I suppose it was unrealistic of me to think I could install Drupal 7 and have it ready to do all that I wanted right away. I really wanted to allow my family and friends to sign up to receive emails whenever I update the melanoma portion of this blog. Whatever was I thinking?!

It's also been difficult finding time to work on this website, and it is taking a lot more work than I realized it would. With all the hype about what's been moved into the core of D7 - and indeed a lot of modules were included in the installation - I had built up an unreasonable expectation. Now that I've adjusted, and started to install modules to increase the functionality of the site, I'm starting to have fun with it!

My recent additions include the Messaging and Notifications modules, and now I'm ready to try my hand at making them work so that people can sign up for updates. I didn't have to do this on my D6 sites because I have my own personal Drupal guy to make things work for me. However, one purpose of starting this blog was to learn D7, and when I saw the new module installation process I decided to take as much responsibility for the site as I can - including creating new features on my own. Installing new modules is very easy - you just copy the URL of the TAR file and clip it into the field that asks for it, and it happens automagically. No more FTP or using WinSCP to put the modules in the right folder. How much easier could it be?!

Another thing that I've found easier in D7 is granting permissions for newly installed modules. It's possible that was similar (or the same) in D6, but since I didn't take responsibility for the back-end of the site I considered it a chore. It's nice to know that I can learn and increase my skill level, and D7 is giving me the confidence I needed to take on some of these chores on my own.

One problem I had seems to have gone away, and I'm not sure why. I was having a problem with the autofill functions and getting error messages (something to do with Ajax) whenever I tried to enter a taxonomy term on my blog posts. It wouldn't autofill, but if I entered the term properly it still would show up at the bottom of the teaser on each post. That let me know that the problem was with autofill and might not have anything to do with the Taxonomy modules.

I also found that there was a conflict between the Toolbar and the Administration Menu. I wasn't surprised by this, but I couldn't fix it the way the documentation said - by using a setting to move the toolbar down. It still was hiding the drop-downs from the Admin menu - perhaps because I'm using Chrome, but honestly I don't know why. Once I turned the Toolbar module off, the autofill was working again for my taxonomy terms. I thought I had fixed the toolbar so I turned that module back on, and voila, the ajax error messages came back. So, I'm back to the old-style admin menu - not unhappily, I might add. I miss the shortcut bar of D7, but I'm going to try to customize my dashboard and see how that works. Meanwhile, all is working fine at the moment, so I'll move right along now...

Eventually I also plan to involve myself more int he Drupal community, in particular to figure out how to let someone know about the problems mentioned above. I have found it frustrating to try to post questions on drupal.org because I always seem to put them in the wrong place and then I don't get any responses. So, I guess it's time I grow up and join the party! No promises about the results, though - I've still got lots to do and too many things occupying my mind right now.

Who knew that full retirement was going to be so busy?!!