Post installation

Hi there,

After some troubles with getting actions and workflow set up (using drupal 4.6.6), it's finally done. Unfortunately I've got some problems or rather questions on using it. This is a long post, as I want to be thorough with what I did. If you don't want to read that much try reading my questions (1. - 5.) at the end of the post first. The info inbetween might not be that interesting (details).

Situtation:
I've got 3 users and the roles "anonymous user", "authenticated user" and "moderator"
1. Admin -- all rights
2. Mod -- authenticated user and moderator
3. User -- authenticated user

What I did:
In admin/workflow
1. add a workflow, call it "wpage".
2. add two states to "wpage", call them "propose" and "publish"
3. edit/actions workflow "wpage", first bullet in edit, second bullet in actions:

• (creation) -> publish
  • moderator
  • promote to front page, remove node from mod queue, publish node
• (creation) -> propose
  • author, authenticated user, moderator
  • none
• publish -> propose
  • moderator
  • remove node from front page, unpublish node, add node to mod queue
• propose -> publish
  • moderator
  • promote to front page, remove node from mod queue, publish node

4. assign the node type "page" the workflow "wpage"

What does taxonomy_get_tree really does? I have a site that has more than 14,000 terms and growing by the day. Is it really necessary? I commented out the content of the function for now.

Well, just getting started on this Drupal thing, and truth-be-told, I am finding it very confusing...

I'm using 4.7.0-rc1 on some advice from the "Pre-Installation" forum but this seems to cause some issues in itself - firstly it seems that the phpTemplate engine is not yet 4.7-ready and so that cuts out pretty much all the templates that I like :-(

I just want a simple one-user read-only site... so it is not very complex.

But my main problem seems to be that I can never tell whether I am configuring something for MYSELF (ie when I am logged in as the main user) or for the people who I am intending to READ this site. Often it seems that I change something and that alters the "administration environment" but has no effect on the "casual viewer environment".

So I am trying to figure it out by having one browser logged in while I try to change things, add content etc and another browser viewing it as though I were a new user..

Here are a couple of examples of things that I can't seem to figure out.. I am using the default "bluemarine" theme..

I want to permit my users to Search through things.. so I want to add a "Search Form"... So I go to "administer > blocks" and then choose "Search Form" and enable it and add it to the right sidebar...

Result: the administration environment (ie when I am logged in) has TWO Search forms (one sitting next to the edit primary links) and the other one located where I chose it to be in the right sidebar. The "viewer environment" meanwhile has NO Search forms...

I did not install the spam module(my foolishness!) and therefore have lots and lots of spam comments. Is there a way to delete all the comments on my drupal installation. 99.9% of the comments are spam, so individually deleting is not an option.

Is there a way I could make a link, that has a parameter that sets the default category for the post?

My goal with this is that I want, when someone is browsing a particular category, there will be a link above the list of posts, saying "create your own post in this category" and if you follow that link, it takes you to the "Create Story" page, but the category will already be set to the correct category.

Has there been anywork done on internationalising the zip(post)code features of Drupal?

I'm based in Australia and am keen to use some of the features which rely on postcodes.