Installing Drupal 6
I installed a drupal 5 about six months ago. It was fairly easy. I have spent over 16 hours straight trying to install drupal 6, and after all that I am back at the initial install screen. The trouble started with mod_rewrite, then memory shortages, moved to register globals. Hell, I may be wrong with the order, as I have had so many problems that I am considering learning wordpress or something else. It appears that drupal 6 is uninstallable by a normal person (stupid) as downloaded.
I have been struggling with php.ini, htaccess, and settings.php files. I really don't think you should reccomend installing drupal to anyone but coding experts. I'm afraid that drupal is no longer a public CMS, but is only usable by experts.
I reccomend that you post a warning about this on your download pages.
Are you installing on the
Are you installing on the same server as your 5.x? Is there anything unusual about the install configuration (subdirectory, subdomain, etc.) or is this just a routine setup, like your 5.x?
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http://music.bwv810.com
http://davidhertzberg.com
I am a writer, researcher and solo drupal freelancer.
D6 installation
Thanks for your reply. Sorry about my delay responding. Life has been chaotic.
Absolutly nothing changed on my end. I have the same server, with exactly the same settings. (1and1, buisness package) The domain is top level. I viewed the lulabot before downloading, unzipping, and FTPing. I read the readme.txt., and the installation instructions on drupal.org Yet it was hell.
But,despite these hair-raising problems for a "newbie," I learned a hell or a lot in a reletavily short period of time.
At hour sixteen, I had worked out all the problems, installed 6, and was even able to make the htaccess enable clean URLs. I took that knowlege back to my 5 site, and enabled clean URLs, which had previously driven me crazy.
Although I made all of the htaccess and settings.php changes necessary to complete the installation, I completely died and folded up when it came to making the changes in the php.ini file. I fk'd the file up, and completely crashed the site.
When I called Inda (where most of 1and1's support is based) I was really lucky. The Tech didn't just reopen my directory, he went in and rewrote the php.ini file to properly configure it. He told me I should look at it carefully.
Hell, I was dying on putty, but I should never have been forced to go to that point to complete a basic installation.
Thus my issue: D6 is not an easy installation. I was really blindsided! I've learned a heck of a lot, but I was in up to my earlobes. This will kill drupal as an option for low-level bloggers and small commerical operations, which will eventually choke off work for developers.
But Drupal is badass. I selected drupal because of it's incredible power and flexibality, and I knew that I would have to learn a lot to use that power. But not all at once, and especially not during the basic installation!
Now that I've got the basic installation down, I've been carefully organizing my next steps, which is carefully surveyingand determining exactly which configuration of the vast array of contributed modules will best present and promote my content.
My d6 installation has two purposes: first, to begin implementing a commercial site, tahoetowhitney.com, The purpose of this site is to present the 470 miles of trails between tahoe and whitney with images and text as the primier destination and goal of every backpacker and outdoorsman in the western world. The second is to learn enough to redesign my clunky HTML non-profit political site, committeefordemocracy.org into drupal.
I have compiled a vast arrary of content for my new commercial site, including over 1000 incredible images, (all taken in 35mm negs, digitized) an html trail guide, a butload of wilderness adventure stories, and the maps, mielages, elevations, trail culture, food, equipment, and a whole file structure of content I must present in a sophicated web presentation, if this site is going to be profitable.
The plan is to create THE backpacking/wilderness adventure site on the web that will draw every affectanido of the outdoors, from citidiots to seasoned outdoorsmen, to this site.
I have checked out and listed about 135 modules that are potientially suitable for the site, and broken them down into 10 categories, such as formatting, menus, taxonomy, contents, and so on. My next problem is how to figure out which of the 7 media player modules is best suited for my site and my low level of programming (PHP) skills. The same process of selection is required for each of the other nine catagories of features I wish to deploy on the site.
I feel like I can’t tell the forest from the trees. If you could suggest a process, or a reference source, that will assit me in determining the best module for my needs and skill level, I would be eternally grateful.
Thanks again for your attention, and sorry again for my delay responding,
Alex
Thanks for the detail. Its
Thanks for the detail. Its odd how people can have such different experiences; I am on a 1and1 server and must admit that my installation of 6.4 was absolutely flawless and trouble-free.
Regarding the selection process, I have found that trial and error is the best way to proceed. I can recommend some media modules that I use, but your requirements may be different. If you spell out how you want to use the media players (video types, audio types, etc.) we might be able to make some suggestions and save you some time.
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http://music.bwv810.com
http://davidhertzberg.com
I am a writer, researcher and solo drupal freelancer.
Module Selection
It's amazing the different experiences I had between installing d5 and d6. I thought that the problem had to be changes in d6, as that was the only change in my set-up. Until you mentioned that you also use 1and1, and had similar installation experiences with d5 and d6. Now I'm not sure.
