Using Red 5 Flash media server with Drupal

I am working on a project where I wanted to be able to record audio through a web browser. Not having the $5000 to pay for Adobe Flash Media Server, I decided to try to use Red 5 instead.

My first step was to download Red 5 and get it installed locally. As I'm on a shared computer, I'm developing in Windows so I used the Windows version. It installs relatively easily, and you can check to make sure it is running smoothly by visiting http://localhost:5080, assuming you install it with the default port.

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Creating a module to allow a user to upload multiple files at once in a ZIP Archive

I am working on a website called Pedagogle.com which is intended to be a file sharing website for educators. The plan is, upload and categorize resources, and if enough people do this, and we have enough resources, then we end up with a website where teachers can go to find resources easily. The problem is that it takes a long time to upload and categorize each file, which leads to frustration from users.

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SWF Playlist module

This module let's you take a Podcast view you have created (or probably ANY audio podcast) and allow the JW Media Player 4 module (from the SWF tools module ) to play the audio feed as a playlist, automatically embedding the player as a block. Note that this is built for Drupal 6.

It does not have a lot of configuration options yet, you pretty much need to open up swf_playlist.tpl.php and modify it to suit the location of your feed.

swf_playlist.tpl.php
<?php
// get the location of the JW Media Player

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Add Help module

This is a module to help non-coders add help text to the top of any path, much like the core Help module does. One problem with the core Help module is that it relies on using hook_help to add the help text to the top of the page. This means that if you want to add help to a page which does not already have it, you need to create a custom module. This means that only the developers of the site can easily add help text, although once the text is added, a user with sufficient privileges could 'translate' the help text string and reword it however they like.

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Creating a better administrative interface for Drupal

One problem with Drupal is that the UI sucks for beginner users. They have great difficulty finding all of the most important administrative menu items they want to use. Since Drupal tends to group administrative items by general functionality and by module, it can tricky working where something is located for a beginner. Not to mention the fact, many beginning CMS users are terrified to death of 'clicking the auto-destruct link' by mistake and screwing up their work.

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Updated BookGUI

This is my BookGUI module, including the most recent updates (which are actually almost a year old). I don't consider it stable for a except for a development environment, but maybe someone can iron out a couple of the kinks I gave up on.

This allows you to edit the structure of a book (AKA the Book module) as well as add/delete pages to the book on the fly, all via an Ajax management page.

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Search Statistics for Drupal

Someone mentioned in one of the Drupal groups that they had created a very simple script to check how popular search terms, unique for IP address. In other words, how many different unique visitors have searched for a particular word. I just took their script and converted it to a simple module. Can't take much credit for this one.

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Basic templates for themes

There are 8 different basic usable website themes I can think of. I've listed them below. My intention is to find minimal mark-up that will produce these themes, with as wide a range of browsers as possible support.

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Simplifying pane creation using the Panels module

So I love the Panels module. It gives me much, much greater control over where I want to place my content, and how I create my blocks. It's stupendous.

It has a serious problem though, the actual construction of content is not meant to be done by a beginner. The form includes many unnecessary elements for a novice user and the process is confusing. Worse still, you can't use either the IMCE module or any WYSIWYG editor when creating custom panes. This is a serious issue for many of my users, most of whom will be publishing to the web for the first time.

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More detail on theme creation for Drupal 5

So I thought I should give more detail on how to create a theme for Drupal 5.

What I basically did was copy page.tpl.php, node.tpl.php, block.tpl.php, box.tpl.php, comment.tpl.php and template.php from the Garland theme. I then also created a file called page-front.tpl.php. This gave me a basic framework with which to work.

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