Using Drush to sync live and dev Drupal websites

This post describes how to use Drush to synchronise a live drupal website with a local development copy and vice versa, to synchronise an updated dev site back to the server version.  Following on from previous posts about Drupal this blog assumes that both a live server-based and a local drupal website are in place.

Part 1: Local Drupal7 on Mac OSX Lion
Part 2: Set-up Multisite Drupal 7
Part 3: Using Drush to sync live and dev Drupal websites

Set-up Multisite Drupal 7

In order to develop my website using Drupal I wanted a local version to work on off-line and a live version to periodically update with releases.  This post continues to tell how I achieved that by describing how to create a multi-site drupal installation having completed setting up Drupal 7 and AMP on my Mac OSX Lion.
Part 1: Local Drupal7 on Mac OSX Lion
Part 2: Set-up Multisite Drupal 7
Part 3: Using Drush to sync live and dev Drupal websites

Local Drupal7 on Mac OSX Lion

Having set up a website on a live server using Drupal I wanted to set up a local copy for development without risking stuffing up the live version.  This post describes how I set up Drupal 7 on my Mac OSX Lion/10.7.

Part 1: Local Drupal7 on Mac OSX Lion
Part 2: Set-up Multisite Drupal 7
Part 3: Using Drush to sync live and dev Drupal websites

Install Drupal Zen Theme

Now that I've installed Drupal, I decided to install the most popular and 'award winning' theme. That is Zen.  This is how you get Zen and get Zen working for you.

Raspberry Pi - play videos on your TV over home network

XBian is free software to turn your Raspberry Pi into a full function media center. This is my experience of installing XBian Media Center (XBMC) described in simple steps to follow yourself. I have updated this post as XBian becomes a more polished product. Once setup there's no faffing around or technical stuff to do. The major steps are
1) Install the XBMC Software
2) Configure Xbian/XBMC

Clean Up your Dirty URLs in Drupal

Having installed Drupal, the website building Content Management System (CMS), on a cloud server I had some issues getting Clean URLs to work.  This post describes how I got rid of my dirty URLs for Drupal hosted websites.

Dirty URLs

Default URLs for a Drupal hosted site include ?q= e.g. www.yoursite.com/?q=node/366 because it triggers a database query for what's after the ?q=.  Removing these characters, or at least not displaying them in the URL makes search engines friendlier towards your site and may increase your page's rankings.  A further step is to add aliases to pages so there is a human readable name instead of an id e.g. www.yoursite.com/barbie-girl instead of www.yoursite.com/?q=node/366.

Drupal basic concepts

Oh wow - Drupal as expected has a steep learning curve!  Once I'd installed it on a cloud server, here's what I first learned while clambering up the learning curve.  I've also written posts about specific (and general) stuff I've done with drupal.

Installing Drupal CMS

Now that I have started a business I need to have a professional looking webpage.  I also wanted to learn how to set this up myself using Linux as this skill may be useful in the future.  This post describes how I did that using a cloud Linux server and Drupal.