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Nancy's Questions setting up ncwu.nccommunities.org

Submitted by nshoe on Tue, 10/21/2008 - 6:21pm

This really isn't a good way to have this discussion... Will work to clean it up later... - nes

5. Configure user management

User settings

Q: What does "e-mail confirmation" mean if users must be created by the admin? Anything?

* I don't think it does anything. When you create a new user you have the opportunity to send them email or not. -- JHH 10/24/08

Roles

Q: Is each user assigned exactly one role? No. The roles are cumulative and so can be set up as a role (set of permissions) for different tasks, and then when a user is created he can be assigned multiple roles.

* I haven't worked much with roles. Did you find somewhere that a user can be assigned multiple roles? -- JHH 10/24/08
** Yes -- nes 11/5

Q: What does "locked" mean in the anon and authenticated user roles? [I inadvertently changed the authenticated user roles without any problem.]

* I think it means that you cannot you can't edit the role so you cannot delete it. -- JHH 10/24/08

** ? I'd believe "cannot delete" but I did say I was able to edit the roe -- nes 11/5

6. Site configuration

Q: Does the link indicated for /admin/settings work before "clean urls" are enabled? It works after they're enabled then disabled, so what does "clean urls" mean? Does it just mean that clean URLs will be generated? Or does it also mean that this has to be selected at least once before they'll be recognized. [I'm assuming that setting them changes .htaccess as well as an option in the code on how to generate urls -- does disabling it unset the .htaccess change?]

* See http://hallman.nccommunities.org/glossary#cleanurl. I guess I should copy the Glossary to the Drupal resources section. I'll just put in a link for now. I don't know how it interacts with .htaccess if at all -- JHH 10/24/08
** Yes, I understand clean urls in principle. But next time you set up a site, see if /admin/settings/ works before you enable clean URls. Maybe they're okay in the admin area "out of the box". -- nes 11/5

Q: Time zone. Does Drupal automatically adjust for DST?

* Yes, I'm pretty sure it does. -- JHH 10/24/08
** It didn't appear to do the switch automatically -- and since I can't find a configuration option to choose the DST algorithm, that's not surprising. For sites where all the users are going to be in the same timezone, I'd suggest (on /admin/settings/date-time) disabling the "users can set their time zone". Then the administrator just has to do it once for the site instead of each user doing it. [See http://drupal.org/node/11077 discussion from 2004, but it doesn't seem to have been cooked yet. It may be on the roadmap for v7, but we're still v5.x, right?] This may be one reason for the preference for "amount of time ago" messages instead of specific dates/times. But still... [To be fair, if you'll let me use the W word, WP doesn't handle it automatically either ...] -- nes 11/4

15. Configure TinyMCE

Q: How come the Firefox spell chk doesn't work in this TinyMCE windo ?  http://drupal.org/node/135150

Q: Do all the roles need to be checked or would authenticated user apply to all others. [See above.]

* Hum... I've been checking all the roles, but if you create a new role, you wouldn't necessarily think to come here and add the new role. -- JHH 10/24/08

* Be careful when editing a profile -- I accidently clicked delete instead of edit and my profile was deleted immediately. -- JHH 10/24/08

21. Image and Inline

Q: Near the end there's a reference to "inline image" but it looks like just "inline" to me. I'm not sure what that's supposed to do since it indicates it's not

* I need to go back and rework the image stuff. What I had earlier is more complicated than needed. -- JHH 10/24/08

Other things

  1. NCCommunities has a page that talks about the GIMP. Well, yeah. But there are online crop/resize tools that may be all that most folks need to post pictures here.

    * Good. Can you add some links? When I asked the CTCNet list, they said to use GIMP. -- JHH 10/24/08
    ** Google "image crop resize". The first link, http://www.drpic.com/, seems reasonable, but I didn't test it or check other options. I still use an ancient copy of PaintShop, so I'm not too motivated to investigate. Maybe another query to another list? Idealware hasn't addressed this, have they? -- nes 11/4

  2. On that page about GIMP (a book page, right?) there's a table of contents at the top, but it looks as if it's coded by hand. So my comparing a book to a wiki wasn't quite right -- that TOC would have been generated automatically in at least some wiki systems.
    * Yes, I manually put in that table of contents. -- JHH 10/24/08
  3. I've got "directory" at the top of the admin menu. What is that? Update: Maybe I created it? If so, how do I now delete it? I see "disable," but not "delete."
    * I disable it. I found http://drupal.org/project/directory . It looks interesting to investigate. -- JHH 10/24/08
    * I don't know anything about taxonomies, so that page doesn't make much sense. May get back to it later -- nes 11/4
  4. In the admin/by-module, what's the order in which the modules are listed? It looks as if it's

    A B

    C D

    E F

    but it doesn't account for the fact that A/B, C/D, E/F are not pairs of the same length so the eye needs to bounce around to follow the order. What's up with that?
    * Yes. It's a little hard to follow. Perhaps they've improved it in Version 6. -- JHH 10/24/08

  5. Is there any plan to improve the consistency of the naming conventions? Particularly when there are (relatively) long alphabetical lists of things? Is it "news aggregator" (under "n") or "aggregator" (under "a").
    * I don't know. They are probably listed under the module name. -- JHH 10/24/08
  6. Is there a better news aggregator? or am I using this wrong? What I'd like is more like www.ncwu.org/news/ . The limit on the # of articles from each site (5) may be working, but I'd like a checkbox to configure whether or not to show the feed text or just the headline. Update: I put things in categories and then the "source" appeared (or maybe it was there all along) and it seemed to be doing what I wanted. I was able to make a new menu item link to that page.
  7. From admin/settngs > Input Formats, there's a configure link on each row. Clicking the link takes the user to the View screen for the format, where it's possible to configure some things, but then there's another Configure screen. Maybe instead of tabs labeled "View/Configure" they should be labeled "Configure/Advanced"?