Undocumented Gotcha with Drupal Installation
I have had an idea for a website for a couple of years. I registered the domain, and never got anything else done. Until now.
Since it seems like a content management system matches the requirements the closest, I did some investigation into content management systems. I host at Dreamhost, and they offer two popular CMS systems in one-click installs: Joomla and Drupal. There are lots of other options too. I decided I did not want to write a custom CMS from scratch, and figured I’d try how far I can get with popular off-the-shelf systems. Wikipedia has some lists and comparisons of CMS software, but the nicest comparison tool I found was cmsmatrix. I looked at some Python options as well, but I didn’t want to go with Plone or any Zope-based system; I am just assuming they are too heavy for Dreamhost’s shared hosting. And they don’t really have a reputation of being easy.
In the end I decided to try Drupal. Besides being an easy install at Dreamhost, the modular architecture is appealing. And while I suspect I won’t be modifying Drupal itself, it has gotten some reputation of being rather well designed. I have read some problems about database connections being too slow on Dreamhost, so I will need to keep an eye on performance.
Installation was an interesting experience. I read the Dreamhost Drupal wiki page, which pointed to an installation video. I think this is the first time I have watched a video on how to install something. Seemed simple enough, but I actually got stuck in a spot: the 6.6 installer requests that you copy sites/default/default.settings.php to sites/default/settings.php and ensure it is writable by the web server account (which in case of Dreamhost is just your user account). Even after the copy I was still getting the error message that I needed to do this. I then made it world writable, with no difference. I found the INSTALL.txt and read through that with no clues. I did a bunch of searches to see if others had seen it, but no luck. I read other people’s install stories, and by luck happened to notice someone mentioned you need to chmod 755 the settings file. Doh! That did the trick, but nowhere in the installation instructions did I find any mention that this file needs to be executable.
I have still tons of configuration to do before the site becomes even remotely useful. I am also on the lookout for a horse-related theme. These themes seem to be surprisingly rare. Maybe most people who are into horses aren’t into computers, and vice versa.
