Norio De Sousa's blog

Remember Me?

Norio De Sousa — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:14:59 +0200

It's frustrating to have to log in to your site, over and over again, just to delete some bozo's worthless spammy comments.

The fix? Ask your Drupal site to remember you :D

CAPTCHA is Practically a No-Brainer

Norio De Sousa — Thu, 01 May 2008 17:13:29 +0200

Regardless of what type of Drupal site you run, you should probably install and use some form of CAPTCHA system. I've played with some of the options and they range from cumbersome to almost-useful but, alas, in this world of constant spam, we have to choose something somewhere in between that range or we'll be inundated with irritating viagra comments all day long!

How Tag Clouds Can Help Guide Your Visitors to the Good Stuff

Norio De Sousa — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 10:58:03 +0200

I've found out, over the past 7 years or so, that you can offer somebody the EXACT same thing as what someone else is offering but, if you can make it LOOK easier to use your version, guess what? You win!

So I've put this into a new category called "Presentation Modules" because even the best content needs to be displayed well.

On to our topic of conversation... tagadelic.

Sliding Pop-Ups are Cool!

Norio De Sousa — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:41:05 +0200

Techies are notorious for hating anything marketing- or sales-related. Well, at least we start out that way. Some of us eventually grow to realise that that's how you make money and eventually start appreciating it.

That's me -- I started out as a techie but now I'm an online marketer with a technical background so I just love it when I found a smart way to do something marketing-related.

(And, of course, anything to do with Drupal is smart ;))

Enter slidebox.

Boost - Static Page Caching for Drupal

Norio De Sousa — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:46:46 +0200

Massive web sites with tens of thousands of articles don't tend to run well on Drupal, even with aggressive caching enabled.

Judging from the reading I've been doing on the subject recently, the problem seems to be that Drupal empties its cache when a node is updated. I'm not sure how true that is but, the fact of the matter is, my site (www.freearticles.co.za) was consistently grinding to a hault at peak times and not even aggressive caching was helping.

Verify Email Addresses

Norio De Sousa — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:24:54 +0200

The last thing you want is a bunch of people registering on your site with fake email addresses. It usually results in untraceable spamming and a whole lot of admin.

Nip the problem in the bud by using Drupal's "verify email" module. You simply install it and configure some basics and, just like that, you've probably halved the amount of spam that will end up on your web site!

The email verify module can be irritating when it doesn't work properly, especially if you've configured it to actually check that the domain exists but I say that it's an annoyance we can live with.

User Registration Notification

Norio De Sousa — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:15:06 +0200

Drupal was made for community web sites but it lacks some of the most important features that a site like that requires.

One of those features (for a new site) is to be notified when someone registers so you can check out their profile, welcome them to the community and generally get the ball rolling.

As an example, I run a free article directory and I like keeping tabs on new users so that I can spot a spammer quickly and put an end to the trouble before it even begins!

Comment Mail - Keep Me Notified

Norio De Sousa — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:16:33 +0200

Drupal's commenting module is great. You can prevent anonymous people from posting junk by forcing that role to require approval before comments are approved.

Great stuff but a pain in the butt if you forget to log in to your site every now and again and check out the approval queue!

Comment mail allows you to set up your site like a regular blog so you get notified about new comments and each mail even includes links to approve or delete the comment it's mailing you about - brilliant!

Configuring it is a cinch - just install it and wait :)

Admin Menu - Keep it Standard!

Norio De Sousa — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 13:11:09 +0200

Admin menu is another one of those modules that I don't know how I'd live without! Before discovering it, I found Drupal a pain in the butt to administer. Reloading the page each time I tried to find something in the admin menu really slows things down.

For those of us that administer more than one web site, Admin menu is especially useful and a time-saver. It makes it easy to administer any site without spending too much time thinking about it.

Pathauto - SEO Mana from God

Norio De Sousa — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 16:51:08 +0200

Drupal's standard URLs are far from pretty. They suck.

First off, who's going to remember http://www.example.com/node/12762 over http://www.example.com/about-us.html? It's just not user-friendly. You kinda have to take a gamble each time you want to link to something in your own web site. And chicks don't dig it ;)