d-hosting

Birds-eye Overview

LAMP server graphic

The Louisiana Chapter's website is a dynamic site with a news blog, minor content feeds, and supplemented with static pages storing rarely changing content. Four components, including a LAMP server, make this possible:

  1. Apache web host running on Linux
  2. MySQL (or similar) relational database
  3. php scripting language
  4. Drupal 7.x CMS framework

Drupal resides in the www/site directory of the Apache webserver. As a CMS, Drupal stores most of its content (exceptions include photos managed by Brilliant Gallery and files managed by FileDepot) within an SQL database. In this way, content displayed on any particular page can be continuously updated when a browser hits that page, displaying the latest blog articles, slider images, history items, or other dynamic content. 

 

​GoDaddy Basic Hosting

The Louisiana Chapter has basic, “economy” shared hosting by GoDaddy Apache server with a 2nd level resources upgrade to handle traffic spikes. Below is a screen capture of the cPanel hosting interface. Using the account login credentials, it can be accessed by logging into GoDaddy.com, then click manage hosting. Through this interface you can upload/download files; make a full site and database backup; access and edit the database through phpMyAdmin; adjust security certificates, check site metrics, and more. Be careful and deliberate at what you do here as missteps may cause serious damage.

screencap: GoDaddy hosting cPanel

 

Drupal CMS

Drupal 7.x is the CMS (Content Management System) and Corporate Clean is the theme in use. Drupal is an open source framework for managing dynamic content as a web service similar to WordPress, Joomla and others. The latest version is now 8.x, but support for 7.x will continue for several more years. D8 offers numerous improvements, but upgrading is not as simple as switching from Microsoft Word 2013 to Word 2016. "Upgrading" a Drupal site requires a complex migration process, and some functionality and content may be lost or require re-creation during the process. In short, the time required simply is not justified at the time of this writing. In face, there are plenty of stable Drupal sites still running version 6...

A key concept of Drupal is that of modules. These are software patches that provide enhanced functionality developed by 3rd parties. Most are available at no cost and distributed as open source software at drupal.org. 

The best source of instruction and assistance for Drupal and it's modules is the Drupal community. www.drupal.org/community The forums are a wealth of information, as are the module pages. The basic Drupal 7 Documentation is also informative: www.drupal.org/docs/7

Drupal Updates

All software requires periodic updates to take advantage of security patches and feature enhancements. Drupal and its 3rd party modules are no exception. Drupal has been manually installed on this GoDaddy hosting account. The Installatron application within GoDaddy's cPanel interface was NOT used, and it is not recommended for applying updates to Drupal Core because it could break the website. Regardless, Installatron will not update 3rd party modules. See instructions below for that.

Check for required updates

  1. Login to the website CMS
  2. Choose Status Report from the Reports menu. This will list the status of Drupal and all of the installed modules. 
  3. Many modules can be updated from within the CMS, but the process requires you to put the site into maintenance mode before running database updates. Follow the prompts to do so.
  4. Significant updates to Drupal Core must be done manually using an FTP client or perhaps using GoDaddy's cPanel Installatron interface. Leave these for the site administrator.
  5. Be aware that occasionally innocently updating a module can cause a conflict or error and "break" the website. Backups should be made before installing major updates.
  6. After updates are applied, make sure maintenance mode is deactivated and your site is live again. View it from a different browser which is not logged in to the site. Occasionally, it gets stuck in maintenance mode. I've solved this by repeatedly applying and deactivating maintenance mode one more time.

 

Delayed Posting

This is an explanation of what may seem to be odd or unresponsive behavior of our website when making additions or changes. Sometimes there is a delay on the public-facing website when edits have been made. Just give it some time - up to a half hour.  Is this caused by Drupal's caching, (or by CloudFlare? Investigate further...) Although annoying to the content editor, caching is a good thing because it speeds up delivery of pages to website visitors.