IVAN SOTO

We all know Drupal has some usability problems (or a lot). It's not friendly when you first install it and adding modules and themes can be confusing at the beginning. But wait! Adding stuff to Drupal is so easy, just download the zip file upload to the server and enable the module/theme. And here is exactly when we start having problems. At one side, going module shopping is easy and repetitive fun but on the other side we often forget that downloading 20 extra modules can make our site run slow and even make it crash. Not to mention that some modules are not meant to be compatible with others. And first of all, don't be scared of buying a book that teaches you how to administrate Drupal, it's definitely worth if you are going to be in charge of the content.

Plan your site before start building it

Even though this is important for any kind of project, because of Drupal ease of installation and setup users tend to "try" modules and forget that little tab called "Uninstall". Even so, some modules won't completely uninstall or can just break other parts. Not all modules are perfectly made. By "plan" I really mean to plan your modules. Which modules you will be using and how do you want to use them.

Testing

Consider having a "sandbox" site. A common rule on web development is not to work on a production site, but again because of Drupal being modular some users just install a module not even trying or testing it. Another reason why you should do this is because even when you have experience working with a module in past projects, you are definitely working with different combination versions on the next one.

Benchmark your site

So, you enabled 10 modules, you setup your views and panels and your site looks perfect but it's starting to feel slow. Let's test with no cache, normal cache and aggresive cache

ab -c1 -n100 http://ivansotof.com/

Will give you a lot of information. Just google Apache Benchmark tool.

Configure your server

Make sure you are running some kind of PHP accelerator (eAccelator is my favorite). Make sure PHP has enough RAM to use or you can get the infamous "white screen of death" Tune up MySQL, the performance can be greatly improved with this.

Finish your website, plan releases

It's true that websites need to be improving all the time, but that doesn't mean you have to add new features everyday. Don't rush, have a testing site, install your new modules and see how things go, test a lot.

Further reading

• SimpleTest for Drupal
• Apache Benchmark
• MySQL settings