FYI: my initial experience with Yahoo Web Hosting

Here are the steps that I remember going through in the past couple days while I was setting up my new web site. So far, so good! :)

1. Signed up for Yahoo Small Business Web Hosting. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting/

2. Reviewed Content Management Systems (CMSs), especially Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, Xoop, and WebGUI. I especially considered each system's install base; how many implementations there are and whether I recognized the users (i.e. Tim Berners-Lee!). I used the following websites to help me compare the systems.
- http://www.cmsmatrix.com/
- http://www.opensourcecms.com/
- http://www.cmsreview.com/

3. Downloaded Drupal. Unzipped the package to a new, local directory (on my hard drive) that I am using to mirror the files and folders in my Yahoo Web Hosting account.

4. Went back to my Yahoo web hosting control panel. Activated/initialized local MySQL database. Created admin user account. Used control panel to install phpMyAdmin. Logged in and created new database called "drupal" with the collation = "utf8_general_ci".

5. Went back to the new local directory and changed the "\sites\default\settings.php" file as per http://drupal.org/node/31395. Specifically, I changed the line that starts with "$db_url =" to

$db_url = 'mysql://myadminusername:myadminpassword@MySQL/drupal';

6. Because Yahoo Web Hosting allows directory browsing, and I did not want to allow it, I created a simple "index.html" file in every local sub-directory. I used a meta refresh tag to redirect to the root web site page.

7. Synched contents of local directory to root directory on Yahoo. (I used FireFTP.) Note: I could not synch ".htaccess" because of a Yahoo limitation/restriction. (They don't allow files starting with ".".)

8. Browsed to my root web site address, i.e. http://mywebsitename.com/. Created initial/first Drupal user account that is used as the administrator account.

9. In my new Drupal installation, went to Home>Administer>Logs>Status Report. Created files directory as per on-screen recommendation. Ran cron manually. (Note: cron not available on Yahoo.)

10. Went to Yahoo Web Hosting Email Control Panel. (http://us.1.p11.webhosting.yahoo.com/email/) Changed default email address to "administrator@mywebsitename.com".

11. In my Drupal installation, went to Home›Administer›Site configuration and changed e-mail address to "administrator@mywebsitename.com".

12. Began creating content, configuring, and creating new test users.

WHY DID I GO WITH YAHOO HOSTING? Because I already had a Yahoo! Mail Plus account and there is integration between the email that I already have (with the disposable addresses that I *love*) and the email that I set up for the new site. That is the only reason.

WOULD I RECOMMEND YAHOO HOSTING? While I enjoy the email integration (see above) for myself, I cannot recommend Yahoo! hosting for Drupal to others because it does not support the .htaccess file or cron jobs and they don't appear to have an option to turn off directory browsing.

FYI, here is my VERSION INFO from Administer>Logs>Status Report
- Drupal 5.1
- GD library bundled (2.0.28 compatible)
- MySQL database 4.1.14
- PHP 4.3.11
- Unicode library PHP Mbstring Extension
- Web server Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) FrontPage/5.0.2.2510 mod_fastcgi/2.4.2

OTHER THOUGHTS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS, ETC.
- Modules for download on Drupal.org should be sorted by the number of downloads or activity or something similar that allows me to see their popularity.
- The documentation here seems a bit messy. The Handbooks section could probably benefit from being converted into a wiki.
- I haven't been able to find a simple explanation of why I need cron (which isn't offered through Yahoo Web Hosting). Fortunately, the self-registration of new users with confirmation emails works fine without it.