This is the 2nd feature I've added recently, the first one being the Bloggerfeeds section, which shows feeds from 18 and counting Mom Blogs at the moment. Some blog more often than others naturally, but I'm getting good stuff for the most part.

I realize I'm happy working on my sites, and frequently when I go out such as attend events and whatnot, I compare how fun it'd be to working on the sites. Other than the fact that it's great to see something work out, it's great to actually make 'web services' that aim to help people. Jesus Christ I know that sounds corny, but I think about Book Reviews, for example, and I envision a time when a parent would find an interesting review there and buy the book for their kid. Wouldn't that be fun? Wouldn't that be far more helpful than, say, declaring on Facebook or making a blog post about how you want to eradicate illiteracy, but stop short there? Wouldn't that be far more effective and efficient than, say, joining a rally on the streets?

I know in effect I'm patting my own back after writing what I just did, but it really really makes me feel good to do stuff like this. I know for sure that yeah it might not catch on real quick, or that people might use it for whatever other purpose it might serve them (such as self - promotion or whatever), but I figure the benefits outweigh whatever bad stuff it might do. I figure most people would catch on to what I'm trying to do, and get with the program. I certainly hope so.

Well that's it. It's 747pm on a Thu night and tomorrow is another fun day with my wife - to - be where we'll attend an event (!), and hopefully catch a movie.

After which on Sat or next Mon or whenever I can, I'll work on something else. I sooooo love what I do. Now if it were only more profitable.

I am without a doubt focused on this 100%, to the point wherein I feel I have reached the point where I possibly hinge its success upon that of my own, as a person, that is. A risky, and foolhardy proposition, considering that it is merely, at the end of the day, a website.

Regardless, I like to think of myself as competent in no small way in the making, planning and creation of such things, and therefore am placing a great deal of weight upon its success. To my mind I am convinced I have a winner. There is no hindrance to the top of the heap. No blockage, no a speck of dust, obstructing it from its goals. As long as I perform all the tasks I ask of me, all I envision of it will come true. It all depends on me.

That is the reason of course, why it is taking me so long. That, and, the carrying out of the complex plans I have drawn up for it. It has come to the point wherein I sleep with a PHP reference book in my hands. A coding book. Not one of literature, not of adventure or love or mystery or other fancies of fiction. A coding book, in order for me to get it right.

For if it were only the mere act of putting it up for the world to see, I would have finished by now. But no, I need it to be as near perfect as can be. There is always something that needs fine tuning, always something I need to tweak and twist and turn every which way to point it the right direction.

Finish though, I must, for there must be closure after all this preparation. Onwards, I continue, tomorrow.

I've worked all day on MomEx and finally got some semblance of the Yahoo! Answers like system I've been saying I'm gonna implement for such a long time. Only thing I didn't get done was to put a voting system for the comments so that the person who posted the question (or the people) can vote which answer is best. I tried using the vote up or down module which can implement voting on nodes and comments. I can turn off voting on the nodes which I don't need, but voting on comments applies to all content types and not just the question content type I created. That sucks because again, I only want voting on comments for the questions, not comments on, say, the blog entries.

The solution apparently is to make comments into nodes, but the problem there is that you'll have to disable the core comment module and therefore delete all existing comments, so that's not gonna happen. It's obviously a good solution for brand new sites, though, so am applying that to the one I'm launching soon.

That's it really, that's the big drama of today.

x backup momex db
x backup momex files (everything)

x create mom1 (backup of wp)
x make mom1 work

x activate zen / momex
x activate offline mode

x download momdrupal in delayed inserts (works with bigdump)

x delete all modules in stock momdrupal
x copy all modeuls in 192momdrupal
x upload all modules from 192momdrupal to new momdrupal

x edit settings.php

Some terms:

• Mom1: the previous MomEx in WordPress.
• Zen: The amazing Drupal Zen Starter Kit theme that takes the pain (well, not totally but still quite a lot) out of Drupal theming. Love it.
• momdrupal: The 23mb. sql backup.
• 192momdrupal: My test momex installation on my server.
• bigdump: The absolutely essential open source tool that allows you to migrate large sql dbs. Absolutely essential since php only allows uploads of 2mb., so if you've got anything larger than that, you're in a fix. Oh did I say absolute essential? Just in case I forgot to add: Absolute Essential.

The only thing left is a weird clean urls issue that prevents me from using the permalink structure wordpress was using. Losing the permalinks is gonna be a disaster SEO wise, so I gotta try and make that work. Seems like I have hope though, with PathAuto, which seems fit for the job.

I haven't read through it yet since at this point, I've gotten tired. At the moment if you go to MomEx you'll see a 'we are offline' page which is an edited version of Drupals. I added a Feedburner Subscribe form to increase my subscription whilst working on the site. Cheeky, but I think it's useful.

At this rate MomEx will be up either tomorrow or Wed.

