Drupal Question and Answer

Are there any standard rules of thumb on how to go about fixing/debugging Drupal sites that have been gently broken for a while? (like if something mysterious in the past caused a problem that wasn't big enough to notice right away)

Does anyone have any favorite tips or tricks to ease the pain of upgrading sites? (patch->5 min; the proper method->more like an hour--there must be an easier way??? Have heard Drush mentioned as fabulous, is that the main thing?)

Are there any generally accepted design principles for speedy/scalable modules (either when building custom ones or when picking out ones already made from contrib)?
(If it isn't too specific, was wondering about stuff like:
-a preference for caching, vs. putting lots of tables in the database to keep everything neatly subdivided like CCK does; or
-doing more processing in a module's code as it runs, vs. storing the results of the processing in database tables to be pulled out, or
-modules that need lots of other modules installed to run, vs. modules that are more standalone?)

Thanks all for the input and feedback on our questions last night. It was extremely valuable.

-Ryan

Here is a list of questions we had in yesterday's session.

I don't have all the answers for all the questions, just some that remember.

It may be a good idea to have someone assigned in round table sessions to take notes and summarize them for posting on this group. This will broaden the benefit to those who did not attend (but they should attend, right ....)

Q1
How do you evaluate a module before deciding whether it is worthy of being used in an installation?

Q2
Are there any standard rules of thumb on how to go about fixing/debugging Drupal sites that have been gently broken for a while? (e.g. if something mysterious in the past caused a problem that wasn't big enough to notice right away)

Q3
Does anyone have any favorite tips or tricks to ease the pain of upgrading sites? (patch->5 min; the proper method->more like an hour--there must be an easier way??? Have heard Drush mentioned as fabulous, is that the main thing?)

One possible answer is outlined in this article. Although the article says Drupal 5, the technique applies to any Drupal version minor releases. I attached the latest script to that article. It requires command line access (via ssh).

Q4
Are there any generally accepted design principles for speedy/scalable modules (either when building custom ones or when picking out ones already made from contrib)?

• a preference for caching, vs. putting lots of tables in the database to keep everything neatly subdivided like CCK does; or
• doing more processing in a module's code as it runs, vs. storing the results of the processing in database tables to be pulled out, or
• modules that need lots of other modules installed to run, vs. modules that are more standalone?)

Q5
Need for a project to do a Youtube like site for upload and transcode video. With emphasis on usability.

Since this use case is not open to the whole web and is restricted to an intranet, scalability is not a real concern, and there may not be any need to separate the servers (drupal, transcoding server, video serving server).

Here are some links on ffmpeg
http://groups.drupal.org/taxonomy/term/2628
http://drupal.org/project/ffmpeg_converter
http://drupal.org/project/ffmpeg_wrapper

Q6
Using Aegir for deployment of Drupal sites.

Q7
Multilingual content for a site
Tips on how to do it.

Drupal 6 code has content translation and locale modules. In addtion to that, yo need the i18n module from contrib, so you can translate things that core does not translate (blocks, menus, taxonomy).

Q8
A standard node has one content area. What if a node or home page has more than one area of content. How to pull different content to differnet areas of that home page.

One solution is using regions in your theme. Start with the .info file and define the regions, then assign blocks to them under admin/build/block.

A more sophisticated solution is Panels 3.x for Drupal 6. It has all sorts of features to allow having complex layouts, panes, ...etc. It integrates with blocks, views and nodes too.