problems "cloning" a Drupal site

Had a site that I wanted to have 3 iterations of -- to use as multiple sandboxes --

I had them in subdomains -- and copied the database -- but the copied sites didn't look like the original --

I could not find any reason for the discrepancy and in truth I don't even now know what was causing the problem -- but I did find a way to get the three sites back into step...

Found a solution to my problems --

I logged in as admin to the Drupal sites --

then I ran

update.php -- nothing was shown to have updated --

after update I ran

cron.php

and voila

or is it eureka??

either way -- the sites look like they should ---

why -- I don't know ---

so there it is --- now -- when I compare the 3 sites --- varying in name something like the sites below --

ALL IS WELL

http://rslts.example.com

http://rslts3.example.com

http://rslts152.example.com

Drupal 5.x Search vs 6.x Search

Sometimes it seems like I am just searching for the perfect search.

I have a site that has close to 7,000 nodes of resource contacts. All the contacts have a phone number. I can jot down a phone number and have it exactly right. In Drupal 5.x I could search on the phone number and just go right to that resource.

I upgraded to Drupal 6.16 from Drupal 5.22 and the search died.

That was bad news for me and the usefulness of my site.

I would put a phone number in the search box and get almost every node in the site in the output.

So I searched all over drupal.org and the web via google.com and tried to learn what had changed to kill my search from Drupal 5.x to 6.x.

I never did find any documentation on the change that did me in, but in the Drupal handbook at the link below

http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/search/

I found the following

"If you're looking for an exact phrase, enclose it in quotation marks."

Now there's an idea - put your search keyword in quotes. That wasn't necessary in 5.x searches -- but apparently it is necessary in Drupal 6.x searches.

I was doing things like adding the Custom Google Search Engine module and the Search Lacene API search - but it was all unnecessary.

The power of quotation marks was all that I needed.

Lost my search function on Drupal 4.7

Here's the scenario -

I was moving an old web site -- and saw the huge number of searches and thought that they were bloating up database. I cleared out the searches and search index file.

Guess what?

When I tested the search in the new installation I got very few or no hits.

What to do?

I did a number of searches on the problem.

Like

Drupal 4.7 search broken

Drupal 4.x search problem

Drupal 4.7 search won't work

nothing seemed to work out

I tried editing a few posts and running cron.php after each edit. Those posts showed up in the search.

Then reading another bit of advice - I saw that I go to

Admin
Settings
Search

and if you change the number of letters you use as a minimum the site is reindexed.

I changed the number a few times - also I set the number of nodes reindexed in each cron to 50.

After doing that enough times to cover the whole site I had my index restored and working.

Good news -

Right?

Right!

DRUPALACON*DC - Documentation sprint

At my first DrupalCon in Boston last year I was unable to stay on for the sprints - This year in DC I could delay departure for a number of hours and learn how to help out.

I sat at a table where we were "rolling up comments" on the handbook pages.

We were worked out a workflow and shared our efforts around the room via an IRC channel at freenode - #drupal-comments

We were directed to look at

http://drupal.org/handbook/comments

Pick a node and see if we could find a way to eliminate the comments by either rolling their info into the node or deciding that the comment was not really adding to the discussion.

The room in the convention center was full of volunteers.

Great atmosphere.