Majic

Some days ago I've decided to make a small update to my site by installing the <a href="http://drupal.org/project/comment_notify">Comment Notify</a> module. The module should help the visitors get updates on answers in the comment sections. The main reason I added this since some people have been asking me questions on some of the Free Software X.509 Cookbook pages (which is yet to be disclosed completely to public :), and to get a notification on answers they'd have to check manually.

The module installation was quite easy, and I've also done some testing prior to using it to make sure one can unsubscribe from the notifications. Should prove a useful improvement to the website.

I've also spent some time in the past weeks analysing my possible move to Drupal 7 which came out not so long time ago. This has also given me an opportunity to review some possible changes in the way I handled the content (primarily switching away from <a href="http://gallery.menalto.com/">Gallery2</a> to something more native to Drupal itself). I've ran into nice gallery-like module called <a href="http://drupal.org/project/galleryformatter">Gallery Formatter</a> which might prove to be what I need if I manage to allow for bulk uploads.

In the line of this analysis (or to be more precise searching for modules that'll make my use of site easier - both in terms of regular use and extending), I've come to conclusion that although a great piece of software, Drupal still lacks a bit on the ease-of-use. For example, I've had insane trouble finding anything which would allow me to rearrange fields in Drupal 7 on a per-node basis. You can rearrange them using views etc, but this is strictly valid for content types. It's also interesting that Drupal doesn't seem to offer any easy way of adding images inline. I've ran into one module that adds a link to create an appropriate HTML tag to images attached to the node, but it uses absolute URI's instead of relative ones, "breaking" the SSL in the process.

Another thing I've been looking for is implementing MediaWiki-like templates, which would get rendered dynamically. So far I haven't found anything functional (at least not for Drupal version 7). This is not such an important thing, though.

Another thing I've failed to find is the way to embed contents (full rendering) of another node in the node I'm editing.

All in all, I won't be making a switch to Drupal 7 anytime soon, and I might consider redesigning the way my site works (maybe even switching to something completely different, like having <a href="http://piwigo.org/">Piwigo</a>/Gallery3, MediaWiki, and Wordpress as separate installs (for needs of Gallery/Books/Blog). What I know is that first I'll probably try setting-up Drupal 7 to my liking, and if that one fails, I might end-up looking at alternatives.