Blogs

Drupal gives ability to control access to content.

If a user hits some content that gives a 403 error ( access denied ) either because they have not got correct access rights,
or are anonymous it is possible to control what happens next.

This php snippet does just that.

here are some simple examples of some SQL to get information from watchdog, using sql string matching...

SELECT message,timestamp FROM watchdog WHERE message LIKE '%daws%' 
AND type='user' AND message NOT LIKE 'notify%';

you get the idea...
to see how many password resets I'd asked for I'd do

SELECT hostname,message,timestamp FROM watchdog 
WHERE message LIKE '%Password%' and type='user' 
AND message LIKE '%ligh%';

or

SELECT COUNT(*) FROM watchdog 
WHERE message LIKE '%Password%' and type='user' AND MESSAGE LIKE '%dawson%';

OK .. rough notes on work in progress of the hot seat software ... basically so I can remember how to do it again.

There are quite a lot of settings to get right. Some through drupal, others on a shell on the webserver ( or however you mod the files on there )

Its work in progress but at this date can be found at http://hs.technologyandsocialaction.org

Eric Lee: Linux: The first 100 days

I notice that Eric Lee,who moved to linux shortly after the

first pradsa workshop, is still going strong in the free world.

Nice one!

Leonie recently asked me to add a feature to the technology and social action web site that allows participants to categorise the content on the site with their own tags. This we enabled by using the community tags module. She also asked to add a feature where a user tags would be available on their profile page. This took a little more work as this feature required a new module writing. I've just finished it.

Decision Making Tools

Online decision making tools and projects

The Decider - http://labs.riseup.net
A very simple site that helps groups to make decisions online. It enables the creation of “issues” (e.g. how should we spend this £1000?) and “options” (e.g. i) go on holiday ii) put it in a saving account iii) other). Users can then vote on how good they think each option is and/ or create a new option.

VoSnap - http://vosnap.com

The recent pradsa2 workshop at University of West of England had a session on decision making. Our group decided assess the design decisions in developing this web site. I'll start putting my understanding of that process here.

Before the first workshop I perceived the site to be a place where people would come to ( ie log in ), produce content ( ie blog stuff, post forum questions ), building a corpus of examples and knowledge.

We start tomorrow at Margrove Park. There's no plan. We'll just react to what atendees want to do and provide the vehicle. For the next 6 weeks there'll be an informal drop in between 4pm and 8pm.

They're sure to want to recap on how to edit their website www.margrovepark.com but we can now also offer email accounts of name@margrovepark.com courtesy of google apps. I've made this a link from the website called "Intranet". I couldn't thing what else to call it and if people personalise it to utilise document sharing etc then it really will be an Intranet.