All of sudden I got following error in one of my Drupal website

Warning: require_once(./includes/database.inc) [function.require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc on line 1021

Fatal error: require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required ‘./includes/database.inc’ (include_path=’.:/usr/lib/php:/usr/local/lib/php’) in /public_html/includes/bootstrap.inc on line 1021

Digging down further I discovered that the files are somehow corrupted as I had moved the files from one host to another. I uploaded files again and it solved the problem.

Also a loto of folders were not uploaded correctly.

There might be case when you have disabled the navigation menu in the front of Drupal and would like to enable it in just Admin.

To do so go to admin->build->block

Enable the Navigation menu and attach it to left, right, header or footer wherever you want.

Then click on Configure against this and make it visible for authenticated user so that it shall be visible to Admin only.

In Drupal it is little tricky to specify which page would be home page.

You can specify which page you would like to be shown as home page from Admin->Settings->Site Information

admin/settings/site-information

In the Default front page: enter the node which you would like to make to be displayed on front page.

this value should be node/1 or any node which you wish to make home page.

One question people frequently ask is whether Drupal is WAI compatible?

Well the question itself is not quite correct. Drupal is just a framework and no one writes any code to always keep it WAI compatible.

You have to “Do Extra Work” to make any website, whether based on Drupal or any open source framework or developed from scratch, to be WAI compatible.

So the question would have been “Can we make Drupal website using AJAX and Javascript to be WAI L2 compatible?”

Answer is YES.

Complex part is getting it done, which involves a lot of extra work.

An excellent topic to understand the flow of Drupal’s page serving mechanism

http://drupal.org/node/10858

Drupal provides the function db_query() to interact with database.

This function is defined in includes/database.inc file.

You have to include database.inc in your file to get db_query() working.

<?php include(“includes/database.inc”); ?>

However if you are trying to access drupal database from a non-drupal .php file then all you need to do is to include following lines at the top of your file.

require_once ‘./includes/bootstrap.inc’;
drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

If you are modifying Drupal theme and wish to play with attached image then following code might be helpful.

This code prints attached image (to a node) .

<?php
foreach ($node->files as $file)
{
$fileType = $file->filemime;
if($fileType == ‘image/jpeg’)
{
$imagePath = $file->filepath;
$imageTitle = $file->description;
print ‘<img class=”contentImage” width=”100″ height=”80″ src=”/’.$imagePath.’” alt=”‘.$imageTitle.’” title=”" />’;
}
}
?>

You can modify it as per your requirements. The above code prints all the attached images.

pathauto module could be extremely frustrating for any newcomer to Drupal.

pathauto module generates URL automatically based on the pattern which you specify in the configuration.

pathauto home page: http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/pathauto

First delete the alias settings for the types for which you wish to change pathauto settings.

E.g. if you want to change the Category URLs then delete all existing aliases first before making changes or else the new changes will not be reflected.

pathauto configuration for Category

Set the default path setting to be [vocab-raw]/[cat-raw] and you will get a very nice hierarchical URL.

See it live on www.SwamiPC.co.uk – http://www.swamipc.co.uk/desktop-pc/acer

URL Path Settings

While adding any page/product etc you can specify the name of URL and it will be automatically generated.

Uncheck the Automatic alias box and add the name which you want to be displayed in URL for that item.

E.g. for About us page I specified about in URL path settings which gives me URL http://www.swamipc.co.uk/about

Reason No. 1

It is not developed by native English speaking people. This is biggest drawback of Drupal which is reflected in almost all aspect of Drupal for which I don’t like it.

Few years back when I first started exploring Drupal I gave up as I could not understand the way it was written.

On the contrary it just took me 10 minutes to setup my first Joomla based web site.

Reason No. 2

It is too complex. I’ve worked with almost all of open source packages and it is undoubtedly the most complex CMS package to work with

Reason No. 3

The contents are not organized as it should have been. They got nodes then they added taxonomy and topped up with terms, vocabulary etc and all these hotch potch takes all your time to figure out what to put where.

Reason No. 4 – Ecommerce

They are trying desperately to integrate ecommerce package into CMS. I appreciate the effort and see it is almost coming good, however the basic framework of Drupal itself is not organized and adding ecommerce further makes it complex to glues everything together.

Reason No. 5 – SEO

Begin SEO guru I always look for an easy way to enable SEO freidnly URLS, keyword etc but Drupal gives me sleepless night in getting it together.

Reason No. 6

It is slow. It takes time to load after mouse click, it really takes a lot of time.

You can disable Author name and date appearing on contents from

Adminster->Site Building->Themes->Configure->Global Settings

See the Display post information on box

Enable or disable the submitted by Username on date text when displaying posts of the following type.

You can uncheck the type where you don’t want it to be displayed.