www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

About 2 posts ago, I mentioned that I would be working on getting the Blog Archive back to the way it was before I did the Drupal 7 upgrade.  Before the upgrade I had the Archive setup so that you could go to www.itowler.com/Archive and you would see a listing of Years that have blog postings.  The display is looks similar to this: 2011(16), indicating that that there are 16 posts in 2011.  By clicking on the year, it brings you to the a Listing of the blog postings by month, and looked similar to this: June (4) etc.

I will preface this post with the following:

So this is a minor gripe in the big picture, and I am sure that it is all my fault.

Well,

Post number 2 for the year, and as you can see, things are on a roll as far as updating the site.  Itowler.com has undergone a few changes, most of which are not minor.  The first major change is the fact that I have moved to a new host.  Right off the bat I noticed that there was an increase in speed.  The new host allows me much more control and so far I am liking it.  It has forced me to learn even more about server administration, but that is a good thing.

10 years ago, many websites were just using static html pages, with a single file for each page.  These days, many people are moving to a CMS (Content Management System) platform.  I have talked about CMS platforms before, and this site used to run on one called Xoops.  Now it runs on Drupal.  The first site that I actually built using Drupal was a high school reunion site (www.lnhsalumni.com).  It worked pretty well, and better yet, I was able to put it together pretty fast.  Since then I have moved itowler.com to drupal, and created / helped create several more websites with drupal.  By my count, I have now used drupal in at least 5 different sites:

One of the great things about using a CMS like Drupal is that you can add new "features" to a site by installing a module.  I was (and still am) using the Tagadelic module, which creates a list of the blog topics that I have.  The terms in the list are then scaled in size based on the number of blog posts that have been flagged with that term.  If you look to your right, You can see that the term "Genealogy" is big, and the term "pi Day" is not.  I obviously write much more about genealogy than I do Pi day.

The latest module that I installed is called Cumulus.  It expands on the Tagadelic idea, and makes the list more 'interactive".  With cumulus, instead of the list just being listed, it is in a cloud format, that rotates and moves based on what you mouse is doing.  If you hold your mouse near the top of the cloud all the terms will scoll "up", if you have you  mouse to the left side of the cloud the entire cloud will scroll left.  You get the idea.  To slow the list down or stop it from moving, just hold your mouse close to the center of the cloud.  Lastly, to select a term, and see all the blogs tagged with that term, just click on a term and away you go!

In Tagadelic, the font size increased the more the term was used.  In Cumulus, the font size increases, but also gets darker in color.

I plan to keep both the Tagadelic block and the new Cumulus block active for a while, and maybe down the road I will disable the Tagadelic block.  I am not sure about this yet, it might be nice to have both there....Cumulus for looks and fun, and Tagadelic for a straight forward use.

My only gripe about tagadelic is that the install could be a little tricky for someone that is new to drupal.  The module functions as a "Block" in drupal, so you have to go t the Block admin page, and enable the module, then edit its settings.  This is not that hard to figure out, but if you are new to drupal, it might take you a bit to figure it out.  An update to the readme file that is included would help, in my opinion.  Other than that this a fun little module that works great!

Well after a few days, I have some of the site put back together.  The main reason for the update to the site was to update the software that the site runs on.  The site used to run on a CMS called Xoops, and I wanted to switch it over to Drupal.  I wanted to make the switch for several reasons, but mostly I am becoming more comfortable with the Drupal way of doing things.  In addition I felt that the Xoops platform was not moving forward with progress. 

So as you may have noticed, things at Itowler.com have changed.  I am in the middle of changing around the software that Itowler.com runs on, and for the next few weeks, things will be changing a lot.  My goal is to get the basic features back up soon, and then play around with the look and feel of the site after that.  Hopefully by the end of the week, the blog posts will all be back, and the a few other things as well.  The picture gallery, I still need to figure out how I want to do that.