Let’s highlight some of the main differences in this new version of Drupal.
Stories are now Articles – In an attempt to name Drupal’s core content types in ways that more closely indicate their usage, the Story content type is now Article. Articles are pieces of content that typically post blog-style to a prominent place on your site, but may be replaced, or scrolled down the page, on a regular basis as new articles are posted.
An Administrator Role is already created at installation – Several of the changes that have been made reflect things that most users do immediately after installing Drupal. One of these is the inclusion of an Administrator role as part of the default installation profile.
Search and Paths are enabled by default – Other things that users typically enable immediately are the Search module that allows users to search for content on the site and the Paths module which allows the creation of path aliases to content so that you can publish the link www.yoursite.com/directions instead of www.yoursite.com/node/123.
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Though WordPress is by far the leader when it comes to blogging software, it has made significant strides in the last two years towards becoming a quality Content Management System as well. This means that those who love WordPress can now easily bridge the gap between blogging and a website designed for news by setting up their blog as a CMS.
What is a CMS? I would define a CMS using WordPress to create a website that does not display your posts in reverse chronological order. In other words, a CMS is using WordPress for something other than blogging.
Some examples of WordPress as a CMS:
- News or Magazine-Style WordPress Site/Theme
- Building a Portfolio Site
- eCommerce Site
- Picture Gallery
- Photoblog
- Video Blog
- Directory
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Advertising is by far the most popular monetization method that bloggers use. After deciding whether to show ads, the next decision is which type. The most popular advertising system with bloggers is Google’s AdSense, but there are several other advertising system options (affiliate networks), including:
If you have installed a local blog on your computer for testing purposes you probably will need some actual ‘real’ content to test out all your theme or other changes. Creating ‘dummy’ content is one option, but it can take awhile to create and is not the same as the actual content that a ‘live’ blog contains.
So if you already have a blog online, you can follow these steps after you have your local environment (Apache, PHP, and MySQL) up and running.
Step 1: Create a backup from your current live blog.
- Log into phpMyAdmin (from a web host account), and select the “Export” tab.
- Select the database your WordPress blog uses.
- Make sure the “SQL” radio button is selected.
- Click the “GO” button.
- A new screen will display with a textarea box containing many SQL statements. These will re-create your entire database, tables with content when executed.
- Copy this script to your favorite text editor
Step 2: Modifying your backup script.
- Since we are restoring to a database from a different blog, we have to ‘tweak’ it a bit (database name and url parameters).
- Change name of the database to the database of your development blog. This should be the first command in the script starting with CREATE DATABASE.
- There are two lines that you need to specify the url of your development (http://localhost/). Do a text search on the ‘wp_options’ table. You will need to change the parameters of two INSERT INTO statements (‘siteurl’ and ‘home’).
Step 3: Copy your blog folder structure.
- Copy the entire folder struture (and all files) of your live blog to your root directory of your local Apache environment. You can create a subfolder in your root if you wish. I discuss where this location is in the lesson.
- Once copied, open up the wp-config.php file and make the neccessary changes. This would involve changing the database name (DB_NAME), database user (DB_USER), and database password (DB_PASSWORD) and MySQL host (DB_HOST). I discuss this in the lesson as well.
Step 4: Execute your modified restore script.
- Open up phpMyAdmin in your local environment
- Select the “SQL” tab.
- Paste the restore script in the textarea box.
- Click the “Go” button.
- Verify that the database and tables have been created.
Step 5: Open up your local blog
- Go to your local blog that you just copied all the files to. This will be http://localhost/. You will specify the subfolder if you created that as well.
- Log into you blog
Now you have an exact local copy of your live blog that you can develop and test.
Note: Since we didn’t change any other parameters in the restore script, some of your plugins may not work. Also, if you use custom permalinks, you may need to modify your .htaccess file. Change your permalinks to the default setting (Settings->Permalinks), if you cannot see certain pages in your local blog.
One of the traps that some bloggers fall into is that their blogs often become quite one-dimensional in terms of the type of posts they write.
Mixing up the types of post that you write can add interest and character to your blog, which will help to keep readers over the long haul. There are many types of posts that you might like to use—here are 20 to start experimenting with:
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WordCamp is a conference type of event that focuses squarely on everything WordPress. Everyone from casual end users all the way up to core developers show up to these events. These events are usually highlighted by speeches or keynotes by various people.
WordCamp is a spin off from the popular BarCamp which was a spin off of FooCamp. Each one of these events are smaller in nature when compared to your particular conference, but they are usually focused on a particular subject.
So what can you expect when you attend a WordCamp event? Based on the numerous amounts of videos and photos taken from attendees, you can expect a whole lot of fun in an atmosphere that promotes social interaction.
The first WordCamp conference was held in July of 2006 in San Francisco. Matt Mullenweg pulled this event together in only three weeks time and ended up with about 300 people in the Swedish American Hall. The first international WordCamp event was held in Beijing China on September 1st, 2007.
Check out the BlogHerald to see if there will be WordCamp in your area, or start your own.
Administrating your blog goes beyond just writing posts and tracking your page ranking. It includes the regularly scheduled maintenance a blog need over time.
Managing your blog is a challenge at first as it is all new and there is so much to learn. As your blog becomes more sophisticated, possibly expanding into advertising, you will spend more time, do more research, and work harder at trying new things to make your blog better, and your readers happier.
Here are some quick tips to help your manage your blog better and more efficiently.
- Create a blog maintenance calendar
- Keep a collection of ready-to-publish posts handy
- Don’t expect to reply to every comment
- Create a home page for your product or service
- Backup your blog
- Upgrade your blogging program
- Update plugins, widgets, gadgets and add-ons
- Update blog content
- Check for dead links and 404s
- Validate and optimize your blog’s code
Ping, in the simplest terms, is an Internet tool that knocks on the doors of search engines and directories to invite them to crawl your website or blog.
When you publish a post on your blog, modern blogging programs send a signal to a pinging service such as Pingomatic which relays a digital invitation to seach engines, tagging services, and other web crawling services to visit your blog.
If you wish to manually ping, do it more than once within a reasonable length of time can result in penalization. Pinging is like submission to a search engine and carries penalization for abuse.
Manual pinging is a great way to reach search engines and directories outside of the most popular indexing services.
