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Your Drupal website can now send notifications via SMS

MAR 10 2010

From now on, I can upgrade your site so it can be able to send SMS automatically.

Why? People is not always connected to the Internet, but they always carry their cell phones with them. That's why this service is so useful. You can't be sure they'll read an email from you, but most people reads all SMS they receive before deleting them. If you want to be extra-sure they are properly notified, you can send both an e-mail and an SMS, not a problem.

Get back your good name on the Internet

FEB 20 2010

So you've worked your ass off to have some quality online presence using your real name. Maybe you're a freelance trying to get gome buzz, generate some traffic to your site that translates into customers. You have a blog, some info about your business or company, profiles on LinkedIn and sites like that, you got some reputation. How is it going? Is it producing any benefit? You google your own name and...

Holy Goat of Babylonia! What's this?

This is what happened. You don't even appear on the first page of results. Instead of that, we see references to other people whose name is the same as you. Or even worse, someone is talking shit about you, and this someone has a better position in Google. Your business' online presence is at risk.

OK, you can whine if you want to. 10 minutes. After that, we're going back to work.

Modifying the contact form in Drupal: how to add a field

FEB 14 2010

Please notice: This article is for Drupal 6.

It would be great if we could add and remove fields to the contact form the same way we add them to content types using CCK, don't you think? But at this moment, this is not yet possible. As of today, there's no module that let us do it using the control panel. We need to do it "geek way", writing code.

The good news is that, as usual, we don't need to hack Drupal's core. We just use hook_form_alter to make the trick.

OK, let's do it.

Don't make me think!

FEB 11 2010

Usability? Keep reading...

Don't make me think!

This is the most useful book on building websites you'll ever find. Period.

Don't believe me. Read a chapter and see for yourself.

105% recommended.

Stop SPAM in your site being invisible. A honeytrap for Drupal comments form

FEB 08 2010

If you can see me, you're not human

The concept is quite simple. SPAMbots browse the Internet like mad searching for forms to fill with their crap about enlarging things and meds for your little soldier friend not getting hard enough and all that. OK, this is the game, they want forms to fill, we'll give them some.

Beware those that request control on your domain

FEB 05 2010

I've seen this happen again and again. Up and coming rock bands, small companies just trying move up the ladder, NGO trying to get their own space for communication... Some of them try to do all by themselves. Some others look for professional services. 

If having your own website was like building a house, it would be like this:

Someday, Google cache will save your ass

FEB 05 2010

You've got a site. A nice website. A page you haven't touch in weeks needs a change, you go for it. You edit the content, click on save... NO, WAIT! Oh, crap! You totally screwed it!

OK, before anything else, DON'T PANIC! There's a backup somewhere, you can download a 500 Mb daily or weekly backup, open it, get the database, install it in your own computer using Xampp or something like that, access to the database using PHPMyadmin, locate the table where your content is saved, search for the appropiate row, then...

Drupal for multiple languages, part two: content types configuration

FEB 03 2010

In the first article of this series, we configured Drupal core. Now we have to configure all the content types.

This site has four different content types: page, project, partner (this is for internal use) and article. Those articles are the blog posts. I am not using the blog module here, a blog is just a bunch of articles sorted by date, you don't need the blog module for that.

Anyway, Let's focus on our subject: configuring the content types to work in multiple languages.

Why Facebook connect can be a great idea for them but a bad idea for you

JAN 31 2010

Facebook Connect is a great idea, but if you're using it, you should understand that it poses some risks. Essentially, Facebook connect is a service for website developers that allow them to “hook into” your Facebook account.

What the benefit? Imagine you just discover a new great forum on red-haired pets. To participate on this forum, you must fulfill a form, choose a username, a password, write your username, validate your account, blah blah blah...