By jseng on

The purpose of 'Drupal for bloggers' is develop a customized version of Drupal which has features that typical movabletype (MT) bloggers are used to. This is still a beta software but the goal is to develop it to a stage where it is possible to replace movabletype without touching the core drupal system (so you can still use all the wonderful drupal plugins).

Version 0.1 is now available for download http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.1.tar.gz and you can find more information at my wiki: http://james.seng.cc/wiki/wiki.cgi?Drupal_For_Bloggers.

For Drupal programmers, here is the diff file of the changes I did: http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.1.diff

Comments

heather’s picture

heather commented

mt announces changes to pricing... and the various trackbacks and comments show the mixed reaction.

i wonder will drupal expect an influx of MT users because of this?

jluster’s picture

jluster commented

Maybe not into Drupal alone, but we'll see an increase in WordPress, Textpatter, ExpressionEngine, and Drupal sites as a whole, as compared to MT.

Let's just say, for a second, that Mena Trott is one of the best PR people, the other blogging apps have, right now. As for the "mixed" reactions, so far it's overwhelmingly negative. A lot of the trackbacks are just kids whining about having to pay at all, but there's a hefty number of people who will switch, because the license limitations are too outlandish for them.

If Drupal had a working MT importer (walkah might be working on some much piece, and I've cobbled one together in Python) some might switch right away.
--
http://www.jluster.org

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Someone pointed out in my blog that there is already a MT migration guide at http://drupal.org/book/view/271

We need something even simplier however.

We also need a way to rewrite /archive/* to drupal since there are just many permalinks in the world of blogging.

Junyor’s picture

Junyor commented

That should be fairly simple using the Path module: http://drupal.org/project/path.

Junyor’s picture

Junyor commented

http://drupal.org/node/view/6141 is the closest I've been able to make to an MT importer.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Just release v0.2 - The major work diff in this release is he hack I done for Trackback and Ping modules.

Trackback module can do autodiscovery and auto ping external links in the node when it is published. It also remembers which sites it successful ping'ed and which site it fails to.

Ping module now comes with configurable sites to ping. Technorati is also part of the default ping list.

You can download v0.2 from ">http://james.seng.cc/wiki/wiki.cgi?Drupal_For_Bloggers.

For Drupal programmers, here is the v0.2 diff file (to v4.4.1):
http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.2.diff

ps: Sorry for the dup posting. I realize I post it the wrong thread.

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

Please consider submitting patches for inclusion in Drupal 4.5.0. Thanks.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

will do so once i fixed the others stuff..

Dries’s picture

Dries commented

Thanks, James. Your patch looks OK but has quite a few minor issues: I will review things when they hit the patch queue. Please cut your patch in logical chunks when submitting them for review (eg. the changes to the ping.module should be isolated in a separate patch).

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

is there a reason why i can create project but not able to access them?

i started two, one for the overall drupal for blogger and the other for a new module (simple upload and file manager) for the project.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Just release v0.4 (release 0.3 less then 24hours ago)

The major work in V0.3 in this release is the addition of a upload module which popup a window to upload file to a specific directory. It also comes with a simple file manager. Search, Archive and Tracker modules are also turned on by default.

The major work done in V0.4 is the hacks done on Taxonomy to make easier to use. (Most people just need simple category, or at most, hierarchy category). Options are available to turn on different level of taxonomy complexity (much like the hacks I done to comment.module). Also included in V0.4 is a new blogadmin.module which provides simple quick admin functions designed for bloggers and also ISO 8601 bug fix for RSS feeds (included in blog.module..I didnt fix node.module)

You can download v0.4 from http://james.seng.cc/wiki/wiki.cgi?Drupal_For_Bloggers.

For Drupal programmers, here is the v0.2 diff file (to v4.4.1):
http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.4.diff

ChristinaBox@www.iaslash.org’s picture

ChristinaBox@www.iaslash.org commented

one of the reasons to switch away from MT is the better features-- I would be careful not to clone MT, but rather to make Drupal simpler and more blog-oriented, while keeping the many good features like rich taxonomy (many folks were actually hacking MT to do facets!), comment management and photo galleries.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Yes, I agree with you. As I was saying in another thread, I am not trying to make Drupal like MT. I am trying to make Drupal "good enough" (aka easy enough) to be used by common bloggers. It is a small but important difference that I hope people dont get confuse. The result of "Drupal for bloggers" will still be Drupal (albeit easier to use) first and foremost, not a MT-clone or wannabe.

