whartonstreet.com

Yay, my blog is back. It's been missing for at least a month or so. I noticed it had disappeared, but didn't have the time to troubleshoot and figure out what was going on. All that was displayed was "n/a" for each blog post. It came down to a corrupt table in the database.

When trying to access the drupal_node_revisions table I got this message:
...is marked as crashed and last (automatic) repair failed

My forum has been hit hard by spammers..I've been trying to clean that up and I'm wondering if that's where the error originated.

If you are a Drupal user and happen to stumble across this post because of the same issue, I ran a single SQL command to fix it. Simply, "repair table drupal_node_revisions". And that did it.

My shoutbox has been getting hit with a lot of spam lately. So, I put a CAPTCHA on there....see if that stops it. Sorry for the extra inconvenience.

Oh my I've been hit hard with spammers in the past few days. I just finished deleting about 200 comments. I guess I'm gonna have to do something to prevent it. I'm going to make anonymous comments need approval before showing to the page. I might implement captcha or something else in the future...not sure right now.

*edit - I've added a quick and easy math based captcha. Anonymous comments are now enabled without approval.

I've added a few new things to the site. There's a shoutbox on the right side now, so, give me a shout.

I've also added a discussion forum. A few topics have come up recently that need some discussing, so go there to participate. You will need to register an account to be able to post messages, but I tried to make that as painless as possible. Basically, just pick a username and password. No need to click a confirmation email or anything like that. I may have to change that in the future if it gets abused by bots, but that's how it is for now.

There is a login block at the bottom of the right sidebar. You can login there or on the forum page. The only extra thing you get by logging in is the ability to post in the forum. Everything else is available to unlogged visitors. I may create some exclusive content in the future only for logged in people, and I've thought about making some of the photo albums for logged in guests only, but that's another project for another day. For now only the forums require logging in.

Oooo, I'm really starting to feel the power of Drupal now. There's a steep learning curve to get started, but once you get the hang of it there isn't much you can't do.

Lately I've been learning how to create multiple sites to run off of a single Drupal installation. A couple days ago I put a page together for Kristen. www.whartonstreet.com/kristen Yep, just one day, and it was quite simple to do. It really didn't take long at all.

I'm really amazed at the simplicity of this technology. There is so much potential with Drupal and I feel I'm only beginning to scratch the surface of this truly powerful framework.

I'm just now going live with this new site. There may be a few bugs until I get everything worked out. If you come across one or see something you don't think belongs here, please let me know.

So, I have a completely new website now. This site is run on a Content Management System called Drupal. This makes it very easy for me to add new content and other thingies. I have lots of ideas for things to add in the future, but I'm just trying to get the basics up for now.

My photo gallery hasn't really changed though, just the cosmetics. I have added a good number of pictures from various times over the past year. Look at the recently uploaded section to see all the latest uploads in one place.

I think I'm just going to let my old blog die. I didn't really have enough posts in it to bother with converting them here, so, I'm just going to start fresh with this.

I'm really excited about this site though. I really have been working on it for quite a while. A recent (several months) addiction to World of Warcraft has definitely put a damper on my getting things done, but now that I'm far enough along to get the page up, I'm regaining my interest to do more.