Drupal: Useful tips

By: Suchi Garg

This post lists few helpful tips, tricks and code snippets around Dru. I have compiled them mainly form across the web, will try to credit the original site wherever possible.

Drupal admin and configuration:

Create a "HTML help" block and assign it to appear on only "node/*/edit" and "node/add/*"
Use the "edit permissions" link on admin/user/roles to get a single column
Use the Firefox Web Developer Toolbar to "Populate Form Fields" on the access page for the admin role
Use "site:drupal.org {search terms}" to search all of drupal.org with
Google. Set up a Firefox shortcut so you can type "dru [your search]" to
search Drupal. Also api.drupal.org/apis/{search_term}
When using pathauto to alias usernames, don't let users change their usernames.
Use PathAuto and Path Redirect together to redirect old aliases to the new ones. Search engines will love you.
Use Global Redirect to make sure home page is "/" and current page doesn't have an alias.
When creating PathAuto template, keep uniqueness in mind -- perhaps add a date to your blog and news entries.
Move the "My Account" menu item by creating a custom menu item at 'user'
Use update_status module along with cvs_deploy & cvs tags to manage sites
Use ImageCache to resize images. It's worth the poor u.i. and configuration challenges. Tastes best with ImageField, CCK, and Views.
Turn any CCK type with an imagefield into a photocast with ConTemplate
Use Automatic Node Titles whenever you want to have separate (CCK) fields for first name and last name, but you want the node title to contain the full name.
Use SimpleMenu to remove the need for an admin block on the page.
Set your site in "offline mode" when doing Drupal upgrades, to ensure that your end users are never exposed to any funky errors.
Use locale.module to change English text into other English text. Example: change "Forums" to "Message Boards". Slight performance issue for high-traffic sites. In Drupal 6, there's a new "locale lite" feature to translate only a few pieces of interface text without the overhead of locale module itself. Check the bottom of default.settings.php for more details.
Use views + views_fastsearch to build "section search" or custom advanced search pages
Set up a quick "wireframe" site using Zen or another simple theme. Show this and the HTML it outputs to your web designer before they start working. Point out items like tabs and messages.
Change your administration theme when working on a new theme
Get to know Firebug for ALL front-end development: JavaScript and CSS!
<?php var_dump(get_defined_vars()); ?>

inside any template file to see what variables are available.
Create a hook_link_alter() and add a "More..." link to the end of the Teaser text while removing the Read more link
The format_interval() function
is cool. It outputs "X minutes Y seconds ago", or similar...
Accommodate page caching by substituting dynamic page elements in your theme.
If the user is not logged in, use absolute values such as "posted on {date}
at {time}", rather than relative such as "{X} hours, {Y} seconds ago".
Use theme('view', {arguments}) to embed a view anywhere in your theme's template.php or .tpl.php files
Use the custom argument handling code in a View to change anything about a view: filters, number displayed, fields, and of course arguments. You can alter these items with or without conditionals. Change the number of columns in a grid view; change the number of items that appear if the "feed" argument is present; etc... (see #36 to see the view object)
Use "promote to front page" / "sticky" to do other things using Views... see also Views Bookmarks
Use Views + Taxonomy
Redirect to use a custom view for each vocabulary's listing pages.
Use print_r($view) inside the 'Argument code' field of a View to see the view object. see #33 (oops)
Give any number of 'block'-only views the same page URL, and their [more] links will all point to the same page.
Translate your javascript by doing

<?php

drupal_add_js(array('my_module' => array('my_string' => t('My string'))), 'setting')

?>

Get translated strings from javascript: Drupal.settings.my_module.mystring

Same with urls:

<?php

    drupal_add_js(array('my_module' => array('my_url' => url('node/10'))), 'setting') 

    ?>

It's more reliable and less work than using $base_path and Clean URL setting.

DON'T HACK DRUPAL
Many IDEs (Zend, Komodo, Eclipse) will parse Drupal's code base and give you autocomplete and documentation on the function names
Run a local copy of api.drupal.org (using api.module) -- parse contrib modules! Documentation here: http://drupal.org/node/26669
Figure out arg(), you won't be sorry.
Use $_GET['q'] anywhere in your site to get the real Drupal path (not what's in the menu bar)
Find out if the current user is logged in:

<?php if ($GLOBALS['user']->uid) {/* the user is logged in */} ?>
In Drupal 6, the contrib Schema module will generate a full-documented list of Drupal's tables. See http://jaspan.com/drupal-6s-self-documenting-database-schema and http://drupal.org/node/184586.
Use cvs annotate to track down the hows and whys of a particular line of code. View a how-to at http://www.lullabot.com/articles/cvs_annotate_or_what_the_heck_were_they_thinking
Coder module can not only be used to check over code for coding standards compliance, but can also be used to notify you of things that need to be done to your module to upgrade it to the next Drupal version.
On api.drupal.org, you can use the "List references" tab on any function to view where else in the source it's called, as well as what other functions are called by the function you're looking at. This can be helpful if you have a question about how a function is used.
Drush!

Sourced from Lullabot

Useful Tips

Menus always disappears on 404 Not Found error pages, install 404 Blocks module to prevent this from happening. This is fixed in Drupal 7.
If you are using Pathauto module to auto generate path aliases, be sure when you are showing block on specific pages under the 'Page specific visibility settings' that you use Drupal internal paths (ie, node/1) instead. This way when menu titles are altered, the blocks don't lose their page visibility since node ids never change and that Pathauto always uses the title as the aliases.
When migrating an existing non-Drupal site to Drupal, use Pathauto to generate same URLs or use Path redirect module to redirect old URLs to it's new ones. This is good for SEO.
Use "site:drupal.org {search terms}" to search all of drupal.org with Google.
Everyone knows this: Use Admin Menu, it'll save you many clicks to get to the page you want (excellent for usability and saves space on your site). Now that you don't need to show navigation menu, i'll advice to create a user menu since any custom menu will not show under the admin menu so the user menu will be a good place to put them in
Sub themes do not need to be installed inside of the base theme. Just as long as the base theme is installed in the themes directory, you can place the sub theme outside of the base theme in your themes directory.
Use Mollom for spam filtering in comments or contact form, it's accessible since it offers both image or audio captcha. Furthermore, it does a damn fine job of stopping spam (even on the free version)
Use Taxonomy Super Selectto display vocabularies as radios or checkboxes. Much more usable for end-users
To avoid duplicate content which search engines to not like, use Global Redirect module.
Another duplicate avoidance is to redirect site to either WITH or WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix in your .htaccess file (see lines 81 - 91).
There are certain times when Drupal loses it's active menu state in sub navigation links, use Menu Trail module to restore it
If you have a development site on the same server hosting the production site, use Secure site module to prevent public to access the development site. It also prevents Google from indexing the development site.
Menuless nodetype is a simple module but can vastly improve usability for end-users by removing menu settings on certain content type that do not require it.
Lastly but not least, this is a very useful checklist to review before website going live.
When creating a Views block to show teaser and image/video, it's often a good idea to include an edit link field. This way, anyone that has permission to edit the node can jump straight to the node to edit it.
Always remember to add a Views filter for 'publish'. So when a node is unpublished, it'll not show up.