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Drupal

Protected Node Installation

The basics of the Protected Node installation are easy:

  1. Get one of the tarball from Drupal.org
  2. Extract the files under sites/all/modules or some other modules folder
  3. Go to Administer » Site building » Modules and install the module (package Access)
  4. As the administrator (UID = 1) you are done.

Once you have installed the module, you probably want to change the permissions. Permissions allow your users to access the Protected Node functionality based on their roles. Please, see the point about Permissions for more information about those.

Now, you're ready ...

Protected Node (The Drupal module —)

The Protected Node module is used on websites where some pages need to be password protected. This is different from asking someone to create an account and often seen as much more user friendly, although in terms of protection it is quite similar.

If you've seen photo websites where you can go to an album but have to enter a password to see the photos, that's one example how this module can be used.

The module adds a field set in the node form to let authors enter a password.

The module has many options that are rather tricky to use so this documentation tries to explain what you can do

Drupal Aggregator

The default Aggregator Drupal module does not work very well. There are several problems with the Drupal Core module, one of which we have not fixed in our version (i.e. the flatness of the item table.)

There is a list of the known issues and our comments and whether we fixed the problem:

Problem Solution in m2osw's version of Aggregator
Missing XML marker The <?xml ... ?> marker is missing from some RSS feeds, add it as required
Spurious data Some RSS feeds add spurious data ...

How to bypass Drupal strong security?

Interestingly enough, today I received a Security Advisory from Drupal saying that users received an email from a hacker asking them to install a Trojan module on their Drupal system.

I find it quite interesting since, if Drupal wasn't secure, the hackers would not have to ask you to make it unsecure, would they?

However, this shows how many CMS systems introduce a security issue problem to your web server installation since it is required to let your web server execute any one PHP file...

All the files installed on your web server and that are directly accessible from the outside (i.e. ...

jsMath Security Issue

Security Issue

A security issue was found in all versions of jsMath before 2.x-dev for Drupal 6.x of Jul 29, 2010.

You may still securely use older versions of jsMath on private websites and websites were you are the only user (as in, the only one who can log in.)

The Drupal Security Advisory issue is here: https://www.drupal.org/node/854402

Other Problem

There is another problem: jsMath offers a JavaScript function that parses entire web pages (although there are ways to circumvent that problem, the module does not currently make use of those.) The jsMath Drupal module uses the ...

jsMath Installation

Requirements

In order to use the jsMath for displaying mathematics with TeX Drupal 6.x module you need:

jsMath for displaying mathematics with TeX Drupal 6.x module

This is a quick helper to get you started with jsMath for displaying mathematics with TeX Drupal 6.x module.

I include an installation procedure and some sample of equations you can write and corresponding result. This very website does not run jsMath for several reasons, one being that it is slow and the other is that we don't really need it on our corporate website.

If you find an issue, please, file it in the jsMath Drupal queue.

SimpleMenu Custom Theme

Introduction

The newer versions of SimpleMenu allows for an easy way of adding custom themes.

There are two main ways to add new SimpleMenu themes:

1. In the simplemenu themes folder;

2. In your theme folder.

SimpleMenu themes folder

CSS

If you look under the simplemenu folder, you will see a sub-folder named themes. You can place your own specialized themes in that folder to make them available system-wide (i.e. if you are using many themes or use one Drupal installation for many websites.) In other words, this folder is viewed as a global theme folder.

The themes folder ...

Table of Contents tags and parameters

Syntax

Supported Tags

The module supports 3 tags that all generate a Table of Contents.

The most popular is now [toc] since it is easy to type and works in WYSIWYG editors.

Table of Contents Settings

Filter Configuration

At this point, most of the Table of Contents configuration is done in the Table of Contents filter.

This means multiple Input formats allow you to make use of several different configurations.