Talk:Drupal

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General Comments
Some PHPSESSID are still showing in the address bar appended to URLs, particularly after an edit of a page, forum post, or book page. Even after applying several fixes to settings.php and .htaccess I'm still seeing PHPSESSID in URLs in Drupal (v.4.6.5 - Jan 2006).

See: http://drupal.org/node/4109 and: http://baheyeldin.com/drupal/how-to-get-rid-of-phpsessid-in-drupal-and-other-php-applications.html

Most DreamHost customers are not going to want to compile their own versions of PHP to run Drupal, and it should be modified at the server level to hide those session id's, imho, to prevent a lot of costly mistakes by users who are not comfortable with the command line but are just desperate enough to try a custom PHP compile.

Aine 22:23, 4 Jan 2006 (PST)

Modules Section

 * I'm not sure, but I think a Drupal Modules page needs to be added to the wiki. We now have more questions about drupal extensions than with the drupal install itself.  --Xyber411 12:55, 13 Dec 2006 (PST)

Civicspace and/or CiviCRM
I am interested if anyone has experience adding installations of Civicspace or CiviCRM to their dreamhost site. If so would you be willing to post some additional instructions on these?

bsnodgrass 21:09 March 24, 2006

Drupal really is an amazing piece of work... I'm currently working on my (thinking...) probably at least 8th install of Drupal, after implementing it for use as two personal blogs (first one got deleted by my ex-webhost), personal intranet, former highschool band blog, family blog, and countless others. I got on to drupal working on the Weblogs@UPEI project at the University of Prince Edward Island, which is probably the second biggest install of Drupal I've ever seen, 2nd only to the actual drupal.org site.

Your first install of Drupal is always the hardest, but I'd say now I could have a fresh install up and running in 5 minutes or less. Take the plunge and try one for yourself... If you're looking for the best CMS on the planet, look no further than drupal. --Adamfreeland 21:59, 18 Apr 2006 (PDT)

Organic Groups

 * Background: You see, I was attempting to use Drupal as a base site for a mailing list.  I do not like the mailing lists provided by Dreamhost, as interfacing with them from a website seems more difficult than I'm capable at the moment (seeing as my understanding here is obviously so limited, but you're helping a lot... Thanks again, by the way).  Anyways, I got my mind around using one of their modules, the mailhandler module.  That requires imap support, which Dreamhost does not support out of the box.  So, I emailed DH and they sent me to Installing_PHP5 to compile my own version of PHP5, which I did (after about 10 failed attempts due to seemingly random errors and one typo).  So, when I compiled it as per instructions with all features as written, without any errors, and added it to my .htaccess, I found that the login function broke.  So, I switched the .htaccess file back until I could do some research.  I came across a blog which stated that they had to change their settings.php file to read mysqli:// from mysql://, so I figured I'd give it a shot, and it worked.  Suddenly the site came back to life.  I now believe that my compile of PHP5 was attempting to use mysqli instead of mysql, which I would rather it didn't.  Any suggestions?  After I had all this working though, I found that the module listhandler is not a mailing list at all, but simply an extension to the mailhandler module.  I really wish people would learn to more accurately title things (myself notwithstanding).  I am now attempting to use the Organic Groups module with it's Organic Groups List Manager module.  The Organic Groups List Manager module attempts to use exim or postfix as the MTA.  I am having trouble getting exim to work, so I am attempting postfix right now.  I need help.  My website is currently working with anonymous comments, so you can go to http://www.miicommunity.com/node/14 to discuss specifics.  Thank all for any help.
 * So, what's all of this for? The Nintendo Wii.  I'm trying to get things as simple for the users as possible.  The path things will go are as follows:  They send an invite email to someone@miicommunity.com -> mailhandler -> listhandler -> forums -> Organic Groups -> Organic Groups List Manager -> users inboxes.  By doing this, they send one email and it gets sent to everyone, as well as gets posted to the forums.  I will also have a filter which will filter out anything which is not directly from a Wii console built into the mailbox.  I'm also trying to split off of the mailhandler to also create a new user account based off of the Wii Console Number, but I'm not even sure how I'm going to do that.  I need suggestions.  --Xyber411 12:55, 13 Dec 2006 (PST)

Added Cron Job section

 * Just thought I would add that, being a new Dreamhost user and all... Plus it took me a while just to figure out how to do that, even though its relatively easy. So thought I would add it to the drupal entry here so as to help future Drupal users.


 * I also fixed a couple of markup oddities furthur up in the doc (for example, indenting a block rather then doubling it up).


