Drupal

The Less CSS Preprocessor Drupal module requires installing a LESS engine, but the instructions are confusing.

The LESS Engines documentation page is a little more helpful, except for a missing little twist... Here's how to do it:

This is work in progress...

I like working in Eclipse, and I've gotten used to having one project for each major Drupal version. This allows me to put the corresponding contribs inside the respective sites/all/modules directory and to just .gitignore them. That way I can let my local webserver serve each Drupal version without having to switch branches.

Set Up a Cache

So I bought a new notebook computer, an HP dv5-1250us, which came with the unloved Windows Vista, 64-bit version. I haven't wasted any time on Vista so far, and don't intend to, either. So the plan was to install Windows XP until Windows 7 would be available, but it turns out that the XP installation disks don't have the required SATA drivers. Rather than mucking with custom XP installation disks, I'm going for the Windows 7 64-bit RC now.

Get the Servers Up and Running

If you have Set Up a Single Drupal Installation for Supporting Multiple Virtual Hosts, then you're also sharing the themes. What if you want to make some minor customizations on one of the sites?

As mentioned in Customizing the Drupal Garland Theme, you can unshare the theme by making local copies in each site. But this is exactly what we wanted to avoid in the first place! There is a better way: create a subtheme for each site.

On-line docs for PostgreSQL:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/index.html

Taken from a post by Barry J.:

I use XAMPP on Windows for development. Here is my process for using PostgreSQL 8.3:

1. Download and run the installer.
2. Uncomment the "extension=php_pgsql.dll" line in Apache's php.ini.
3. Re-start Apache.
4. Change $db_url in settings.php.

Taken from a post by Bill M.:

Once it's installed, there's another step called "initializing

You should always create a test site for testing purposes. If your test site does not have email, but the module you want to test requires it, you have two choices:

• On a Linux box, see http://drupal4hu.com/node/55
• On a Windows box, use your ISP's mail server by setting the following values in php.ini:
  

  [mail function]
  ; For Win32 only.
  SMTP = your.ISPs-email-server.tld
  smtp_port = 25
  
  ; For Win32 only.
  sendmail_from = your.email.address@example.com
  

Garland is the nice new default theme in Drupal 5. Here's how to customize it...

Change the Colors

Garland not only looks good out-of-the-box, but it also comes with a number of predefined color schemes and even lets you define your own using the color.module core module:

Here I'll collect some minor issues and their solutions, which are often surprising...

Site Logo Color Is Wrong in IE

Drupal comes with site logos in .png format. If I create my own site logos in .png format and try to blend the background, then they look fine in FF, but the background is different in IE. Why does this happen?

The solution is to use .jpg instead.

On some sites with very mixed audiences I try to get people to use their full names as user names. Sometimes, couples share an account, and then I try to get them to use both of their names. This can result in some very long user names, and Drupal has a nasty habit of truncating after 15 characters.

Consider a couple with a user name of "Jane Doe and John Smith" — John probably won't be happy to get truncated...