1.  FCKEditor loves to add <p> tags.  Problem becomes even worse if you are making a block with only an image in it and FCKEditor just won’t let you take that <p> tag out.  Of course you can disable FCKeditor and enter everything manually, but I’m sure we will all agree that FCKEditor along with IMCE just makes life a lot easier when adding images to the site.  One solution is to configure the FCKEditor module so that on <Enter> it adds a <br /> tag instead of a <p> tag.  The other solution ties in with the second problem below

2. Even without FCKEditor, when you go and check your site on IE, you see the block is just not positioned properly! What’s going on?  You check the source and you find a <p> tag AGAIN around the image!  What the?  If you create a block with the intent of only including a simple image tag in the code (or anything besides text), Drupal will surround your code with paragraph tags. The tags, by default, come along with a 1em margin on both top and bottom — right, while Firefox may show your design properly, IE definitely doesn’t.  Solution?  You can always just put a small code in the CSS file.  In my case, with Acquia prosper (and Skinr module), I was able to add a custom CSS class to the block which then was defined in the local.css file:

.custom-css-name p{
margin:0;}

So that works.  You can also try a CSS override in the following manner:  #your-block-id p { margin: 0; }

Or finally, you can always create a new block input type that doesn’t convert spaces into unwanted tags.  Basically a new input format that will have the following property unchecked:

Converts line breaks into HTML (i.e. <br> and <p> tags).

I hope this helps if you have also run across this problem … ah that pesky <p> tag that just won’t go away!

Now this being my first Drupal installation, and as much as I love this CMS, the updating process can be a pain if not following the instructions carefully.  The instructions can be found in “upgrade.txt” file located in your drupal zip file, also you can find tons of instructions online.  An excellent website learnbythedrop.com can help you out a lot if you are looking for tutorials on Drupal.  Here’s the video I followed to help me update Drupal.  Posting it here so that it can get more recognition on the web!  They say you can fill an ocean, one drop at a time….

There are several work arounds for the issue if you come across an error during installation asking you to turn “register_globals” off.  It may work for you or it may not work for you, but the final one will definitely do the job.  Just to be safe, try the fixes in the order below:

1.  You can always add or edit the .htaccess file in your root directory with the following line:

php_flag register_globals off

This may or may not work depending on whether the apache configuration on your host allows directives to be fed through the .htaccess file.  Find out more about .htaccess files by going to http://www.freewebmasterhelp.com/tutorials/htaccess/

2. So that didn’t work huh?  Fret not, here’s another solution.  Place a “php.ini” file in your root directory with the following line:

register_globals = 0

did that work?  Basically you are telling php to initialize with the setting for your directory.

3. Wait, we didn’t cover the fact that you may be running your own server! Well if you are lucky enough to have your own server and control over your php.ini file, simply change the register_globals variable to ‘off’  in your php.ini file.  More information can be found at the php website about how to configure your php.ini file.

4. You could also try adding the following line to your .htaccess file (it has been proven to work on 1&1 webservers):

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php

This directive simply tells the server to use php5 for .php files instead of php4 (which might be the default for several webhosts out there)

5.  Ok genius, nothing worked, now what? Yup, that was my case as well, nothing worked, seemed the host didn’t allow default settings to be changed.  Well there’s always the “ask your hosting provider” answer.  If you are so inclined to do so, send them an email and ask them how to turn the “register_globals” variable off for your particular site.  They might not be of much help, but you never know.  Or, (Yes!) there’s another method.  You can simply tell Drupal to ignore it when installing.  It requires you to change the install file located in modules/system directory called “system.install“.  Go ahead and find the line:

if (!empty($register_globals) && strtolower($register_globals) != ‘off’)

and change the “!=” to “==” .   The line should now read:

if (!empty($register_globals) && strtolower($register_globals) == ‘off’)

Curious to know what you are doing here?  Well you are simply telling the system.install file change the “not equal to” to “equal to”.   Basically, you fooled the system into treating a response which would mean that “register_globals” is “on” into treating it as “register_globals” is “off”.  You will not get any more errors when doing the install now.

Now, remember, it is unsafe to have register_globals on.  Your system is not fully secure if that directive is on.  So if you are willing to take the risk, you can implement the solutions provided in this post.

Link to the report:
http://www.waterandstone.com/downloads/2008OpenSourceCMSMarketSurvey.pdf

While you are at it, couple of other sites that may be of interest to you are:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/
http://www.oscom.org/matrix/index.html

If anybody reading this has any thoughts on the open source CMS systems, please share.  I personally have liked playing with Drupal a lot.

INSERT INTO MASTERTABLE
SELECT *
FROM NEWTABLE
WHERE NEWTABLE.`UNIQUEID` NOT
IN (SELECT `UNIQUEID`

)

This sort of problem may arise when you need to scrub a file against another or run a duplicate scan on a file against another to weed out any duplicates that may exist prior to doing whatever it is you need to do with that file. Lets assume that both the tables have a field called “PHONE” that identifies your clients as unique.
The query that you will need to run uses LEFT JOIN function

SELECT * FROM TableB b
LEFT OUTER JOIN TableA a ON b.`PHONE` = a.`PHONE`
WHERE a.`PHONE` IS NULL

This should do it.

So I made my little booklet and realized that my page numbers were showing up wrong, after 10 or so pages, I started getting 1-2-3-4 repeated all over! What’s wrong? Apparently, you need to tell Scribus that you want more than 10 pages.  So on my master template, where I had put up a # sign to indicate I want the page number to come there, I had to put up ## signs for pages more than 20.  Simple solution, weird behaviour.

Thought I’d share this with the world.

The plugin gives you a few choices to download streaming video/audio from a site by giving you (what it assumes) to be the best link to download the media file.

So after you have downloaded the flv file, simply open up the terminal and run this command:

user@server:~$ ffmpeg -i get_video.flv -ab 56 -ar 22050 -b 500 -s 320X240 video.mpg
A great link that gives more information about this process is in my del.icio.us and here it is: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1656936