This is not a rant.
I installed Drupal about 4 weeks ago. Build the site, and since then it seems like almost everyday there is something new which breaks, or doesn't work.
Error of the day: Suddenly the javascript in Panels stopt working, so panels can't be edited.
The past few days having the admin slowed down to a crawl for no apparent reason.
And the list just goes on, and on.
Seriously considering stopping with the use of Drupal (modules) for my site.
Not to offend anybody, and I mean that. But this is just crazy, to expect to work with this like this, I can't turn my back on the site for a minute without worrying about another problem cropping up. And I am losing visitors because of the problems.
Who knows maybe in the future.
Good luck with Drupal and everything, hope it works out for you.
Comments
Not meant to offend you, but
Not meant to offend you, but the cause of so many issues usually has to do with implementation. Alas, you could get a lot of support by posting broader details or even searching the issue queue. See, I can't believe some "Drupal deity" disliked you in heavens and cursed your installation while so many more experienced devs hav been blessed, so Web dev has all about these issues. =)
Drupal has a slow learning curve, you have to take your time (or go with wordpress if it suits you and you don't have time). It's about sowing and cropping later. ;)
BTW, panels has been buggy for centuries =P
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Franz | Trellon LLC
I can understand your
I can understand your frustration but I hope you stick with it. Four weeks is nothing...really. As the previous poster suggested, Drupal has a steep learning curve (especially if you are already using Panels) and you have got to be patient with it.
Rarely does anything on Drupal stop working without a 'human' cause. The javascript on panels doesn't just stop working...you must have installed another module that conflicts with it.
The admin menu slowing down? Are you using the admin menu module or do you mean the main administration page? This could be server or Drupal related. More details would be nice.
The National English Club of China
Thank your for replying, and
Thank you for replying. I really appreciate it. :-)
Found my second wind, thanks to the encouragement above, and did some debugging and the problem appears to be possibly this:
The back-end runs in SSL, and the front-end on a non-SSL. Next to that I had the I8N module installed.
What looks like what might be happening is that the site got 'confused' in what it had to look up.
So for example secure back-end -> language 1 or secure back-end -> language 2 or secure front-end -> language 1 or non-secure front-end language 2, etc. This was somehow possibly causing the site to look up a lot more than necessary. Or possibly also causing problems when both the back-end and front-end where open in the same browser.
Google was also indexing a lot of language pages that hadn't been translated (but were set to language neutral?), so nothing should be there. Set nofollow on the language.
Unset second language and uninstalled the I8N module until I retest this.
Next setting the settings.php $base_url to:
// Change base_url to HTTPS ($base_url may be explicitly set by settings.php)
if (isset($_SERVER['HTTPS']) && $_SERVER['HTTPS'] == 'on') {
$base_url = 'https://yourdomain.com'; // NO trailing slash!
} else {
$base_url = 'http://www.yourdomain.com'; // NO trailing slash!
}
Uninstalling I8N module and setting settings.php appears to have increased the (look up) speed tremendously. The search also started working normally again. Before this debugging, it would not look up some nodes, which were there, and should have been indexed.
Next I had also put the $scripts at the bottom of the theme (loading javascript at the bottom), and moved this back to the top. This also gave an increase in smooth loading.
Implemented a file cache, to take some of the load off at the front-end.
Cleaned the watchdog tables also seemed to help a bit, although I am not sure on that one.
Contacted my webhost, with a log of the times that the site error-ed out, and hopefully we'll find additional info there.
And, last but not least, the Javascript problem in panels was indeed another script that decided to start conflicting, because of a typo in the theme.
Lessons learned:
Setting up a new workflow: Offline development testing server => online testing server => main website
Testing Drupal and modules under more circumstances on testing servers, before deploying.
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Have some spare time? Consider helping, and fixing bugs. :-)
Re
The webhost moved me to another server.
Besides that it seemed that the problem also occurred because it appears Opera was having trouble discerning between https and http in the back-end, or with the certificate. This caused the site to time-out, or drag along. Using another browser solved it.
So this in combination with conflicting modules (Boost with XML Sitemap), and the other things mentioned was causing havoc.
The site is working fine now.
Placing the $scripts at the bottom is also no longer a problem.
----
Have some spare time? Consider helping, and fixing bugs. :-)