Blog → D6 update log

That wasn't an easy job to do. But it was much needed. This kind of spring cleaning is essential. And I'm absolutely happy with results. I'm terribly sorry it took so much longer then expected. So what was it all about:

• Screenshots: files cleared up and recreated by amazing laser shooting screen grabbing robot. Big thanks to Paul Hammond for his webkit2png

  Screenshot subsystem now uses imagecache for greater flexibility. The default size from now on is 600px wide to keep up with future developments and only jpeg and png are accepted. But still, naming your file something like "mysite.jpg" is highly recommended (screenshot.jpg or logo.jpg can still puzzle the system).

• Voting: much work has been done to filter out cheaters and rebuild results. If your vote amount will will be higher then 10% of link clicks it might be reviewed as cheating (very individual, but based on average score). In case of violation all votes will be deleted.
• Links: the whole system has been migrated from links bundle to CCK link field. It means no more redirects and more SEO friendly links. Click count is now handeled by pop_links module which is using VotingAPI. The click count is view is yet disabled. Let's check how it goes first.
• Users: about 200 never logged in users were deleted. Another 100-ish spamming users are kept on block list.
• Nodes: the whole drupalsites.net submission count shrunk back to 3000 sites listed in sake of quality vs quantity.

  About 300 unpublished nodes has been deleted (spam or dead links) in first round. Another about 400 nodes were deleted with help of mentioned robot. It gave a great visual source of about 3500 screenshots to scroll around. The robot was run through all links 3 times in within a week. So this way I was looking to keep the submissions with brief outages. But any dead sites with blank screens, suspended hosting, 404s ... were spotted and deleted from the list. There were a few previously Drupal powered sites converted to html (why in the world?) or to other CMSes.

  Submissions are now tracked by $nid (was $lid). It paths the way for future expansion without links bundle. There is a new live published node counter block as well.

• New rules: new submissions are given a "few days" to update description with at least small English piece. Let's face it: English is de-facto official language of international Drupal community since very beginning.

  No sites with "coming soon" or "under construction" are accepted. Please build your site first to show it to general public. Sites with Garland or Bluemarine themes are accepted individually. Honestly, let's build something better then the mess, Drupal deserves allows it! After all it showcase.

  Featured and random sites are served only if submission has screenshot.

• Top sites: the old idea and the page (dead for more then a year now) was transformed to list of sites aggregated by votes and views. All old link stats was reset to give everybody fresh and equal start with new system.

After all I hope you'll like the renewed drupalsites.net!