You’ll want to start with these four functions:

1. compoundfield_field_settings(), to declare your database structure:

   /**
    * Implementation of hook_field_settings().
    */
   function compoundfield_field_settings($op, $field) {
     switch ($op) {
       case 'database columns':
         return array(
           'textfield' => array('type' => 'varchar', 'length' => 255, 'not null' => FALSE, 'sortable' => FALSE, 'views' => FALSE),
           'textarea' => array('type' => 'text', 'not null' => FALSE, 'sortable' => TRUE, 'views' => FALSE),
           'select' => array('type' => 'int', 'unsigned' => TRUE, 'not null' => FALSE, 'views' => FALSE),
         );
   
     }
   }
   

2. compoundfield_process(), to declare the Form API structure (as you would any other Drupal form):

   /**
    * Process an individual element.
    *
    * Build the form element. When creating a form using FAPI #process,
    * note that $element['#value'] is already set.
    *
    * The $fields array is in $form['#field_info'][$element['#field_name']].
    */
   function compoundfield_process($element, $edit, $form_state, $form) {
     $element['textfield'] = array(
       '#type' => 'textfield',
       '#title' => t('Example Text Field'),
       '#maxlength' => '255',
       '#default_value' => isset($element['#value']['textfield']) ? $element['#value']['textfield'] : NULL,
     );
     $element['textarea'] = array(
       '#type' => 'textarea',
       '#title' => t('Example Textarea Field'),
       '#required' => FALSE,
       '#default_value' => isset($element['#value']['textarea']) ? $element['#value']['textarea'] : NULL,
     );
     $element['select'] = array(
       '#type' => 'select',
       '#title' => t('Example Select Field'),
       '#default_value' => isset($element['#value']['select']) ? $element['#value']['select'] : NULL,
       '#options' => array(
         '1' => t('Option 1'),
         '2' => t('Option 2'),
         '3' => t('Option 3'),
       ),
     );
     return $element;
   }
   

3. theme_compoundfield() to theme the form HTML:

   /**
    * FAPI theme for an individual element.
    */
   function theme_compoundfield($element) {
     // If you want to add CSS (or JS) for this form, here's where you would:
     // drupal_add_css(drupal_get_path('module', 'compoundfield') .'/compoundfield.css');
     $output = '';
     $output .= '<div class="compoundfield">';
     $output .= theme('textfield', $element['textfield']);
     $output .= theme('textarea', $element['textarea']);
     $output .= theme('select', $element['select']);
     $output .= '</div>';
     return $output;
   }
   

4. and theme_compoundfield_formatter_default() to theme the default view:

   /**
    * Theme function for 'default' example field formatter.
    *
    * $element['#item']: the sanitized $delta value for the item,
    * $element['#field_name']: the field name,
    * $element['#type_name']: the $node->type,
    * $element['#formatter']: the $formatter_name,
    * $element['#node']: the $node,
    * $element['#delta']: the delta of this item, like '0',
    *
    */
   function theme_compoundfield_formatter_default($element) {
     $output = '';
     $output .= '<div class="compoundfield-textfield">' . $element['#item']['textfield'] . '</div>';
     $output .= '<div class="compoundfield-textarea">' . $element['#item']['textarea'] . '</div>';
     $output .= '<div class="compoundfield-select">' . $element['#item']['select'] . '</div>';
     return $output;
   }
   

Suggestions, questions, and comments are all welcome. This code is mostly a combination of the link module, Karen Stevenson’s very helpful Lullabot article, and this article by Jennifer Hodgdon.

One caveat with this method: all of your email will be “archived”, meaning if you’re one of those people that keeps everything in the inbox, your inbox will be empty when all is said and done. Some people think that’s a good thing, and I agree – though the line between organizing 99% of your mail and 100% happens to overlap the line between sanity and insanity. The line between love and hate is also nearby.

Preparations

1. You’ll need to set up a Google Apps “Premier Edition” account. They have a 30-day trial so you can do all of this and then cancel before being charged.
2. Set up your user and your email account.
3. Recreate your gmail filters and labels before migrating – this way your migrated email will be filtered and labeled as it comes in. Contacts can be exported/imported easily.

Migration

1. Go to the Google Apps dashboard > Advanced Tools > Set up mail (IMAP) migration.
2. Set up the Google Apps <> Gmail connection like so:
   
   You can of course change the number of connections but it should probably be kept low, otherwise you risk a lockdown in sector 4.
3. Enter your Account username and password and test the connection. You should only see “All Mail” under “Folders Found”. (This is important because the migration program thinks labels are folders, so if a particular email has 3 labels attached to it and if you were to import the entire gmail account, you’d end up with 3 duplicates of that email.) Click Start migration. Enjoy knowing that you didn’t have to waste hours figuring all of this out on your own. You bastard.
4. The migration should create two new labels, “Migrated” and “Migrated/All Mail”. After migration is 100% complete, delete those labels and you’re done.

If you’ve ever wanted to be able to install a font simply by right-clicking on it in Windows, this InBev’s for you.

/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/loading.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/blank.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/prev.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/next.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/close.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/expand.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/pause.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/contract.gif
/sites/all/modules/lightbox2/images/play.gif

It’s possible that Firefox and IE (and/or Safari) behave differently in this case, where an image is called by the CSS background property but the containing element is set to display: none. I don’t see these as loaded in Firebug, but I do see them in “Page Info”, under Media, as well as in the HTTP access log.

Since I’m only using the loading.gif image for preloading (clicking the image itself or the overlay closes the lightbox), I want to keep from loading the rest. The solution here is to comment out the background property definitions in the lightbox2/css/lightbox.css file that call the remaining images. Having done that, the TCP connections needed for each non-cached pageview is reduced by 8.

Two of my Media Temple (dv) servers were getting hit by a botnet-like spam attack this morning, causing a significant number of concurrent SMTP connections. There was a rapid succession of /var/qmail/bin/relaylock entries in the maillog (checking that with tail -f /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog), but the real problem was the number of qmail-smtpd instances running (found through either top or ps aufx), each of which was eating into the available kmemsize.

I think I’ve managed I thought I managed to limit the number of simultaneous qmail-smtpd instances by changing the number of instances from 60 to 10 in /etc/xinetd.conf and restarting xinetd & qmail. I tried changing the instances of both /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa and /etc/xinetd.d/smtps_psa to 10 (from the default UNLIMITED) as well, but that didn’t seem to have any effect. After both changes I restarted xinetd and then qmail like so:

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart
/etc/init.d/qmail restart

Update:

On further investigation, this measure didn’t work out, qmail-smtpd instances were still going overboard and causing kmemsize problems. However I did find another option which seems to be having a slight effect: adding a “per source” to smtp_psa and smtps_psa, which means each IP can only have one connection at a time (doesn’t do much for spam flooding in from hundreds of different IPs, but still):

service smtp
{
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
disable = no
user = root
instances = 10
per_source = 1
server = /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env
server_args = -Rt0 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/bin/smtp_auth /var/qmail/bin/true /var/qmail/bin /cmd5checkpw /var/qmail/bin/true
}

Let me put it to you this way: only Internet Explorer 7 and Phoenix 0.1 put the refresh and stop buttons to the right of the address bar. Mozilla developers quickly realized how stupid that was and fixed it in Phoenix 0.3; but Microsoft, who had the correct idea since IE 1.0, decided after 9 years to unfix it in IE 7.

This could also have applications in blogging, project management, groupware – any online application where ideas would be more efficiently or effectively communicated visually.