Site features

And got recent comments, top rated posts, and my ratings pages done. Note that a "comment" includes any reply to a forum topic (a "post" is like a page, blog entry, book page, story). I do wish Drupal had implemented comments as normal pages...

Hey, Peat - I deleted the comments you wanted deleted.

Unfortunately, I tried a lot yesterday, and could find no way to give you delete rights to your own comments, without delete rights to everyone's comments... So for now, you can edit them to < blank >, and I can delete them...

I think these may be side effects of the "Advanced Forum" module I added. Which makes the forums a whole lot nicer... mostly. But - essentially, on this site, forums are a tack-on, not the normal way to do things. For important stuff, your contributions, growlogs, etc - it's better to blog about it, or create a story or book page. Then people can rate the content, add comments, etc. But it's your podium, if you see what I mean.

Yeah, the hardware section would be great for it! But don't use a comment. Instead, there's a link at the bottom of the Hardware page called "Add child page". Use that and edit the new book page however you'd like.

Yeah, this site isn't a forum. It's a content management system optimized for collaboration and user contributions. With a forum tacked on for conversations, and lots of support for commenting on other people's content.
 
That has good and bad aspects. The forums here are naturally weak compared to phpBB and other forums. At being forums.
 
On the other hand, there are things forums aren't terribly good at. Organization. Ownership & authorship. A subsidiary relationship between content, and comments on the content. So, there are always dodges like "sticky topics" and control of board creation in a forum, in a weak effort to impose order on a bunch of people chatting.
 
This more generic system has advantages. I haven't used many add-ons yet, since, well, today is the site's one week birthday from unpacking the first tarball. But, the lightboxes (popup picture viewer / slideshow), and ability to rate content (and eventually, also forum topics and comments) are add-ons. (Actually, so is the forum. ) I can create custom content types, custom queries and reports - the "Recent Comments" link is one of those.
 
You may not have noticed it yet, but the content is "tagged". So for instance if you notice on a blog post or book page that the content is tagged with "lettuce", it's a link to a page of content tagged "lettuce". And there's an RSS feed icon at the bottom - you can subscribe to get updates on new "lettuce" content. (Getting a page of tags to rummage through, preferably organized by topic, is high on my wish list.)
 
And I've programmed Flex extensions to a Drupal site before, so I could add cool interactive graphic things eventually, if inclined. An easier way to make my lightbox series springs to mind...
 
What this site is best at is blogging. But - you can only have one blog per user. Which is why I used a book, instead, for my grow logs. I want a separate log for each project, not "Gisette's Diary".
 
Still a pretty blank slate, but hey, as a week's progress on a hobby, it isn't too bad. I hope?

Definitely agree - one should be able to delete one's own posts. I toyed with the idea of granting full delete (to all posts) to the "gnome" class of users - as in, a trusted regular gets the full array of rights. But, people'd feel bad if they deleted someone else's stuff by accident... Just still need a real solution - delete rights only to original poster (or admin).

In the meantime, at least you can edit it and wipe out all the content. When I run into those, I'll delete 'em, of course.

BTW, if you haven't noticed the "Switch to plain text editor" link yet - therein, you can simply paste HTML, should you happen to have HTML... It'll toss whatever it doesn't like when you preview.

Hey, Bruce. I still do HTML in WordPad a lot of the time. Since you know how, assuming you remember, you may way to dip down to the "Switch to plain text editor" link below the text editor. There you can express yourself in pure HTML. (And yes, I do that a lot. It's the only way to get the cute popup lightboxes so far.)

I'm glad you'll copy over the nutrients posts! I was thinking of asking you to do that!!! (No way will I copy over someone else's content without permission - how rude.)

1. To copy over a post, you can pretty much copy/paste from there to here. Click Preview button. Probably, it's good enough as-is, but adjust the formatting if you want.

2. Where to store it is a different question. If you just want an ongoing discussion, everybody equal partners, you'd post in the Nutrients topic on the forum. More likely, for that, you'd want a Blog entry (create via "My blog" link on the lhs menu), or a Story ("Create content | Story"). In that form, people can rate your post, and comment on it, and discuss - but it's clearly your stuff, plus commentary. And if/when it evolves to conclusions / reference material, the conclusions would go in the Aerogarden Lore book, probably with a link to the longer discussion.

3. Yeah, just use the "Insert/edit image" button (it's near the anchor icon on the editor - not the one that says "Image Button") to implant a picture here. You can simply paste in the URL of the picture, but also play with other aspects, like giving it a different width or height to scale it down. You really don't want to upload pictures here if you can avoid it - just <img src="where"> link to them, to make them show up. (That's what "Insert/edit image does - at its simplest.)

4. Videos... Well, you can embed Flash content here. And you can link to somewhere where it will play. I think I could even get Flash content or a standard mpg or avi or something to play in the lightbox. But no, you're right, no one really wants to view a video that requires a player download.

Yeah, we actually all three do end up online at the same time pretty often.

Which theme were you using, that didn't have the search box, Peat? That may be easily fixed.

Oh, and I noticed that although my "view" link on the "Recent comments" page won't jump to other-than-first-page-comment, if you jump instead to the topic and click the "1 new comment" link at the top, that does jump to the right spot. Little more convenient, tho not what I was shooting for...

OK. Well, that much fixed on wabi... I resisted the temptation to reset the wabi color scheme to anything-but-blue. But yes, the other themes need further attention...

One change already made - comments no longer threaded. It's a lot less confusing to just keep 'em flat...

