mary – Page 21 – The Coding Pad

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 11: Managing Spam and Comments

Welcome to part 11 of our tutorial on building a website with Drupal 6. Previously we covered:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Installing Drupal 6
Part 3: Configuring your Site
Part 4: Playing with Blocks
Part 5: Playing with Modules
Part 6: Playing with Themes
Part 7: Installing Modules and Themes
Part 8: Pathauto, Content, and Content Types
Part 9: Users, Roles, and Permissions
Part 1o: Reports – Keeping Track

As we go through this tutorials I am building a Drupal resource site called Learn Drupal.

So far our website looks like this: (you can click on the images for a larger view)

As we’ve been building our website we’ve been aiming to have users and visitors interact with our website. One of the ways in which visitors interact with the Learn Drupal website is by leaving comments, and sometimes, spam. Today, we’re going to look at some ways of managing comments and spam on our website.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 11: Managing Spam and Comments”

Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 5: Introducing Snippets

Welcome to part 5 of our series of tutorials on building a website with MODx CMS. So far we’ve looked at:

Part 1: Introduction to MODx
Part 2: Installing MODx
Part 3: Working with Templates
Part 4: Introducing Chunks

As we work through these tutorials, we’re building a MODx resource site called Learn MODx. In the last installment we introduced chunks and learned how to use them to clean our template and make it more manageable. So far our website looks like this: (you can click on the images to see a larger view)

Today, we’re going to introduce snippets and learn how to use them to add functionality to our website using one simple example. At this point in our tutorial, if you’ve been following along, our website navigation is simply cosmetic and the links don’t really lead anywhere. We’re going to use a snippet to rectify that and make our site navigable from the horizontal menu links.

Continue reading “Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 5: Introducing Snippets”

Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 4: Introducing Chunks

Welcome to part 4 of our series of tutorials on building a website with MODx CMS. So far we’ve looked at:

Part 1: Introduction to MODx
Part 2: Installing MODx
Part 3: Working with Templates

As we work through these tutorials, we’re building a MODx resource site called Learn MODx. In the last installment we started working with templates and moved our site from using the minimal base MODx template to the nice blue Swansong template. So far our website looks like this: (you can click on the images to see a larger view)

In this tutorial we are going to get a gentle 🙂 introduction to chunks. I had mentioned in the last post that we would delve into chunks AND snippets in this post, but I realized after some thought that I was being a tad too ambitious. I feel that it’s better to introduce each in its own post. I apologize for any crashed hopes and dreams, and any harmed puppies and turtles, but we will look into snippets in the next post.

So what are these chunks anyway? Chunks, to me, are like little mini-templates.

Continue reading “Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 4: Introducing Chunks”

Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 3: Working with Templates

Welcome to part 3 of our series of tutorials on building a website with MODx CMS. So far we’ve looked at:

Part 1: Introduction to MODx
Part 2: Installing MODx

As we work through these tutorials, we’re building a MODx resource site called Learn MODx. So far our website looks like this: (you can click on the images to see a larger view)

If you recall, we didn’t install the sample website but instead opted for a minimal install, which I feel is cleaner and easier to work with. As I clarified in my addendum to the post on Installing MODx, Shane’s comment about the value of installing the sample website as a demo to see how MODx does things is an excellent idea. If you didn’t read the addendum to that post and the comments please do so.

In today’s post, we’re going to start looking at templating MODx. We’re going to begin implementing a new template to our site to give it a unique look and in the process we’ll learn about some of MODx’s template tags.

Continue reading “Building a Website with MODx for Newbies – Part 3: Working with Templates”

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 10: Reports – Keeping Track

Welcome to part 10 of our tutorial on building a website with Drupal 6. Previously we covered:

As we go through this tutorials I am building a Drupal resource site called Learn Drupal.

So far our website looks something like this: (you can click on the images for a larger view)

Our website is coming along great, we have some content, we have a contact form, we have a relatively unique look, things are looking good. But how do we know if we’re getting visitors? You’ll notice in my screenshot that I have a counter on each piece of content that tells me how many times the content has been viewed. This is made possible by the settings we chose when we enabled the Statistics module, and is visible to me as the administrator, and you should be able to see it on your website too. But what other specific data does the Statistics module log? This is part of what we’re going to briefly explore today.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 10: Reports – Keeping Track”