Course Home and Latest News
New Deadline for Project 2
March 31, 2009As we agreed as a class tonight, the deadline for Project 2 is now April 21; April 14 will now be another progress presentation/work week. See the calendar for details.
Importing MySQL Databases at the Command Line
March 24, 2009Some of you are having problems with phpMyAdmin timing out while importing MySQL databases. Here are instructions for importing the files using the command line (rather than phpMyAdmin):
First, copy your .sql file into the xampp/mysql/bin folder; you might rename it to something simple, like hpkcc.sql; you can delete this file once you've completed the steps below.
Now the real fun starts:
- Start XAMPP (if you don't have it running already)
- Go to Windows' Start menu and click Run...
- In the box that comes up, type cmd and hit Return
- A new DOS window comes up; type the letter of your USB drive followed by a colon (e.g., G:) and hit Return
- Then, type cd xampp\mysql\bin (which changes directories to your bin folder where mysql lives and where you copied your .sql file) and hit Return
- Now start mysql by typing mysql.exe --user=root --password=unsafe (assuming you set your root mysql password to unsafe) and hit Return
- Finally, import the database by typing SOURCE hpkcc.sql (or whatever the name is of your .sql file) and hit Return
- You'll then see the queries run past; when the database is done importing, you'll just see the mysql> prompt; type exit, hit Return and then type exit again and hit Return again.
Done!
Email Notifications of Changed Pages
March 4, 2009There is no good plugin that allows the wiki to email you on a per-page basis when a page has been changed. But I think I've found a better solution that involves RSS feeds and feed readers.
Specifically, every page has an RSS feed that tracks its 10 most recent changes. For example, the course calendar's RSS feed is at
http://courses.karlstolley.com/537/CourseCalendar/revisions.xml
To access the feed for any given page, you can either use the feed icon in Firefox or other RSS-friendly browsers, or simply add
/revisions.xml to the end of the normal page URL.
If you put that URL into a feed reader, you can receive notifications that way. However, most of you are interested in having changes appear in your inbox. Here's where it gets interesting.
I discovered a site this morning called Notify Me at http://notify.me which is a cool, free service that will read RSS feeds and send you notifications of updates to them via Email, IM, and even SMS messages. So, each time someone changes a particular page on the wiki, you can get an email within a few minutes.
You simply sign up for an account at http://notify.me BUT, before you start entering feeds for pages on the wiki, you need to verify your email address (they send you a link to your inbox on sign up that you should click). Once you have done that, it's easy to start entering feeds and sending notification to your email account. To check to see if your email has validated, go to http://notify.me/user/destination. You should see "validated" next to your email address.
To start adding pages from the wiki to your account, go to http://notify.me/user/source/list which is a listing of all your
sources. To add a new wiki page to check, simply paste the full RSS URL into the input box at the top of your list. So, for example, to get notified when there are changes to the course calendar, simply copy and paste the URL http://courses.karlstolley.com/537/CourseCalendar/revisions.xml into the box. The same is true for any other wiki page you want to track.
Once you click the Add Site button, the page will refresh and show the title of the page you just added (e.g., CourseHome). There are four icons: IM, SMS, email, and app. (If the email icon is missing, you haven't validated your email address) Click to turn the links on or off; IM is on by default (for whatever reason), so I click to turn it off, and click email to turn on email notifications. (Icons appear washed out when that particular notification is turned off). You can leave the app icon on, should you decide to install their app.
It takes a few minutes for notify.me to catch the change, but when it does, you'll receive an email with, among other things, the note from your edit in the subject line and the editor's wiki name in parentheses. So make sure you're putting in meaningful notes with each edit.
Project One Turn-in Procedures
February 22, 2009Turning in Project One consists of two parts: the easy part is to post your memo to the wiki, prepended with your username (e.g., KarlSProjectOneMemo).
The second part is to package up your Drupal site so that I can install it over the top of a Drupal core on my own computer. Create a new, empty folder of your first and last name (e.g., karlstolley). Then, place into that folder everything from the backup instructions at BackingUpDrupal, ensuring that you have:
- A .sql or .sql.gz file named project-1-database
- Your complete sites folder
Then, send that folder to a .zip file and place it off the root of your USB drive. You'll turn in the drive to me.
If you have had any sort of administrative problem that you want me to look at and comment on, please email me your administrator username and password for the site. Again, if the password is something you use for your bank accounts, etc., change it before you back up the databases and email me.
