Comments
In Chapter 2, we looked at all the aspects of Drupal's administration, including comments and their moderation. Now, let us look at how the comments are created, and how we can enable them. When creating content for our site (via the Create content link on the menu), there is a group of options for the content's Comment settings. This allows us to set whether comments are Disabled for that content, if they are Read only (useful if we need to close our discussion later on), or enabled (Read...
Drupal as a social networking platform
Because of the way Drupal is structured, it is very flexible in adapting to the needs of a wide range of different web sites. Permission to perform various actions such as creating content, writing a comment, writing a blog post and so on can all be assigned to different roles within Drupal, be it the role of an administrative user or the role of a standard user who is logged in. This means we can grant the permissions to contribute and help in managing the content of the web site to the users...
Creating a forum topic
At the top of the forum page, there is a link to Post new Forum topic, which allows us to create a new forum topic. If we are on the main forum page, we will need to select the forum to create the topic in if we are within a forum, it automatically picks up the forum to post it into. Alternatively, we can click Forum topic from the Create content menu. Topics need a subject (which is displayed on the forums page), a forum (to be displayed within), and a body (the actual content of the topic)....
Dino Space
Throughout this book, we are going to create our very own social networking web site using Drupal. This web site is called DinoSpace , and it is aimed at the owners of pet dinosaurs yes, I know, nobody really owns a pet dinosaur .it would be too expensive and impractical to interact with one another. In particular, the web site aims to Connect owners of pet dinosaurs and allow them to build and maintain friendships with other users Allow owners to share stories about their pets Help in...
User settings
From here, we can configure the registration requirements of our users, email templates used for new accounts and so on, and users' picture settings. We can determine what security precautions should be taken when a new account is registered. New accounts Can only be created by an administrator Can be created by a visitor, but require administrator approval Can be created by a visitor without administrator approval and in addition to the previous two, require user email verification User...
Installing Wamp Server
Once downloaded, we need to install the software. First, let's open the file we have just downloaded. We may need to agree to some security dialogues before Windows allows us to install the software. You must be logged in as an administrator to install WampServer. The first window to be displayed warns us that we shouldn't try to upgrade from a previous version of WampServer and that we need to uninstall the older versions if any. Now, let's click on Yes so that the installation can continue....
Planning
For our Dino Space site, we want to facilitate discussions on So let's break this down into categories which we might want to group these forums into Health and Care containing forums for health and care Out and about containing forums for places to visit, dino-friendly hotel reviews, and a general forum for other things related to getting out and about with your dinosaur General containing general dinosaur-related discussions, and discussions not necessarily related to dinosaurs
Install and enable the module
The file we have just downloaded is a ZIP file, which needs to be extracted using a program such as WinZip, or the built-in application for handing compressed files , to the sites all modules folder within our Drupal installation. The modules subfolder may not exist, so if prompted, allow your decompression program to create this folder. Because we have just placed the modules files within our Drupal installation, the modules should be picked up by Drupal so that we can enable them. We need to...
Sitewide contact form
The site-wide contact form enables our users to get in touch with us the site administrator, or someone else who is assisting with the running of the site. When a user completes the contact form, they must select a category that their enquiry is relating to. We can then route the email to a different person depending on the category selected. To configure the module correctly, we need to Create a number of categories for the contact form, and set up the email addresses which they should route...
Creating our relationships
Relationships are defined and managed within the User management section Administer User management Relationships . Relationships Add type AdddeFault Settings This page lets you setup user relationship types. Relationship Types Name Plural Implies Type Requires Approval Expiration Operations In the above screenshot, we can see the Relationships in our site we currently have none , add types of relationships, default relationships, and settings for the module. Let's click the Add type tab, and...
