Case Study: How To Setup Multisite Configuration on Drupal
One of the feature of Drupal Content Management Framework, you can set multi site with a single code base without a massive modification on scripts code. We just set up some configurations on Apache Web Server (I assume you use this great web server software) and some configuration on Drupal settings (yes, Drupal has provided this multisite configuration out of the box).
If you unpacked the Drupal package, you may find on settings.php comment how to set up multisite. From my experience, I have read many posts but I have to tear my hair off to get it done. From this documentation, it makes sense, and I want to start from there.
Okey, I have case study to share with you. I have set up multisite with different subfolder. Yes, you may apply this for subdomain too. First I will describe how to set up multisite with sub folder: http://playwithbeauty-id.com/magicspell, and http://playwithbeauty-id.com/whiteglam.
You have to have some knowledge about:
- Edit Apache configuration and reload the web server
- Edit Drupal configuration ;). I bet you know this one.
First we edit apache configuration. Configuration path depends on your installation and operating system, find httpd.conf or apache.conf then add this line:
Alias /magicspell /PATH_TO_YOUR_PUBLIC_HTML/
Alias /whiteglam /PATH_TO_YOUR_PUBLIC_HTML/
You may change magicspell and whiteglam with your own sub folder. The second step is create multisite folder on Drupal root folder:
mkdir -p sites/playwithbeauty-id.com.magicspell/{files,themes}
mkdir -p sites/playwithbeauty-id.com.whiteglam/{files,themes}
Commands above create two multisite with files and themes folder. We create separate files and themes folder to make a different theme with the main site. Now copy settings.php file from the default configuration to those folders:
cp sites/default/settings.php sites/playwithbeauty-id.com.magicspell/
cp sites/default/settings.php sites/playwithbeauty-id.com.whiteglam/
Edit those settings.php with different database configuration to make them properly separated. Also you can set $base_url variable to reflect the website URL (recommended).
Okey, reload the apache configuration:
apachectl graceful
Then try to access those subfolder URL. If you find an installation page, then you are done! Follow the instruction and create a custom theme for your new subfolder by copying your theme on sites/YOUR_DOMAIN.subfolder/themes. Good Luck!
The Amazing New GMail
I checked my GMail yesterday and found some differences. GMail is faster than before. Some features have been added to enrich the User Interface. I must admit that the first time I used GMail, I thought this is the best webmail software in this world 
(oops, I didn’t meant that Yahoo! Mail webmail is the best too, the drawbacks only on the interface that mimic some email clients software out there and bloated).
Ok, back to the GMail. I can make my inbox colorful by adding some labels (I prefer to use tags term for this, I think the GMail developer will be consider using term “tags” instead of label). The label’s color can be changed to make it different with others, so we will aware what the most important emails, where they come from, have some attachments and so on.
Don’t forget to include how fast I can read my email, how fast I can search my emails with different search options (to:, from: subject: etc) And the most important is, GMail interface is clean and fresh. That’s why I give GMail the number one webmail software :).
Thanks Google to make my life easier.
Update: This post is my first time using GMail, sorry it is on Bahasa Indonesia
OMG, Wordpress 2.6?
I read my comments and found link back from here and here. OMG, Wordpress 2.6? I’m so curious, I hope Mark and the team will not skip the version for minor changes on 2.5, and then go directly to version 2.6. I may assume that 2.5 version have some minor bugs on it and need to be patched.
On my personal opinion, this 2.5 version is a rock solid version. For my daily use, this version is really stable. I don’t need any version or any features anymore. Just speed it up, AJAX’ed everything 
(oh my, this could enrich the UI and user experience).
I hope Wordpress follow the GNOME based releases, slowly but sure and it is a 6 month basis release. That’s why GNOME software is rock solid Desktop Enviroment (oh, no offence for KDE users :D) so Wordpress too.
(/me wink to Drupal developers)
Wordpress 2.5 review, an UI comparison with Drupal
One word to describe this release: “excellent”. I love the User Interface (UI) administration theme, the tone color, layout and a touch of AJAX on some functions, for example editing permalink.
The UI design is almost similar with Drupal style: some item can be collapsed or expanded to save some rooms. So when using this release, my behaviour is similar when using Drupal website.
I hope the Drupal developers can use this new Wordpress UI design for Drupal administration theme. I know that we can define one theme for administration theme on 5.x releases. I found version 6.x did too but I wish Drupal will create a dedicated theme special for administration section like Wordpress or Joomla did.
The similar administration theme for every release will help people to get used to use the UI. What about Drupal version 7.x?
