Randomland.net - Test Site Discussion

[zourtney]

That is a really awesome picture.

!

[Nick]

Haha. Thanks. That's the magic tank that Cody randomly came upon while digging a hole.

[zourtney]

That was quite awesome. Awesome enough for me to say "campcamp"!

Edit: as for the topic at hand, did you find anything about the images galleries that would make life harder/easier than our current Drupal setup? I didn't mess with it at all this weekend...

[Nick]

I did no messing with it either. And I am sadly not moving masses of files today. I will try and look at them though.
The one photoblog setup I looked at didn't seem like what we were after.

http://test.randomland.net/wp/?p=30&preview=true
Also, there is a 'tag gallery' plugin. That works with two other plugins to do 'lightboxes'
Its not as powerful as drupals solution. So far the only advantages wordpress offers is SMF integration and a bulk file uploader.

So our options are:

• wait for drupal to catch up.
• Fix the wordpress plugins to be better (I think this is doable)
• Move the gallery off the main site.. I don't like that. We are to thin already.
• Fix the drupal plugins/make them work better. If all we want is a nice flash/html5 uploader that creates tagged image nodes I think we can hack something together.
• Live with the crappy admin menus of 6 and make a new theme
• Get a jeep

[zourtney]

Yeah, I think I know enough about Drupal now to hack an uploader thing together. It won't be pretty---I had a semi-rant written, but then spent 10 seconds and brought this up, IMCE module (Drupal). Whatever shortcomings it has, it is certainly better than what we have now. And there is a 7.x version (yay). It's installed now. I think we've played with it before...

So, lest I forget, these are about the only things I care about having functional on a Randomland CMS

• Posts with tagging and commenting support (given)
• Server-hosted image support. Tagging and batch upload pretty much required. External services (Flickr, Picasa, etc) is cool, but really not necessary.
• Mobile theme (detection is probably a module's responsibility; we'll write the theme)
• Forum login bridge. Better yet, support 3rd-party logins (Google, Yahoo, OpenID, etc) on both the main site and the forum. And you'll never need a (user-visible) Randomland account again!

Am I forgetting anything? I like the wiki idea, but we're too fragmented; we ought to shuffle any worthwhile content back over to the main site. (I know, I probably could have done that in the time it took to write this sentence...) We could tweak permission such that anyone could edit the posts, I suppose. But that's a use-case with no user.

Edit: half-thing number 5 is mobile-friendly posting capabilities. The Wordpress app looked decent; I've found nothinga little for Drupal (exceptand a chorus of "yes we should!") I'm going to start digging into the Android APIs in my spare time, so this could be a new project. Of course, a decent mobile theme would be almost as good...Almost, but not quite because mobile Safari likes to hard-refresh pages if you leave them sit for 5+ minutes, thus erasing your entire post if you decided you had to pee, smack your cat, or work.

Let's use IMCE for Drupal. It's works. And pretty well.

[Nick]

I like the look of it, and it does work... but....

http://test.randomland.net/drupal/taxonomy/term/6#overlay-context=taxonomy/water

Images are not their own nodes.... so their tags don't make them part of the taxonomy. Unless I am missing something.

Edit:
Also, I just disabled the Media Gallery module so we could be less confused as to what part of what we are talking about. IMCE is not a gallery.

[zourtney]

Does that mean I was using the Media Gallery the whole time? I really don't care...I just want pictures!

If we need to write custom search scripts, then ok. I guess. Not fun, but we can do it.

Do I need to lower my standards in order to get something functional?

[Nick]

If you just want a gallery, then using views and tags works.

If we want a bulk uploader then..... not drupal at the moment.

Perhaps there is a better gallery then the Media one that works with the IMCE thing.

[zourtney]

Does this mean I have to go back to being disappointed by Drupal?

[Nick]

Never! And always.

Drupal rocks, but it is missing those little things... the things that make so sense to have missing. The things that seem so obvious to have that it dives you just a little bit crazy that they are missing. Leaving you with a throbbing head and aching teeth from the dull frustration of searching for something that has to exist... yet cannot be found.

The ability to bulk create nodes. Present in drupal 6 in multiple forms. Missing from drupal 7 (Should be in the freaking core) The one module that is capable of this only works with other modules that call it.

Perhaps we should create our own version of the fUpload module (its rather in demand for 7... yet no one seems to be working on it.)

[zourtney]

I could probably hack out a proof-of-concept in a sleepless weekend. What's the existing batch upload module called?

[Nick]

pupload. The most basic thing we need is a php script that eats a directory and spits out nodes of images. All while making the images get thumbs/preview sizes created.

But a bulk node creation/upload page would be nicer. If you want to do this I will set aside some time for coding it. I can give the dwarfs and the portals a break for a few days.  But as soon as we finish something, a semi official one will get released

[zourtney]

This seems like a job for Drush. And that makes me shudder!

[zourtney]

Ok, so, I spent a few minutes playing with the image modules we have installed on the test Drupal site. I think it's pretty usable. It does everything I was trying to do in my own attempts at a Drupal module. That is: individual images with titles/descriptions, galleries, tags.

We (probably?) still lack a mass-upload option and a way to view/search EXIF data.

Using the Media module markup, we can embed images in posts via unique ID. See this example. The syntax is both unwieldy and sparsely documented. If it's of benefit, we can wrap this up in my crappyclassic rlimg syntax.

Edit: aaaaarg, I tired to install a multiple-upload module. All I managed to do was raise my blood pressure. And get grumpy at Drupaldom's Perpetual Beta. I just want something that works!

[Nick]

that's about how far I got.