I made a web-site (manually) years ago and now I’d like to update it using Drupal as my CMS.
I would like some advice as to which editor is the most suitable. I don’t really want to install things like ISS and SQL on my PC,
and was hoping I could just test my site from my web-host’s server prior to going ‘live’, but I think I may be dreaming there.
Would it be easier for me (I know nothing about Drupal, PHP, etc.) to install something like Microsoft’s Web Matrix and let it download
and install the Drupal and ISS parts I need, or is there a less-complicated way?
Are programs like Xara and NetOptions Fusion worth trialling?
I’m just after some good kick-start advice here, so please ask more questions if it will help.
If you want to have a local development environment and install non-flat file CMSes such as Drupal (requires a database), then you need to install something like MySQL or alternatives.
Someone else will have to help you there as my experience with Drupal is just above zero. I’ve used it before but didn’t like it, though I do know that some people on here swear by it.
Thank-you Kohoutek, but I fear I am now in worse trouble;
I re-booted my Win 7 64bit machine and now I cannot open my Acquia Drupal web site that I have been working on. The Error message that
WebMatrix pastes to the clipboard is below: Can somebody please advise? Thank-you.
"Unable to connect to any of the specified MySQL hosts.
ResourceName:
Microsoft.WebMatrix.Server.WebManagementServiceException: Unable to connect to any of the specified MySQL hosts. —> MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlException: Unable to connect to any of the specified MySQL hosts.
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.NativeDriver.Open()
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.Driver.Open()
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.Driver.Create(MySqlConnectionStringBuilder settings)
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlPool.GetPooledConnection()
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlPool.TryToGetDriver()
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlPool.GetConnection()
at MySql.Data.MySqlClient.MySqlConnection.Open()
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.DatabaseManager.MySqlDatabase.MySqlDatabaseProvider.TestConnection(String connectionString)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.DatabaseManager.IisDbManagerModuleService.TestConnection(Object databaseConnectionObject, String configPathState)
— End of inner exception stack trace —
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.Client.SharedMemoryChannel.InvokeInternal(String serviceName, String methodName, Object parameters)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.Client.SharedMemoryChannel.Invoke(String serviceName, String methodName, Object parameters)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.Client.ModuleServiceProxy.Invoke(String methodName, Object parameters)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.DatabaseManager.Client.IisDbManagerModuleProxy.TestConnection(DatabaseConnection connectionObject, String configPath)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.DatabaseManager.Client.ClientConnection.Test(ManagementConfigurationPath configPath)
at Microsoft.WebMatrix.DatabaseManager.Client.DatabaseHierarchyInfo.EnsureLoaded() "
…
ERROR IN FIREFOX:
…
Error
The website encountered an unexpected error. Please try again later.
Error message
PDOException: SQLSTATE[HY000] [2003] Can’t connect to MySQL server on ‘localhost’ (10061) in db_table_exists() (line 2730 of C:\Users\USERNAME\Documents\My Web Sites\Acquia Drupal\includes\database\database.inc).
Well, miraculously, I can now access my website after yet another Firefox re-start, and running the following file:
C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin\MySQLInstanceConfig.exe
WebMatrix is now showing ‘Tables’, ‘Views’, and ‘Stored procedures’ underneath my database as it should, instead of ‘Error’.
I did however fail to complete the ‘security’ portion in the final window of the above config. application even though MySQL has been given permissions in my Win 7 firewall.
Can somebody advise me if this is important or not, and a possible ‘fix’?
I think the problem you’re having is that MySQL is not starting automatically when your computer starts up. You need to either start it manually when you want to work on your site or set it up to start automatically.
I used to develop my Drupal stuff on a Windows laptop or spare server in the office but now I tend to do it all remotely. Usually I’ll set up a subdomain on the same server as the website I’m replacing so that once the site is ready to roll all we need to do is change the DNS entry on the host to point to the new site and ignore the old one. If you can’t do that then I think Web Matrix and Acquia should do the trick.
Yours is the first helpful reply I’ve had in four forums! (or is that ‘fora’?)
As per my original message… “…and was hoping I could just test my site from my web-host’s server prior to going ‘live’, but I think I may be dreaming there…” it seems that I wasn’t too far off the track after all.
Being a newbie, I didn’t think of creating a sub-domain and doing it that way. You have shown me a way that I originally thought may work, but didn’t quite know how to make it so.
As it stands, I’m still getting used to ‘modules’ and ‘nodes’ and ‘structure’, etc., and I’m slowly wrapping my head around Drupal. I like what I see, so far, but it’s posts such as yours that re-affirm my faith in the dev. community.
