Get Inside the Loop

So where have I been for the last six months. I have been on a trip to explore new Web site programming systems and online advertising programs for Google and Facebook. Much of my effort went into a new ecommerce site, BodyVerde – http://www.bodyverde.com.

I had not done an ecommerce site since 2005. This site uses Drupal 6 and Ubercart 2. This system is truly impressive. If you are developing an ecommerce site, I strongly recommend Drupal. Go to the Drupal site at http://drupal.org/ to download the core application. You can also get a wealth of information from the site about the system. I plan to be blogging about Drupal a lot in coming weeks.

Drupal is open-source software and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. The latest version of Drupal is 6.15. More than a Content Management System, Drupal is a Web programming framework that allows one to built quality Web site by combining the core modules with contributed modules that expand its functionality. If you are going to build a Drupal site, you need to understand some basics about the system.

First, no one is going to hold your hand to make sure you understand how to use, install, or configure the system. If you have a problem, you can go to the forums and get help. Sometimes the documentation is good, sometimes it is wrong, and sometimes it applies to an early version of the module and has not been updated. Thus it is important to read the notes and use a test server.

As I said, documentation is often incomplete, hard to find or missing. Remember nobody is getting paid to write topnotch guides or instructions. It is a free application. But programmers do like to talk about what great modules they have created, so the Drupal site is loaded with information about the core module in all its versions. The difficulty is in finding the information you may need among the thousands of pieces that may be based on versions 4.7 to 5.21 to 6.15. My recommendation – Get a good book like Drupal 6 Social Networking from Packt or a book on Drupal 6 released in the last year. Without such help even an experienced programmer may configure his/her way into a deadend.

For example, the Drupal 6 site I built has multiple modules for handling photos and images. One module allows uploads of photos directly to the server, another is used for adding photos to products and a third module is used for random photo illustrations.

During the development of the ecommerce Web site, there were at least four times when I ran into problems that required me to ask for help. The information I needed was on site, but I had to go to the forum and look for hints on where to find it. Once you discover a problem and find the solution, please help others by posting your finding or correction.

I have an Drupal sample site, I have put on my production server at http://www.comptoncoms.com/drupal/ and I plan to move to a my entire site to Drupal later this year and provide and portal for clients and combine functions now handled by separate programs such as blogs, forums and news.