Drupal

A new look for MacMegasite

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I switched to a new theme & logo at MacMegasite, and I also de-cluttered the sidebars. I’m still looking at more themes and working on the logo, so I may still change it if I find something I like better.

The last few days I’ve looked at a lot of WordPress & Drupal themes. Almost none of them are truly ‘ready to go’. I always find little bugs such as misaligned list items or conflicts with various modules. I also found that many of the WordPress themes that claim to be widget-ready really aren’t.

MacMegasite happenings

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I’ve made a few changes at MacMegasite and there will be more coming in the next few weeks.

First of all, Daniel Brusilovsky is officially a staff member! Hopefully we’ll add more staff this year. Look for a staff bio page to be added soon.

I’ve also added the mysite module, which lets users set up their own ‘my macmegasite’ page with their favorite content, on the style of iGoogle or PageFlakes.

I’ve cleaned up the user registration system to check for valid email addresses and purge any users who don’t activate their account by clicking the link in the registration email. As a result, several hundred user accounts that were never activated and never logged in have been deleted.

My MacHeist referral seems to be paying very well, and after that’s finished I will have additional paying sponsors.

Performance improvements

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I’ve adjusted the cache settings and added the Block Cache module to MacMegasite, which seem to improve the performance. I’ve also had to increase the memory & CPU for my DreamHost Virtual Private Server several times in the last few days when the load got too high. Hopefully with the cache changes I won’t have to increase it any further.

my2unz.com is open to the public

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Anyone can now register at my2unz.com, although the site is still in beta and not feature complete. I’ve finalized the database structure and cleaned up a lot of stuff. Uploading iTunes playlists & exported libraries should be a lot more reliable now.

Other site features include music discussion forums, buddy lists, and private messages, I plan to add a way to view all tracks owned by a member, and rate tracks & artists by popularity.

my2unz changes are live

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I’ve uploaded the changes to the live my2unz.com site and updated the database. All of the original content is still intact. I disabled playlist import, however, since that feature hasn’t been thoroughly tested.

I’m now using standard CCK fields & standard views, along with the content template module for track, album, artist, and playlist forms rather than defining those content types in my iTunes module. I now only use one custom table, which links tracks to a playlist and includes playlist specific info for that track such as rating & play count, since it was easier & cleaner than using one of the node relationship modules.

As soon as I have the iTunes playlist import cleaned up and a fast, clean way to create playlists from scratch without importing, I plan to open the site publicly. The other major feature I plan to add is linking albums & tracks to Amazon & iTunes Music Store, and providing audio for tracks, most likely from last.fm.

What's happening with my2unz.com

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Things have been pretty quiet with my2unz.com lately, but I have some big programming changes planned. I finally got a chance to do some work on it over the weekend.

The site uses a custom Drupal module for iTunes integration. In addition to importing iTunes playlist or library XML files, it also defines several content types for tracks, albums, artists, and playlists. I use a few custom tables to link artists, albums, and tracks. The module also defines the forms & views for those content types.

I’m eliminating those content types from the module and converting them to standard content types using CCK node reference fields and standard views. The itunes module will simply act as a helper and will still handle importing iTunes data. Hopefully I’ll be able to preserve the existing site content.

I would like to open it to the public before the end of the year. I was originally planning to wait for Drupal 6, but it’s still far from ready and most of the modules I use aren’t compatible.