Drupal Backups, Mac/XAMPP Instructions
Feburary 17, 2009I've added two new pages to the wiki: the first, on backing up Drupal, will be of interest to everyone (we will walk through a backup in class together tonight. The second is on installing and configuring XAMPP and installing Drupal on a Mac, for you Mac users out there.
Starting Tonight, A Code Editor is Essential
February 10, 2009Now that we're getting into Drupal theming, you'll need to have access to a good code editor that will make it easy to edit PHP, XHTML, XML, and CSS files. Dreamweaver can be used for these purposes, but there are free and open source alternatives (both of which I personally prefer to DW).
If you are a Windows user or if you are looking to run an editor off of your USB drive, you can't beat Notepad++. Download the ZIP (.bin.zip) of the latest version (currently 5.2) and extract it to your Desktop. You'll get two folders, ansi and unicode; throw the ansi folder away, and rename the unicode folder to Notepad++. Copy that folder to your USB drive. Open the folder, and you'll see the Notepad++ application file (and a bunch of other files that it needs). Double-click the Notepad++ icon, and you'll be off and running. But before you start coding, adjust your settings by going to Settings > Preferences and choosing the follwing tab:
- New Document/Open Save Directory
- Under Encoding, choose UTF-8 without BOM
- For Default Language, choose PHP (second item on the list, which is not alphabetized)
If you are a Mac user, give Smultron a try. You can't, however, run Smultron from your USB drive.
Installing Contributed Modules
February 3, 2009See the basic guide at http://drupal.org/node/120641 (Drupal 6); essentially, Drupal modules should be installed in the sites/all/modules folder in Drupal; (you will have to create the modules folder yourself).
Optimization
February 1, 2009I've posted a couple of new pages on optimization: one for XAMPP, and one for Drupal. Have a look at both.
As Soon as You Sit Down Tonight...
January 27, 2009Go to the XAMPP installation page and follow the instructions for downloading and unzipping XAMPP. The download will go fast (just put it right on your desktop), but the unzipping takes a bit longer (unzip it to your desktop, and move it to your USB drive after it's unzipped).
Also, I'm going to say something about this tonight, but if you find yourself getting behind where I am at in demonstrations, please speak up. I have no problem slowing or stopping if people are getting lost, but I can't know to slow or stop unless you say something. Otherwise, I will charge ahead at my own break-neck speed.
One of Our Tech Comm PhD Students Needs Your Help
January 27, 2009Please look at this note from Stephany, one of your fellow IIT graduate students, who needs subjects for her dissertation study.
Course Audio is Up
January 23, 2009Have a look at CourseAudio. Links are there, with a built-in, on-page audio player for your listening enjoyment. I've made sure no student voices are in the recordings, and that no one is mentioned by first and last name...
Site Design Change
January 22, 2009The design has changed, but the content's the same.
Room Change & Reminders
January 21, 2009We'll now officially be meeting in Siegel Hall 237, rather than Siegel Hall 236.
Also, be sure to add yourself to the People page, and email me your wiki name & Delicious account URL (e.g., mine is http://delicious.com/kstolley).
First Night of Class
January 20, 2009Welcome to the course website for COM537: Publication Management. You'll want to bookmark this site for future reference; beyond containing the policies for successful completion of the course, it also contains the course calendar with each week's class agenda and readings and activities for the next meeting. We'll go over both the policies and the calendar tonight.
One of the other important orders of business tonight will be for everyone to register on the wiki. A top-secret invitation code will be given in class that you'll need to register; please set your username (aka "wiki name") as your first name and last initial (e.g., Karl Stolley is KarlS, Jane Smith is JaneS and so on). Read more about naming conventions on the wiki. This will keep help everyone clear on who's doing what on the wiki, while also avoiding having this site show up in a Google search for your full name.
(By next week, edit your page with a short introduction to the class, and then add your name on the Course Members page in alphabetical order. See the WikiHelp page for more information on using the wiki.)
Also, if you don't have a Delicious or other social bookmarking account, you'll need to register for one. You'll use the tag com537 to mark links you find that are of relevance to the class--anything from Drupal tutorials to news stories with a content or project management angle to them. Starting next week, your com537-tagged Delicious bookmarks will appear on the wiki.
Finally, we'll spend just a little time tonight setting up a few other course technologies, and what's expected of you for next week.
Again, welcome to the course.--Karl
Author: Karl Stolley
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