 * Question, why is it that it wouldn't let me save my edits? I had to try like 15 different ways, submitting it, previewing it (naturally to check for any errors) and then saving it didn't seem to work, and I think I messed it up and submitted the wrong version (see the latest revision, says "Err?" which is the one with the added section >_<! It should say "added cron job section"... oh well).


 * --Neo 03:35, 18 May 2006 (PDT)


 * I am considering putting the wget option --spider in the documentation. Whenever my cron job would go it was downloading a copy of the cron.php to my home directory. I put spider on there and it now checks it and runs on Drupal, but without the download. What I am wondering is if anyone else is having this issue, or if I just have a really weird setup. I plan on adding it as a small note after the main info about cron. --maiki 16:35, 19 Feb 2007 (PST)

Examples of Drupal on Dreamhost
Is this really appropriate? The section is beginning to look a little bit like self-promotion that is masquerading as useful information. At the very least, I think this section should be given its own page (and be replaced with a single link to that page), rather than having a growing list on the main article. -- Scjessey 08:38, 8 Aug 2006 (PDT)
 * After further thought, I have created a category to deal with situations like this: Category:Example Sites - I can forsee a need for examples for many or all of the DreamHost one-click installations, and any other web applications supported by DreamHost. -- Scjessey 09:51, 8 Aug 2006 (PDT)

Drupal 5.0
The final release of Drupal 5.0 will appear in the next month or so (currently at RC1). The installation process has been improved greatly in this version (now featuring an online install wizard).

When it's out, this page should probably be updated to reflect that. Arancaytar 10:40, 31 Dec 2006 (PST)

Drupal 5.1 is out now. I've installed it on a few of my own servers at work and it's a breeze. This page needs to be cleaned up--I'll check back in a few weeks and try to contribute if I have time. Lukeman

Drupal 6.0
Drupal 6.0 is out now. I just tried upgrading from 5.x with limited success (multiple errors returned, and, being the n00b that I am, I just decided to do a clean install for 6.0 - I didn't have much on my 5.x site). And, of course, I did not keep the log of the errors (sorry), but trying to install 6.0, I am failing miserably. If anyone wants the specific errors, I can pass along, but - my *point* is -

We could use an updated guide for installing 6.0 on DreamHost. I managed 5.x, but I'm failing miserably with 6.0. I suck. Of course, if I figure it out, I'll try to put together a decent article on it. --GuerrillaMovements 11:15, 17 February 2008 (PST)

6.0 (update from above)
Wow! 6.0 is super easy to install and I feel a little foolish now. I decided to try again, fresh databases, etc. and thought to myself, "don't edit *any* files before you upload this time" (particularly the default.settings.php under sites/default). So, I set up a new database on a new server with a new user, I unzipped the 6.0 files to the directory I wanted to do the installation in, and I pointed my browser there. I filled in all relevant info and clicked the "Advanced" section drop down and filled in the server my database was created in and - voila - it works.

So, the key is, don't overthink it. I'm not terribly comfortable editing wiki articles (this is my first stab at the discussion thing - can you tell?), so I'd rather not edit it, but if nobody else does in the next day or two, I'll go for it.

One thing that *would* be definitely useful is if someone successfully upgrades from 5.x or 4.x to 6.0(x), a how to would be great to have somewhere since I bombed that one (and I still have at least one drupal 5.x install out there that I'd like to upgrade for a friend).

Anyway - Happy Drupaling! --GuerrillaMovements 21:48, 19 February 2008 (PST)

Drupal Multisite Install...
I added an instructional for a Drupal Multisite Install. It only explains how to install for multiple domains/subdomains. I still can't figure out how to get subdirectories to work. If anybody knows how to do this please add it to the instructional (I'd really like to know).

Also the instructional is only for 5.x. I'm planning on adding a 6.x tutorial but I'll need some time to test it out before I do that. If anybody already knows how to do this, please feel free to add it without me.

How I Installed Drupal 6
Drupal is a pretty awesome application. The basic installation available on Dreamhost through the one-click install doesn't allow for much customization (they even mention it on the one-click install panel). To get the ability to customize Drupal, you will need to install it by hand. These are the steps that I did to do the installation, you can use these as a guide for your installation. All names used in these instructions can be modified to meet your needs.

The setup is a multisite setup for Drupal that uses separate databases but the same codebase (see http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/install/multi-site).

The instructions will install it first on the www domain and then set up a multisite on the dev domain.