Incidently, I just release V0.5 so you can grab it my wiki. There arent any major changes in this version except some bugfixes and also added a block for Taxonomy. I thought I should release this before I fly off (in two hour) and would likely to be offline for the next few days.

I will start work on blogapi.module to include some of the features we now have in Drupal 4 Bloggers (e.g. entries, excerpts, trackbacks, pings, image uploads, formatting rules etc) on my Mac which is already setup with Drupal :-)

sleiman’s picture

sleiman commented

I see there is a new implementation of ping in the ping.module. But I am afraid it still doesn't work for me. Would you please clarify the following couple of points:

1. Assuming that site name, email address, slogan and mission are nonempty in administrator -> configuration AND ping module is enabled (in modules page) AND cron.php is manually run via browser, assuming all of the above, should ping work? (I guess that ping would be working well if I see my site's name in www.weblogs.com or Drupal's site list).

2. If I need to add a site to ping (for example, my site's ping page) can this only be done by adding a few lines to the end of the ping.module?

Thanks for your work and feedback.

Sleiman

sleiman’s picture

sleiman commented

I can see in the admin account that I can modify the settings of the ping module and specify sites I like to ping.

Question 1 is unresolved yet. I still cannot see my site (http://www.netdemo.org/blogcity/drupal) on www.weblogs.com or blo.gs.

Sleiman

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

yep, for the benefit of others, this patch will allows you to configure sites to ping.

as to why you cannot see your site, have you set your regular cron job? Pings are not send when you post but only every cron run, depending how frequent you set it to be.

See http://drupal.org/book/view/260 Section 6 Cron Task

florin’s picture

florin commented

Hi Jseng,

This is exactly what i was looking for!

Please see some messages i sent to drupal-support, i wonder if you plan to address the issues that i highlighted:

is Drupal friendly to blog crawlers?
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-support/2004-05/threads.html#00186

XML feeds
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-support/2004-05/threads.html#00181

how to verify the ping module?
http://lists.drupal.org/archives/drupal-support/2004-05/threads.html#00173

Also please see the patch that i made for ping.module to make it more sysadmin-friendly:
http://florin.myip.org/stuff/ping.module.patch

Thank you, and keep up the good work!

--
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Sorry for nearly two weeks of silent. Was busy catching up with day work after my Brunei trip. Anyway, tomorrow is a holiday for me so I burned some midnight oil to do some hacking and release just release Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.6.

The major change in this version is Blog APIs which means you can use your favorite blogging tool (mine are ecto and Zempt) to post your blog entries :-) And yes, the APIs have been enhanced such that it recongize extended and excerpt entries. I also fixed the bug that will allow you to change the posting time via the tool. Oh, you can even upload files and images via the Blog API now! Take a tour at my demo/dev site. :-)

Two things left before I shall make my big move to Drupal: (1) Templating (2) MT Migration scripts. For the latter, there is some work done by Morbus Iff which would really save me a lot of time. Nevertheless, I think I might still do a simplier one-click migration tool because I dont like keeping my entries in HTML as Morbus' method will do.

There are also some activities on the Drupal-Blog mailing list which I started for the project. Thanks for all the feedback and as usual, bug reports are welcome!

Download:
General User: http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.6.tar.gz
Drupal-4.4.1 diff package: http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.6.diff.tar.gz
Drupal hackerS: http://james.seng.cc/files/drupal4blog-0.6.diff

ioioofftowork’s picture

ioioofftowork commented

I'm using v0.4 right now on one site. I don't mind the blog admin. I found the image module would not work with it. Has this to do with the node module being broken?

Otherwise I still have questions about how I can tell if a ping is sent out by the ping module? I look for my sites at weblogs and tecnorati but I only see it listed at technorati and then I'm not sure if I updated it there. I'm a rookie.

So when I do this:

[root@ns1 cron.d]# tcpdump icmp -i eth0
tcpdump: listening on eth0

And then run the cron from the browser window or watch until it fires off after having submitted a new blog entry I don't see anything happening. I took the ping module from your release. Do I need to alter the database? I thought the ping module was incorporated into the drupal module more or less.

Another thing. How can I tell if anyone has referenced my blog with a trackback?

