For our Wordpress 2.0 sites, we have been using the Akismet plugin to fight off the spam thrown at us through our comment pages. We’ve been impressed with the results with over 550 spam filled comments blocked since early 2006 and only two spam comments slipping by Akismet’s filters. With these impressive results, we have been hoping to see an Akismet Drupal module also developed. Now both Drupal and phpBB users have access to an Akismet module for their CMS.

Markus Petrux from phpmix.org announced at Drupal.org:

After several days of work and tests at phpMiX.org, I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of about 2000 lines of code compiled into Akismet module v1.0.0 for Drupal 4.7.

You are encouraged to visit the Akismet site to learn more about it. In just a few words, when new content is submitted to your site, the akismet module sends a real time request to Akismet where hundreds of tests are applied to get a thumbs up or thumbs down kind of response. It may finally that tell us if the content is spam or not. If it isn’t, the content is published, if it is, then it is placed on the moderation queue. Moderators may opt-in to receive e-mail notifications for all content, just content needing approval or nothing at all. The module is fully customizable, almost everything is optional. It also keeps track of a counter that you can use to show your visitors how many spam has been caught by Akismet in your site.

Also announced, was a module for the phpBB forum software. You can visit either Akismet or phpBB for more information. If you check out phpBB, you’ll likely get a kick when you see that they are calling the mod the “Akismet Spam Butcher”. Hopefully both Drupal and phpBB users will find the Akismet modules as useful as Wordpress users have found the plugin for Wordpress to be at their sites.

There is one caveat to using the Akismet modules though. You’ll need a WordPress.com API key that is available, as far as I know, only by opening an account at Wordpress.com . I’m not really sure why the API key is only available at Wordpress.com and not Akismet’s own site, but that’s what they’ve chosen to do. For non-Wordpress users, Wordpress.org is the site you can download the actual open source software and Wordpress.com is a service that provides users a free Wordpress blogging account.

Reposted from our sister site, CMSReport.com.

Here at Like that Idea, we have been using the Akismet plugin to fight off the spam thrown at us through our comment pages. We’ve been impressed with the results with over 550 spam filled comments blocked since early 2006 and only two spam comments slipping by Akismet’s filters. With these impressive results, we have been hoping to see an Akismet module developed for our Drupal sites. Now both Drupal and phpBB users have access to an Akismet module for their applications.

Markus Petrux from phpmix.org announced at Drupal.org:

After several days of work and tests at phpMiX.org, I’m proud to announce the immediate availability of about 2000 lines of code compiled into Akismet module v1.0.0 for Drupal 4.7.

You are encouraged to visit the Akismet site to learn more about it. In just a few words, when new content is submitted to your site, the akismet module sends a real time request to Akismet where hundreds of tests are applied to get a thumbs up or thumbs down kind of response. It may finally that tell us if the content is spam or not. If it isn’t, the content is published, if it is, then it is placed on the moderation queue. Moderators may opt-in to receive e-mail notifications for all content, just content needing approval or nothing at all. The module is fully customizable, almost everything is optional. It also keeps track of a counter that you can use to show your visitors how many spam has been caught by Akismet in your site.

Also announced, was a module for the phpBB forum software. You can visit either Akismet or phpBB for more information. If you check out phpBB, you’ll likely get a kick when you see that they are calling the mod the “Akismet Spam Butcher”. Hopefully both Drupal and phpBB users will find the Akismet modules as useful as Wordpress users have found the plugin for Wordpress to be at their sites.

There is one caveat to using the Akismet modules though. You’ll need a WordPress.com API key that is available, as far as I know, only by opening an account at Wordpress.com . I’m not really sure why the API key is only available at Wordpress.com and not Akismet’s own site, but that is what they’ve chosen to do. For non-Wordpress users, Wordpress.org is the site you can download the actual open source software and Wordpress.com is a service that provides users a free Wordpress blogging account. We’re having too much fun running Wordpress on our own server that Wordpress.com isn’t really for us. However, if you would rather write content than look at the code…Wordpress.com likely would be a good solution. Either way, happy spam hunting!

