Drupal 6: installing, testing, troubleshooting and configuring the new version of the powerful CMS

Installing Drupal 6 from scratch

The next major version of the ever-popular CMS framework (yes, that is Drupal) is in your hands to install for testing or production deployment (depending on how many modules you want to use in your production environment).

Modules and add-ons

As you may expect, or have come to expect, module builders and themers are yet to churn-out new, and ported and updated version of existing modules and give-away themes. As such, if you are already running your site on a previous version of Drupal (Drupal version4.7x or 5.x), you should weigh your options before replacing your existing production version with the new version. Personally, I run pre-release and release versions of Drupal on a secondary environment for 1 to 4 months (or until my critical modules are ported - those that will affect access to content, and SEO), before I begin to roll-out or upgrade the newest version to the production server. This delay also enables me to thoroughly learn the workings, features and other changes; this properly equips me to quickly deploy the application and respond support my clients.

Step by Step Instructions

• Download a fresh copy of Drupal version 6 from drupal.org.
• Uncompress the source and upload it to your LAMP/WAMP server (Apache, MySQL, and PHP are requirements to exploit the many powerful features of Drupal)
• Access your Database Management Application and create a new database, or identify and existing database in which you Drupal 6 will create database tables. Write down the database name, username (with ALL privileges to that DB) and password, you will need them below
• * As usual, make sure that you also create a /files folder and make it writable (CHMOD 666 or more). This is the location where the application will write uploaded files to. If you do not create this directory at this time, you will be warned by the Drupal 6 installer to do so after you begin the installation process
• Open your browser (my skewed recommendation is to always use Firefox) and go to the URL that defines the location where you uploaded your Drupal 6 source files - You will see a familiar Drupal installation screen with a global progress list on the left, and directions on the right
• Assuming that you are installing in English, click on the first link to start. If you do not have a writable /files directory within your Drupal installation folder, you will see the following error message ("The directory files does not exist. To proceed with the installation, please ensure that the files directory exists and is writable by the installer. If you are unsure how to create this directory and modify its permissions, please consult the on-line handbook or INSTALL.txt.")
• Once you have created a 'files' directory and given the correct permissions (666 - read/write or above), try again and you will proceed to the next step
• Using the database name, username and password that you created, or noted when you created or identified the database, fill in the three fields provided at this stage. You have the option to expand to the advanced options if you want to define the name of your database server (if it is not on the same IP/server as your Drupal web server), database port, and the table prefix (if you are using an existing database, or intend to share the database with other applications, then you should define a table prefix to help you identify the tables by application or installation version)
• The installer will display a progress meter while it writes to the file system (settings.php), and creates database tables to enable Drupal 6 to run
• When done, the next screen will require you to enter elementary account and site information. This is a departure from earlier versions of Drupal in the following ways
  1. In previous versions, generic information was used and this information needed to be added after installation
  2. Previously, if you did not create the first user (UID=1) as soon as possible, as well as the first node, someone else could potentially hijack your installation and site/server (could run PHP code) by calling the installation URL and maybe secretly creating a controlling account
  3. In Drupal 6, you can choose the name of the admin account, and there is a password security evaluation metre that tells you how strong your password is, and if the repeated password matches
  4. There is a configuration test that tells you if you are able to enable and use 'clean URLs' based on whether your server configuration (Apache mod_rewrite) is enabled
  5. The last feature on this page is the ability to have Drupal 6 alert you whenever there are updates and upgrades to your current installation - this feature ensures that you are running the latest and greatest version (if you choose to install), or you are at least aware of the option
• When you are done adding the requested information, you will see a message in the next screen informing you that your installation has been successful