drupal Archive

Here on CenterNetworks, we use the Drupal content management system and have tried a variety of spam blocking applications. Earlier this month on HTMLCenter, I explained how I believe spammers are able to attack posts we create within 1 second of posting. I’ve tried the basic spam plugin which was barely effective, Akismet which I believe is the most popular spam protection service and now we are using Mollom.

On our WordPress blogs, Akismet is awesome and blocks nearly all the comment spam that comes in. For some reason with Drupal, it seemed to let through a good bit of spam both in comments and in the Web Directory.

Last weekend I installed the new Mollom spam prevention service. Mollom was founded by Dries Buytaert who also founded the Drupal project. Perhaps that’s why the first Mollom plugin is for Drupal. Installation went very smoothly and I was up and running in minutes. The plugin provides a chart showing the number of spam messages destroyed by Mollom.

Mollom works differently than Akismet and also different than CAPTCHA verification. CAPTCHA verification forces each user to enter a code to let the system know they are human. I found adding this forced verification reduced the number of comments on CN – you want to make it as easy as possible for people to interact.

At a basic level, Akismet looks at each comment, compares it to their list of spam and if it’s deemed to be spam, it goes into a folder which you then have to check (or set to delete). I found that while Akismet caught the majority of the spam, going through the pages of spam looking for the few legitimate comments was taking nearly an hour a day.

Mollom works differently. When you post a comment on CN, Mollom scans the comment and if Mollom thinks it might be spam, it sends you to the CAPTCHA page. So while a few real comments might get sent to the CAPTCHA page, the majority go through without ever knowing Mollom is active. Here’s where Mollom gets bonus points. By sending the potential spams to the CAPTCHA page, I never see them and they aren’t in a spam folder – they just don’t make it. Hello one hour at the gym! So far, one spam comment made it to the live page – but it appears that comment was from a human.

Mollom works on the same pricing model as Akismet – free for most, pay for the largest sites and those that need customizations.

I’d like to see Dries add the ability to customize the message that a reader sees when Mollom thinks the comment might be spam. Right now the message suggests that the message might be spam and frankly if it isn’t sure, just ask the reader to enter the code, no reason is frankly needed. No reason to potentially piss off a reader.

There’s only one part of CenterNetworks that Mollom does not currently protect — trackbacks. If Mollom could remove the 8,000-10,000 trackback spams we get a day, I could easily turn them back on the site. Currently I have to manually look through each batch of 500 at a time to find the one valid one in between the 499 spams. It is just out of control.

Both Akismet and Mollom are some of the best spam protection services out there and while some bash when they miss, just think about if they weren’t around. I will report back after a longer period of time with more stats.

Quick announcement that the latest version of Drupal is live. It’s the 6.0 release and is the most robust to-date. We use Drupal on CN and after working with some of the largest CMS packages over the past 12 years, I can tell you that Drupal is the best I’ve worked with. The flexibility is awesome and the admin makes life easy.

There are too many new features to list here so check out what Drupal calls the “easiest version ever”. One of the biggest new features is drag and drop site admin which is similar to the modules option in the latest WordPress version. There’s also an in-depth screencast of the new features.

The only downside to upgrading is that you must have 6.0 versions of every contributed module used on your site or there might be pieces of the site that are broken. I will post another note once we’ve upgraded.

Back in August, we covered the NYC Drupal meetup at the Fast Company HQ in lower Manhattan. Fast Company showed off an early version of their new Web site which is built entirely in Drupal (as is CN).

As of this morning, the new site is live. While we normally don’t dive heavy into the backend technology, I’d say that the new Fast Company is utilizing the full power of Drupal. Lots of strong caching is in place, along with some other options within the config that help with loads. It looks like not all of the pages have been converted yet.

Here is an example page: This one asks users to provide input on who is the most creative mind in business today. Looks like Kevin Rose of Digg fame is a popular choice. I like the way they have worked to get site visitors involved in the site.

They are also using user profiles and groups — something we haven’t implemented yet. Once registered you can also setup your own blog within the Fast Company Web site.

Lastly, new acquisition Robert Scoble has his own section of the site. It includes his latest links from his link blog and other posts and videos by Scoble. While this looks like it was also part of the old site, I am guessing this will be a main piece of his online home when FastCompany.tv launches next month.

Quick note: We are now in the process of upgrading Drupal. Things might appear broken during the transition. Please remain calm with your hands and feet inside the site at all times. We expect the upgrade to be complete within 4-5 hours max. While we don't expect any downtime, you might have to refresh multiple times to view your desired page. Thank you for your patience.

Tonight I had the pleasure of sitting with about thirty Drupal folks of all experience levels down by the World Trade Center. This space will always hold a special place in my heart as it was the first place I worked after college and lost a lot of friends on 9/11. It's always a bit emotional to go back there. So many tourists taking pictures and videos of the area.

Ok, on to the meetup. The meetup was hosted by Mansueto Digital. They produce magazines such as Fast Company, Inc., and IncTechnology. Awesome space, but where were the drinks! At least water in a cooler? Deduct 4 points for no water offering during the summer.

First up was a man who spoke about using Drupal for DNA research. Way over my head but it looked very interesting. Basically he has a 30 gig database of DNA "stuff" which he is using drupal to pull out his specific needed content and creating new content pages from the mashed-up content. It's not live so I can't link to it, but it was groovy.

Next up was Paul Maiorana from Mansueto Digital who took us thru the new FastCompany web site. I have a video but Paul asked me not to post it as it contains their development url which is not secured. From what I can tell, it's a start page plus a social network all built on Drupal with some external help from the Lullabot team.  They are looking to hire two Drupal developers, if interested drop me a line and I will put you in contact with Paul.

Last up was a developer who seemed to be willing to make demands on the clients or pass on the work. He showed us his latest work at Thehotreportonline.com which uses a flash replacement option to create the text based on font switching – was pretty neat.

I am still so impressed by the amount of community we have around the software and programs we use online. Here are 30 people all willing to help others for free with their questions and concerns. We should never forget how great we have it. Get out to a meetup sometime and share your knowledge and learn something new.

Here are my pictures from the event – check out the last one – it's one of my best photos – awesome reflection off the buildings back inside to the wall.

I decided to take today and use it as a public relations day for the Fat-Off. Thanks to Scott, I sent about 20 PR e-mails to other weight loss community sites to see if they would either participate or provide some coverage for the Fat-Off. And I contacted PRWeb about creating a press release. They want $299 to create the release which frankly I would rather not spend right now. So I may have a friend work on the press relase. Let me know if you have any other ideas for getting the word out about the Fat-Off.

I have the review for RunFatBoy about 85% complete but decided to do some exciting PHP code for the evening. I figure I have enough weight to lose that RFB can hold for another day :)

You will see some changes and you won’t see other changes I made. But I assure you that all of them will help enhance your experience in using CenterNetworks. Some of the changes include:

• Addition of a Get Involved bar at the top of all content pages – this should help with the viral ability of the site
• New style for comments – still working this out a bit
• Faster page rendering
• Other misc tweaks which I cannot share since we are on a code orange alert level

We will be applying to be a 9rules site on Wednesday, I wonder if they will accept us.