Get Inside the Loop

The title is a little misleading since Drupal documentation refers to two types of distributions termed installation profiles and distribution profiles. Once you go outside the main drupal.org or Drupal groups sites, you find that a couple third party organizations have assembled their own distribution packages. It is one of the oddities (sometimes not very amusing) of Drupal that the terms used may change over time. It also is the prerogative of the coder(creator) to name things whatever he/she/it chooses. Ah the joyous complexity of Drupal 6 and its documentation - a lot of things get written, but nothing seems to get rewritten.

Last week I decided to try out the Innovative News Install Profile. The install is supposed to create a News Web site with the major roles of Writer, Editor, Photographer and manager already created. Every attempt to install the profile ended with timeout errors. After each attempt, I also had to wipe out the WAMP test server and setup a new clean install. The problem turned out to be with the WAMP test server. After some serious searching, I found that the script was so big that one needed to go into the php.ini file of the test server and increase the wait time and memory.

I will continue to play with the News site until I transfer it to the production server as a sample site under my company site - http://www.comptoncoms.com .

I am looking at putting together a whole system of sites - News, Church, Intranet and Ecommerce - as both demonstration and training sites for customers. I recently built an ecommerce site using Drupal 6 and Ubercart 2 and learned that finding the right set of modules that can work together efficiently and effectively is not easy. However, after seeing how contributed modules to Drupal 6 just keep getting better and better, I decided the system is a serious CMS that should be used to build quality special purpose sites.

The ecommerce site is BodyVerde and the Ubercart module has a quality checkout and credit card system. I will try to keep you posted as I try new installs and Drupal 6 distributions.