This week I installed SimpleNews and MIME mail modules and began to experiment with sending newsletters to email addresses. This is a nice enhancement to the website. I noticed another church was doing this, and tracked down how they did it. They use a pay service, so that would cost at least $225/yr. SimpleNews is -- free. And we have it here.

I also experimented with screencast software (camstudio.org is free and has audio support).

Here is my text for my first attempted screencast explaining how to do logins:

Hi this is Jim from St Francis. To help you get more out of the church website, we've prepared a short tutorial on how to create a user account at the st. francis website. While many parts of the church website are freely accessible without an account, there are features of the website that do require you to log in to the website. For that, you'll need an account, and I'm going to explain to you now how to set up an account on the St Francis website.

Firstly, you will actually need to access our website, which is at http://stfrancisnm.org. Once you are there at the website, you can move to the left side of the frontpage screen. If necessary scroll down until you can a block on the left that says user login. If you do already have an account at stf then you can put in your username and password here and simply log on, but I am assuming that you do not yet have a login, so we're going to set one up now.

And to do that, you simply need to hover over the text that says "create new account" and click the text. When you do that the website will take you to a page that you will fill out to apply for a web account. You will need to choose a username, which can be pretty much anything you want. I recommend you keep it simple enough because that is what you'll need to enter each time you login. So let's do that now.

Next you will have to supply an email address. This is important, because you will receive confirmation emails relating to your account and it's the only way for us to tell you your account is. Now if you do not have an email address, the church will be happy to supply one for you. Just come back to this tutorial after we've given you an email because you'll need it to go any further.

So I'm going to assume you have an email. I'm just going to use one of my 200 random emails for myself and enter it her. You'll need to enter more information, so just scroll down. We'd like you to put your name and address in these blocks. Don't worry about this information getting out. It is in the password protected part of the website and will not be shared. So I am going to fill in these blocks now... The phone number is optional but it is helpful to enter one if you have it so that we have another way to contact you.

Now below, we've provided an optional biographical block. It's completely optional, and you don't have to fill it out. If you do, of course, it is helpful to us especially for member/staff listings and if you do volunteer work for the church. I'm going to skip this part myself.

Now, there is this one strange block on the form called CAPTCHA. It is necessary nowadays to take measures to protect the website from automated web-based spam attacks. This kind of block is probably familiar to you if you go to other websites. It provides some kind of challenge that usually only a true human can respond to, so I will in this case answer a simple math problem so that it knows I am a human.

When I am done with this form, I just click and click the CREATE NEW ACCOUNT button, and I'm done.

If you have your email program handy you can go to it, and you should shortly receive a confirmation email.

Now after the website administrator has approved your account

This has been no end of frustration. As of Dec 30, 2008 I do have some functionality in image galleries. When you open a gallery you will get a lightbox for each image within a gallery. I do not have a gallery powered by a slideshow from lightbox. In other words, the galleries are functional, not necessarily very slick or pretty.

what works

the basic gallery functionality from the image module "set" works. I don't like that every single image I put up is thrown into a gallery that anyone can see (i'd like to hide the clip art and newsletter image galleries, as they aren't really for "show"). But at least right now (30dec08) the light box fires up when you click an image in a gallery (see here for the galleries of St Francis).

I guess, after time, the inline html with lightbox2 DOES work. Clicking the link should fire up a light box. This test image uses an image tag (you have to be in "edit" mode to see the tag):

I can't have an inline html image (href tag) work either:
image #1

what doesn't

stf_200809_jas_0215: Testing the LightBox with a picture from the YZ picnic

So that doesn't work yet.

Summary of install

• get the module from drupal,install in the sites/all/modules directory as usual.
• check permissions
• check input formats and configure them to work with lightbox 2
• configure the module itself through the admin interface. Pay attention to the "image node" settings. I chose to make them respond to thumbnails.

See here and here for more details on the Drupal Lightbox 2 module.

1. Install the slideshow creator module in the "normal way".
2. from the embedded doct:

In any node, add the string:
Previous Slide 1/2 Next TITLE DESCRIPTION TITLE DESCRIPTION

where:
VERSION [required]: the slideshow filter version: currently 2
ROTATE_SPEED [optional]: the speed, in seconds, to rotate images (0 to not rotate at all)
SLIDESHOW_NAME [optional]: you can theme your slideshow thru CSS giving it a class name
HEIGHT [optional]: all images will be at the same height
WIDTH [optional]: all images will be at the same width
BLEND [optional]: how long will take the fading transaction between images
LAYOUT [optional]: the buttons, title and description can be displayed under several combinations. You can choose between top, bottom, reverse or default.

than, for each image you want to insert, use:
IMAGE_URL [required]: the image itself
LINK [optional]: if you want to provide a link to some page, put the URL here
TITLE [optional]: often the bold text over the image
DESCRIPTION [optional]: often the text under the image
TARGET [optional]: where the linked page will show: _blank (default) will show on another window, _parent and _top is only used when pages have frames, _self shows on the very window or you can use a window name.