I used WordPress Import, a pretty powerful tool which is still in development mode. On the surface it's a straightforward process of installing the module, uploading your WordPress .wxr file and then mapping out which posts are 'owned' by which users (aka authors). It then transfers both posts and comments associated with it.

It becomes a hell of a lot more complicated though when your .wxr file is 17mb. like mine, and I have nearly a hundred different subscribers and authors.

The actual migration is extremely resource intensive, so to upload the big file and handle the job you need to tweak these things: One, php.ini to allow for a large upload (the default is only 2mb.), and Two, Drupal's settings.php to allow for both a longer session time and to for more RAM to do the job, otherwise you will receive errors midstream like I did, and only transfer, say, half your posts or an increment instead of all.

To be specific, I changed the line at php.ini from this:

; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
upload_max_filesize = 2M

to this:

; Maximum allowed size for uploaded files.
upload_max_filesize = 64M

Then you'll need to add these two lines to your settings.php:

ini_set('memory_limit', '128M');
ini_set('max_execution_time', 0);

Naturally you'll need to restart the webserver and make sure everything, including your other sites hosted on it, is fine. If you're doing this on a live server (meaning there are people reading the website), you need to do it quickly, then return the settings to their original immediately.

It so happened I bought a new domain so I'll be practicing on that one first before finally jumping onto MomEx.

Another issue that's been licked is the 'Clean URLs' problem. As I use Lighttpd, using .htaccess rules is out of the question, but I managed to find a good tutorial here, and another one that deals with imagecache issues, an important feature to handle images, using Lighttpd here.

There's only one more issue I need to fix before finally getting it all together.

MomEx's pageviews are counted by a WordPress Plugin called Clickcounter, which as the name suggest, registers a 'click' everytime someone views a page and displays it on the page plus stores it in the db.

A transfer to Drupal will negate all the registered hits! Drupal has its own click counter equivalent I'm sure, and I could probably tweak it to start counting where it left off, but that would require some MySQL magic which I'll have to investigate.

I know it sounds a little vain to want to keep all those registered hits but hey, we worked for those, some of which have gone up to the thousands. It'd be a pity to just lose it all.

When I do get that fixed there's the issue of finally migrating the site while it's online. That means I'd have to take it down for a a day or two just to make sure everything works. I can probably start on it in the morning and if I don't get it working, use the backups and go back to the old site in the evening, then start again the next day. The documentation I've read never mentioned these, as they all assumed you'd be migrating to a different domain. Migrating from WordPress to Drupal using the same domain is something new, so I plan to document it.

As with most daunting techie tasks I'm usually overwhelmed at the start but I eventually get over my wussiness and fix it, usually realizing it wasn't all that hard as I thought it was. In other words, I'm confident, and let's face it, getting something to work when a minute ago it seemed impossible feels GREEEAAAAT.

I'm excited about the fancy stuff I can implement once I get it on Drupal for sure, but the tremendous geekiness of it all is partly why I'm doing it as well I think.

Asides: I wanna show posts (or post titles, or post titles with excerpts) from specific categories on the sidebar. I have done this with limited success on BallEx on a category I called 'PBA Notes' (ftg. news fresh from the PBA), but unfortunately WordPress counting mechanism counts these posts as part of the posts that it should display on the front page, so everytime I post to the PBA Notes category, it removes a post from the index. It's not a terribly difficult issue and is 'resolved' somewhat by merely posting more (which I should be doing anyway), but it's kept me stumped for too long a while already, and prevents me from putting even more categories on the sidebar. At the moment the setting on BallEx for 'Options > Reading > Blog Pages show at most:" is set at 30.

As I mentioned on this post, the best Aside Plugin seems to be Katesgasis' Sideblog, but it has unfortunately not been since 2006.

Limited User Info: A lot of other WP users out there wanna do this as well. I'd like to put more relevant fields for users, such as address, mobile numbers and so on. Drupal users know this is very easy with CCK + Views. I haven't visited this issue for a while though, so there may have been developments.

Postie: Postie is a plugin that allows you to publish posts via email. While WP hanoles that natively using (the very simple) wp-mail, Postie allows great flexibility such as category, author, subject, comments closed or comments open, and even set a delay from 1 day to 1 minute. It's terrific if you are, say, posting from the road, or like me, which needs to publish multiple posts to multiple blogs at any given time. It also allows for an automated system that will allow me to post rss feeds or emails from mailing list subscriptions. In other words, I don't have to login each time. Instead, I just send an email. It's wonderful.

It also has not been updated since 2005. Recent comments on the Postie page are mostly requests for updates and pledges of donations, but no go. I am unsure if Drupal has a direct solution to this problem, but for some reason I am confident I can either find one or hack one in.

