it (Amazon.com is a good place to start looking for those).
Another open source content management system which is a strong contender to Drupal and is widely used too is Joomla.
We will review Drupal soon and give you our opinions.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: cms, content management system, drupal, hosting, joomla, mysql, open-source, php, postgresql
Microsoft Web Applications Installer – distributing open source web software (Drupal, DotNetNuke, WordPress, osCommerce and others)
Oct 16, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Something new comes from Microsoft: the company could become among the biggest open source software distributors in the world (not from their legal stand-point but it is a step)!
Now, that’s something new for a company known to say that open source movement is a “cancer“. Times are changing, so the words.
Microsoft developed the Web Applications installer software recently to help people get up and running with the most used Web Applications freely available for your Windows Server (yes, just Windows, no Linux support, as usual).
You can download the executable from here and install it on your computer. But be aware that you need to have Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista SP1 installed on your computer in order to successfully run this software (of course, you have to have IIS web server installed too, have the administrator privileges and at least .NET 2.0 framework).
Beside these requirements you have to have also MySQL database set up on your computer (use official MySQL installer).
The open source software supported so far are DotNetNuke, Drupal, Gallery, Graffiti CMS, osCommerce, phpBB and WordPress (probably more to come in the future). These are written in ASP.NET and PHP.
If you run into problems Microsoft has setup an online forum where you can get some help (this is a beta product).
Good move, Microsoft! If you can’t beat the open source join it 
!
Tags: asp.net, dotnetnuke, drupal, installer, microsoft, open-source, oscommerce, php, web application, web software, windows, wodpress
The OpenX plugins (free ad server) for Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress have arrived!
Aug 17, 2008 by Mircea Goia MyTestBox News
Because there are many users of these content management and blog systems – Drupal, Joomla! and WordPress – the team behind the free open source ad server solution OpenX started to develop plugins for them.
This will help the users to get the most out of OpenX, ultimately making more money from online advertising.And recently (August 15) the team released those three plugins! Below you have a small description of each of them (according to their blog post).
OpenX for Drupal
The module was developed for Drupal 5.x and 6.x and supports OpenX 2.6 and later (you need to have OpenX installed on your server to take advantage from this module). This is a working protoptype and developers can help improve it. More details here.
Download the modules:
- Drupal 5.x
- Drupal 6.x
Installation
To install and configure the module:
1. Unzip the relevant Zip file (according to which version of drupal you are using) into your Drupal/modules folder.
2. Login to your Drupal admin console and go to Home > Administer > Site building
3. You should now see the OpenX module listed. Enable it
4. You need to setup your zones in Home > Administer > Site configuration > OpenX AdServing
5. If you have an account on the hosted version of OpenX, you only need to put the zone ID’s into the table (you can also give the zones meaningful names here).
6. If you want to serve ads from your existing OpenX installation, expand the “Don’t have a hosted account?” section and enter the delivery URL to your OpenX installation
7. You can then add the blocks to your layout in Home > Administer > Site building > Blocks
They have prepared also a FAQ for you in case you have more questions.
And, of course, you can always get support on their forum.
OpenX for Joomla!
The module (working prototype) was developed for Joomla! version 1.5.x and requires OpenX 2.4 and later (and also the hoted version of OpenX). As in Drupal case, you need to have OpenX installed before taking advantage of this module. More here.
Download the module for Joomla 1.5.x
Installation
To install and configure the module:
1. Go to Extensions – Install/Uninstall
2. Upload the Openx module Zip file
3. Go to Extensions – Module manager
4. Find OpenX and click name to open module
5. Enter the delivery URL where you have installed OpenX. If you have set your delivery URL to be different from that of the main installation then place that here. By default the OpenX hosted version is placed here. You need to have an account with OpenX to use this
6. Enter the zone ID which you wish to display in this module
7. Now choose the position in your Joomla! template where you want to display ads
8. Enable the module
9. Your ads should now appear!
To create multiple ads on one page, copy the module and repeat steps 4 – 8.
Read also the FAQ page and into more support on their forum.