The domains the Drupal sites will run on are:
 * www.somesite.com
 * dev.somesite.com

The hostname that the Drupal database will reside on is:
 * drupal.somesite.com

The Drupal databases are:
 * somesite_drupal
 * somesite_dev_drupal

Drupal administration ID: somesite_admin Drupal administration password: saadmin952 Administration ID e-mail: admin@somesite.com The installation steps  Create the two site domains Create the somesite.com domain under the Dreamhost Manage Domains panel. Create the dev.somesite.com as a subdomain under somesite.com.   Create the database hostname drupal.somesite.com under the Dreamhost Manage MySQL panel. Wait for the DNS entries to catch up. Should take only a few minutes. On the Manage MySQL panel, under &quot;Create a new MySQL database&quot; create the first database with the following entries:  Database Name: somesite_drupal Use Hostname: drupal.somesite.com</li> First User: Create a new user now...</li> New Username: somesite_admin</li> New Password: saadmin952</li> New Password Again: saadmin952</li> </ul> Create the second database called somesite_dev_drupal using the same settings for hostname and user as the previous step. NOTE: If these last two steps didn't work correctly, make sure you have given the DNS enough time to recognize the new hosts.</li>  Before copying the files to the server, prepare the www installation files on your local hard drive. In the Drupal folder under the sites/default directory, copy the default.settings.php file to settings.php.</li> In the settings.php file, update the line that begins with &quot;$db_url =&quot; by entering the mysql connection string. The line will look like:

$db_url = 'mysql://somesite_admin:saadmin952@drupal.somesite.com/somesite_drupal';</li> On the line that begins with &quot;$base_url =&quot; enter the site URL. The line will look like:

$base_url = ' http://www.somesite.com ';</li> </ol> </li>  Prepare the dev installation files. In the Drupal folder under the sites directory, create a folder called dev.somesite.com.</li> Copy the settings.php from the default folder to the dev.somesite.com folder.</li> In the settings.php file, update the line that begins with &quot;$db_url =&quot; by entering the mysql connection string. The line will look like:

$db_url = 'mysql://somesite_admin:saadmin952@drupal.somesite.com/somesite_dev_drupal';</li>  On the line that begins with &quot;$base_url =&quot; enter the site URL. The line will look like:

$base_url = ' http://dev.somesite.com ';</li> </ol> </li> FTP the Drupal files to the server into the somesite.com directory.</li> Telnet to the server.</li> <li>Remove the dev.somesite.com directory that was created when the subdomain was created in the Dreamhost control panel.</li> <li>Create a symbolic link by issuing the command: ln -s somesite.com dev.somesite.com (If you need to remove the link, issue the command: unlink dev.somesite.com)</li> <li>Change to the somesite.com directory.</li> <li>Issue the command: chmod 777 sites</li> <li>Change to the sites directory (somesite.com/sites).</li> <li>Issue the commands: chmod 777 default and chmod 777 dev.somesite.com. NOTE: The dev.somesite.com directory should have been created when the files were copied to the server. If it wasn't you will need to create it and ensure the settings.php file is in the directory.</li> <li>Go into the somesite.com/sites/default directory and issue the command: chmod 777 settings.php</li> <li>Go into the somesite.com/sites/dev.somesite.com and issue the command: chmod 777 settings.php</li> <li>Do not close your telnet session yet, you will need it a couple steps later.</li> <li>Open a browser window, go to  http://www.somesite.com/install.php  and follow the installation instructions on http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/install/run-script. For the database name, use somesite_drupal.</li> <li>In the telnet session, change to the somesite.com directory.</li> <li>Issue the command: chmod 777 sites (During the install a couple steps ago, the process changes the permissions on the directory. I believe this folder needs to have the permissions opened up for  the install.)</li> <li>In your browser window, go to  http://dev.somesite.com/install.php  and follow the installation instructions again using the somesite_dev_drupal database.</li> </ol> Problems you may encounter If you have any problems with the installation, make sure that you have given the DNS enough time to recognize the new hostnames. If for any reason you need to redo the installation, you can easily drop all the tables in the databases and if necessary, remove the site files.

If you have given the DNS enough time to propagate the new host names, there may be a problem on the hosting side. Recently when I did a Drupal install it happened to be at a time when Dreamhost was experiencing database issues. The installation failed miserably and the only fix was to wait for the problems to clear up and then attempt a reinstall. Good luck and let me know if this works for you. :)

GoldFrost 07:52, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Drupal 7
Could use some help here folks--Cberlet 14:12, 1 April 2012 (PDT)