When the days are less crazy, we’ll write more about a sister site of ours, the CMS Report. The site is still in it’s iniitial stages with content somewhat limited. The site currently provides content through a news aggregator and an occasional original article. The theme also needs some work. For now though, we’ll just say if you have an interest in web content management systems you’ll likely find something that interests you.

The site covers most open source projects including Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Wordpress, etc. Also covered is the propriety side of CMS. In the near-future, discussion will also include the broader topics of information systems and system adminstration.

CMS Report currently runs on Drupal 4.7. While CMS Report will allow for comments and submission of articles, it is not expected to introduce a forum-type format. If you like forums, we recommend another CMS-focused site we are associated with…the WebCMS Forum.

Here at Like that Idea we have spent quite a bit of time talking about Web content management systems, with one of our favorites being Drupal. You may have wondered who actually uses these open source applications and how good could something you download for free really be? Dries Buytaert, the project leader for Drupal, pointed out on is blog that:

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is using Drupal for their Academy of Program / Project and Engineering Leadership website (APPEL). Sweet!

Some well known (and not so well known ) Drupal sites also includes: American Idol’s Blog, Mac Geekery, Nashville News, Ringo Starr, Anthropology.net, Fish Fever, and Empire Investor. Ok, to be fair, Empire Investor is a site we did for a client…but if the site’s owner is happy with Drupal why wouldn’t you be happy with the CMS? If you want more examples of Drupal sites, check out DrupalSites.net and Drupal Showcase.

We had great intentions to continue to keep everyone up to date on a new site that we’re building using Drupal, a content management system (CMS). The idea was as we were building the site we intended to write down how we did it so others could learn with us. Well if you look at our Drupal blog here at Like that Idea you would see that we have not had too many posts in the blog. Have we given up on the idea? No hardly, we are just so busy with other projects (including the project of raising a family) that we have had to prioritize and put some of our ideas on the back burner.

I have no doubt the new site focusing on content management systems will eventually be up and running, the question is when and not if it will happen. I suspect that once Drupal 4.7 has been released is when we’ll start working on the site.

In the meantime, We would like to recommend a few places that you can go to learn about Drupal and other content management systems. First, if you haven’t visited the handbooks at Drupal.org lately, you should. A lot of changes have been taking place in the user support documentation at Drupal.org and most of it is for the better. If reading isn’t your thing, Drupal users don’t have to wait for the movie to come out since it is now available at Lullabot. Lullabot is providing both audiocasts and videocasts on a number of Drupal topics. The Lullabot video for managing menus and links with Drupal is very well done.

Last but not least, if you have questions about content management systems and how they can help you build a Website; please consider joining in on the discussions at our sister site, the WebCMS Forum. While most people think of a Web content management system as only Web Portals, the forum also considers software that manages blogs, forums, shopping carts, and photo-galleries to also be variations of a CMS. WebCMS Forum is still a new site, but it already has had a promising start with a number of users of different CMS applications coming together to share their ideas and learning from others. I already find myself learning a lot and like to see it when those from Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, e107, SMF, phpBB, Wordpress, osCommerce, and others express their thoughts and ideas on their own favorite CMS. I you don’t mind me saying it, I hope you like that forum!

A prerelease of Drupal 4.7 was installed on the Web server to support a new site, CMSReport.com . The experiences of building the new site are initially being recorded here at Like that Idea in a series of articles about Web Building.

The latest article, Web Hosting: Providing a home for Drupal has received some attention on the Internet, including mention on such sites as Linux Today, NewsForge, and a Denmark blog. A third article in the Website Building series is expected to be written soon and focus on a basic install of the Drupal software.

Once CMSReport.com is stable, the more technical software articles being written here will be moved to CMSReport.com. This is good news to Like that Idea readers who would like to see a return to the site’s original concept. Karen, wife and co-author, likes that idea too.

