Moving Drupal from one host to another

You've got a Drupal site running and now want to move it to another server which is bare-bones. This server is luckily running Ubuntu, which makes installing the rest of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) stack a one-line operation:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

The install process will stop at one point to ask for the password of the root user for MySQL. Once the install completes, use the MySQL command-line client to add in the same database (an empty one) and user that Drupal uses.

Use mysqldump to dump out the Drupal database data into an sql file. Load it in the new database, populating it. You'll want to tar up the whole directory where the Drupal files reside (not forgetting the .htaccess) and expand it out in the same location within the new machine. You may (not) need to edit sites/default/settings.php or .htaccess for any host information changes. settings.php is also where you edit the database login information, if you decide to use different ones.

With Apache running, you should be able to hit the new Drupal site. It looks to be running but there are a few gotchas. If you are (most likely) running Clean URLs, the links don't work anymore. You'll need to disable it to get navigation working at http://hostname/?q=admin/settings/clean-urls, maybe going through http://hostname/?q=user to log in first. To set up Clean URLs again, you need to run this line:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

And edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default, changing the AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All inside the directory with the path /var/www, or where the Drupal files live. Restart the server and you find that you can enable Clean URLs now.

The other gotcha is that the status report is complaining it can't find the PHP GD library. Apparently PHP library is installed but not configured so you run these lines:

sudo apt-get install php5 (optional?)
sudo apt-get install php5-gd

Lastly, cron needs to be set up to update the Drupal site. I use curl so the lines are:

sudo apt-get install curl
crontab -e
0 * * * * curl --silent --compressed http://localhost/cron.php

The last line is done inside the vi editor so after that, save and quit.

Congratulations! Your Drupal site is now running fine on the new machine.

Google Analytics not showing Firefox and Internet Explorer hits, only Safari and Chrome

If you find your Google Analytics is not showing any results for Firefox and Internet Explorer and everything is correct with no problems on the Javascript side, you might want to take a closer look at the GA code. It might be that all the code is in one script block like so:


<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="'+gaJsHost+'google-analytics.com/ga.js" type="text/javascript"%3E%3C/script%3E'));

try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker('UA-XXXXXXX-X');
pageTracker._trackPageview();
}
catch (err) {}
</script>


The code that GA gives you to use is no mistake, you need to separate them out into two blocks:


<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="'+gaJsHost+'google-analytics.com/ga.js" type="text/javascript"%3E%3C/script%3E'));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker('UA-XXXXXXX-X');
pageTracker._trackPageview();
}
catch (err) {}
</script>


The first code block is responsible for downloading the ga.js. That file needs to be loaded up before the second code block can execute properly. If they are in the same block, the try code will fail and no exception or alert is given.

Below are three separate posts covering the same question:

• GA not tracking Mozilla or Firefox. Only shows Chrome and safari Clicks


• Reports not showing some browsers


• Analytics not showing visitors using Internet Explorer

The last comment here lets you know what to look for in troubleshooting Google Analytics. The GA cookies are named __utma, __utmb, __utmc, __utmz, and __utmv and if you do not have any of them, GA is not working.

Groovy Tutorial for MongoDB

Java Tutorial (http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Java+Tutorial)

Since Groovy is based on Java, you can make use of the Java driver for MongoDB as well as go through the tutorial shown above. The code can be used as-is or modified to look more groovy.

Create a groovy file (mongo.groovy) and place the Java driver in the same directory. Edit it so the code looks like:

this.class.classLoader.rootLoader.addURL(new File("mongo-0.6.jar").toURL())

import com.mongodb.*

DBAddress address = new DBAddress("localhost", "mydb")
Mongo db = new Mongo(address)
db.authenticate('testUser', 'testPassword')

DBCollection coll = db.getCollection("testCollection")

BasicDBObject doc = new BasicDBObject()
doc.put("name", "MongoDB")
doc.put("type", "database")
doc.put("count", 1)

BasicDBObject info = new BasicDBObject()
info.put("x", 203)
info.put("y", 102)
doc.put("info", info)

coll.insert(doc)

for(i in 1..100) {
coll.insert(new BasicDBObject().append("i", i))
}

println coll.getCount()

DBCursor cursor = coll.find()
while(cursor.hasNext()) {
println cursor.next()
}

You can see it's just a rehash of part of the Java tutorial, the output will be a count of the number of inserted objects followed by the objects themselves.

The first line of code loads the jar file, this is useful if you're not looking to put the jar in a classpath or one of groovy's configured library paths like '~/.groovy/lib'.

Running the script is accomplished by 'groovy mongo.groovy' in the terminal. You can also type in 'groovyConsole' to load the console then opening the script and running inside it.

Installing MongoDB on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope

For the installation, I decided to build MongoDB (http://www.mongodb.org/) from source. The documentation regarding this is thorough and getting it running was a cinch. A Javascript engine called Spider Monkey is used and you need to build it with UTF8 support.

