Code by P6 Lazy, selfish programming

Had to go back to the node creation method I used with Drupa 4.7.

I couldn't get the bulk import functionality working for the Drupal 6 version of my Amazon.com interface. It seems drupal_execute() is non compos mentis with node creation forms due to the splitting out of the include files.

What sucks in the import form is really good.

I'll try again-again because you can't build an online book store entering one book at a time. But I am very unhappy.

Check the previous three posts and you'll see the basic functionality for Amazon Associate Tools is now functional here on Code.

Searching for Books, DVDs and Music is supported; other product types would be added by customizing the include file for the Amazon site you are querying just like last version. Bulk imports are next. Blocks come after that; I believe I'll get both squared away this weekend.

Some folks complained the detail page url didn't wind up crediting their account when folks purchased things. Rather than using the detail page url to like to a product, I used a "approved do-it-yourself" link.

I do have shortcomings to overcome. Notice the Amazon.com search page is not integrated into the site search functionality. It seems to do that you have to actually use the Search API. Maybe I screwed the menu definition when I tried it. Also, the database tables as slightly different...upgradable, but no upgrade yet.

I got dismayed by politics the other day, so I decided to write some code. Code is rational. I decided to write another commenting enhancement.

On my political site I require folks to register in order to comment. Sometimes I want to throw the post open, let the world reply to specific items. So I wrote a simple module called Open Thread. It adds a checkbox to the node creation forms (immediately above the comment options so it's easy to find) which, when checked, marks the node as an open thread which anyone who can see the "New comment" link can comment on without administrative intercession. This means you can still disallow folks from commenting at all.

I feel terrible, running Code by P6 on Drupal 6 while still developing for Drupal 5. Fact is, D6 has a few strange issues. I decided to try FckEditor here because tinymce isn't so friendly with Mac browsers and I got a bunch of Mac users on my political site for some reason. For some reason, if I've scrolled the page down, when I hit the return key the page returns to its original position.

THAT is frustrating. There was a Drupal bug fix released today, maybe that will fix it. Anyway, there's still a number of modules I want to play with and they aren't D6 ready yet so I'm still working with D5. For instance, I'm working a kind of Google/Technorati mash-up based on the D5 Links module and the google_cse module. I wrote a module hooking into the weblink node type to retrieve the Technorati ranking for each site. And I hacked the google_cse module to produce a local custom search engine from the sites registered via weblinks.

Yes, I started by working on a module to interface with Amazon.com, but that's not the first module that gets installed. The first one is a handy little thing called extralinks, which was originally here.

This module brings back a functionality that was lost in between Drupal 4.4 and Drupal 4.5 it optionally adds

1. an "edit" link to teaser displays (like Drupal 4.4)
2. "next", "previous", and "latest" links to node pages, based on the front page display order.

These links are real time savers for site administrators. When a administrating a website the number of clicks between repetative operations should be kept to a minimal. This module reduces the number of clicks involved an editing operation by two and raises the likelyhood of site administrators editing typos and content mistakes.