drupal

Es hat ne ganze Weile gedauert, aber seit heute ist die neue Interentseite erfolgreichgesund.de im Netz.

Hinter Brauner Training — erfolgreich gesund steckt mein Bruder Stephan, der als Berater zu den Themen Gesundheit, Bewegung, Selbstmanagement und Stressbewältigung tätig ist.

Seine letzte Seite wurde von mir etwas überstürzt und auf Basis eines eilig ausgewählten CMS’ zusammengezimmert. Das war zwar sicher leistungsstark und nicht sonderlich kompliziert zu bedienen, allerdings war das “theming” — also die graphische Gestaltung — nur durch Änderungen via Webbrowser möglich und nicht durch echte HTML/CSS Editoren. Darunter litt dann die Motivation, der Seite ein ordentliches Aussehen zu verpassen und sie hatte dann entsprechend wenig Charme.

Screnshot der alten Seite

Für seine aktuelle Seite wurde — wenig überraschend — Drupal auserkoren. Für eine bessere Web-Visitenkarte ist ein Community-orientiertes CMS sicherlich etwas überdimensioniert, aber die Möglichkeit mit CCK und Views eine eigene Seitenlogik zu definieren ist einfach zu verlockend. Das Theming ist dann, wenn man einmal durchgestiegen ist, auch wirklich leicht umzusetzen. Gerade wenn man sich im reichhaltigen Fundus bedient und nur Kleinkram anpassen muss.
Und weil das alles so einfach war, gab’s noch einen netten jQuery-Slider für die Startseite oben drauf.

Screnshot der neuen Seite

Ein paar Kleinigkeiten fehlen zwar noch, aber die werden bei Gelegenheit nachgeschoben.
Wer die Seite nun live in Aktion sehen will, der folge einfach diesem Link: erfolgreichgesund.de.

Contrary to other popular content management systems, Drupal innately does not support time based publishing and removal of content. This can be retrofitted with the cron-based Scheduler Module at the costs of a slightly increased memory footprint and decreased usability in the even more overloaded node creation form.

In some cases you may find another solution suitable: Just use Views to hide nodes that have their creation date set in the future. An “Authored on:” field is already present in the node creation form, hence the form won’t gain complexity with this approach.

Views settings dialog (click for fullscreen)

Just edit your frontpage view, add a new filter “Node: Post date”, set it to offset and “NOW”, and you’re done. Check if this setting applies to your frontpage and your feed.

This will probably only work for content that is published in a blog-like fashion, i.e. the content should not be linked from your menus.

Beware: Although the nodes will not be shown on the start page or your feeds, they’re still published and accessible by guessing the URL. Fiddling around with ascending node IDs isn’t that complicated.

Additionally your hidden content may be searchable by Google and other sites, especially if they automagically get notified of new content through pings or XML Sitemaps.

Use the Scheduler module if your content should really be inaccessible.

I’m using Drupal to power this site. It’s not as user-friendly as — let’s just say WordPress — but very powerful and easily extendable through well-designed PHP modules or even rude hacks inside your posts.

One nice feature for site admins is its status report page: At a glance you can check if your Drupal installation is in good shape, when the last cron maintenance tasks was run, and how many form submissions were blocked by CAPTCHAs.

What I like in particular is the list of available updates for modules and themes:

Through the use of eye-catching colors you can easily spot which modules are current (green), which might be updated (yellow, not depicted), and which should be updated (red). If you look closely, you can read out the modules current version number and the version available for installation. Additionally this page also directly links to the appropriate download packages, release notes, and — as in the example above — you can choose to branch over to the release candidate of a module, or to stick with the development releases.

Downsides? Just a small one… I usually forget to update the database tables, but this will also be displayed at the status report page.

Nice Job, Drupal community!

P.S.: … and you can configure the site to send you an email when updates are due.

I just set up a new site for one of my mothers projects: "Baum der Religionen" (Tree Of The Religions) - a project to improve the understanding and tolerance between different cultures and religions.

The idea is actually quite simple: Several different apple sorts were grafted onto an apple tree. Each of the seven apple sorts represent on of the seven world religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and Baha'i.

Once a year - when the tree is in full flourish - the "Apfelblütenfest" is celebrated and members of all religions are invited to enjoy a relaxing time with delicious cakes, enlightening talks, and interesting people.

Check it out:
Baum-der-Religionen.de (german – work in progress)

Like my own site it is powered by Drupal and a bunch of additional modules.
I like Drupal for to things: It's quite easy to get presentable results and it is very extendable through a wide range of available modules and even custom PHP code inside you postings (if you have to).