Where to Install Modules

There are thousands of contributed modules. For many people, it is unlikely to build a drupal website without installing contributed modules.

A common mistake a drupal newbie makes is installing the contributed modules in the modules directory found within drupal root. This mistake make future upgrading very cumbersome: You have to find out which modules are drupal system module, which are installed by yourself.      

The right way to install modules is to install them in the sites directory. You can install the module any of the following:

 drupal\sites\default\modules\
 drupal\sites\all\modules\
 drupal\sites\mysite.com\modules\

If you copy the module files to one of the first two directories, the module will be accessible to all sites(if you install multi-sites using one drupal installation). If you copy the module files to the folder of "drupal\sites\mysite.com\modules\", then the module is only accessible to the site mysite.com.

When upgrading your drupal(this is a very frequent task if you want to ensure your site safety), you need only to backup the sites directory and copy all the contents to new drupal installations.

Creating Redirect Page using Views& CCK in Drupal

If you have a drupal website with many affiliate links, you may want to hide those long affiliate links by using a redirect script. This tutorial tells you how to create a redirect page using Views & CCK module.

• In Administer>Site building>Views, add a new View.
• In the View type, select Node, and click Next button.
• In basic settings, set the Style to HTML List.
• In the Arguments, add Node: Nid.
• In the Fields, add the CCK field that contains affiliate link you want to redirect. In this tutorial, we add a content field named "Content: DownloadUrl". After you added the field, when put the mouse over the link, you will find the name of the field which is at the end of url shown on the status bar. In this tutorial this field is called field_downloadurl_value.
• Edit the Page display. In the page settings, set the Path to whatever you want. In this tutorial, the path is set to "go/download".
• Save the views.
• Overide your views templates:
  
  Create a file views-view-fields--YOURVIEWSNAME--page-1.tpl.php in your theme folder.
  (Please note you need to replace YOURVIEWSNAME with the name of your view.
  In views-view-fields--YOURVIEWSNAME--page-1.tpl.php file, you can access the affiliate link using the variable $fields["field_downloadurl_value"]->raw.  Use the following code to redirect your page to the affiliate link:
  
  drupal_goto($fields["field_downloadurl_value"]->raw);
  ?>
  
• In your node template, use the link "/go/download/nid ?>" to replace the affiliate link. 

Install Drupal in a Sub-directory

The easiest way to install Drupal is to copy all the drupal files to your web server's document root or your public HTML directory (normally this is public_html directory).  However, this causes many issues.

• There are other top-level directories under web root. The drupal files will clutter with them  in the root.
• Themes, modules and configuration files are all under separate directories in the root directory.
• Upgrades are problematic because of intermixing.

Therefore, I would prefer have Drupal installed in a subdirectory, and it will make maintenance a lot easier.

For reference, my living website (www.gleanergames.com) set up like this:

• gleanergames.com root = /public_html
• Drupal root = //public_html/drupal

Follow these steps to install drupal in a subdirectory.

• Extract all drupal files into a subdirectory named drupal. The directory structure should be:
  
  • public_html (root directory)
  • public_html/.htaccess
  • public_html/drupal
  • public_html/drupal/.htaccess
  • public_html/drupal/includes
  • public_html/drupal/modules
  • public_html/drupal/...
  • public_html/drupal/sites/
  • public_html/drupal/sites/default
  • public_html/drupal/sites/default/settings.php
• Edit the .htaccess file in root directory (public_html/.htaccess), add these lines:
  
  RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(www\.)?gleanergames\.com$
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/drupal/
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ drupal/$1 [L]
  
  Don't forget to change the domain name (gleanergames) to yours.
  
• Save the .htaccess.
• Open browser and type your domain name, you should be able to see your web site.

Please note, these steps allows you to install drupal in a subdirectory but access it as if it lived in the root. You don't need to change the .htaccess file in public_html/drupal/.