Drupal multisite

Hi Readers,

Let me show how I made a Drupal multisite on my localhost. Of course, I did it a bit different way (I'm sure). That's me. By the way, this is the NORMAL description about multisites: http://drupal.org/node/43816

1: Deploy a Drupal site
Download the newest Drupal and install it. I did it into a folder, under my web root folder: /PATHTOYOURWEBROOT/DRUPALMULTISITEDIR/

2: Add your first site name to /etc/hosts

sh# sudo echo "127.0.0.1 FIRSTMULTISITENAME" >> /etc/hosts

3: Also tell to Apache, where is your new domain points
Insert at the end of your httpd.conf this snippet:

<virtualhost>
ServerAdmin webmaster@dummy-host.example.com
DocumentRoot "/PATHTOYOURWEBROOT/DRUPALMULTISITEDIR"
ServerName FIRSTMULTISITENAME
ServerAlias FIRSTMULTISITENAME
</virtualhost>

4: Rename sites/default to your first multisite's name

sh# cd sites
sh# mv default FIRSTMULTISITENAME

5: Restart apache
After restart check this out: http://FIRSTMULTISITENAME/

Of course, it's just one site. Adding a new site (SECONDMULTISITENAME):

• Create subdirectory in sites (SECONDMULTISITENAME)
• Copy a brand new settings.php into it, and create a files folder
• Add the /etc/hosts entry (2)
• Add apache directive (3)

I think, it's not that hard.

Evening,
Peter

Hungarian Drupal Podcast - Episode 4

Hi Readers,

We finished recording our 4th podcast. It was a bit calm, a bit non-informative, but still us:) We continued the development environment topic. The video:

Magyar Drupal Podcast - 4. rész from Peter Arato on Vimeo.

Next part will be - I hope so - a quite interesting episode: Drupal myths and legends.
We collect a lot of things ... wait for it ... in Google Wave. Yeah baby, we all have a Wave account. You can ask why I am so happy about it, and it's because a simple fact: concurrent editing. We have a single wave conversation with all the topics we would like to talk about, and we could edit it at the same time. It boosted the planning phase a lot.

Night,
Peter

FMS in OSX

Hi Readers,

I would like to give you a quick description how to work with FMS (Flash Media Server) under OS-X. Unfortunately FMS server is only available for Windows and Unix. Almost. I tried to fire it up in Ubuntu 9.10, and got a bunch of error messages. I would have killed both of that bastard application. Nevermind. So these were my steps to a working environment:

1 - Install Virtualbox and Windows XP in it
This is an easy step, just make sure you use latest version of VBox.

2 - Run Windows XP, and install FMS
The development version of FMS is free: download Though, you have to have an Adobe account. (1 minutes registration) The installation is straight forward, you can't make a mistake. I suggest you using the built-in Apache if you don't use that guest os for other webserver functions.

3 - Port forward to the guest machine
I'm not a server guy, so maybe it's not the best, but it's working, and that is the point. By default, your guest OS is listening on your localhost (127.0.0.1). But without port forward you can't access to it. We have an Apache (port 80) and the FMS (admin server port: 1111, fms server port: 1935) on our newly installed Windows XP. These 3 ports we have to bind. Open a terminal in OSX, and type these commands:

(change the YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME text to the name of your guest OS - which is the name in the vbox machine list)

VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/httpfwd/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/httpfwd/HostPort" 8888
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/httpfwd/GuestPort" 80

VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fmsadmin/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fmsadmin/HostPort" 8889
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fmsadmin/GuestPort" 1111

VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fms/Protocol" TCP
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fms/HostPort" 8890
VBoxManage setextradata "YOURGUESTMACHINESNAME" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/fms/GuestPort" 1935

(more about these settings in the virtualbox's UserManual.pdf)

Now you have to restart your guest OS. Settings above allows you to access to your guest OS, for example for port 80 type http://localhost:8888 into your browser in OS-X. You should see the FMS server start page with a video (train). If you don't see, there is something I missed or is wrong.
And one more step, you have to turn of the firewall in Windows. (Sorry but I haven't found a better way.)

