When you're updating your Drupal site, you'll need to put it into Maintenance Mode so that no problems occur for you or visitors.
Here's how to turn on Maintenance Mode in Drupal 7:
How to Put Drupal 7 in Maintenance Mode
Updating Drupal 7 to the Latest Version
Updating a Drupal site is vital for security.
In this tutorial we're going to show you how to update your Drupal 7 site from one minor version to another. That means from 7.0 to 7.2 or 7.2 to 7.4. and so on.
Unfortunately moving between major versions such as from 5 to 6 or from 6 to 7 is a much bigger topic and too large for a single tutorial.
Before you start, please remember one thing: backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup, backup your site!
Using Linkit with TinyMCE and Drupal
Linkit provides an easy interface for internal linking. Linkit links to nodes, users, views and terms by default, using an autocomplete field.
Linkit requires that Pathologic is also installed.
Pathologic is an input filter which can correct paths in links and images in your Drupal content in situations which would otherwise cause them to “break;” for example, if the URL of the site changes, or the content was moved to a different server.
Win a Free Ticket to DrupalCon London
Are you thinking about going to DrupalCon London in August?
Around 1500 Drupalistas from all over the world are going to be converging in Croydon in South London from August 22nd to 26th.
If you're thinking about going, but haven't yet made up your mind, we've got a great offer. We've got a free ticket to give away. That ticket is worth at least £336 ($536).
Here's how you can win the free ticket:
IMCE for Drupal 7 and Integration with TinyMCE
IMCE is a great module that will give you file management capabilities while editing your articles in Drupal 7.
You can add various WYSIWYG editors to Drupal to allow you to have advanced editing capabilities. Among these are TInyMCE, CKEditor, BUEditor and more. However, while you get a great toolbar, these plugins don't natively allow you to search your file system to find a picture to insert in your page. You need another module for that and it's called IMCE.
We are going to show you how to install it and get it working with TinyMCE. The process is similar with each WYSIWYG editor you install, but the way it looks and acts will be different in each editor. If you'd like to see a demo of how it works, you can visit this page http://ufku.com/drupal/imce/demo.
Installing TinyMCE in Drupal 7
This tutorial will show you how to install the TinyMCE editor into Drupal 7.
By default, Drupal doesn't install with an editor in place so you'll need to install one to have any text formatting options. Here's how to install TinyMCE, perhaps the most popular editor for Drupal.
TinyMCE is not a Drupal not so we can install it directly. Instead we're going to install a module called Wysiwyg and we'll then upload the TinyMCE files seperately.
More Editing Controls with Tiny MCE plugins in WordPress
WordPress is easy to use, but making something easy to use usually means you have to leave out features or reduce control. Editing text can be very frustrating with the native text editing built into WordPress.
Adding TinyMCE advanced editor, and two additional plugins, one for tables and one for shortcodes, will make editing easier.
Add CKFinder to CKEditor for image file management.
Client side editors in Drupal often require additional modules to enhance them. If you uploaded CKEditor, without a file management module you won't be able to search the site for pictures when you click the insert button.
CKFinder is an addition for the CKEditor that will give you file management capabilities. With this installed you will be able to search your site for pictures in your various site directories.
NextGen Sidebar Widget Spacing
The NextGen Gallery is probably the most used gallery for WordPress sites.
There's a great sidebar widget for showing thumbnails from galleries on the pages. It comes with a very basic styling, but there are templates easily accessible for creating the look you want.
The default style jams the thumbnails together, and to make a pleasing look, you need to add some spacing.
Wordpress Post and Page Screen Options
One of our students noticed that his Add a New Post area looked different that our tutorial. For example, he had no excerpt or custom fields on the page and asked why his layout was different. The answer is that as of WordPress 3.1, some screen options on the Post and Page areas are hidden by default and need to be enabled.
This tutorial will show you step-by-step how to enabled them using Screen Options.
Clearing your Browser Cache, Cookies and History
Browsers want to appear really fast for you. So instead of going back to the webpage every time you visit it, they save copies of pages and bits of information called, "cache". There are times when this effort at speeding up the browser actually slows you down. Like when you're trying to make changes to your live site and see the changes in real time.
There are three things that can cause some frustration, cache, cookies and browser history.
You may need to get rid of all these temporary files so you see your changes. The process is similar in all browsers, you just have to know where to find the controls. Check out the list.
How to Exclude a Page from the Pages Widget in Wordpress
One of our students asked us how to remove a link from a left menu. In his case the link was coming from the Pages Widget, so we created this tutorial for him.
This tutorial will walk you through step by step how to exclude a page from the Pages Widget in Wordpress
We're Teaching at DrupalCon London in August
As an ex-pat Brit, it gives me great pleasure to say that we're coming home in August.
OSTraining is going to be providing Drupal training at DrupalCon London.
We're going to be teaching the Absolute Beginner's Guide to Drupal which we also taught at DrupalCon Chicago this spring. Both classes cover the same material as the beginner classes that happen regularly all across the United States.
How to Use the BrightCove Debugger
Here at OSTraining, we usethe same video provider as the New York Times, Sky, Fox, the Weather Channel and more so the video quality is as good as it can get.
However, online video sometimes suffers from regional or even very local glitches.
If you do experience video problems, we'll often ask you to send us a report to help diagnose the problem. Here's how to send the report.
Step 1: Visit the Brightcove Debugger
- Go to admin.brightcove.com/viewer/BrightcoveDebugger.html
- Set level to DEBUG.
- Set type to MEDIA
Step 2: Watch an OSTraining Video
- Open another tab in your browser.
- Watch any OSTraining video.
Step 3: The Debug Infromation Starts
- In the tab with the Brightcove Debugger, you'll see reports starting to show.
- Wait 60 seconds.
Step 4: Copy and Send
- Click copy all.
- You'll get a message saying "Output copied to clipboard."
- Paste the reports into an email.
- Send the email to support@ostraining.com.
Welcoming Rod Martin to OSTraining
We're delighted to welcome Rod Martin to OSTraining this week.
Rod's a "new" staff member only in a very literal sense. He's been working with us for 18 months now and any of you who have seen our Joomla videos will have heard and seen him before.
Rod is our Director of Online Training and will be helping us to provide you all with more great videos. Rod's also a great live trainer and he'll be teaching classes with us around the Mid-West and at some exciting events that we'll be able to announce soon.
We seem to be a company of ex-pats so it works out well that Rod's originally from Australia, grew up in Canada and now resides just outside Cincinnati, Ohio. He has worked in both the non-profit and for-profit worlds, in small companies and large corporations. We're also a company of teachers and Rod has been training people for over 25 years.
Rod plays ice hockey a couple of times a week and rides his Goldwing motorbike pretty much everywhere he can.
Follow him on Twitter at @navtomorrow.
Use W3 Total Cache to Speed Up Your WordPress Site
Speed is everything these days. People are browsing faster and have a shorter attention span. Time is literally money:
- Microsoft showed that when pages slowed by 1 second, ad clicks per user decreased by 1.5%.
- Amazon showed that when pages slowed by 1 tenth of a secon, sales decreased by 1%.
One great solution to make your WordPress sites run more quickly is the W3 Total Cache plugin. Here's how to use it:
Test Your Site
Before we speed up our site, let's test how fast it's running now. You can do that by visiting http://gtmetrix.com. In the image above I'm testing a plain WordPress install and it scored 87% and 93% on the two tests. Don't be surprised if your site is substantially slower after adding themes, plug-ins and widgets.