Drupal

<p>Are you thinking about installing Drupal but have an existing Web site to maintain during the changeover? This description of one conversion to Drupal will help you plan the change.</p>
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<p>This conversion uses a local computer as the conversion and workstation. You install Apache, MySQL, PHP, and <a class="ex" href="http://drupal.org/">Drupal</a> on the workstation. You configure the software then the current Web sites then merge the Web sites in to a new site.</p>

<p>You copy your current Web site to the workstation so that you can experiment with compatibility changes for your current site. You configure the new Drupal site on your workstation. You then merge the Drupal site and the existing site as a new Web site on your Workstation. When you are 100 percent happy with the new site, you copy the new site to your server.</p>

<p>I describe what I did. I cannot describe what you need to do because I do not know how your site is constructed. What is of use in my description is the overall process and, if you happen to have similar systems, most of the detail.</p>

<p>I have set up over 50 successful Web sites and helped hundreds of other Web sites become up to 1000 percent better. My experience means I do some things without remembering to write them down. I may no have written every detail in this page which means there may be some obvious steps missing.</p>

<p>I will include references to sites that help you with more detail or more up to date information on specific steps. Send me your questions and feedback so that I can improve this information for the next person who wants to convert a Web site.</p>

<h2>Further reading</h2>

Drupal 8

Drupal: 

Drupal 8 is shaping up to be another Drupal 7 waterfall without the benefits.

Open source development hits another roadblock

Drupal: 

Open source lets anybody contribute to any code but it does nothing to ensure the contributor understands either the code they are contributing to or the code they contribute. Some open source projects add automated testing of code execution or code format. There is no tests for good design or applicability. The larger projects are crashing into problems created from accumulated contributions that misdirect people and the projects.

node_load_from_title()

Drupal: 

node_load_from_title() is a function for Drupal 7 to replace functionality lost in the changeover from Drupal 6.

Drupal - performance or flexibility

Drupal: 

Drupal offers some choices between performance and flexibility. There are heaps of recommendations for increasing performance and they are almost always applicable only to high volume Web sites where you have good control over the server and you have a very small proportion of your visitors logged in. Everyone else has to fight for performance from the ground up through the Web design and coding. Here are the critical design decisions.

drupal_lookup_path()

Drupal: 
technology: 

The Drupal function drupal_lookup_path() is the biggest database access time consuming function on many Web pages and chews up ten times more than most other functions. There are some straight forward solutions and some difficult ones. Here are the problems and potential solutions. You can use the results in other database access code.

Module variable new

Start using Module variable by creating an object from class module_variable. Your module supplies the name of your module, the lower case machine name, not a decorative title. In this example we are adding variables to a module named Translate Java to PHP. The internal name, the name used for the first part of the name for the .info, is kill_java. The Module variable class, named module_variable, is loaded automatically by Drupal 7 when you use the class.
Drupal: 

Notice: Undefined index: to in DefaultMailSystem->mail() (line 83 of /var/www/example.com/public_html/modules/system/system.mail.inc).

Drupal: 
technology: 

Notice: Undefined index: to in DefaultMailSystem->mail() (line 83 of /var/www/example.com/public_html/modules/system/system.mail.inc).

You forgot the $message['to'] part of $message.

You could be using a main function direct, mail($message);, or the following drupal_mail function with an invalid $to. An invalid $to is unlikely because processing will almost always stop with an earlier error message.
drupal_mail($module, $key, $to, $language, $params, $from, $send)

Warning: implode(): Invalid arguments passed in DefaultMailSystem->format() (line 23 of /modules/system/system.mail.inc).

Drupal: 
technology: 

Warning: implode(): Invalid arguments passed in DefaultMailSystem->format() (line 23 of /var/www/example.com/public_html/modules/system/system.mail.inc).
Somebody broke the following line of code. You are sending mail without the body component or with the body component in the wrong place or with the body containing a string instead of an array.
$message['body'] = implode("\n\n", $message['body']);

Views development - Testing a change to a view

Both Drupal and Views have real performance limitations they try to overcome by caching (saving) the results of an operation for reuse. This can make testing painful by showing you the results of a previous test, not the current test. There are a few things to switch off when developing new views or changing something that is input to a view.

Drupal: 

Views installation

Views administration page showing some views supplied with Views

  1. Install Drupal 7.
  2. Install and activate Ctools, the only prerequisite for Views
  3. Install and activate Views

Done. Finished. So easy.

Drupal: 

Pages

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