OpenX for WordPress
Because WordPress is wildly used OpenX had to develop a plugin for this blog system (many times WordPress is seen also as a content management system too).
Like in the above cases the WordPress plugin is a working prototype and developer can contribute to make it better. The plugin supports OpenX 2.4 and later as well as the hosted version of OpenX.
Download the plugin for WordPress 2.5.x
Installation
You need to have OpenX installed before installing this plugin.
To install and configure the plugin:
1. Drop the attached file in the /wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation
2. Enable the plugin in the WordPress administration console.
3. Setup the OpenX server in the OpenX-WP setup page
4. You can now add OpenX banners within your posts using the macro “{openx:NN}” where NN is the OpenX zone ID that you want to display.
5. This plugin also provides a widget which can be added to the WordPress sidebar
More detailed instructions can be found in the attached README.txt file.
Their FAQ section can answer to more questions you might have. Not to mention the forum.
These prototypes were designed with simplicity in mind but the team expects, with the developers help, that these plugins to be developed into feature rich integration tools.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: drupal, free ad server, joomla, modules, open-source, openx, plugins, wordpress
SMACKDOWN :: Who were the Open Source Content Management System (CMS) market leaders in 2008?
Jul 31, 2008 by Mircea Goia Content Management, MyTestBox News
When it comes to life online, we all use content management systems in one way or another: blogging, building websites, maintaining websites, marketing them, etc.
If we are not web experts, we usually just use software tools to develop websites. We may not even know what it is that powers the websites—what is actually doing the back-end work. Now it’s time to discover Content Management Systems (or CMS systems), and which ones are used most frequently.
I came across an interesting study about who are the leaders in open source content management systems market in the year of 2008.
The study was just released to the public and it was conducted by Ric Sheves from Water & Stone web development company (cool name, by the way). The company specializes in open source content management systems, particularly Drupal, Joomla!, Mambo, osCommerce and WordPress. Ric lives in Bali, Indonesia (talking about working from cool places).
At 50 pages, there is a significant amount of data in this study that should be of use to developers or to anyone who is looking to commit to a web publishing system. You don’t want to bet on a dead horse, do you?
But first let’s see WHAT is a content management system.
According to Wikipedia a content management system is:
- …a computer software used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files,electronic documents, and Web content.A web content management system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of Web content to Web sites, in particular allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.
Because the theme of this site is web software (software which runs on a web server and in a browser – not desktop software) we will concentrate on web content management systems. And because we do like free things (who doesn’t?) we will present this study which took in consideration only the open source web content management systems (and only the publication-oriented CMSs, not e-commerce like osCommerce and not enterprise portals like LifeRay). Commercial or hosted products are excluded too.
Below are more details about this study.
—————————————————————————————————————
This whole exercise began by brainstorming through various methods of assessing popularity and adoption rates. While there are a number of indicators, there is no standardized metric to gauge market share in this particular segment — there is simply no way to get an accurate fix on how many systems are actually in use on the web right now.
For this survey the research results were broken down into two broad categories:
• Rate of Adoption
• Brand Strength
In each of the areas, they used a multi-faceted approach, assessing a wide variety of measures to identify broad trends and patterns from which we can draw conclusions with some
degree of confidence. Among the many metrics they sampled are a number of non-traditional indicators, such as Twitter Prominence and Social Bookmarking statistics.
Rate of Adoption
The team began their examination of the open source CMS market by attempting to measure the relative rates of adoption of the systems in the sample set. For reasons discussed below, direct evidence alone is not sufficient to allow them to draw firm conclusions.
As a result, they were forced to look at a variety of metrics in hopes of building a more complete picture of the current state of the market:
- Downloads
- Installations
- Third Party Support
- - Developers
- - Publishers
All these three metrics are explained in details in the study.
Sphere: Related ContentTags: b2evolution, cms, content management, drupal, elgg, joomla, mambo, market share, mediawiki, modx, phpnuke, pligg, plone, study, survey, tikiwiki, typo3, wordpress
Get News by RSS feed