Reporting number of files as a Drupal status item

Submitted by John on Sat, 07/11/2020 - 14:57

Lately I've been spending a lot of time working with the Feeds module in Drupal, especially dealing with this issue, where using the module on a site in a containerized load-balanced set up can cause problems accessing temporary files. The work around is to just use a different directory for your temporary files. But that comes with some caveats. When you use the systems temporary files directory, e.g.

Blackout page

Submitted by John on Wed, 06/10/2020 - 17:19

If you attempted to visit this site in the week before this was posted, you would have seen an entirely blacked out page. This was to observe in Blackout Tuesday, which was an effort to provide a platform for black content creators to say their voice. 

The blackout page can still be seen here.

Gamification for open source software

Submitted by John on Sat, 02/29/2020 - 00:59

Here's an idea, let's gamify open source software contributions. Here's a list, it's still in development:

File an issue on a project: 10 pts.

Create a patch file and post it to that issue: 50 pts.

Have that patch file committed to the project: 100 pts.

Become a maintainer for a project: 1000 pts

Incorporate a contributed patch for a project you maintain: 200 pts.

Write a unit test for a project (either one you maintain or not) 300 pts

Make your first core contribution to:

Enabling the php72-fpm Service

Submitted by John on Mon, 10/28/2019 - 09:36

The other day, my hosting provider initiated a forced reboot of the server I use to run this website. Unfortunately, this resulted in some unanticipated down time. Now I should note, I’m a web application developer, not a system administrator. I really run this server has a hobby an as an opportunity to learn. But in my professional career, I delegate the responsibilities of setting up these things to a team of talented system administrators. With the site down, I was seeing entries like this in my logs: