Dave Cohen

I saw a recent post by Brandon Tate about using rsync and I wanted to share that...

a) I'm a big fan of rsync, and
b) I've used rsync for some time to keep Drupal websites up-to-date

Typically, I create a staging directory on a local machine. I check the website files out, from a source code control system, into the staging directory.

As a freelancer and Drupal specialist, I've worked with a number of website-building teams. It seems like each group reinvents solutions to the problem of sharing settings between multiple copies of Drupal. Frankly I'm not sure "solution" is the best word, because with each team, there have been headaches in setting up a new copy of the site for development, and further headaches getting changes to other developers' copies and to the live server.

This problem has been called "the Drupal Staging Problem" (in an excellent summary by Dominique De Cooman). If you ask around, you'll hear about a number of solutions, including but not limited to hook_update_N, backup_migrate.module, features.module, deploy.module, and possibly others I don't know about. In this post I describe a new(-ish) approach that I call site_update.

So many solutions! Does that mean the problem is solved? Or could it mean the problem is widespread, but not solved at all?

Here's a little tip for developers who encounter "unable to find" errors from Drupal's imagecache module...

Background: As a website developer, I often run a local copy of a website on my own server. I make and test changes there, before promoting those changes to the live website. Usually, my local copy is "incomplete" in that it does not have all the content and data stored on the live site. (Incomplete on purpose, as it would be a lot of overhead to keep all data and files in sync between servers.)

Adding a tag to a git tree is not hard, as long as you know the secret parameters.

Deleting a tag is another story. Here's what you'd expect to work...

Last night, I updated this blog to the latest version of Drupal. In doing so, I left access to the devel.module wide open to anyone who visits the site. I hadn't noticed I had done that, and it was a problem. Visitors not only saw the details of the site, but could potentially change variables like the site name and more. (No-one did.)

So, this morning I found half a dozen friendly emails warning me about it; all from users who found my site on planet drupal.

But here's the thing... each of those emails came via my drupal.org account. That means each of those kind folk took the extra time to find me on drupal.org, find my contact form there, and type in a message. It may not sound like much, but I consider that going the extra mile.

And that, friends, is why I like the Drupal community. A big thanks to everyone who got in touch with me.

So I've updated the software running this blog, and I didn't bother bringing over all the posts from the older version. At least not yet. A lot of that content was old, and I thought it was better to start with a clean slate. Also easier.

Bottom line, if you came here looking for something in particular, but haven't found it, try the old site. All the old posts are still available there, http://old.dave-cohen.com.