DrupalNub.com The adventures of a drupal nubie

I must admit I was rather non-pulsed when I read about the new Amazon MP3 store. While I am not a big DRM fan, having DRM laden tracks really doesn't cause me much pain. I am not a "No DRM" freak by any stretch. Also the iTunes Store experience is pretty great, click, download done!

I decided to give the Amazon MP3 store a try anyways. Slightly cheaper tracks + RadioHead was enough to get me to give it a try. Not that I need any RadioHead, I have it all on CD/MP3 already but mention RadioHead and I am there.

These steps where observed/performed on my Mac using FireFox, other OS/browsers will be different (and suck more).

First I downloaded and installed the Amazon MP3 Downloader. This app runs separately to handle downloading and in theory (see below) importing the MP3s into iTunes. After installing the downloader it takes you to a web page (via your default browser) where you can download the free track—“Energy” by The Apples In Stereo. Funny, very funny and the song sucks to boot. What this does is pop-up (in Firefox anyways) a box to associate the file to an application, you want to choose the MP3 downloader that is installed in your applications folder.

The downloader app fires up and starts downloading. Download speeds seem pretty fast on the T-1 I was on at the time. Then off to find something new and I found this

The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead:Enigmatic

Looks interesting so I download a track. The track sounds cool enough to get the entire album so I go to download the whole enchilada and I notice I don't get a credit for having just bought the one track. That is pretty lame. It also appeared to downlod the file twice although I have not confirmed that, it shows up in the download window twice however.

Then I went to look at iTunes and could not find any of my songs there. Hmm that is pretty lame. It is supposed to work but for some reason it does not for me. I have to choose "Import into Library" to suck the songs in. Pretty damn lame if you ask me.

Conclusion

I will buy songs from there again but only if they are not available on the iTunes store already. I am spoiled with the seamless way iTunes and the iTunes store work together. For me that is worth an extra 10 cents a song. Yes I am that lame.

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This was fairly easy for me. I use SMF for one of my other sites and I am a charter member (so I get support etc). Once I found this SMF-Drupal Integration it like a no brainer. However something felt funny in my tummy. While SMF rocks and drupal rocks, it felt funny kinda bolting them together. The integration was fairly easy but looked pretty goofy with SMF sitting in a frame or worst taking over the entire page. So i decided to dive into the drupal forum module to see what I could make work and how close I could get it to SMF.

The first thing I noticed after enabling the forum module and creating a few forums are the nice search engine friendly URLs. Sweet! I like it already.

I then went and added the modules mentioned in this SMF forum doc looks like we might be on to something here. One thing I keep running into is the default "non-prettyness" of drupal. I get all the piece in place functionally but I am left wanting cause it is just kinda ugly. Guess it is time to dive into themes...

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Proper planning for a new site can save you countless hours of frustration. I find creating a list of features you want, and not getting into specifics (like what modules) gives you a better vision for the site. Then you can go about finding the modules that meet your requirements. I am planing a site for people that pour there own plastic fishing lures (talk about a tiny niche!) Here is my quick list of features I am aiming for.

• Classifieds
• Forums
• Video Tutorials
• Photo Gallery
• Social Networking

Then I try to figure out the best way to generate revenue on the site, this one is pretty straight forward most of the time but here is my list anyways:

• Google Ads
• Yahoo Ads
• Amazon Affiliate
• Ebay Affiliate
• Sell ad space

That is a good list to start from, now I have to go research how I want to implement the features above.

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I feel weird making the first post on a site documenting my drupal journey not be about drupal but about iMovie and Keynote but what the hey! I like the new iMovie but I was kinda bummed with the weak titles. I love Keynote and do all my presentations with it these days. I mean FIRE!!! as a transition, freakin sweet. Then it dawned on me, I could export Keynote slides to quicktime! Keynote as a video titler!?!? Well not really, I am pretty sure you can't overlay the Quicktime file you export from Keynote over pre-existing video but you can make some sweet looking intro titles. Check out the screencast below for the step-by-step.

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