Since I've now had this site online for just two weeks I think I can say a little about Drupal and SEO. SEO stands for "Search Engine Optimization", which means setting up your site to help the Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, etc) figure out what pages are on your site and what those pages are about.

The one thing that didn't go smoothly in my install of Drupnewb.com on Lunarpages was the cron job. I've run cron manually a few times for DrupNewb, but now it's time to try and get this running correctly.

It seems that all you need to do is run the php program cron.php which is right in the root of Drupal. As I have previously set up cron jobs to optimize the MySQL tables for the custom CMS systems I have written, it wasn't too hard for me to get cron.php running for Drupal.

In my last post I really needed to have a few html <h3> tags to break things up. However, it seems that <h3> tags, as well as most other html tags, are turned off by default. So, I needed to go into the admin panel and allow a few more tags than are the default.

On the Administer » Site configuration » Input formats --> View page I had "HTML Filters", "Inline images", "Line break converter", and "URL filters" checked. I had "PHP evaluator" unchecked.

When learning a new language or system I always like to write a simple "Hello World" program. Therefore, to learn about Drupal Modules I have written "hello_drupnewb".

Perhaps this is a good time to stop and say a little about myself. You can see my complete resume here: www.LarryTruett.com

OK, so now that I have blog images working I'll write a bit more about the San Diego Drupal meeting. It was held on Novmeber 20, 2007 at the Cream Coffee Bar (www.newtosandiego.com/Cream-Coffee-Bar/) in University Heights. Another account of this meeting can be found at http://groups.drupal.org/node%252F7003.

In my last post I talked about adding the Image module. I added the Image module because I wanted to add a photo to a blog post. While adding Image allowed me to upload images to the DrupNewb site, it did not allow me to add them to my blog posts. I looked out on the Drupal.org forums, and found this post (http://drupal.org/node/193156) which said that I need the Image Assist module and why. Essentially, using the Image module allows me to upload images as "Nodes" on their own. Image Assist makes it possible to add images as supporting content for other Nodes. Makes sense.

I've been away from Drupal and Drupnewb for about a week as we moved from an apartment here in San Diego to a house. I hope my legions of fans haven't been too disappointed...

Anyway, last Tuesday, November 20th I attended the local San Diego Drupal Group meeting (groups.drupal.org/node%252F4038) held at the Cream Coffee Bar (www.newtosandiego.com/Cream-Coffee-Bar/). It was great to meet some other local Drupers, and Harry Slaughter (www.devbee.com) did a very nice presentation on what to expect from Drupal 6.

To get Drupal set up the way I wanted for DrupNewb I did need to change a few settings.

admin->site configuration->clean URLS
I enabled clean urls

admin->site configuration->site information
I set the Name to "DrupNewb"
I set the Slogan, Mission Statement, and Footer messages.
I set anonymous user to "Visitor"

admin->site building->themes
I set the default theme to bluemarine
In bluemarine->configure I set it to display logo, site name, and site slogan.
I also set up a new site logo, which I talk about in my last blog.

admin->site building->modules

One of the first things I wanted for my newbie site was a newbie logo. I used Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 to create my logo, using the shape tool to create the iconic kitten logo. I got a ton of shapes from the Adobe Exchange for Custom Shapes (www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/). I originally wanted to use a baby for the logo, but I couldn't find a baby shape and I could find a kitten. So, A kitten it was.