Caution Search Engine Penalization
Most search engines use a number of different metrics to determine where a web site is positioned in a list of search results. Some search engines, such as Google have a metric (Google's is called Page Rank which factors in other things too) which is based on in-bound links, where a web site link from one site to another acts as a vote. Some web sites and businesses use this to their advantage, and offer to pay for advertising space on other web sites (normally ones which have a high ranking)....
Pay Per Click Advertisements
With Pay Per Click (PPC) advertisements, as the name implies, you pay only when a visitor clicks on your ad and visits your web site. This is often seen as a better option than just paying for advertising space, because you pay only when you get a new visitor. With many of these services, you pay in advance, and can set daily and monthly budgets. Let's take a look at how PPC advertising generally works First, we sign up with a network (see the next section for a few networks provided by search...
Advertisement networks provided by search engines
The following are links to some advertisement networks provided by three major search engines, which are reputed and used by thousands of people for advertising their web sites Yahoo (http sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com searchenginemarketing index.php) Some of these networks allow both text and image ads, but generally, image ads are shown only in large ad units (when a web site owner opts to display ads on their site they choose which size of ad-unit they wish to display. Large units typically...
Offsite SEO
Off-site search engine optimization is particularly useful for specific key words to obtain certain specified rankings in search engines. It relies on promoting the web site on other web sites hence it is called off-site SEO. As we had discussed earlier, one of the metrics for a web site's position in search results are its inbound links. Commenting on web sites, blogs, forums, video posts, profiles and so on with web links can increase a web site's ranking. This should always be done with...
User contact forms
Since the module is enabled, we now have user contact forms already available with us. All we need to do is visit a user's profile and click the Contact tab shown on their profile. This contact form allows a user to email another user, but keeps the recipients' email address private, unless they chose to reply. From here, we can enter a subject for the message, the message itself, and check a box to request a copy of the email to be sent to our own email address as well for our reference....
Groups
Groups, courtesy the Organic groups module, can enhance our community by providing an area for groups of users to communicate and work together. Users can create groups, join groups, contribute to groups, and subscribe to groups, thus creating a series of smaller communities within the site. Why might we want to provide groups in our Dino Space network Let's take a look at some potential groups New users group help and support for using the site UK Dinosaur owners group related discussion and...
Configuring Drupal
Since we have just set up Drupal, and created our user account, we are now logged into our new web site. On this front page, we have a link to the configuration section where we can configure our installation. Once logged in, visit the administration section, where you can customize and configure all aspects of your website. J This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Richard Ostheimer on 15th June 2009 2205 hilda ave., , missoula, , 59801 The customize and configure link...
Using the module
To use this module, users can click Create content Feed and create a feed by entering the URL of a feed. This creates a content element for the feed (the title of which is either obtained via the feed itself, or is set by the user as title at the time of creation), and new Story elements for each item in the feed (as defined by the settings). This then creates a new feed for us, as illustrated in the following screenshot BBC News Science & Environment J UK Edition Visit BBC News for...
Hosting and domain names
There are many hosting providers and domain name registrars available, and as such, prices are generally quite competitive. When looking for a web host, it is important to keep in mind the amount of web space required, bandwidth (amount of data that can be transferred from your web site to your users per month), service level agreement, minimum contract term, acceptable usage policy and of course the cost. Most hosting accounts come with access to a web-based control panel to make many...
Creating content
Content is created from the Create content link on the menu. My account Create content Administer Log out This then takes us to a page where we can select the type of content we wish to create, which is currently only either a Page or a Story. Content types can be created for almost any purpose, including things such as a Dino Recipe, to help our users create a great meal for their pets, or a Dino Playing Cart with stats and information on specific breeds of dinosaur. A page, similar in form to...
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...
Collaborative writing
Drupal's book module is designed for creating structured, multi-page content on our site, for things such as Since our site is a social network for owners of pet dinosaurs, a suitable use for this module would be to allow our users to create and contribute to a book on looking after a dinosaur throughout its lifetime. Of course, as our site grows, it would be better to have more books related to specific breeds, which is something we can accommodate as our social network starts to grow
PacktI
With a feature which reveals such detailed information about our users' usage of the site, it is important that we give them the option to opt out of having their activity logged. This can be done via Administer Site configuration Activity Settings. We should check the Allow user privacy opt-out box to ensure that our users can opt out of the feature, and maintain a higher level of privacy when using our site. Select the number of activity records to show on activity pages such as this one....
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....
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...
Configure the module
There are two areas within the administration tools where we can configure this module, the first is within Administer Site settings FeedAPI settings. These settings allow us to set which HTML tags are allowed in the feed elements that are posted. The second group of settings are in Administer Site building Content types Feed. These settings define when the items from the feed are updated, including whether a feed should be refreshed when it is created, whether existing feed items should be...
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...
Comments within Dino Space
Comments are clearly a fundamental communication feature for any site which facilitates user interaction. However, these features can be easily abused by spammers. To help protect against spam, we should only allow logged-in users to post comments. But all logged-in users should be allowed to do this. Allowing only logged-in users to post comments isn't a solution to spam. We will cover more effective methods to protect against spam later in this book. By requiring users to sign up and log in...
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...
