I've been dealing with some issues with Drupal, the content management system running this site, and Godaddy, the hosting provider I'm using. It seems there have been longstanding problems with the two systems playing nicely together, but for now I'm trying to make the best of where I'm at. I chose Godaddy because my brother has a hosting plan on which he let me install this site for the low low cost of free. Of course there is always a price to something.
Lately my site was getting a lot of server 500 errors. It seemed to be a Godaddy thing, but they never really said what they were doing, just sent me a report letting me know some ways to make my site work better. I'm planning on looking into these issues and seeing how to speed thing up. Perhaps I need to try a new theme - or maybe my playing around with Drupal should go back to my development server.
There are still a number of functions I'd like to add to the site and all, but it has been a good excercise and I have learned a lot - which really was the point of putting my MLIS Portfolio and Directed Fieldwork materials here, rather than simply making a simpler html site.
Well, I finally got the website about how I want it. At least the backend of things. Through a combination of too many modules I was able to make most of what I wanted to happen on the site work out just fine. I do like that Drupal has many free options for modules (unlike Joomla, which has a lot of modules, but some of them cost money - usually the ones I wanted), but figuring out which ones to use is more difficult (one nice thing about Joomla was that their modules have ratings and reviews). The only real indication if something might be good is to sort things by popularity - presumably if other people are using a module, it must do something right. Doing a Google search was helpful in locating other information, but is also an extra step.
I am still trying to get the image part of Drupal figured out. I'd like to use the Lightbox2 module (it brings up the image in a new box, overlaid on the page, rather than opening a new window), but the various methods I've read about haven't worked seamlessly for me - yet. I'll still work on it. I wanted to put some of the supporting material for my portfolio into a format that could open in the lightbox so that people wouldn't have to download a PDF, but could quickly scan the documents on the site without leaving the page. We'll see - I am still going to try to get it to work, but it may take some time. It would also be nice to be able to incorporate photos a little more easily into some of my posts.
I am still planning on tinkering with my theme choice. I'm not sure I like this one. I will look at some of the theme templates and maybe work on getting one of those set up and customized more to my liking. And I need to work on the homepage. Maybe I should just remove it until I have more of the other content I plan to include up on the site. I can let the blog part be the home for now perhaps. We'll see. I do have a lot to do to finish up my graduate program in the next four to five weeks, so I might just let things be as they are, unless I get some fantastic inspiration (that doesn't require too much time to implement).
I am beginning to see how the implantation of something like Drupal for running a website can become problematic. There is a constant need to monitor and update contributed modules and the Drupal core to fix bugs or patch vulnerabilities. Modules are not so bad. Although the more one has installed, the more often updating will need to occur. Updating the core is a little more time consuming - backing everything up takes some time, though it is a good idea to be doing periodically anyway - then turning off all non-Drupal modules, switching to a default theme, deleting the files in the Drupal install directory, installing the new files and then re-installing all my data and contributed modules. Then turn the modules back on and change back to the theme - and make sure it all works. Whew! Good thing I've only had to do that twice since I installed Drupal to run my website.
So, I finally got back around to messing with my Drupal installation. I think I figured out the blog problem. Thankfully I hadn't entered much content into the blog module (which is designed to set up multiple blogs per site, rather than just one blog). In my post about Testing CCK I mentioned creating a new content type. I finally played around with another module, Views, and figured out how to create a page that shows content according to various criteria. I created a new Page View that I called Blog and indicated that anything with the content type blogging that is published will go to this page. I also made it a menu item in my primary menu. The views section also has an archive option that should allow me to make a page and a block where people can find material by date. Also has some pretty neat other features that I hope to get set up soon.
I am almost finished with the parts for my portfolio, which should be making their way up on the site soon. I hope to get a couple relevant projects displayed on my projects pages too, but that may need to wait a bit yet. Now there is nothing stopping me from spending a few minutes each day ruminating on the state of libraries, information, and technology - at least as far as feeling good about the site architecture and all that - making the time is another story.
