Over the easter long weekend I setup a new blog that I plan to grow over the next 6 months. Zero RC is a RC hobby blog running Drupal 5.1, the Aurora theme (that I customised to be 760px wide and not full screen), and a lot of different modules. My aim is to get several key authors who each have a different expertise (RC Cars, RC Planes, RC Helicopters and RC Boats).

The modules I'm currently using are:

• Blogs (to handle multiple blog authors)
• Path, Pathauto, Metatags
• Google Analytics, XML Sitemap, Adsense
• Ping, Diggthis
• Search
• Comments, Trackback, Akismet, Captcha, Textimage

I've also customized the node.tpl.php file to insert Adsense code between paragraphs like this:

<?php
  //Split the content based on closing paragraph (</p>) tags
  $content_array = explode("</p>", $content);
  //Rebuild the content and add adsense in between
  $new_content = '';
  foreach ($content_array as $key => $value) {
    if ($key > 0) $new_content .= "</p>";
    if ($key == 1) $new_content .= adsense_display($format = '468x60', $group = 1, $channel = 1);
    if ($key == 4) $new_content .= adsense_display($format = '468x60', $group = 1, $channel = 1);
    $new_content .= $value;
  }
  $content = $new_content;
?>

So, if you're a fan of RC toys, check out the site and contact me if you would like to become an author (paid of course).

When I went looking for an opensource content management system to use mid last year, I only knew of a couple, these were Mambo, and PHP Nuke. I had heard mixed reviews about these systems, and wanted to make sure I was using the best, I went in search of one that would do everything that I needed.

After a bit of searching I came across two of the most useful sites on the web (in my opinion)... OpenSourceCMS and CMSMatrix.

I am currently building a lot of Drupal powered sites, something that I will go into more detail a bit later on when I have some time. But because of this I find myself searching Drupal.org more than I search Google, and it was getting annoying and time consuming to type in Drupal.org, then type my search from there, when I am used to using the Quicksearch form in Firefox.

For this reason I had a bit of a look around and found that someone (LouCypher) had already created one and hosted it on MozDev.org.There is even one for DrupalDocs there as well.

This is the third "first post" I have done for NickSchoonens.com. I have been playing around with several content management systems and blogging tools, but have decided to go with Drupal. I have used Drupal for a couple of other sites that I am creating at the moment, and it just offers a whole lot more flexibility than any other system I could find.