Local/Drupal: complete!

k, picking up from where I left off yesterday - configuring and finishing the local install of Drupal. References: dev env set up page and installation/configuration instructions. Instructions focus on command line tools, so that's good. Thank goodness I had already installed Git and know a few Unix commands or I'd really be behind the curve on this.

1. Neat, here's a handy list of best practices for CMS usage. Completely agree about backups, and definitely need to test mine for the WordPress site I'm maintaining. ...Documentation can be such a rabbit hole; if I don't stop myself I'll just keep reading for hours.
2. First we check system requirements, which I already looked at yesterday. Double checking in more detail now. I will want to enable clean URLs on my own site later on.
   • Web Server: Apache, check. Apache Virtualhost configuration file would be httpd.conf, I think, so I change the AllowOverride to "All" there.
   • DB server: MySQL is what MAMP uses, with PHPMyAdmin, so I should be set there. Not sure how to check what rights my account has or how to change max_allowed_packet, so I'm hoping everything just works. And my PHP is obviously already connected to MySQL. 
   • Good lord I wish I knew what I was doing.
   • Might need to up my memory for my own photography site later on. Maybe by the time I do that, I'll have plenty of experience and it'll be straightforward.
   • My favorite words today: "Enabled by default." 
   • On the bright side, I feel pretty confident about my skills once I have things installed. It's just finding all the configuration files and prying out info about new systems that's challenging.
3. 
   Download instructions not relevant, already have the local directory and Dreamhost has its own instructions that I'll use for my site later. oop, actually I do need to drop the Drupal folder contents into my specified web root, or just redirect the web root. I "woohoo'd" when I saw this in my browser. A little soon for the woohoos, perhaps.
   
   
4. Oh hey, Mac specific install notes regarding PHP, MAMP and other things from my last post. Whoops. Also this note on CVS repository... Question: is this relevant, and wouldn't the Git functionality supersede it? I should figure out how to keep my local version up to date. I bet that's later in the instructions... 
5. Looks like Drupal will create its own DB, so I'm off the hook for that... Might have to adjust settings.php, but I know where to find it, so I'll come back to this step if the install script throws an error. 
6. Checking my MAMP install against the instructions here. Hm. Well this is saying I DO need to create my DB (and here are those pesky user rights from above). hm! all these instructions overlap, so I'm just going to stick with this one, then check back on the INSTALL.txt instructions, and really everything should work fine anyway. Really appreciating the detailed instructions on this link for db creation (necessary or not). Found max_allowed_packet here, too. 
7. Annd filling out the db info on the install page... looks like I wont need much more from the help docs at this point, though I do wonder if I should do "minimal" or "standard." Standard makes sense for testing, rather than custom, right? right.
8. Ok, I think... I think that's done. I get the site login page, changed some settings as in the MAMP local instructions above, db works, only thing I feel stupid about is not installing in the directory I should have. Question: how could I move the entire shebang? What's connected? MAMP needs the location, but the installation script wrote a whole bunch of db links I'm not sure about. Not critical, just irritating to my file system.

And with that, I move on to the rest of the dev env instructions and start my first patch/module/test!