Web Infrastructure

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

1. Designer
2. Front-End Developer (also representing backend development)
3. Content Writer
4. Web Marketer
5. SEO/SEM
6. Support/Metrics

1) Designer

• Creates visual concepts of brainstormed and agreed UI strategies with input from the other team members to properly integrate knowledge and stakes of others
• Integrates the stable branding priorities of the organization into the design choices for an individual piece while using the uniqueness and differences in the piece to evolve the overall brand of the organization of branded product

2) Front-end Developer

• Based on approved mocks, creates accessible standards compliant and valid XHTML/CSS markup and styling of the designs. These are used at CMS templates and other presentational materials (email, interactive campaigns)
• * Backend Developers - The front-end developer acts as the bridge between the front-end (UI/UX) team, and the backend application developers to harmonize the needs of the UI/UX team with the application programming priorities of the backend team. Ideally, the limitations and structures of backend applications should be transparent to the User Experience

3) Content Writer

• Is knowledgeable about the media of the Internet especially regarding to the short attention span, SEO (keyword density, titles and meta description importance and content structure), marketing (Introduction, talk-to-client needs, call to action) and come up with content that is complete, short and precise that fits in the agreed visual design and can achieve its objectives with and without visual aids (images, audio etc)
• Can look at the micro level focus of a given document (subject, keywords, call to action, etc) and write content, while paying attention to the macro-level role that a given document plays in tieing together the purpose and goals of an individual document to the purpose and brand of the entire website

4. Web Marketer

• Along with general marketing techniques, the web marketer understands the unique characteristics of the Internet marketing medium, and he/she adapts the organizations marketing strategies and campaigns for the web.
• Works with the content writer, and the visual designer to create marketing materials and messaging that fits the agreed visual design and branding, and that is effective in informing the audience and converting traffic.
• To gain search engine visibility and traffic, he/she may work with the SEO/SEM to target and convert traffic from various sources (SEM/SEO keywords, affiliate websites etc) into viable prospects and leads

5. Search Engine Optimizer

• Pays attention to the accessibility of content created for the web; not necessarily for all the reasons that justify global accessibility concerns, but specifically to ensure that all content created is accessible by search engines for indexing and ranking.[see more details in the below-listed document on SEO]

6. Support (Metrics and Web Analytics)

• The main function of this role is to turn the collected quantitative and qualitative Search Engine and user feedback information, and to convert it into hypotheses that can be the subject of case studies, or decisions on how to better create and target the go-to-web strategy for better returns
• This is not specifically one individual, but a role that can be performed, and may be best performed by more than one individual because it requires hypotheses, analysis, comparison, and brainstorming.
• Search Engines provide some free tools that supplement paid web metrics applications. in particular, Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools, Yahoo Site Explorer provide valuable insight into how each of these major search engines crawl and classify the content on your website. Using this tools gives an analyst an idea of the keywords that the site is highly ranked for, and the ones that are driving traffic. In situations where pages might be ranked for the 'wrong' keywords and bringing in irrelevant traffic, the problem cab be easily identified and steps taken to adjust accordingly
• The above-identified tools also make it possible to see where there are technical errors on the site, and correct them

Search Engines, and Google in particular penalize sites that present similar, or identical content using more than one unique path. This is the case whether the duplicate content is hosted on the same domain, but more so when the content is on different domains.

A major inherent problem with enabling and supporting URi path aliasing as a web server feature is the possibility of accessing the content items using more than one URL path. Without considering SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the resulting rules and formulae that have been created by the major Search Engines, this phenomenon should not attract any attention.

The Drupal Module called "Global Redirect" enables website owners to streamline the content paths to provide a single URL to any given content on the website. The module is designed to go beyond simply redirecting requests to the default paths (node/x) to the custom path defined in the "URL path settings" section of the content creation form. It creates a 301 header redirect to unify the content paths.

Testimonial
I previously had a problem because the content on cmsproducer.com was initially created and published without adding custom paths with content relevant keywords in the path. 'Unfortunately', because the website got the attention of google before we had completed the process of creating custom paths, most of the content at the time was indexed as node/x, as well as unse the custom path. By installing and configuring the "Global Redirect" module, we were able consolidate all the duplicate URLs (including click links) and only present the content using the custom URLs that are relevant to the content subject.

Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon Linux Distribution is available

If you are already using the upto now latest version of Drupal (7.04 Feisty Fawn), this upgrade will quick and painless. At least I am sure that it will be painless while the quick part will depend on the power of your processor and your internet connection. In Fiesty Fawn (and probably in other older versions), a notice will appear at the top of the regular update window informing you that a new distribution of Ubuntu is available for download. If you opt to upgrade as opposed to just installing the available updates, you will launch the update process with the following progress dialogue.

If you have my kind of luck, you might see the following message which is most probably a result of congested networks due to everyone rushing to upgrade their Ubuntu computers to the latest distribution.

Failed to fetch http://www.kiberpipa.org/~gandalp/ubuntu/feisty/cinelarra/i686/./Packages.gz 404 Not Found

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