4 - Create a sample Flash / Flex project on the client side (host OS)

It doesn't really matter which one you use. Here you are my working actionscript code:

public var nc:NetConnection = new NetConnection();

public function connect():void {
   var r:Responder = new Responder(responderResult, responderStatus);

   nc.connect('rtmp://localhost:8890/HelloWorld');
   nc.call('serverHelloMsg', r, "John Doe");
}

public function responderResult(result:Object):void {
   trace('Result came: ' + result.toString());
}

public function responderStatus(status:Object):void {
   trace('Status update');
}

5 - create the server side code (in the guest OS)

The server side parts has to be written in ActionScript 1.0. (Pretty weird.) I just pasted the sample from the tutorial:

application.onConnect = function(client) {

   client.serverHelloMsg = function(text) {
       return "Welcome: " + text;
   }
 
   application.acceptConnection(client);
 
}

Copy it into: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flash Media Server 3.5\applications\HelloWorld\HelloWorld.asc.

6 - Start FMS server in the guest OS
In Start Menu you can find an icon that starts the FMS server.

7 - Test you application
And be patient if it won't work at the first try.

Of course, these stuffs are all available in the documentations.
Flash Media Server: get all the official documentations
Great FMS service tool for your host OS: FMS Feature Explorer

Best wishes,
Peter

Hungarian Drupal Podcast - Episode 3

Hi Readers,

This week we had out third podcast (about development environments). I have to say, I'm so f**king enthusiast about it. I wouldn't have imagined that kind of greatness of a podcast. It's not about us, it's about a channel to share information. And we have feedback. I wouldn't enjoy 100$ per episode as much a correct negative feedback. It means someone is watching you. Ok, enough hype. Let's see the 3rd part:

Magyar Drupal Podcast - 3. rész from Peter Arato on Vimeo.

I guess I forgot to mention, but check the URL we have: http://www.vimeo.com/podcast That was a huge win for sure.
In the following episode we will continue with the second part of development environments. We left a lot of interesting stuff. On: 19th of November, 18:00. If you follow me on twitter, you will get a notification about the start.

We are waiting for your feedback/questions: podcast {worm} pronovix {point} com

Best wishes,
Peter

Drupal life

Hi Readers,

This Friday me and my colleagues took some presentation at the university. I had a pretty cool and easy topic: contribution. For me, it means, how you can be a valuable member of the Drupal community. I always realize the Drupal is such an awesome thing. Of course, it's quite subjective, but have never seen other communities being so viral, enthusiastic. Here you are my slides:

Drupal Contributing

View more documents from Peter Arato.

I don't want to duplicate what is in there. I tried to cover the possibilities you can involve to Drupal. And yeah, it is vast, isn't it?:)

Honestly, there are no better slides the Dries's presentations. Those are absolutely awesome.

Night,
Peter

Drupal FormAPI Examples (with source)

Hi Readers,

We at Pronovix used to keep Drupal lessons at Universty of Szeged (SZTE). My last presentation was about Form API. I made an example module with the following parts:

• Basic form building - validation - submission
• System setting forms
• AHAH form elements
• Theming form elements
• Custom Form API (FAPI) field
• Remote form execution
• Confirmation form.

You can download the source code from: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2629592/formapi.tar.gz
If you enable the module, you should see these links in the Navigation menu:



My slides was just a shame, sorry about that, but I like more practical explanations.

Night,
Peter

Building a Druplash site - full Flash version

Hi Readers,

I've already spoke enough about Druplash, now let's see how to build quickly (~2 hours from scratch) one. Here is a short demo about the stuff have:

There is several ways to leverage Flash-Drupal, and one is when using a full-sized Flash object on the site.
The features we insist everytime:

• Deep linking (browser history, bookmarking, ...: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_linking)
  
• Graceful degradation (disabled browsers - same HTML content)

Good news: for an initial release, we don't need to write any custom Drupal module. Some modules we have to download:

• Services
• AMFPHP (+ the AMFPHP itself)
• SWFAddress (+ SWFObject and SWFAddress libraries)

For the demo we need also:

• Views (V2)

Enable: Services, Services - Key Authentication, AMFPHP, Views Service, Node Service, System Service, Views, Views UI.
The downloaded Flash application assume you have a Views list of nodes with the name of: news. It also assumes you have a node with NID=1. (So you should create these two
parts.)