New feature: automatically extract images from a given directory
You can create a normal slideshow, but you can scan for more images using dir=|DIR_IMAGE|DIR_RECURSIVE|DIR_LINK|TITLE|DESCRIPTION|TARGET|

where:
DIR_IMAGE [required]: the diretory that you want to scan for images
DIR_RECURSIVE [optional]: "yes" if you want to scan recursively or leave it blank
DIR_LINK [optional]: "yes" if you want link all images to their own path or leave it blank
TITLE,DESCRIPTION and TARGET are applied to all images

example: (you can copy and paste)
Previous Slide 1/2 Next Drupal The ultimate CMS. Download it now! MySQL Free and reliable SQL server and client.

More clear examples of syntax for directory inclusion is given from (http://tarnaeluin.wordpress.com/2008/06/01/images-galleries-in-drupal-6/)

Altered syntax

From this, it seems that the "rotate" doesn't work, and including it freezes the slideshow.

I have set up a folder at sites/default/files/slideshow, containing subfolders to support ad hoc slideshows. This may lead to some duplication in the primary galleries, but it is IMO more manageable. So here's a test slideshow using December 2008 subfolder

Previous Slide 1/9 Next

Conclusion
So, now the method to build a slide show quickly is to:
* find pictures, try to make the resolution and pixel shapes the same
* creat a folder under sites/default/files/slideshow
* insert a tag, based on the examples in this blog entry, and insert in the web page created (or blog, or publication,etc.)
* be sure the "Input format" is set to something that allows a slideshow to be inserted
** See http://www.stfrancisnm.org/admin/settings/slideshow_creator for basic settings
** See http://www.stfrancisnm.org/admin/settings/filters for input filters (configure these to permit the filter tag to be used in a document)
* be sure you have permission to do this (see user->permissions) based on the role you occupy when you create a document.

I hope this is still clear the next time I read it. It took longer than I care to admit to rediscover all of this.

To reach the main contact form page, you just goto http://stfrancisnm.org/contact. This will give you a general pull-down, but it is not particularly friendly.

Apparently, you can reach the specific contact categories by extending the URL. If the contact was Jill Jones, you actually use the form ...

<?php
print l('Email Jill Jones', 'contact/Jill_Jones');
?>

So spaces are replace by underscores.

I need to lay out a better contact page.

Block theming provides a way to develop a variety of themes for blocks and permit admin to easily select those pre-created themes from a pulldown menu. It is a lot of work to setup but makes maintenance a snap (some of it). You have to install Drupal block theme module. I tried this because I wanted to highlight a particular block yellow, simple enough. But our current website uses Marvin, a sub-theme of Chameleon, which is a CSS-only theme. This simply means after a lot of effort, all the block-theming is basically ignored, hence mitigating the power of block-theming. I experiment with zen theme and eventually got it to work for a couple of simple test cases. Implications of this is that I probably will need to develop a custom theme for the whole web site, which is not trivial. My new "todo" here is to create a church theme based on a sub-theme of zen and then I can develop a whole set of block themes and apply them. It's a lot of work but it will pay off long range because of the greater control.

Somethings I was working on

Gallery
=========================
* http://blip.tv/file/256997
* Modules used
**imagecache
**cck
**imagefield
**views
**views bonus pack
**custom pagers
**thickbox

Some emails of church
=======================
felixmorg@aol.com,
williamwj3@comcast.net,
stfechurch@qwestoffice.net,
i@jimlyke.com,
mstorz@aol.com,
sond39@aol.com,
wcdurden@msn.com,
fbj8489@aol.com,
jepanter@cableone.net,
jackgng@cableone.net,
jmfosso@hotmail.com,
petraabq@yahoo.com,
lutefisk98@aol.com,
huggnola@msn.com,
revdcave@gmail.com,
pawneeq@msn.com,
wines60@aol.com,
eblangley@yahoo.com,
arturo.d.rangel@gmail.com,
hfa_mea@msn.com,
falkpb@netzero.com,
pjchuckdriver@msn.com
jimandtoby@msn.com

Fr. Pete can e-mail the church stfechurch@qwestoffice.net

Fr. Daniel revcace@gmail.com

Vera Kleinhenz organist zoeter50@msn.com

Karen Huggins she is both vestry (2009) and does the Happenings huggnola@msn.com

John Panter does the Monthly Messenger jepanter@cableone.com

Jane Cave Youth director balloontour2001@hotmail.com

Betty Rangel Children's Ministry Director bettyjrangel@gmail.com

Jeannie Martin Altar guild pawneeq@msn.com

Joan Harris Hospitality no e-mail address 10400 Universe Blvd. NW #317 ABQ 87114 897-5107

<?php
print l('Email Acolyte coordinator', 'contact/Acolyte');
?>
stfechurch@qwestoffice.net

Vestry Members (added to contact form/vestry)
==================
* Leon Davis Sr. Warden sond39@aol.com
* Chuck Martin Jr. Warden pawneeq@msn.com
* Betsy McUne (Clerk) betsy@mcune.com
* Norma Edwards (2009) normajeanedwards@comcast.net
* Bill Oehlshlager (2010) alica6678@msn.com
* Tris Carty (2011) triscarty@yahoo.com
* Rusty Elliot (2011) rkmn4@aol.com
* Arturo Rangel (Treasure) Arturo.d.rangel@gmail.com