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Drupal 6: Define SEO Meta Tags dynamically using hook_nodewords_tags_alter
Ever wanted to implement or alter meta tags on a custom page or a view? As most of you would have already heard of the excellent nodewords 6.x-1.11 (module which allows users to define their own meta tags for nodes and much more), we will use some of the very useful API functions of this module.
You can actually use the nodewords API to alter, inject and define your own meta data on virtually any page.
Say you have a view and you want to dynamically set the meta tags for that view? easy..
Step 1: Implement the hook_nodewords_tags_alter() hook
Drupal Forums instead of phpBB or vBulletin: A casestudy
For years I have been using phpBB for a busy community website that has over 162490 registered members. It has been a great ride, members are happy with the functionality and ease of use BUT from a development and security point of view it has been a painful experience.
As anyone who has ever installed, hacked and setup phpBB forum will tell you that due to the lack of hooks or modular nature of phpBB you have to hack core to add any additional functions. Prior to Drupal this was "acceptable loss" to me, but I have "come to my senses" and it is something that I would hate to do now.
For one of the work websites (www.mychild.co.uk) that is currently running on Drupal 5, we decided to expand the website and expand it to incorporate a forum. Fun times!! After much deliberation and discussions about pros and cons of each package, here is a "must have" that we decided upon:
Must have features
- Forums must share the same login as Drupal site
- MUST look and feel like a phpBB/VB forum
- Private Messenging
- Private Forums (moderate only - access by role)
- Email notifications of updates/comments
- Avatars
- Post count (in profile and forum posts)
- Star Ranking (based on post count)
- Rank Badge (based on role)
- Custom folder icons (keeping the look and feel close to phpBB)
- New posts since last visit
- Custom breadcrumb
- Banner blocks
- Ability to cross promote other drupal content types (based on term relationships)
- Attachments in comments (with limit)
- Quote
- Banwords
- Offsite links open in a new window
- Advanced search
ApacheSolr search for Drupal on CentOS
At the recently Drupal Camp Prague 09, I was introduced to ApacheSolr as a replacement to the standard Drupal search or the Google CSE.
On most sites the basic Google CSE setup is sufficient, however for some of the more serious "work" websites my colleague Nick and I got experimenting with the Drupal's implementation of ApacheSolr module.
Here is a quick and rough writeup on how it was implemented on work and my personal (janaksingh.com website).