Warning: because of the rush, the site url is hardcoded in the Flash movie. You can recompile the Flex project with the correct path pointing to your site's amfphp gateway, or you put the site under drupal_sx_druplash_full folder (and the site should be there: http://localhost/drupal_sx_druplash_full/).
Update: the compiled SWF is updated in the tar.gz file. Now it should work out of the box on every URL.

The source of the Flex application: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2629592/DruplashFull_091220.tar.gz (updated)
If we installed successfully a base Drupal 6 site and enabled these modules, let's copy the Flash object (DruplashFull.swf) into: sites/default/files/DruplashFull.swf
Visit the SWFAddress settings page at: /admin/settings/swfaddress
The following image shows my settings:

Now you should see the replaced content if you visit the front page:



I think that's it. You have to give permission to non-admin users if you want to the same content with Flash them. This is just a very quick and dirty demo, but in the Flex source code you can check what basic features you can start.

I worked with the latest module version, but some of them (ex: Services) are under heavy development. Just be aware, user experience may be vary:) If you need any other info, let me know, I'd glad to help you.

Flex source: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2629592/DruplashFull_091220.tar.gz
Live demo: http://bison.hu/public/drupal_sx_druplash_full/

Best regards,
Peter

Hungarian Drupal Podcast - Episode 2

Hi Readers,

Let me announce our new episode of the Hungarian Drupal Podcast. Topics:

• Drupal meetings
• Open Atrium
• Search + Solr

As out listeners suggested, we made a topic list (above). This way you know what you can expect to. We set the lights a bit better, sat closer to the camera and tried to speak louder than in the first part. The first episode is watched by more than 170 people. I think it's a good start.
Here you are the video:

Pronovix podcast, episode 2 from Peter Arato on Vimeo.

Next time we will speak about how to build an efficient development environment. I think this is kinda topic can fill not just one full podcast. We'll see.
If you have any question, claim, or advice, please leave me a comment. Thanks in advance.

Best wishes,
Peter

Drupalcamp Prague (CZ)

I had the privilege to participate on Drupalcamp CZ Prague: http://drupalcamp.cz/. It was an awesome Drupal meeting. I liked the city, I liked the people there. We arrived at the bus station, Prague just before midnight. We lost a bit, but the found the hostel. Both the 2 days there were plenty of good presentation. I also took one about Druplash, here you are my slides:

How to build a Druplash site?

View more documents from Peter Arato.

Although my English still horrible, it wasn't so bad. (I hope.) Though, I realized, when I take presentation, I'm half as smart as other times, at least. Maybe because of you don't want to waste the time with thinking of your words, just pushing the slides. There were some developer interested in the Flash - Drupal way of site building. I'm glad to it.
I really enjoyed the other presentations. Check the program: http://drupalcamp.cz/schedule/
At the nights we could taste some delicious Czech beers.
Yup, and the best non-drupal part: I were in KFC. OMG, I love that place. I ordered a big bucket (Kyblik) of chicken with fries and the mandatory unlimited drink.
Lot of good memories, thanks Prague. See you next time.

Best wishes,
Peter

Hungarian Drupal Podcast

Hi Readers,

I always had the passion to help and share things I know (or not know). In Hungary, there are so few podcast about technology. That was the moment I realized, let's do it. This is our very first, very low cost podcast:

Pronovix podcast, episode 1 from Peter Arato on Vimeo.

We were so lame, but it seemed we had an audience. Let's see, why it's so cool, even if you have so much to learn? Because it's free knowledge. We bought some beer, heated up the room, sat down the coach and just spoke what we are enthusiast about. We stream every our podcast at the time of recording on UStream, this makes listeners possible to take real-time questions. Later then we realized it's not the best practice to talk about everything. On the other side we got several advice and critics. Let's me say a big THANK YOU for all your help in improving the podcast. Second episode is coming soon. [It's already happened, but you know, I'm a big blog-procrastinator.]

Best Regards,
Peter