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07/17/2005 Archived Entry: "Drupal"

Drupal
Since the last two universities I was at refused to install PHP and Mysql, I've never had the luck to play with goodies like Drupal. I got a great admin at Wayne to get things running this past week, so I've started to mess around a bit in the hopes of getting something going for me, as well as for grad students who pass through the practicum I teach.
But so far, I'm not getting out of Drupal what I want. I want more control over multiple blogs (it can't or I dont' see how these "blogs" function like the blogs we normally use) and ability to link to stand alone pages and such (not getting how yet) and having items only appear in one place and not on the main page as well (like a resource page you don't want on the main page). The template's style sheet can be manipulated, but some things can only be done through the fill in the blank interface.
I've skimmed through some sites using Drupal for courses (and I know about the C&W workshop that recently took place), but am I missing something about its dynamics? Probably. But what?

Posted by Steven @ 07/25/2005 04:33 PM EST

Hey Brendan
Not so much problems - but figuring out stuff. The open directory issue with WP got fixed.
What's Sharing Cultures?
The plan (my plan) here is to provide WP and Drupal (and maybe later Moodle and MediaWiki) for grads to work with in teaching and writing.
Right now I have a Drupal and 2 WP sites set up. I'll post the URLs when they look pretty.

Posted by jeff @ 07/19/2005 06:57 PM EST

Weird--I just installed Drupal too. Just today I got my administrator account working at badmovieclub.org. I haven't done anything yet so I can't speak to the problem you have for sure, but at first glance it sounds like an Apache config problem, like cbd said.

With regard to the courseware issue-- we're looking at it as a blackboard substitute for Sharing Cultures next spring. The SC team was really jazzed about Open Source at C&W in June.

Posted by Brendan @ 07/19/2005 06:20 PM EST

Did you even bother to say please?

Posted by Drupal @ 07/18/2005 08:43 PM EST

You can uncheck the box under "Options" that says "Promoted to Front Page" if you don't want a resource page to be on the main page. But maybe I'm not understanding your problem correctly.

I'm not sure what you mean when you talk about linking to stand-alone pages. Drupal has the collaborative book module, in which you can link pages together in a linear sequence (see this example), but if you're just talking about linking static pages together, I don't know if Drupal has a special way to do that, or if you'd just have to use an a href tag.

Posted by Clancy @ 07/18/2005 05:39 PM EST

My guess would be that Apache (or whatever web server you use) isn't configured to use index.php as the index for a directory.

Posted by cbd @ 07/18/2005 05:22 PM EST

Absolutely. I've never found any courseware/portal attractive entirely for the many limitations they pose.
But...Drupal/Moodle/MT are far more flexible than the standard WebCT/Blackboard models. And, of course, Drupal/Moodle/MT are on the Web (unlike the standard models).
So I keep playing. At the very least, I want instructors to also play and invent with the tools - not idealize the tools role.
I want to install Moodle as well - but let me ask you this: have you ever heard of a problem that when you install into a public_html directory (and everything works), the system shows the open directory ? In this case, we did some WordPress installs into public_html dirs, and the system won't recognize index.php as the first page. So it just shows the entire open directory when you go to the base URL.
I can't find any documentation where others experience this problem.

Posted by jeff @ 07/18/2005 10:15 AM EST

This is my problem with courseware. Moodle is cool and flexible, but it's not the tabula rasa that I'm used to as a long-time web page or Perl hacker. Once again, this fall, I'll be using courseware in the hopes I'll learn ways to do what I want in its framework. We'll see.

Posted by cbd @ 07/18/2005 09:48 AM EST