Drupal

Problem: Having a Drupal site automatically run the cron.php script and automatically backup a mySQL database at regular intervals on a Slicehost slice that is running Ubuntu.

Solution: Shell Scripting and Crontab

Turns out, this wasn't so much of a problem after all and it has a really straightforward solution. Since I am using Ubuntu, it already has cron functionality built into it. To tap into this functionality, it is as easy as editing a text file and telling the system to tun the tasks you want (including shell scripts).

MySQL cron backup step-by-step:

Now that KAMP has successfully been set up on a Kubuntu box, setting up multiple sites on one server is the next logical step. This allows you to do Drupal testing in multiple versions/setups at the same time on one localhost server. To begin, open up Konsole (command line utility) and change to the Apache2 sites-available directory (this is where Apache stores the setup files for each Virtual Host):

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available/

Next, login as root and copy the existing default setup file and name it to the "server" you want to use:

Lullabot developer Addi Berry put together some great screencasts on how to setup local Drupal test environments on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu. Even though I have been running Kubuntu as my primary OS at home for over a month now, I hadn't actually set up my test server yet! To make sure I didn't make a misstep, I used Addi's video as the basis for the setup I did on my machine, but command lineified it a bit:

1. Open Konsole
2. Login as root
   • sudo -s

In my role as a web designer at the Idaho Commission for Libraries, I design Drupal themes for our e-Branch in a Box project. On my most recent theme, I wanted to use a gradient background with rounded corners for the block titles. Since we run a multi-site setup, I was a little bit apprehensive to use a jquery solution and ended up using a background image instead. The problem with this technique is that when the block titles are too long, it would wrap around and not align in the image correctly.