what to keep

By wbarber69 on 26 Dec 2009 at 01:59 UTC

I want to start a fresh drupal site I've been testing too many modules and am starting to find errors here and there, but I don't want to lose any of my created content so what db tables do I need to save and what do I need to dump to start over fresh but keep my content

Comments

Impossible to say. Well

dman commented 26 December 2009 at 02:26

Impossible to say.
Well behaved modules should clean up after themselves using the available 'uninstall' function - seen as a tab on the modules page. There they should remove any unused tables and variables.
Many modules however do NOT care about uninstalling themselves.

If you notice any modules that do NOT provide an uninstall function but DO leave DB tables behind, please drop the maintainer a note in the issue queue and ask them nicely to provide such a function. They really should.

For trying out and evaluating modules, you are always advised to do this on a test site, not a production one.

You will probably encounter pain by removing database tables by hand. If you have only a few dozen pages of content, you are best to start again. This is an interesting exercise, as it will allow you to do it 'right' this time.

In extreme cases, you could export your content and re-import it (see node_export or similar) but whether that is worth the bother depends on you. Probably NOT for under 40 pages, depending on your copy&paste skills.

Take he chance to do it again clean. It will take 1/5 of the time it did the first time around.

_{.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards}