i recently updated this site to drupal 6.

it was a fairly delicate task.

i had to follow a few steps to make sure that the update worked ok. the first is to put the site on maintenance mode and to backup all my database, settings of the old drupal 5 site. then i created a duplicate "staging" site to test the new site with the new drupal 6 code. then i had to test each version 6 module and themes to make sure that it worked on the new site. once, i got that working, then i ported over to the "production" site. standard upgrade procedures i guess.

still, doing all this at night was not the best. the mind often doesn't work that well at night. lol.

I post this on the drupal website at http://drupal.org/node/91684

I have posted a couple of requests for support on the following threads:

http://drupal.org/node/62255
http://drupal.org/node/62255#comment-126256

http://drupal.org/node/64591#comment-122097

...but can't seem to get any answers. perhaps my requests are buried deep in the thread. so i decide to create a new thread to seek help.

what i am trying to achieve

i would like to setup more than one drupal site using a single code base. each site would have different settings / databases. i do not want to have subdomains (although this could be a later requirement) or parked domains (as suggested by fidelis on http://drupal.org/node/62255#comment-126409). my response: i intend to set up various community interest sites with a single domain as being the traffic aggregator, so the additional domains is not an option.

A colleague of mine recently asked me the question why I go about building the various websites that I do. What I expect, and have any of my expectations materialised?

A good question.

My view is simple: I have a number of interests, objectives and thoughts on various subjects. Sadly, I have very little time to further expand on those interests, objectives and thoughts (as an individual). However, I fully believe that as a community each individuals has the ability to "help each other" on these matters. The gain I seek for many of these are not monetary but of information, personal learning and development.

You may be wondering what is all the odd and disjointed components on this website are all about. Certainly it is not intentional the way it currently looks right now. I am experimenting with some techniques on improving the navigation on this website.

One of the techniques is javascript + CSS pulldown menus that you see on the left hand side NavMenu bar. I am taking a few tips from suckerfish and a from css.maxdesign. I'm also visiting the CSS creator forums for discussions and tips. I would like to create a menu which opens up as you hover over selected items. I hope this will improve the usability of the site.

For now, the CSS is all screwed up. So bear with me. I would also suggest that you use Firefox for the best & standards compliant experience.

Been swapping themes on this website, and note some good practices that I'd like to adopt for my default site.

1. vertically aligned search box in the top menu: alternate / lincoln's revenge does it well
2. clean layouts like a printed page: chameleon does this well
3. blockquote techniques - the left bar at the indentation of the quote is good
4. different type face for headline titles - say using Georgia to distinguish headline from body text
5. lines to separate content blocks
6. different block style for "sticky" blocks
7. distinct menu headers like the type used by gworks

I am planning to do a few things:

1. installing a taxanomy access control module

   I did some research on the subject by first visiting http://drupal.org/ and went straight to the drupal module downloads. Read a bit on the taxonomy access module and find that this would require me to patch the existing core taxonomy.module - now I am no expert on unix patching and my linux host only provides me a cpanel access... so I cannot do patching without a shell access to the host. Also read that patching also is a bit of a minefield, so scratch that thought. Let's wait for another solution to come up.