Site Administration Basics

Submitted by learnbythedrop on Sun, 02/15/2009 - 16:06

Lesson Ten of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.

This lesson focuses on the basics of administering your Drupal site. Topics covered include the site Status Report, module and core update status settings. Includes step-by-step instruction on how to update contributed modules and the core Drupal release.

The premium version is a full resolution (1024x768) version that contains additional content as indicated below.

Premium Content: 
  • Review of database logs
  • Setting different administration theme
  • Error reporting options
  • Cache settings to improve performance
  • Adding a special administration menu bar
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Comments

Roger's picture
Submitted by Roger (not verified) on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 01:23.

Some serious problems with this methodology

The update method stated here is NOT really 'best practice' material.

It's true that overwriting files like this FTP method will make the status messages disappear, but it makes the false assumption that updated tarballs contain only new or changed files. Often, files may be moved or dropped in an update, particularly in contributed modules that are under heavy development. Just copying over files like this could be quite problematic; at best you'll have unneeded, outdated files in the dir, but at worst there could be two copies of the same module file (like when a file gets moved into a subdir) that could generate fatal errors when running the site (which could be quite vexing to a newbie!).

And the example you did show, of FCK editor, is one of those cases where upgrading the module as you've shown here will wipe out any customization that might have been made to the install (like with the fckeditor.config.js).

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 08:28.

Upgrading Drupal and Modules

This particular method for upgrading Drupal has always worked for me without any problems. To the point on the FCKeditor upgrade. I have to say that as a user of that module all of my upgrades have been successful.

For those that would like instruction on a more comprehensive (and time consuming) method of upgrading Drupal, please see http://learnbythedrop.com/drop/70. The major difference in that version is that I believe I delete all of the files except the "sites" directory.

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu, 02/26/2009 - 10:02.

I agree with Roger on this

I agree with Roger on this one - but as Rob (learnbythedrop) also commented, I've never had problems doing it this way either.

Either way, there are some particular files in the Drupal core that are common to edit and you will want to make sure they are kept in mind when updating to a new version of Drupal. Such as:
- .htaccess (I have added a lot of additional code to these in order to get Boost working as well as other optimization modules)
- robots.txt (not so commonly edited but worth keeping in mind)

Andrew

Anonymous's picture
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun, 03/01/2009 - 02:39.

Ay Caramba!

This video rocked, do you realize how much heartache you saved me??? Bless you my friend.

Darren's picture
Submitted by Darren (not verified) on Tue, 05/12/2009 - 18:57.

For a newbie it worked

The video made the update seem very easy. Going forward, I may make a backup of a couple folders and crucial files just to ensure a headache free update. Overall though, cheers for the easy to understand steps.

kevinkin's picture
Submitted by kevinkin (not verified) on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 13:49.

Hi Rob, I have a problem. I

Hi Rob,

I have a problem. I succeeded to move my website on the net (!) The problem is that after putting the site off-line, I don't know how to get back to the login area! I have tried with "wwww.mysite.com/admin", "wwww.mysite.com/user", etc. but nothing appears. I just have the windows saying that the site is under maintenance that's all.
Please help

Kevin

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 21:16.

Accessing Site

There are a couple of things to check. You want to make sure that your .htaccess file got uploaded. If it didn't get uploaded then clean urls might not work. It could also be an issue with your web server. Also try logging in by going to yoursite.com//?q=user/login. That's the login address if you don't have clean urls enabled.

kevinkin's picture
Submitted by kevinkin (not verified) on Thu, 05/21/2009 - 03:20.

Hi Rob, Thank you very much

Hi Rob,

Thank you very much for your answer, I when to mysite.com//?q=user/login and I can see my home/login page...
The problem now is that when I click on any link on my homepage (mysite.com) I have the message "The page you're looking for wasn't found". Although my homepage seems ok, I cannot access any link on that page, cannot log in (I enter my user/pwd and I have the message above).
What could be the problem?

Thanks for your answer

Kevin

learnbythedrop's picture
Submitted by learnbythedrop on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 20:56.

Check .htaccess file

The only two things I can think of are the web server not supporting clean urls and/or a missing .htaccess file. Make sure that .htaccess file is present in the root folder of your site on the web.