Alberta
British Columbia
Manitoba

ioioofftowork’s picture

ioioofftowork commented

Okay so it works now. I can see that it works on weblogs. Still though how can I tell who has referenced a blog with Drupal?

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Nope. node.module was not changed in v0.4 so no reason why image wont work.

Did you set your site name and slogan? You need to set both before ping.module will send out ping.

If someone reference your blog with trackback, it will be listed as a comment to that entry.

ioioofftowork’s picture

ioioofftowork commented

Can you help me test the track back at any of these sites www.ab.linuxguru.ca www.bc.linuxguru.ca www.linuxguru.ca just need content and a blog or a story. I have content set up at www.envolution.linuxguru.ca that might make it easier.

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jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Only local images are allowed.Just release Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.7. This is a major release with lots of changes and bugfixes.

One of the most difficult to use Drupal as a blog is customzing the look-and-feel. It is almost impossible to do without some php programming knowledge which is beyond most bloggers - you are pretty much struck with what Drupal themes offers. This is one area where MT definately shines with its simple to use template tags. Well, wait no more! You can do likewise in Drupal 4 Bloggers v0.7 now :-)

There are also numerous bugfixes including the autodiscovery in trackbacks (thanks to drumm and crschmidt) and I also fold the contributed patch from mervissen. Thanks!

Please note that there are four database changes in this release. Please read the release notes before attempting to upgrade. As usual, bugs, patches and feature requests would be appreciated.

ps: Incidently, I need some help to document down the tags you can use for templating. Email me if you wish to help! Thanks.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Having some time today, I done some hacking on Drupal for Bloggers today and release v0.9. Foremost, I ported my popular MT Security Code (CAPTCHA) plugin to D4B.

CATPCHA which stands for 'Completely Automated Public Turning test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart' can be enabled to prevent bots from spamming comments. When posting comments, Users would be shown a graphic image with some text which they will have to entered manually. While it is an effectively way to stop bots, it is critizes for been unfriendly to the visual handicaps. CAPTCHA requires PHP to be compiled with GD support.

You can enable CAPTCHA for anonymous users or for all users. ;-) Test drive it at http://james.seng.cc/node/view/234

This version also have several new features requested by D4B users such as (a) displaying the image while managing uploaded files (b) remember anonymous user contact info (c) atom support (altho not enabled by default). It also have several important bugfixes, particularly on RSS and subscriptions' emails.

jseng’s picture

jseng commented

Just release Drupal for Bloggers V0.10.

There are several changes with this release: Mainly, this is brought up-to-date with Drupal 4.4.2 so all the bugfixes from 4.4.1 to 4.4.2 is now integrated into D4B.

Captcha is also rewritten as a separate module and can be enabled not only for comments but also user registrations, forums, stories books etc.

D4B v0.10 also provide a tool1 for users who wish to migrate from 4.4.x to D4B. See UPGRADE.txt for more information.

1 Dries send me an email a few days ago expressing his concern about this tool. So let me clarify here before more people sending me more emails:

First of all, I am still committed to merge D4B with Drupal. (Altho honestly, I am very close to giving up given the treatment I get from the drupal-devel community on my patches...but that's another story).

The diff between D4B and Drupal is pretty large (~6000 lines) and at the rate my patches are been accepted into Drupal, it would be a while before the two project merge. And I am not sure this will happen before 4.5 or even 4.6.

In the meantime, there are bloggers who are already using Drupal 4.4.x and they are looking to migrate to D4B because it offers them a more complete blogging features. Migration from 4.4.x to D4B is not difficult if you know how to look at the diff files and create the neccessary tables. But for most bloggers, that's out of question so this tool is really to help them.

My goal is pretty simple: I will continue to help anyone who wants to use Drupal as a blogging tool.

youyouyu’s picture

youyouyu commented

Maybe not into Drupal alone, but we'll see an increase in WordPress, Textpatter, ExpressionEngine, and Drupal sites as a whole, as compared to MT.

Let's just say, for a second, that Mena Trott is one of the best PR people, the other blogging apps have, right now. As for the "mixed" reactions, so far it's overwhelmingly negative. A lot of the trackbacks are just kids whining about having to pay at all, but there's a hefty number of people who will switch, because the license limitations are too outlandish for them.

If Drupal had a working MT importer (walkah might be working on some much piece, and I've cobbled one together in Python) some might switch right away.

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