The documents referred to:
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building+Spider+Monkey
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Building+for+Linux

The all-in-one command line version:
Dependencies:
sudo apt-get install curl tcsh git-core scons g++
sudo apt-get install libpcre++-dev libboost-dev libmozjs-dev

Spider Monkey installation:
curl -O ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/js/js-1.7.0.tar.gz
tar zxvf js-1.7.0.tar.gz
cd js/src
export CFLAGS="-DJS_C_STRINGS_ARE_UTF8"
make -f Makefile.ref
sudo JS_DIST=/usr make -f Makefile.ref export

MongoDB installation:
git clone git://github.com/mongodb/mongo.git
scons all
sudo scons --prefix=/opt/mongo install

Finishing up:
add /opt/mongo/bin to your path
create a /data/db directory structure and chown it to your user or add read-write permission.
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/ubuntu/how-to-add-a-program-to-the-ubuntu-startup-list-after-login/
System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications -> Startup Programs
click add, click browse and select /opt/mongo/bin/mongod
add run to the end of the line so that it reads '/opt/mongo/bin/mongod run'
enter name and comment then save

And you're done. mongodb will start up with no authentication as default at localhost:27017, the web information interface is at localhost:28017. You can use mongo to enter the interactive shell, similar to mysql's shell client.

Some links to get you started:
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Overview+-+The+MongoDB+Interactive+Shell
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/File+Based+Configuration
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Command+Line+Parameters
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Security+and+Authentication
http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Manual

Delegation for iphone-google-maps-component

The iphone-google-maps-component is a way for you to use Google Maps on the iPhone through the use of an extended UIWebView and an html file on a server somewhere that does the map loading.

The present code overrides the default delegate UIWebViewDelegate with its own, MapWebViewDelegate. You cannot use the setCenterWithLatLng to establish the starting location until the view has finished loading. With the override, the webViewDidFinishLoad delegate method is unavailable.

Going by this post, the following code changes will allow the use of both delegates.

MapWebView.h
1) Change protocol definition.
@protocol MapWebViewDelegate < UIWebViewDelegate >

MapWebView.m
2) Remove the synthesize line.
//@synthesize delegate;

3) Replace with own methods, to hook into super.delegate.

- (id ) delegate {
return (id )super.delegate;
}

- (void) setDelegate :(id ) delegate {
super.delegate = delegate;
}

webViewDidFinishLoad should be accessible, as well as the other methods in the UIWebViewDelegate.

Another way of setting the starting location is through the loadMap method in MapWebView.h. The URL string can accept two more variables, latitude and longitude.

Change this:
NSString *urlStr = [NSString stringWithFormat:
@"http://www.wenear.com/iphone-test?width=%d&height=%d&zoom=%d",
width, height, DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL];

To this:

NSString *urlStr = [NSString stringWithFormat:
@"http://www.wenear.com/iphone-test?width=%d&height=%d&latitude=%f&longitude=%f&zoom=%d",
width, height, location.coordinate.latitude, location.coordinate.longitude, DEFAULT_ZOOM_LEVEL];

Here, location is a CLLocation, part of the CoreLocation framework. The loadMap method is publicly defined in the interface and it accepts location as its variable. The call in didMoveToSuperview should be properly handled.

The latitude and longitude are doubles and can be hardcoded instead.

XML and the Copyright symbol, ©

For anyone parsing an XMl file and wondering what in the world is an org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: Invalid byte 1 of 1-byte UTF-8 sequence error message, check to see whether the XML file has any special characters like the copyright symbol, ©. The default encoding of UTF-8 will choke on these.

Solved my woes by changing the encoding to <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?> to get the character to display correctly. You can also filter it out or replace the symbol with its character reference.

Google Friend Connect & Facebook Connect

Google Friend Connect

A Google, Yahoo, AIM or OpenID account can be used for authentication.

You start it off with logging into your Google account and going to http://www.google.com/friendconnect/.

• From there, click on 'Set up a new site' and enter your site name and url.
• You'll be given two files, canvas.html and rpc_relay.html, to copy onto your web site.
• The last step is testing for those two files.

After that, it's a matter of choosing the gadgets you wish to add, customizing it and then copying the code generated into one of your site pages. The code is normal html and javascript.

From the current gadgets available, you can add on to your site to make it more 'sociable', like knowing the site members, adding in a chat box and reviewing/rating stuff.

You can create your own custom gadgets from these sites:
http://code.google.com/apis/gadgets/
http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/

Facebook Connect

Only a Facebook account can be used for authentication.

Login into your Facebook account and follow the instructions located here:
http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Trying_Out_Facebook_Connect

The main page for developers for Facebook Connect is http://developers.facebook.com/connect.php.

Facebook uses it's own Facebook Markup Language (FBML), in contrast to normal HTML, to facilitate creation of all Facebook applications. Facebook Connect is therefore embedded into user pages using FBML.

Facebook Connect is more of an expansion of Facebook onto other sites, depending on the application, it allows for data on a user site to be displayed back in Facebook.

HOW TO: Add Facebook Connect to Your Blog in 8 Minutes