Installing Drupal

I finally got Drupal up and running. Many thanks to Arevos and Max Bell for getting me on my feet.

Next very basic question: To alter the appearance of Drupal, let's say to make the background black as opposed to white, do I simply edit the "drupal.css?" I saw there was a section called "themes" but I'm not certain how to implement those. Do I simply rename and replace the existing .css files?

I imagine if I wanted to move to a black background, I would also have to invert some of the bitmap files like "menu-expanded.gif."

I want my website to use taxonomy to show small images next to each content item, similar to what slashdot.org does. Is this possible with the built-in taxonomy functionality, or do I need to modify source code?

/mike

hi.

on one of my drupal sites i have a visually impaired user who has requested that i implement a feature where she can sign up to get site content emailed to her as opposed to having to deal with the visual interface that, she says, is not as easy to navigate.

i tried the subscriptions module, but she said that she actually wants the content in the email - not just a notification that the content has changed. and the subscriptions module seemed to have a couple problems anyway... i'll file a bug report.

I've been using Drupal for a little over a month, and i'm still overwhelmed by it. I know a bit of PHP, but not a lot and I'm still trying to figure out how each piece fits together. That and you guys move so quick (I've subscribed myself to the mailing list) I have a hard time keeping up with some changes. I was hoping someone could maybe give me a hint on how to best go about doing this:

I am trying to establish a connection to a database in another server in order to retrieve some information stored there (from another app, not another Drupal installation).

I put this code to connect in a php node:

//	MySQL server connect
$_SWdb=@mysql_connect("$_SWdbhost","$_SWdbuser","$_SWdbpasswd");

//	MySQL database name
$_SWdb_name="dbname";
$_SWdbname = $_SWdb_name;

$_SWdb_select = @mysql_select_db($_SWdb_name,$_SWdb);

But when viewing the node, it shows this error:

Fatal error: No Database Selected query: INSERT INTO watchdog (uid, type, message, link, location, hostname, timestamp) VALUES (1, 'error', 'user error: No Database Selected query: SELECT t.* FROM term_data t, term_node r WHERE r.tid = t.tid AND r.nid = 15 ORDER BY weight, name in D:\\www\\iwanna\\includes\\database.mysql.inc on line 90.', '', '/conciertos', '127.0.0.1', 1070810236) in D:\www\iwanna\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 90

Fatal error: No Database Selected query: UPDATE sessions SET uid = 1, hostname = '127.0.0.1', session = 'referer|s:24:\"http://iwanna/conciertos\";comment_referer|s:12:\"node/view/15\";node_overview_filter|i:0;', timestamp = 1070810236 WHERE sid = '48f6407b76220a846c93c8b684c14d80' in D:\www\iwanna\includes\database.mysql.inc on line 90

Warning: Unknown(): A session is active. You cannot change the session module's ini settings at this time. in Unknown on line 0

I am attempting to figure out how to back up my blog. For drupal to be useful in the long-term, this ability seems rather crucial to me.

I can back up the MySQL database, obviously. I can see the XML of the 'newsfeed,' which would be useful for a small number of posts (seemingly) if I wrote a converter. But what I'm interested in is some way to take every blog post, for instance, I've ever made (or better yet everything matching one taxonomy, for instace) and convert them into another, usable, format. Perhaps XML. Perhaps HTML. Perhaps a different database. Who can say?