I'm writing up the problems, scares, and lessons I encounter as I go from Drupal newbie to (someday) Drupal Ace. I'd love to hear from the pros, but especially look forward to commiserating with, and learning together with, my fellow non-gurus – those just moving beyond the basics, or even just starting out.

Technical difficulties update: lost pages

Wow. This site truly is cursed. I have troubles here that I just don't have on any other sites I build. I suppose it's a combination of this being one of my earlier endeavors, as well as a guinea pig for all kinds of experiments. Oh, and I think the database's server once held a digital copy of the Nekronomicon.

Many recent nodes disappeared from the site. I have no explanation yet; I had not imported content or otherwise hacked the database, yet the nodes just aren't there.

Testing the Blogging Clients #2: Review of MarsEdit on Drupal

MarsEditI have an old, short post about testing blogging client MarsEdit with Drupal. A blogging client is a stand-alone application that posts to your blog or other website; the advantage is that you write and edit in a familiar word processor-like application, without having to log in to your site, navigate to content creation, and work with your site's text editing features.

Dumb mistake #27747: Wrong module version

Captcha's been treatin' me bad. Or so I thought. Looks like I was the one doing' Captcha wrong.

This site has lately been slammed by comment spam. That's okay, the Akismet module and service are flagging it as spam and keeping it off the site, but the "comment posted" moderator email notices are flowing in like an army ant column. (Hmm, I set Akismet to disable notices to the moderator, but they keep coming. Will have to solve that later.)

Putting Seth Godin to work

See, here's the funny part. After I went and wrote that big post on how much I love the What Would Seth Godin Do module, it stopped working for me. Only on Drupalace.com, not other sites on which I implemented it.

Sweet module love: the What Would Seth Godin Do? module

This is one of the oddest-named modules out there. Seth Godin is known to the Internet cognoscenti as a guru of modern marketing how-to, whether traditional biz or the latest "Web 2.0" developments. I read Seth's blog, and in his posts I always find some taken-for-granted business issue presented in a new light.

Find and rate Drupal modules

There's a new website (not affiliated with drupal.org) for finding and rating Drupal modules: http://drupalmodules.com/

If you're like me, you've salivated over that lo-o-o-ng list of user-contributed modules available for Drupal. "Wow, just think of the things I can do with this one... and this one..." And like me, you may have responded to warnings about modules with, "Yeah, I know, not all are guaranteed to work as advertised... but they'll work for me, right?"

Uh oh! Internet Explorer alert!

Most Benevolent Reader GreenLED informs me that this site is showing major visual bugs in Internet Explorer. Aaargh, I had hoped I was immune to that curse...

I don't have a ready means to test my output in Internet Explorer, having no Windows computer. Alas, it looks like I'll need to use virtualization software in my upcoming MacBook Pro purchase, just for the purpose of testing sites on IE.

New EDAM pages: Placing Content on Pages

Got a couple new Easy Drupal Admin Manual pages online, under the heading Placing Content on Pages. As with other pages, it's too basic to be of much use to experienced Drupaltons, but may be helpful for some brand-new beginners.

Also doing a little rearrangement of some other pages. (Ah, the beauty of a CMS here: I can shuffle Book pages around, and not have to worry about the internal links. Thank you, blue drop-headed one.)

The Drupalace theme: download-ready!

Drupalace Zen themeWant your site to look sort of like this one? Then I've got news for you:

Your condition can be treated. Seek professional help. Now.

... Still here? Well, as long as you're staying, feel free to sample my first attempt at a downloadable theme: DRUPALACE ZEN, an unhealthy reimagining of the popular Zen CSS theme. (Download at bottom of page.) 

Think you can admin a Drupal site?

I recently posted a modest Drupal Admin Manual for the non-technical admin.

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