I’ll check my host and look into the sub-domain thing.
Oh… I was concerned about network speed also… I imagined that constant FTP-ing and testing woud have its overheads, but it most-likely wouldn’t be that great, I suppose, when compared to the hassles that could be encountered using IIS and MySQL, etc. on a Windows machine. I’ll have to learn 'nix one day, I suppose…
No worries… I’m a big fan of Drupal and have tried a number of configurations to try to find a simple way for developing sites and then moving them to production. For me the easiest has been the subdomain method.
Regarding the FTP bandwidth question, there are a few ways with Drupal 6 and Drupal 7 to mitigate the problem of masses of uploads. Drupal 6 has a module called Plugin Manager which lets you search for and install modules right from Plugin Manager the admin screen without the need to download, unpack, upload. It also lets you update modules through the same admin screen. This means you only need to install Drupal and the Plugin Manager to start adding the modules you need.
Note: Drupal 6 was superseded by Drupal 7 in 2011 and although it took a while for the contributed modules to get up to speed, IMO it’s ready for anything I can throw at it so I’m using D7 for all of my new projects now.
Drupal 7 has a similar feature built in to the core:
In Drupal 7, you upload a plain vanilla version of Drupal and install it with all the default settings.
Then once you’re logged in you click the “modules” link in the admin menu (top of page when you’re logged in) and then click the “install new module” link on the modules page.
Now you can either install a module from your local machine (costs some bandwidth) or from URL. I generally choose install from URL and just copy/paste the url from the Drupal projects page for the module I want to install.
The built in plugin manager also lets you know when modules need to be updated and will assist by providing a clickable update process.
Armed with this, the only FTPing you need to do is installing or updating the Core Drupal system and uploading your custom theme.
** Another way to automate things is by using SSH to access the server’s shell and then if available you can use a tool called “DRUSH”. It’s a tool created specifically to aid in installing and updating Drupal systems remotely. I’m not a expert with it by any stretch and I’ve only played around with it a bit to see what it’s all about but it will install drupal to your server with whatever configuration you decide to do. I used it on a test site to install and configure a basic Drupal site and it did so. Eventually as I become better versed with DRUSH, I can see myself using it more and more.
I’m using Acquia Drupal 7 from MS WebMatrix, and am just starting to get my site together. No doubt when I have all my basic pages working I’ll upload to my host and polish it up there.
Can you offer any hints on the initial upload (which files into which folders - how to get DNS running, etc.) that might give me a kick-start,
or would you recommend I go straight for DRUSH?
Thanks again for your time. Would you mind if I continue asking you questions if I get stuck with anything?
Yeah, no worries… Sure, we can just keep this thread open and I’ll help with anything I can. I’m sure others will pipe in too when they have a moment.
So you have Acquia, which is what they call an installation profile. There are lots of these bundled “profiles” around. Usually they’re sort of purpose built to get you going quickly with a bunch of features. Acquia seems to build in the idea that you can start building on your windows laptop or desktop and then push the website to their cloud based hosting which is cool but might not be for everyone.
I think an easy course of action when you’re ready to get it on your server would be the following:
1) Download the full Acquia setup from here (http://www.acquia.com/downloads), upload it to your server making sure that you have the same version of Drupal as on your development site.
2) Upload your theme if it’s custom from your laptop to /sites/all/themes
3) Upload any files from the laptop website from /sites/default/files to the hosted site at /sites/default/files
4) Upload/Install any additional modules as discussed earlier so that you have the exact same modules on the laptop site as on your hosted site
5) Get the Backup and Migrate module on both sites. Once you’ve installed Backup and Migrate you can access it from: /admin/config/system/backup_migrate Click the backup button and it will backup the website’s settings and content to a file.
6) On the hosted or remote site use the restore function within Backup and Migrate to “restore” the hosted site (using the data file from the laptop site) to all of the features and content of the site on your laptop.
*** Once you’ve done that, it should be ready to go but I always go to the Admin -> Performance section and clear the cache to make sure there is no cached junk in the system.
I have taken your advice and installed Drupal into a sub-domain, however, I have hit a snag early on.
Using the default Bartik theme, I cannot change any colours. When I try, the page merely turns white.
There was an error in ‘REPORTS’ somewhere stating: “Message The file permissions could not be set on public://color/bartik-128c2329/colors.css.” -
but I have checked the folders and all permissions seem fine (755). Still Bartik refuses to show any other colour than the default blue.
Do you have any ideas? Should I copy the original ‘colors.css’ file into the above location?
There was no file in that location so I created a blank ‘colors.css’ file in the hope that Drupal would write to it, but that didn’t work.
