Day 1 - DrupalCON CPH - Lessons/tips...

The following are the most important Drupal-related modules that were mentioned/debated at Day One of the Drupal Con CPH 2010:

The Modules
- Panels (Project-Panels)
- Display Suite (Project-DS)
- Data (Project-Data)
- Composite Layout for nodes (Project-Composite)

The Starter themes
- Zen
- BluePrint (Works with the BluePrint CSS library)
- Foundation  (comment was that it was in many ways FAR superior to Zen) 

Accelerate drupal performance

Update: There are several modules available to Drupal 6 for caching pages, thus enhancing load-performance of your Drupal website.  I've personally tried the CacheRouter below, and have found this excellent article outlining an alternative - Boost & DB Maintenance.

Dedicated hosting setup
I just installed APC - the PHP opcode cache engine - on our server, and configured it as described in

APC Drupal Performance tuning

APC enabling & optimization makes Drupal websites SCREAM!

Shared hosting setup
If you are running your Drupal website on shared hosting, and don't have the option if APC ( as it is a server-wide installation, and not single-site!) then you might want to check out the Boost/DB Maintenance modules, or the one below...

CacheRouter Module
Update: I've tried this module on a website featuring AJAX loading of node content (through Views 2 Module), and experiencing rather high load-times with this combination.  Maybe Views 2 Cache needs to be enabled for the same content, maybe not.  I will test this later on - And please - if you test, then comment here... Thanks!

Nodes - Hooking into them, loading and saving with new overridden values

Check out this code-centric article on using hook_nodeapi in Drupal 6.  There are good code-examples and the section "Caveats" is especially worthwhile.

Drupal - How does it work...And how do I make it work for me?

Jeff Eaton presents Drupal to the developer.  He outlines the process of making a web-request, using index.php-controller as the stepping-stone, and how to hook into the Drupal-system.  "Hooking" is Drupals way of modifying functionality, and hooks are primarily implemented inside Modules.

Jeff does an amazing job of keeping it simple to understand, and reveals the processes that power Drupal enough to get you more than started coding your own Drupal Modules.

CCK - Compound Fields - Image + Rich Text Caption + Taxonomy...

Here is a great article, outlining how to create your very own compound fields for use in CCK. The article EVEN (!!!) supplies you with two concrete implementations of modules, as added bonus...
- Image + Rich Text Caption + Taxonomy
- Modified User-page fields

You may download these two modules from the bottom of the same page, as linked to above...

SimpleMenu and Devel Themer Conflict...

These two modules, which separately are awesome tools, conflict with each other...

I haven't found documentation of the specific conflict, or the reason why they conflict -But they do.

Activating the Devel Themer module, immediately disables the display of the SimpleMenu, so re-enabling the display of the SimpleMenu is a matter of visiting the relative URL "?q=admin/build/modules" - locating Devel Themer module, and disabling it.

Please contribute with comments, and especially solutions found for this :0)

Pretty URL's - Automatically

Pretty URL's in Drupal 6 are easily introduced at ANY TIME in your development cycle, using the Pathauto Module.

There is however ONE tiny fly in this ointment - In order to enable and use Pathauto, then you will have to introduce the Drupal Rewrite Rules into your web-hosts ".htaccess"-file, or directly into the Apache Directory Rewrite Rules for your website installation. ".htaccess"-files are the most commonly available option, on shared hosting anyway, and you then will just need to download the Drupal installer (if you don't already have this on-disk), and copy the very same ".htaccess"-file to the aforementioned location on your web-hosting.

NB! The Mac OS X Finder and Windows File Explorer (and their likes) may not show you the .htaccess-file, as it is a hidden file (prefixed with ".").
In these cases you will need to view your Drupal-downloaded installation (unzipped), directly in your FTP-application, and make sure that you are viewing all files, even the invisible or hidden ones.

The very last setting...
You need to make one very last setting in your Drupal installation; Visit the page at "/admin/settings/clean-urls" (being logged in as the admin-user), and make sure to enable Clean URLs!

HEEELP!!! Drupal WSOD problem... Why and How to recover

Remember the times when you have seen Bill Gates present a Windows feature to the world, and it all suddenly ends in the BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death)? This kind of problem probably gets a couple of MS-engineers fired ASAP.

Drupal has an equivalent to BSOD - The White Screen Of Death (WSOD) Read on to avoid "getting the boot" from your boss or customer for your Drupal website suddenly going white, and not showing any HTML or other code on inspection!

WSOD - Causes
WSOD in Drupal is most likely to bug you when:

• You've installed (uploaded and activated!) one or several Modules that have bugs in them, or that they together act erroneously (module madness)
  
• You've done something terribly wrong in one of the template/theme files

The first case is the most common, also as you will have guessed that the latter case is easily overcome by simply reverting your own code back to functioning state.

Solution to WSOD - Module madness
Drupal keeps a continuous status of which modules you have installed and enabled for your Drupal installation. These informations are collected together in the database of your Drupal installation. So, using your favorite database-editor (e.g. PhpMyadmin for MySQL), you should take the time to locate the table named "_system" (e.g. "drup_system"). In here, you will observe (upon inspection) that it has two data-columns of special significance; "name" and "status". "name" indicates, as you might've guessed - the Module Name, while the status is enabled/disabled (1/0) for each of these modules.
You will therefore need to disable any of the more recent modules that you've installed, and you should be rid of WSOD once more.
Disabling modules is accomplished by - You guessed it - using that same database-editor (PhpMyadmin) and setting the "status" of the suspected Modules to the value of "0" (ZERO).

Developer modules

Just like you will need the essential modules, as the previous post outlines - then you, as the developer and designer of a Drupal website, will also benefit greatly from these...

1. Devel Module+Devel Themer - Visualize content data, which template (theme) files that apply to a certain page or content-view, and use it to modify your pages and content!
2. SimpleMenu* - Provide a general menu, always displayed at the top of your website - No need to reserve a block-position for this menu - it does it all!
3. Zen-theme - A fasttrack to theming as you can literally "point-n-click" to create your own theme, and THEN specialize this theme to your liking

* SimpleMenu is great, but it has a conflict with the Devel Themer module (specifically the Themer module!), so use it with care, and when using for the admin-user you can switch Devel Themer on and off in your Modules Control Panel on your website.

Totally necessary modules...

The Modules that you will need for the typical Drupal 6 Installation... All modules below are oriented towards content and editing of this content - See other post for Developer modules.

All work in well-tested Drupal 6.x-installation, so go ahead - go wild - Install ONE, install ALL

1. Everyday editing... WYSIWYG
2. Better, richer content on your page, and the content fields and types you crave... CCK
3. Control the display of your content; blogs, listings, detailed views, with or without pager, meeting certain criteria... Views 2
4. File, image and media handling - A collection
   
   • ImageAPI
   • ImageCache
   • Filefield-CCK Extension
     
   • IMCE
   • IMCE-WYSIWYG
5. Create your own forms - replace the limited built in Drupal Contact Module... Webform