I've never seen it default to centering text, so no idea what that's about. Pixture pink I'll add to the theme to-do list.

Smileys are already on my hit list above. Expanding list above - when install other smileys, get the editor toolbox to a reasonable list of edits. (Have kitchen sink in there now, because I tried a couple subsets and they left off choosing font and text color - want those, not others...)

Lemme check whether the displayed date is edit date or creation date... it should be last-changed. If it isn't, I have no idea how to fix it, so, low priority.

You should see other messages when you post, because it's going to refresh context. But because that needs to happen, you need to by-choice go back and choose Forums, or Recent Posts, or Recent Comments, to see what's been going on elsewhere. That's true in any forum. I do have cross-post warning in above list, but it's not going to happen this week, for sure.

Alright, back up to the master list to edit again...

Peat - couple questions.

1. what size monitor are you using? (pixels)

2. is this still the wabi theme?

I don't see the symptom on theme pixture_reloaded.

Hm. My best guess (and I tried several things), is that this is caused by the wide pictures. So the table layout is extended to include those wide pictures...

Fixes 2008-11-03 :

  Mailing someone no longer adds the <p>around your text</p>

  Switched everyone to toolbar "DrupalFull". You can change your preference at : My account | Edit | Rich Editor Settings. Note that "Default" is the huge toolbar - best to stick to DrupalFull, DrupalFiltered, or DrupalBasic.

  Clear your browser cache to get all the editor changes, but...

  Installed much better set of smileys, and

  Reorganized the editor toolbars

Note:  just use your operating system Ctrl-key (or apple-key) combos to do undo/redo/copy/cut/paste. I left the three paste buttons, only because I still haven't quite figured out what they do...

  Book page comments now listed oldest first, not newest first...

  Put Recent Posts first rather than Recent comments, because it's a lot easier to navigate them that way... The "3 new" link on a forum/page/whatever, jumps directly to the new comments, and new pages/forum topics/book pages appear in order. Recent Comments is still there if you want to use it, tho.

P.S. What I'm hoping to do with the images is a bit heavy-handed... Add them all as thumbnail-lightbox combos, defaulting to a lightbox slideshow of everything in the page, for most kinds of page, and everything within a single comment on a forum comment.

For instance, click on one of the images toward the bottom of my coleus/snapdragons page. You can use the right arrow (either click or use your keyboard right arrow) to continue to view the pictures in my comment on the page as well.

But I might leave the embed-image there, too, and see if I can limit width=540 or something.

These are significantly harder changes than adding the smileys. Have to understand someone else's PHP implementation (several modules by different groups) and code up my own opinion.

Thanks, Peat.

The wink smiley looked lame... You want it anyway? It would have to replace one of the ones already there, because I only want 24 on the smiley menu. Toss one of the angry's? Or the yawn? Innocent?

I think both the angry's are adorable. Angry-right looks more wry/cranky , and frontal angry looks angry-bummed, possibly less person-directed angry . Mind if I toss "innocent" instead?

We have wink . And no more innocent. You need to clear browser cache and reload again to see them, though. (This is a Feature. The browser doesn't load all the editor code each time.)

I think Bruce is off setting up his new toys. And I need to go do stuff, too. Later!

Just copying this down to the end of the topic again. Lots of progress...

Some priorities... Sorry, Bruce, for addressing this here instead of in Grow Cabinets. More or less in priority order - you can yelp otherwise. But this site is still pretty raw, so everything on the list is high priority, yet, there's only so much time I can devote to site-building...

1. Move to a real domain name, put some effort into SEO, to make us findable. No workaround. People can't find us now, and want more people.
2. Gisette: Basic use-site-101 documentation under Help.
3. Recent everything, instead of separate Recent-Posts and Recent-Comments. And put it on the front page when login. (Matter of coding.) In the meantime, workaround:  use Recent posts, it works better.
4. Fix the email formatting:  contact emails have <p> </p>, new-stuff notices are rather dense and unhelpful.Would prefer all contact emails come from the site, not private email addresses. Workaround: well, they work. Ish.
5. Gisette:  prune theme stable down to 3 or 4, and make sure all of them have Search & AdSense & user pix turned on... Bruce:  Pixture_reloaded pink comment and quote boxes re-color when theme recolors... (be not pink)
   
6. Peat:  ability to delete own comments, and not those of others.
7. Gisette: want a view link on comments listing that goes to the comment, not the topic...
8. Better smiley set and online icons. Bruce: cut editor gizmos to reasonable list.
9. Page that lists tags (subjects like "tomato" and "nutrients", click for list of content by tag. Those reports are RSS feeds, so someone can subscribe to "lettuce" instead of wading through river-of-new-content.) Weirdly, this is available under My account >> Subscriptions >> Categories.
10. Peat:  Member listing page - for logged in users only.
11. Peat:  Stats page, whatever that might contain.
12. Gisette wants comment admin tools, so she can move them...
13. Automate creation of my lightbox slideshows. Time-consuming.
14. Bruce/Peat: cross-posting notice. Could be very difficult.
15. Bruce: change creation date to last edit date on comment display (or have both).
16. Rate comments as well as "posts". Pending new Drupal module releases.
17. Peat:  Recent comments layout runs off right side of page. Side effect of embedding large pictures (about 540 wide probably max.) Figure out how to enforce, or make it so lightboxing is easy and standard.
18. Peat:  bring back Who's Online.
    

Comments on priorities? Let me know if I've missed any to add...

Edited: added the suddenly missing Who's Online block.