But I am sure of one thing: I am going to work through all the problems necessary to achieve the structure, presentation, and web visibility to successfully present my natural and political content to the world.
So far I have successfully installed d6 and I have reviewed all of the modules avaiable for d6, and compiled them into lists by function. My plan follows your advice, and is basically an informed trial by error. I am avoiding the modules that warn of complex installation setups.
Although I am working to set up a commercial site promoting backpacking, Lake Tahoe to Whitney: Crown Jewel of the PCT, as what I hope will become a premier destination for all who love the outdoors, I am also desiging it as a custom advirtising forum for outdoors manufacturers and retailers to directly reach active backpackers, day hikers, and lovers of the outdoors.
If I can achieve this, I should be able to make some money. A main feature of the site will be the 1500 jpeg images I have recorded during my three complete trips between lake tahoe and mount whitney, as well as dozens of side trips I have taken in the Sierra Nevadas.
The trail is naturally broken down into seven sections by resupply points, and the trail guide and "the trail in pictures" are also divided into seven sections. I would like to be able to set up each section of pictures as a gallery that can be accessed by a viewer, although this will not be the main form for presenting the images.
The main presentation of the images will be as a channel, "The Trail in Pictures," which will feature two or three of the pictures displayed on a nicely formatted page with a brief text describing their location, the hike to the location, and listing links to the proper map, the proper section of the trail guide, and the mileages and elevations pertaining to the specific image. It's quite a project. The plan is for the visitor to be able to "walk" between Lake Tahoe and Mount Whitney in 700 pages holding 1500 images.
I have also broken the pictures down into categories composed of lakes, rivers, mountains, sunsets and sky, animals, canyons, and denizens of the trail (backpackers, horsepeople, locals). The visitor will be able to selectively view all of the mountains, lakes, and sunsets between Tahoe and Whitney.
Other sections include the trail guide, the maps, elevations and mileages, trail culture, the art of walking, navigation, and trail skills. Then there is the money section, the section on equipment, equipment selection, and equipment tests.
While doing this I am also trying to gain the necessary familiarity with drupal to convert my html radical news site, the http://www.committeefordemocracy.org into drupal. (Sorry the link is not active, I use Opera) If you are using Mozilla to view the committee site, I appoligize for the printing error: since the last Mozilla update my homepage has not been printing correctly. Yet Another reason I must convert to a CMS as soon as possible.
The Backpacking site is part of a plan to make money doing something I love for money (backpacking-NOT web design or programming) to pay to keep me in the mountains and support the political site, which I feel duty-bound to maintain in these dangerous times.
I hope to have tahoetowhitney.org up as a beta test site in three months.
I have little programming skill, but I am learning quickly. If you could point out what to avoid as being too difficult for a "newbie" to install, or point out the modules that are easiest, it would surely save me a lot of grief.
These are the module catagories with the potential modules listed below:
Formatting: Both Sites
cck blocks
panels
views
color scheme api
custom page
header Image
work flow: Daily front page, news site
epublish
Daily
Media: Both Sites
images
album photos
brilliant gallery
apture
cck multi image
couloir slideshow
fast gallery
flash node
flash video
metatags/statistics: Both Sites
metatags
intergrated metatags
pathauto
clickthrough tracking
counter
get clicky
google analytics
ADs/marketing: Backpacking site
google ad sense
advirtisment
banner rotor module
cache exclude
front page splash promo
taxonomy: Political Site
cck taxonomy fields
Directory
backlinks
author taxonomy
articles
nodeque
Comments/bloggers: Both Sites
block submit twice
bookmarks (user)
favorite nodes
auto categorize
blog ad-ons
block theme
block quotes
Security: Both sites
bad behavior
Block anonymous link
coral defender
IP anonymizer
Maps: Both sites
gmap
gmap EZ
cck map
Editor: Both sites
fck editor
Any advice on which modules I should avoid is priceless! Any insights you share will be treasured!
Thanks again for you kind attention,
Alex Wierbinski
PS: I checked out your music site, and thanks for this excellent music site. It reminds me of how I feel about politics: these are things every complete person should have basic knowledge. Thanks for the reminder! I bookmarked it, and am listening to some JS Bach right now. (Brandenberg #5) I feel more civilized already!
PPS: Since I wrote the above (about seven hours ago) I have successfully installed the CCK, Views, and Panels modules, all without any real problems. Now I have to figure out how to use them!
I think this is a good "core" bundle of important contributed modules to gain some degree of mastery over, to really reach out and grasp the power of Drupal. With these modules I can try to execute my fornatting plans for tahoetowhitney.org. -alex