I've been trying to figure out how to make Drupal display only one blog - mine. Evidently the core blog module is set up to create multiple blogs, all of which could be published on the front page, but also all reside in the blog section as well as on an individual user's blog. So, for a person - say, me - who only wants one blog, this means my posts are all in several places on different pages. I've read how I can change the core module to not show 'David's Blog' as a link at the bottom of each post or create a CCK content type, or use the story content type or.... I think I need to do some more work figuring out the structure of my site, but I know I want one blog which resides under the blog menu item and allows tags, comments, archives, etc....maybe I really should just switch to WordPress for that.... I also want the other sections for projects I'm working on, my portfolio for my program, and anything else that comes to mind. Anyway, hopefully this next week I'll have more time to mess around with things and get it figured out to my satisfaction.
In my Library Technology Systems class today we were talking about Integrated Library Systems. A question came up asking the class what systems they had experience using and what they thought could be improved about the modules they used. I mentioned having used III Millennium as well as Ex Libris's Voyager. I have limited experience with the cataloging module, but mentioned that a more intuitive interface might help for libraries that utilize student workers to maintain and adjust some records. This could free up staff training time and allow technicians and librarians to more easily do their jobs. A bit later today I was thinking about it some more and wondered if any systems incorporate links to AACR2 or other rules, so a cataloger could easily stay where they are, and bring the information to them. Maybe through an API into Catalogers Desktop or something....Maybe it exists - I shall have to investigate.
Been working on getting Drupal up and running to manage my very simple site - more for the learning experience than to control many users or a complex data structure. So far I like the features better than Joomla. Hopeful I can settle into a theme here pretty soon and finalize my site navigation and layout. Just need a Home page, About section, a Blog, my MLIS Portfolio, a contact form, and that should do it for now. I hope to add a Projects page soon with snippets of things I've worked on for classes at the iSchool, as well as projects from my various work experiences in libraries.
I recently read a blog post from David Lee King titled Doing Stuff at the Library's Website. He asks what can a person DO at your library website. I have been pondering this, as David encourages us to.
Normally our websites provide information (when/where is activity x) or access to information resources (catalog/databases/etc). They usually don't offer online programing (either the event or computer kind of program) nor do the provide access to events going on in the library. At least one person said in the comments section that many of those things can be done on the broader internet. Of course there is always the question of access....
So today, while helping a student visiting from another academic institution, I had reason to ponder some more. My library has several computers that anyone, whether affiliated with the university or not, can use. These systems have restricted access to the internet - people can access .edu, .org, .gov, .mil, and .museum domains. I can see this. The university has a mission and funding parameters. It is nice that we can even have any research stations for visitors.
The computers also have read only versions of some Microsoft Office products - so one can view a Word document but not edit it. I'm sure this has to do with licensing agreements, etc.... OK, that's fine. I'm sure that also prevents people from just coming in and sitting at our computers all day rather than using their hour at the public library (we do offer access to the wireless network if people bring their own laptop - they just have to get a temporary passcode).
Back to the student I was helping earlier. He wanted to add some research notes to some of his own documents. He had a USB flash drive, but was not able to edit his documents. I've tried to use one of my U3 flash drives on the campus computers (it has OpenOffice on it), but I only found one computer on which it would ever work. I thought, oh, why not just use Google Docs - hmm, that's right no Google (its a .com).
Then I remembered the post mentioned above. What if this student from accross the country had a library with things he could DO on their website - maybe they would have a note taking gadget/widget/thing where he could store notes (and later retrieve them, too!). I then wondered how many of our students and faculty have been in a similar situation. What if we had a place to go on our site where people could take notes (and do other useful things, along with a few fun ones, too)?
We don't need to be an all-encompassing portal to the internet, but if there are useful tools which would improve the experiences and work flows of our patrons, wouldn't it be worth exploring them? Maybe we can add a custom setup of Google Docs/Apps, accessible through our domain and tailored to our users. Or find/create the tools we need/want through the open source community. Now, I'm sure there are many privacy issues that would come up and need to be addressed if we are offering any type of DO-able activities that may store people's information (or at least acknowledge issues if shunting them to a third party provider) - but it seems well worth the time to ponder and explore.
Comments
1 comment postedSo basically an IDE for catalogers. That's a really good idea. The main problem you are going to run into is copyright issues between the people who are creating the cataloging module and the people who own the various documentation programs that they use. I hate to say it, but OCLC is probably in the best position to pull this off...