Part Two in a series of articles on Website Building using Drupal

We’ve decided to use Drupal for our content management system (CMS). An important question for newbies remains, how do we get Drupal onto a real Internet Website? You know we need more than the “free server space” the Internet Service Provider is providing, but where do you start? Believe it or not, these basic questions have been asked by even some of the best people I know in information technology (IT). Many IT people may help run or manage the company Website, but someone else in the company left them in the dark to how the company got their Domain Name in the first place. If you’re a small business, you may have computer people but what you don’t have are thousands of dollars to throw at a Web server. How do people get their site on the Internet at a reasonable price, you ask? It’s time to shine some light on these unanswered questions.

The simple answer is you just need to purchase an Internet name (actually called a Domain Name) and “rent” some space on an Internet Server through a shared hosting plan. So are companies providing theses Web services difficult to find? No, not at all and that is the problem. Typing in “domain name” or “web hosting” on your favorite search engine will give you so many companies to choose from that the task can be too overwhelming. Although we’re interested in finding the right hosting company to run our CMS, Drupal, for any Website this is the minimum I would look for when deciding where to host your Internet Site:

• A shared hosting plan that includes PHP at no extra cost. PHP is a programming language used almost exclusively for the Web. Some companies will charge you extra for PHP, but by today’s standard this is a basic feature. (Drupal requires PHP 4.3.3 or higher).
• A shared hosting plan that includes MySQL. MySQL is an open source database that is commonly utilized by many PHP applications, including Drupal. Once again, some companies will charge you extra for the database, but in my opinion that’s so 1990’s. Look elsewhere if you can’t get a basic plan with MySQL included. (Drupal requires MySQL v3.23.17 or higher, but I recommend no lower than MySQL 4).
• A shared hosting plan that provides a “control panel” to help manage your site. In the “old days”, everything was done by the command line. But these days, a couple clicks of a button will setup the database you need for Drupal or install extra open source applications that you may want to use along with Drupal. Even a command line junkie like me has found these online control panels to be time savers.

Ok, so you found a place to register your domain and host your site using my advice. You’re all set for Drupal, right? Well, Drupal needs a little bit more tender loving care than most CMS I’ve ran across. Namely, Drupal requires the ability for you to LOCK TABLES and eventually with Drupal 4.7, CREATE TEMPORARY TABLES. Neither of the before mentioned MySQL database privileges are available by default. Worse, many shared hosting providers don’t give you the option to turn on the needed database privileges to properly host Drupal. In the past, I’ve expressed disappointment with the developers of Drupal for designing a CMS that requires these features. Whether I was fair or not to the developers, one just has to accept that Drupal has database needs that not every shared hosting plan includes. I’ve spent some time removing the code from Drupal that contained LOCK TABLES, but eventually such actions have led me to a dead end (potential problems with database corruption and Drupal requiring more CPU usage).

So if you want to find Drupal a home, make sure your shared hosting plan gives you the already mentioned database privileges. Since I wanted to stay with my current Web hosting provider, Dakota Hosting, I purchased through them a Virtual Private Server (VPS) which is also called a Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS). The benefit to a VPS/VDS is that you get virtually full administrative rights to the server. You can also host more than one domain name on the server (I can host up to 30 Websites) offsetting the costs you would pay for a simple shared hosting plan. For me, having access to a VPS has been a very satisfying experience.

If the $30 to $50 per month costs of a VPS is too high for you, then your only option is to make sure your shared hosting plan offers the rights to the database features you need for Drupal. Drupal.org has started up a list of hosting providers that are Drupal friendly. I would also check out the Drupal forum or the forums at WebHostingTalk for more information and additional options.

So now we not only know which CMS we’re going to use for our site, Drupal, but we now have knowledge of how to get an Internet site of our own. Hopefully, you too can find a nice home for Drupal. In the next article, we’ll take a look of how to download Drupal, uncompress the files, and install the software onto the Web Server. In later articles, we will also have to consider how best to configure Drupal, install any needed modules, install themes, and eventually customize Drupal to meet our own needs.