Advanced

Drupal’s Mutlisite feature sounds like the Holy Grail for whenever you want to run multiple Drupal sites. However, the answer to “Should I use Multisites?” is best discovered by knowing what Multisites is and how it might benefit or hinder your objectives.

In this video, I provide an overview of Multisites vs. Multiple Sites, and hopefully, the insight necessary to decide.

If you manage your own Drupal servers, and have shell access, one of your most powerful tools for deployment are CVS and SVN. Using the CVS deploy module, you can get rid of that tedious Download to computer -> upload via FTP process.

This series of 8 videos will walk you through the process of starting to develop a real Drupal module. Most of what the videos cover are techniques for accomplishing the process. There isn’t as much covered about actual functions in the API and how to code. It’s more about learning how to learn these things on your own.

There are a number of great tips (especially if you’re using a Mac) for getting that all important inspiration going!

[Komodo](http://www.activestate.com/Products/komodo_ide/ "Active State website") is the PHP debugger I use on the Mac. There are others which work well too, such as [Eclipse](http://www.eclipse.org/ "Eclipse.org website"). Once you have Xdebug installed then it's just a matter of making sure the right port is used for intercepting the debugging call.

There’s an easy way to start the learning process of using a debugger for PHP. You don’t have to know how to compile Xdebug (at least if you’re on a Mac).

The Devel module is a SUPER CRITICAL module which you need to use if you’re even considering developing within Drupal.

One of the key elements to knowing what is going on while you develop your module is watching what happens. Using a debugger isn’t the only way to see exactly what is going on. You also need to know how to watch the logs of the web server, php and the database. Just remember tail -f is your friend.

Knowing how to search within the code of a project is what helps you learn any system faster. When you know where you want something to show up (in the browser) then finding where that code exists is the best way to start tackling your solution.

The best way, I find, for learning is to look at what exists and then pick and pull from those examples to accomplish what you want. Overtime, you end with the skills you need to create stuff from scratch.

An 18 minute video about REALLY researching existing code for modules. I reference a number of methods to do your research.