[aklug] Drupal - first steps - rants - raves

Hi All :

Some time ago I stirred up a little dust by bringing up the
assertion made by publishers at Linux Journal (LJ) that drupal sort
of embodied the spirit of linux. That inspired a lively discussion.

Been there. Done that.

Since PHP is the core language of drupal, the thread did include an
even livelier discussion of PHP.

Been there. Done that.

As a programmer who has been doing web development for 17 years,
having developed my own framework in python - along with a remote
server synchronizer - but without an artistic bone in my body, I
have been searching for a CMS or CMF as it were. My first choice
might have been django-cms (based on the django framework, which I
do not use).

I did settle on drupal. Despite the weaknesses attributed to the
core language, drupal appears to be at the top when it comes to
sheer extendability. There is probably a large demand for those
proficient drupal, but I haven't checked that. The challenge that I
face is that I have extensive resources in Python and want to be
able to integrate them (when necessary) with drupal.

I have found mixed results when making the first baby steps toward
this goal. I have also found a lot of "holes" in the drupal
knowledge base. Although the knowledge base is extensive.

An example would be upgrading. I installed drupal 7.15 on my Mac
Mini with OS X 10.7, Using acquaire/bitnami. I note from running
synaptic on our ubuntu boxes that only drupal 6 is available through
synaptic.

I subsequently upgraded to 7.16 as was recommended. Apparently 7.15
is a security nightmare, given the fixes stated regarding 7.16. I
found the upgrade to be complicated but well documented. *YET* so
much time and confusion could be saved (especially by the
non-programmers in the drupal community) by automating the upgrade
process. Well, I guess I will have to do that. Should be easy.

I found that drupal installs mysql databases into a separate datadir
with a my.cnf that is not in the read path of the mysql client and
that it starts a mysqld that listens on port 3307. FYI: my.cnf can
contain the path to a particular datdir as it does with drupal.

I can access those through my own python tools which I developed to
wrap python MySQLdb but I haven't found a way to get that same
access through the mysql client or through PHPMyAdmin. My hack with
the mysql client was to copy the drupal my.cnf to ~/.my.cnf and then
delete ~/.my.cnf when done. To make a long story short.

I've looked at the possibility of using the drupal services module
to leverage non-php scripts as _resources_. A tutorial can be viewed
at http://drupal.org/node/783460. Now here is an example of "holes"
in drupal. I challenge you to find in that page where to save the
resource files! See http://drupal.org/node/1830684 where I posed the
question. My first answer from a question posed to the drupal forum.
Yay!

I'm thinking that with being able to access the drupal DB directly,
that I may be able to bypass the services route entirely. If not, I
note also that the services approach, though complex, might be
boiler-plated and automated as well.

I do find the drupal.org forums to be much less than appealing.
Answers to questions are in short supply. The forum does not provide
email notification of replies to threads. I find this frankly
bizzare given how "sophisiticated" drupal is _supposed_ to be.

Furthermore, I found the chat room approach even worse in results.
Bear in mind that my only experiences have been:
1)A 'small' chat room with a small number of individuals who are
previous acquainted.
2)A chat room where you connect and are shortly put in contact with
a help desk type tech.

#drupal-support is like a 4-way stop in Rome. And that is not a good
thing..

I registered with the theme, developer and support mailing lists. I
like mailing lists, but so far not much activity there.
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If any of you drupalers can recommend any other support venues, I
would be deeply grateful.
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I'll write more later. My biz partner keeps harrassing me about
writting something for his website, so I will use what I wrote here,
as well as content gleaned from the "Linux/Drupal/PHP/Latest LJ"
thread. Some pretty entertaining and edifying stuff in that one!

cheers

-- 
Tim 
tim at tee jay forty nine dot com or akwebsoft dot com
http://www.akwebsoft.com
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