I was one of the last people on the planet to have a mobile phone, but once I owned one I wanted to connect it to the Internet in some fashion. I did not buy one of the fancy phones with a web browser, just a simple flip phone with voice and text. In the interest of connecting my new toy to my website, the first thing I did was to download the mailhandler module to allow text messages to be published from my phone.

Setup for the module is fairly straightforward. After enabling the module and also the blog module, I created a user that I wanted to post under and made sure that user had permission to edit own blog posts. I did not want any future communications to be sent to my cell phone, so I gave my user a regular email address and used ordinary email for the first test. I created a role called mobile for my new user to differentiate from regular authenticated users.

I also set up a dedicated mailbox that I wanted to accept the updates, and entered the information about the mailbox on the Mailhandler configuration page, which is grouped under content management. Messages are pulled from the mailbox when cron is run, but there is also a link on the Mailhandler configuration page to collect the messages. I clicked that and the messages were entered into the site.

The default setting for posts entered from email is unpublished, which is kinda awkward for a mobile post. On the Mailhandler config page I found the input field called:

Default commands:

and typed in:

status: 1

to cause the messages to be published immediately. There are more commands that can be used listed in the Drupal Handbook. Multiple commands can be entered one per line, and are useful for setting a default taxonomy and content type in addition to status and promotion.

Next I need to allow the email address associated with my phone to post messages. I installed and enabled the Mailalias module, then headed over to add my phone's email address as an additional address. This went without a hitch, and I was immediately updating my site via text messages.

I also attempted to set up audio phone posts. There is a PhoneBlogz module for Drupal. This module depends on Views and Audio. I installed all three, set up an account at PhoneBlogz, and entered my PhoneBlogz password and access code on the module page under Site configuration and my PIN number in the provided field on the user page. It is all well documented. The one setting I did not have to change was the XMLRPC preference on the Blog API page. In the past Drupal offered various choices, and PhoneBlogs requires Movable Type, but in Drupal 5 at least there are no options. I did not install the seperate getID3 package that works with the audio module, but I may try that out in the future. I have been contacted by musicians who want websites, and that package would be most helpful.

There is a test audio on the PhoneBlogz website, and after I had everything tweaked I tested the system. Drupal uses cron to pull in the posts, and after I ran cron manually I had a nice audio file on my site.

I also tried to enter a custom message using VOIP and the Gizmo Project. I have not able to connect with PhoneBlogs using Gizmo, and I have not tried dialing directly. I am confident it will work.

It has been a pretty doggone successful day. I can think of all kinds of cool uses for the texting, such as event reminders and personal notes. I did not think that such an Avant Guarde system would be so easy to set up. Future looks bright.

You can look at my successes at the test site.