Drupal Backup and Migrate - how to (in progress)

So, I have a drupal website. I'd like to write down the process of backing up and then restoring upon a complete failure.

So, to backup just use the default backup and set to download. Save these somewhere safe. Just to be safe I also did the same for Public Files Directory and Private Files Directory.

I guess thats the easy part. For the next part I've found it hard to find any documentation on restoring from a complete failure. Here's what I have found:

http://www.anexusit.com/blog/how-restore-backup-migrate-file-using-drush
http://drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/40490/how-to-restore-a-site-from-a-backup-done-with-backup-and-migrate-module-using-dr

Both are related to drush which is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal.

My best guess for restore is to install drupal, install drush and run the restore command line.

If you also lose files, then you have to make sure you have backup of all files as well.

I think what I'd really like is the backup utility used with Joomla, Akeeba. This is much easier. I don't even think you need to install Joomla to reinstall. And it backs up all files. There must be a reason it isn't as easy. Oh well.

Gathering images and media for use in a Drupal site

So I have hit a slight stumbling block whilst trying to integrate media from external websites into my own.

I want to collect Photos from Flickr which are linked to the project and display them on the website in the form of a gallery.

The first thing I tried was flickr module. But I was a little underwhelmed by how simple it was. It simply adds links to the specific galleries etc. that you want. The block adds thumbnails, but thats about it. Whenever you click on anything it takes you straight to flickr. Not what I wanted.

The advantage of this is that every thing can have a 'flickr' field, and so can be used on the map which I have.

I tried using with Views, but I think I need to do some more planning to get this working. But I think it won't work as any fields/data just links to the flickr site.

The next thing to try is the Media module. This is more like what I'm looking for. There is a plugin for this module specifically for Flickr

Contact forms in Joomla and loading modules inside of articles

So I'm wanting to put a contact form up on a page in Joomla in the main content area. The easiest way looks to involve installing a plugin.

Found this free plugin called Rapid Contact. Once installed it is a module.

To load the module up where the main content should go require a little tweaking. Found this article on it.

Basically you make an article which contains a module position:

{loadposition testposition1}


Make a menu item which loads this article.

Then you make the module have the position "testposition1" and make sure it's loaded with the right menus item.

Done


Just found an even better alternative with Joomla 3. Here's the tutorial. Basically:

1. Create a Contact and make sure the contact form is set to Show.
2. Create a menu item to link to that contact!