Update (Summer 2008): This is now obsolete. Please see Site Credits for an up-to-date version.
I get asked about once per week how my photography web site (ericscouten.com) is built, so I thought it would be good to write up a good, detailed description here.
The core software behind my site is Drupal version 4.6.something (I forget which) with only a handful of off-the-shelf and custom-modules. It’s been more than a year now since I’ve done active development on the site, so please forgive that my memory is sometimes a bit rusty on how things work.
Looking through the admin page, I see that I’m using the following modules:
- es_image: A customized version of the built-in image module. What’s different about my version of the module is probably mostly not of interest to anyone else. Instead of uploading the images via HTTP, I upload them to the web server via Perforce, which is the backbone of my storage management across all of my computers. Also, this version links to my on-line store which is operated by Pictopia.
- node, page, search, story: Of course. Everybody has to use these.
- nodewords: A nice way to add page-specific keywords for search engines.
- ping: I don’t notice a whole lot of new traffic that can be traced to the sites being pinged, however.
- postcard: Send e-mail postcards based on my images. Hacked a little bit to work with es_image instead of the standard image module. It looks like this module has never been officially released; you have to download it from CVS.
- project: I track my to-do list items, etc. here. I think I hacked node.module to make all of the project nodes invisible to search, etc.
- scheduler: Once upon a time, I used to manage when nodes were visible. I don’t think I’ve used this in a while.
- simplenews: For a while, I was using this as my e-mail list solution. I’m back to using Mailman instead.
- smileys:
- taxonomy: All of the gallery sections are managed as categories.
- taxonomy_menu: The left-hand navigation menu is one of these. I think I hacked t_menu a bit to give the rendering of the image thumbnails.
- warpbar: A bit of custom hackery that gives the progress menu at the top of each individual gallery page. Deeply intertwined with my theme.
- webform: The contact and mailing list pages use this.
The theme is one I designed on my own and is not available for download.
Oh, and no discussion about how my site is built would be complete without a shout out to my wonderful web hosting company, DreamHost. I’ve been through a few different web hosting companies over the years and there’s no comparison. DH just rocks.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
Hi Eric,
I found you through Pictopia. You have a wonderful collection of beautiful images. I am very impressed with your work.
I am trying to come up with a better way to link my own gallery images to Pictopia. I’m hoping there is a way to automate this process because otherwise it can be quite time consuming.
I’m on a Mac Quad.
Linda