Drupal Thoughts

It's obviously a good idea to backup your databases on a regular basis "just in case" and even more important if you are planning on making a change to the database structure due to an update of your application. (Let's face it, surprises happen.) For new users, this kind of stuff can be intimidating given that just getting Drupal installed in the first place can be a major victory! Each host can be somewhat different but the basic will generally be the same.

1) Login to your host admin panel.
2) Make your way to the MySQL admin section. (On 1and1 it is under "Web Space & Access")

Installing modules is really easy. There are a few steps that will apply to all of them.
1) Find the module you want, download it, and unzip it
2) Check the readme file to see if there are special instructions to install anything else or do anything specific. Usually there aren't but you MUST check
3) Copy the module into the sites/all/modules/ folder in Drupal on the server. (You may have to create the modules folder first)
4) Login as adminstrator to your site and in Administer -> Site building -> Modules check the enabled box next to your module
5) Click on "Save configuration"

One of the first things I wanted to do with this site was implement tags for classifying my posts and information. That really consists of two main steps which aren't that intuitive.

Step One: Configure the site to use tags.
1) Go to "Adminster" -> "Content Management" -> "Taxonomy" (Not very obvious)
2) Choose "Add vocabulary"
3) Fill in whatever fields you want but choose the "Tags" checkbox in "Settings"
4) Now the tag field will show whenever someone creates content of any of the types you specified.

I'm going to classify this as an error even though it didn't prevent the install from working. As I was installing Drupal 6 one of the screens had a radio button grayed out for "Clean URL's" with a message stating that the server was not configured to support that option. There wasn't really any way to solve it before proceeding as far as I could tell so I had to complete the install and then figure it out. Luckily there isn't any harm in configuring it later. Here's how to do it...

1) Open up the .htaccess file in the Drupal folder

After solving my global_variables problem the very next screen had a warning letting me know that my memory limit on the server was not configured correctly. It turned out to be an easy fix after one failed attempt.

When installing Drupal 6 I got an error message saying that "register_globals" was not configured correctly. The fix was pretty straight forward. I just had to create a file called "ini.php" and put that in my Drupal folder on the server with a single line it. Here are the steps:

1) Open notepad
2) Put the following text in it without the quotes. "register_globals = off ; Required setting for Drupal install"
3) Save the file as php.ini
4) Put the file directly in your main Drupal folder on the server

That solved the error for me and I was able to proceed.