Common problems and questions of Drupal for beginners and business owners

By Lucid Softech IT Solutions | Drupal, Web Development,  01 Nov 2016

In last few years Drupal is getting popular and impressed the technical as well as non technical audience across the globe. There is a big reason behind this, Drupal is a free open source CMS and is a very user friendly tool for website development. And the best part of it that a non technical person can also easily understand and work on it.

Our blog may help the beginners, non technical and fresher Drupal developers who adopted Drupal recently and facing issues on basic level.

The major part of Drupal behind its success is its “Community”. You can easily find solutions in web world and get help on each and every issue that you are facing. In this blog we are trying to include all small type of issues and common mistakes that a beginner and fresher may do.

So below mentioned are some of them:

1) Installed Drupal properly and setup everything on local wamp server but it’s not working.

– If you have installed Wamp properly and completed setup of website properly and still your Drupal site is not opening in local host then you need to look into Skype. Try offline or sign-out Skype and restart all services. It will work. Reason, Both Wamp and Skype use same port i.e. 80.

2) Images are getting disappear once saving nodes Drupal.

– This is the problem related to editor and type that you have saved. While saving a node if you have selected a default option in editor like “Filter html” or “Php format”. So while adding html tags, images you need to make sure that editor format will be “Full html”. This will fix the issue.

3) Unable to see updated node / page in Drupal.

– This problem happens when you logged in as admin and you have edited some content of a page. And once you logged out and opened that page then maybe you can’t see your changes. This issue is related to caching most of the times. And you can clear cache from “Configurations > Performance”. You can click on “Clear cache” button and it will solve this problem.

4) My Drupal website is taking too much time to load.

– This is very common but critical issue as this is directly related to website’s performance and user experience. When you have completed the site and want to decrease load time then you can use caching options of Drupal. Caching options are simple and easy for you and you can enable and disable it according to your requirement. Caching helps in enhancing load time significantly.

5) Getting a blank screen and not showing any error in my Drupal website.

– This problem may appear sometime while changing any block, view or any other configurations. So if you are not getting any errors then you can take help of “Devel” module which will help you in debugging of any issue. With the help of this module you can get errors printed. You can get errors printed like below image.

6) How to login if I turn on the “Maintenance mode” Drupal?

– If you enabled the “Maintenance mode” then you will not be able to view front-end pages. The only thing you can see is admin. And for this you need to login with yoursitename.com/user or yoursitename.com/?q=user.

7) I want to block some IPs for my Drupal website.

– In Drupal there is a option “IP address blocking” under configuration.

8) How I can change the password or details of any user from admin?

– For this after login you can open the “People” page from admin menu. In this page you will see a list of users in website. And you can click on “Edit” link in front of each user. From this you can edit any information of users.

9) I have added fields in content type Drupal but want to change the position.

– To change the position or edit in fields of a content type in Drupal you need to open either “Manager display” or “Manage fields”. In this section you will get option to change the position along with edit.

10) How to add email ids in webform Drupal if I have created a webform?

– Edit that content which is created by Webform and click on “Webform” tab then a configuration window will appear. (See below)

Then you need to click on “Email” tab and you can add email ids there.

11) How to show few articles of a content type on a page and change the order according to use in Drupal.

– The best module for this task is “Nodequeue”. This module allows you to add contents of multiple or single content type in a view and you can change order of contents also. You can define a page too where you want to show.

12) How I can add “Meta title” and “Meta description” for a node in Drupal?

– There is module available in Drupal called “Metatag”. You can install and customize Meta details for a node.

13) Which is the best module to make a website with timeline where user can post photo, text etc in Drupal?

– “Drupal wall” is one of the best modules that you can use for your website. It gives user permission to post images, text, video etc and it will looks like a wall / timeline of social networking site.

14) I want to integrate social media and sharing feature in my Drupal blog website and for nodes as well. How can I add?

– You can use “Sharethis” module of Drupal. You can customize it according to your use and can display the social icons on nodes in Drupal.

15) I have created 2 roles in my Drupal website and want to give different – different type of permission to access different content type.

– For this you need to use “Permission” section in “People” area. On permission page, find your content type (Video for example). And in front of that you will see some options related to that content type and you can allow these permission to mentioned content type according to your use.

16) I want to show a “Upload image” option in a content type so that uses can upload any image Drupal.

– You need to open that content type in which you want to make changes. Add a fields “Image upload” and choose “Image” as a field type and save it. Now once you will save, then you can see the field in page of that content type while adding.

17) In my Drupal website I want to create a content type and want to give permission like Role A can add content for that content type but can’t publish. And Role B can see the list of added nodes by A and can publish them.

– For this type of requirement you can use “Workbench” module. This is a very powerful module and you can use it according to requirement. You can deal with multiple users and can set workflow accordingly.

18) How I can add auto complete feature to my search box in Drupal?

– To make your search box auto complete you can use “Search Auto complete” module of Drupal. You can install and configure it accordingly.

19) I want to get notified once a new content is added in Drupal site.

– “Rule” module can complete this requirement. So you can install this module and can set according to use. You can define the conditions and events according to requirement.

20) I have a Drupal website and I want to add multicolumn layout for my website and want to use custom layout. How I can add and use custom layout for my Drupal website?

– For custom layout and multicolumn structure you can use “Panel” module of Drupal. Panel module can help you if you are doing custom theming and want custom layout. You can see and define the structure.

Hope these solutions to some common problem in Drupal are helpful to solve your problem. If you liked it, keep sharing it and check for these kind of stuffs on our blog on regular basis.