EventCalendar RSS: For some reason the RSS feeds for the EventCalendar category (I named rather unimaginatively as 'events') RSS feed does not work, inspite of using the instructions here. Meanwhile, I've managed to get all RSS feeds for all categories (and all my blogs) to work properly, so in other words, I'm stumped yet again. This is frustrating as I really wanna do fancy things with my Events Feed - something that's been on my todo list for.. months I think.

Updating: Finally this is an issue that has to do more with blogging software per se rather than WP itself. I read an interview once of BoingBoing.net's owner saying that we shouldn't be afraid to update specific posts as necessary, even if they've been posted already (as opposed to making a whole new post, especially if the updates are merely incremental). The solution is to edit the post and write 'UPDATE:' or something like that, underneath. This isn't very elegant.

I wanna look for a better solution for situations such as those. The dates and permalinks to posts that have been updated remain same, so on the surface, there is no indication that it has been updated. Once a post has been updated and re-updated, it's RSS feeds, I believe, still shoot off to RSS readers, but they look like the same post (unless the subscriber of course, investigates to check if there's something new). Otherwise if they just look at the title and excerpt, it looks the same. There must be a better way.

Drupal things I can do in addition to resolving above issues:

A much better Shopping Cart: I've been bleeding for a better shopping cart than the handmade one I have. I am currently testing Drupal's Ubercart.

Forum: Drupal's simple forum is way better looking than phpbb. PhpBB, from which I trace my programming roots, is great, no doubt about it. But it also doesn't look very good imho, and aesthetics is important whilst dealing with my target audience (girls and moms). Besides, if I use Drupal's Forum, it can integrate with other services like the blogs, and can be turned into a service that I really wanna try (which shall remain secret because I don't want anyone preempting me).

In summary I basically wanna take my blogs to the next level, and convert them into full fledged, gloves are off, firing on all cylinders, WEBSITES. Featuring community abilities, membership, relevant user info, public and (membership only) private information and so on.

The blog ability will always be its main draw. Great Writing and Content is what makes really good terrific blogs in the first place. People love to read, learn and be entertained, and that's what blogs deliver. But once they're 'there', I wanna make them do other things as well, and WP falls short of that because that's not what it was designed for.

I think I'll do MomEx first. It's gone from being number 1 in its category at PhilTopBLogs to number 8, so it needs more help than the others.

It's taken me a long time to decide which free blogging place to use and although wordpress.com has its limitations, it's certainly less limited than blogspot and LJ. Or at least, as far as I know since the last time I checked, which has been awhile. Suffice it to say I'm not completely sold on staying here, and I do wanna check out the others, although it's time consuming and besides, it's just for a personal blog right?

Nah. You know what? Why don't I just go flat out and just say I'm lazy. Yeah that hit the nail on the head right there.

At any rate since I'm rambling here, I'll just make a quick mention of the fact that I'm happy I've finally gotten a hang of Drupal and it's companions CCK and Views. And you know what? The mere fact that I actually take time to mention such a thing is proof enough that dealing with Drupal is not a task for the weak, no sirree.

I've known 'the power of Drupal' for some time now, and have been quite aware of its success, but I swear to God learning how to develop a fairly ordinary site using it sometimes makes you wanna tear your hair out. But lo and behold, as of the latter part of last week I actually had something decent going for a client, and it looks like I'm pretty much on my way. Of course having said that some ginormous complex problem is gonna crop up that will stun me yet again, but I'm pretty confident now, at least more than in a long time since I've been trying to get it going.

In the meantime however, I'm almost sure I can answer near 90% of anything WordPress can throw at me. I know it sounds like hot air but it's true, and given the fact I run a whole bunch of WordPress sites means that I should be pretty good at it by now. And also, I'm just saying that to compare how difficult Drupal is, as compared to WordPress. I'm sure a lot of Drupal diehards are gonna wanna scalp me for saying that, but hey, it's true. It's very powerful true, but it's also very very difficult to customize and theme.

Many times I felt like just making the site from scratch but for some odd reason, I hung on. It might be because I like pain, but more likely it's because I think I kept finding something nice about it which is why I kept at it. Now that things are moving along I'm actually starting to think of new projects that I can do with it.

No, actually two. One has to do with a techie type site where I can post howto videos that deal with mostly webmaster subjects (and yes, I hope to include WordPress and Drupal howtos in there), hopefully to help keep people from having to spend a hell of a whole lot of time grappling with it like I did, and also because since Paypal has (somewhat) finally allowed incoming cash in, I wanna give the 'Donate' Paypal method a try. I think it might work.

And the other project has to do with a directory slash registry type of listing with a membership system that'll help people find a certain thing faster. Nope, no details yet, I don't wanna get that idea stolen. Besides, I really haven't gotten deep into the details of theming a Drupal site as well as I'd want it to look which means a look as far away from the ridiculously ugly geeky default themes it comes with. Yep I know I am once again stoking the ire of the Drupal faithful, but I challenge everyone other than the medically blind to say that the default themes are pretty. I mean seriously.