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I've begun working a lot more with Drupal multisites, as doing so saves a lot of time in certain situations (usually, when you have a large group of sites that use the same kinds of Drupal modules, but need to have separate databases and front-end information.

One problem I've finally overcome is the use of actual domain host names for development (i.e. typing in dev.example.com instead of localhost to get to a site). This is important when doing multisite work, as it lets you use Drupal's built-in multisite capabilities without having to hack your way around using the http://localhost/ url.

Here's what I did to use dev.example.com to access a dev.example.com multisite in a Drupal installation using MAMP (the dev.example.com folder is located within Drupal's /sites/ folder):

I noticed a post from the excellent folks over at Development Seed in the drupal.org Planet feed on a new Drupal installation profile they've been working on called Managing News. Having tried (and loved) their Drupal-based installation of Open Atrium (a great package for quick Intranets), I had pretty high expectations.

Those expectations were pretty much blown out of the water; this install profile basically sets up a Drupal site (with all the Drupal bells and whistles) that is focused on one thing, and does it well: news aggregation via feeds (Atom, RSS).

I decided to quickly build out an aggregation site, Catholic News Live. The site took about 4 hours to set up, and it's already relatively customized to my needs. One thing I still don't know about is whether Drupal's cron will be able to handle the site after a few months and a few hundred more feeds... but we'll see!

Recently, during one job for a client, I needed to work for a length of time in a location that had quite severe network restrictions—in addition to a proxy server, the location blocked every port besides 80, 25, 443, and 8080. In order to use secure shell (SSH) to login to my work web server, I needed to use one of those ports (I used nmap to find open ports on my end).

Luckily, I gained access to another network for a short time, and used that connection to update my work web server to allow SSH over port 8080 (in addition to the standard, port 22). I edited the /etc/ssh/sshd_config file so it reads:

Port 22
Port 8080

(the Port 22 line was commented out, originally).

Then I simply used the -p (port) directive when logging in via SSH:

$ ssh -p8080 username@example.com

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When I was rebuilding www.lifeisaprayer.com in Drupal, I decided to use the testing domain new.lifeisaprayer.com. This presented me with a challenge, once I started working a bit more on the site, as I set up imagecache, the file system, the favicon, the logo, internal images in posts, images inserted into blocks, etc., into my /sites/new.lifeisaprayer.com/files directory.

If I simply renamed the directory to 'lifeisaprayer.com' and went live, I'd end up with tons of 404 errors. Currently, there's no easy way to switch the location of your files directory in Drupal. Lacking an easy method, it's time to get your hands dirty with a little SQL (I entered the following commands via phpMyAdmin, since my host doesn't yet allow SSH access):

This morning, before heading into work, I ran by the Apple Store to pick up a few copies of Snow Leopard. For most of the morning, I alternated Macs while upgrading one of them, and this post will provide some initial reactions / thoughts on running Snow Leopard.

The upgrade went smoothly—took about 1 hour on my new Macbook Pro 13.3", and about 1.5 hours on an older Core Duo Macbook Pro. No real hiccups, but I have to say I was disappointed that Apple didn't make a new 'Welcome' video. It's the same one as they had for 10.5 :-(

On the first startup, the Setup Assistant displayed the welcome video, then simply said "Thanks for installing 10.6" (I did the upgrade install instead of a Clean install, FYI), and I went about my normal routine. The screen gamma was changed to OSX's new default, 2.2, which is a bit more contrasty... but I simply recalibrated with my Spyder color calibrator and colors were back to my preference.

Exchange Support

Apple's built-in support for Microsoft Exchange is the main reason I went as soon as possible to pick up my copy of Snow Leopard. Immediately after installing, I started playing around with the settings. The biggest question I had was how to set up multiple personal calendars (through MobileMe) concurrently with multiple Exchange calendars (a task impossible to accomplish on the iPhone).