Finally got the site back up. A bad power supply took out the old webserver and the case it was in was a non-standard size Gateway box. No replacing the power supply as I couldn't find one that fit. I figured I'd just transfer everything over to another computer and upgrade drupal to a new version, apache to apache2, and php to php5... all at the same time. Not sure what I was thinking.

I realized pretty quickly that I would need to learn a lot more about php, MySQL, and apache than I really had time for. At the same time, I've been scripting in python on the side for about a year now and yes, it really does seem to make programming fun again.

In searching for alternatives to drupal, I pretty quickly decided on PyBlosxom: it's extremely lightweight, everything is written in python, and there's no database language to learn as everything is file based. It's definitely not for everyone though... the directions for setting up plugins are usually along the lines of 'read the source'. Remember though, it's all written in python ;)

After some work on getting the site's theme similar to what I had before, setting up some initial plugins, and writing some scripts to get all my data out of the drupal database, I finally have the site back up.

It only took a little over two months but... It's not like anything else was keeping me busy ;)

A few notes: as of this writing, the comments are using akismet (the same spam filter that wordpress uses). If this doesn't work for whatever reason and I start getting spam, the comments might be turned off for awhile. Also, there is no need to put the ":2300" in the URL for the site anymore... You don't need to change your links (they will still work), but the ":2300" is no longer a necessity.

I finished the website upgrade last night: it went a lot smoother than I thought it would. The comments don't require moderation anymore, so they should show up immediately again :)

Just thought I'd post that I am so extremely impressed with what the people involved in the drupal project have done. You DO need to have experience with linux, mysql, and apache in order to use their software, but they've really got their process down. It's extremely easy to find help about how to do upgrades and installs. Everything is documented to the point where you almost (notice I said *almost*) don't need to know how to use linux, mysql, and apache. From messages on their forums, it looks as though the installation/upgrade process is going to get even smoother soon.

These guys are awesome :)

I was looking through all the different modules available for drupal and saw a google maps module. Sounded pretty cool so I thought I'd check it out... any ways, the following should be a google map to where we live...

http://www.jbullfrog.net/node/162

This module was extremely easy to set up. The hardest part, which is actually very easy, was obtaining a google maps API key which you can get here given that you have a google account. For more information about this module, go to the GMap module site on drupal.org

this is a screenshot of the website's old theme...

Today I'll be changing the site over to a new theme I've been working on. I think it's a lot cleaner. This of course completely kills everything I've said in a previous post regarding the sidebars on the site. Oh well... If you're interested in how the previous theme looked, here's a screenshot.

Also, with implementing a new theme, there's bound to be something I missed. If anybody reading this sees anything funny, please post a comment. I've tested the theme in IE and Firefox, but I don't have access to Safari...

EDIT: this post is in relation to an old theme...

I thought I'd put up a little code showing how I did my sidebars. This really isn't anything fancy, but because I struggled for awhile setting it up, I thought I'd write down how I did it.

On a base drupal installation you can have two "sidebars". These "sidebars" are the vertical columns on either side of the page's main content (what you are reading right now). These sidebars contain "blocks". Each block is considered it's own section, separate from all others. For example, as I write this my left sidebar has blocks that I created called "pages", "tags", and "links" while the right sidebar contains a block called "website feed" (this came with the aggregator module). The basic code for each of the blocks in the left sidebar is fairly straight-forward...

• about me...
• about this site
...
• user accounts

like I said, very straight forward... Here's the section of the theme's "style.css" that the sidebars use...

#sidebar-left { width: 8.5em; vertical-align: top; background-color: #eee; border-right: 1px solid #999; } #sidebar-left ul { list-style: none; list-style-image: none; text-indent: 0em; padding: 0; margin: 0; background-color: #fff; } #sidebar-left li { margin: 0; padding: 0; list-style: none; list-style-image: none; border-bottom: 1px solid #999; } #sidebar-left .title { font-weight: bold; padding: 0.4em 0 0 0.4em; border-bottom: 1px solid #999; } #sidebar-left .menu { padding-left: 0; margin-left: 0; } #sidebar-left li.leaf { text-decoration: none; } #sidebar-left li.collapsed { text-decoration: none; } #sidebar-left li.expanded { border-bottom: 1px solid #999; } #sidebar-left li.expanded ul { text-indent: 0.8em; border-top: 1px solid #999; }

the style code for the right sidebar is near identical... please realize that I am not a web developer and this website is my only experience with css. I tend to overkill things a bit at times and define things where they shouldn't be (or don't need to be) defined. If you see anything here that I should change or clean up, let me know.

In order to get the hover effect on the lists, I added the following to the style sheet...

#sidebar-left li a { margin: 0; padding: 0 0.2em 0 0.8em; display: block; width: auto; color: #090; } #sidebar-left li a:visited { margin: 0; padding: 0 0.2em 0 0.8em; display: block; width: auto; color: #090; } html>body #sidebar-left li a { width: auto; } html>body #sidebar-left li a:visited { width: auto; } #sidebar-left li a:hover { color: #00f; text-decoration: none; background-color: #ccc; }

almost all of the hover code is from alistapart.com. If anybody reading this has questions or comments about any of this, feel free to drop a post...

We started this site around Thanksgiving 2005 as an online place that we could keep journals and share pictures

The machine this server is running on is also setup to be the jukebox for our living room (using ampache). The jukebox is set up so that playlists are managed through a web interface on the network and are sent to the receiver in our living room. The server is running on an old Gateway box we had sitting around that has a 1.5Ghz Pentium 4 processor and 128MB of RAM. For software, the machine is running the debian operating system, and is powered by apache, mysql, php, and drupal. Pretty much your basic LAMP setup running the drupal scripts. As said before, the music section of the website is running on a modified ampache setup.

The web badges in the "powered by" block on the right (mostly) came from: http://www.zwahlendesign.ch/en/node/19

If anyone has any questions about the website setup, feel free to send them our way...

enjoy your stay...

Had a great Thanksgiving on Thursday. Kellie's parents, grandparents, and brothers came to our house for the festivities. Kel, her ma and her grandma cooked up quite the feast... I think we'll have leftovers for awhile. I'll be going to St. Paul to go out to eat with my folks and see the annual Leo Kottke show. Should be fun :) I need to fix the style sheets for the images as they aren't displaying in Firefox the way they display in IE. There's a bunch of other style/theme issues I want to fix up with the site, but this stuff will get done in time...

just playing around with the formatting of the website... I'm trying to create a custom drupal theme that is very simple and has clear boundries that both separate the different sections of content and different posts from each other. Most of the information is coming from:

• The drupal theme developers guide.
• The drupal API documentation.

Sounds fun eh? ;)

Don't have a lot to post yet as I'm really working harder on getting the website set up the way I want it... oh well, I'm sure I'll be changing a lot of things over time :) my name is Jeremiah and welcome to the site. I'm setting up this site to give myself an online place to keep photos and a journal. I initially thought I'd use a service like blogger, but decided not to after realizing that running my own web server and setting up drupal would put all of the control in my hands while still giving me all the features (and more) that I wanted. I can change what ever I want... open source software at it's finest. ahhh well... enjoy your visit.