modules

The number of available Drupal modules is continuing to grow dramatically. Like a lot of other Drupal users, I spend a good deal of time downloading new modules and trying them out to see what they do. Unfortunately, not all contrib modules work as advertised. I may spend several hours working with a new module before realizing there's some small issue with it that prevents it from solving my problem.

Similarly, there are often modules out there that solve problems I didn't even know I had, but I'm simply not aware they exist.

What I want is a resource that leverages the experience of thousands of Drupal administrators. I want to know that I shouldn't even bother with a module because it's too buggy. I want to know what modules other users find useful in specific areas (such as multimedia, file handling, cache issues, etc.).

Other large OSS communities often solve this need for a shared knowledge base by providing user reviews. Mozilla, Thunderbird, Joomla and other modular systems provide user reviews and ratings. It is time that the Drupal community have one too.

Views bulk operations is ready for some beta testers.

It is essentially the admin nodes page on steroids. It enables you to perform node operations as well as actions from a custom view.

Drupal books are a great way to organize content. Unfortunately, there is no way to control access to individual books by default. Like default forums, it's all or nothing.

The Book Access module adds the ability to set view, edit and delete access control for individual books and all pages therein.  

This module has no official release as it needs to be tested. The development snapshot is ready for testing though.

Until the mid 90s, spam was a non-issue. It was exciting to get email. The web was also virtually spam-free. Netizens respected one another and everything was very pleasant. Those days are long gone. Fortunately, there are some pretty amazing tools out there for fighting email spam. I use a combination of SpamAssassin on the server side and Thunderbird (with its wonderful built in junkmail filters) on the desktop. I am sent thousands of spam messages a day that I never see thanks to these tools.

But approximately five years ago, a new type of spam emerged which exploited not email but the web. Among this new wave of abuse, my personal favorite, comment spam.

I love getting comments on my blog. I also like reading comments on other blogs. However, it's not practical to simply allow anyone who wants to leave a comment, as within a very short period of time, blog comments will be overrun with spam generated by scripts that exploit sites with permissive comment privileges. To prevent this, most sites require that you log in to post a comment. But this may be too much to ask of someone who just wants to post a quick comment as they pass through. I often come across blog postings which I would like to contribute to, but I simply don't bother because the site requires me to create an account (which I'd likely only use once) before posting a comment. Not worth it. Another common practice is the use of "captchas" which require a user enter some bit of information to prove they are human and not a script. This works fairly well, however, it is still a hurdle that must be jumped before a user can post a comment. And as I've personally learned, captchas, particularly those that are image based, are prone to problems which may leave users unable to post a comment at all.