Deprecated - Drupal core

I'm very new to Drupal - but I've started to monkey around in the code... not so much play with it - but start reading it so I understand how it all works.

One thing that I have noticed right off the bat is the conf_init function.

I figure it's purpose is to perhaps allow people to 'hide' their conf.php file by using a name based on the site address. OR - is there a greater purpose for this function?

I hope to be contributing to the project - but first I have to understand it ;-)

andre (with the first of many questions)

Drupal's theme system, while incredibly customizable, is very
developer-oriented and being
acquainted with Drupal internals, is an implicit requirement. This creates very high barriers for
new non-technical users to take place in the project , but more
importantly .. it leads to a lot of cookie cutter sites, which in turn make
Drupal look like a less capable solution than it actually is. There is a need for a generic template layer,
that allows designers to make use of Drupal's excellent themeability , while not being subjected to the complexity of Drupal iteself.

I have written two articles about it for Drupal.org. The first article Open discussion on Drupal's themeing capabilities and templating engines. covered the problems with Drupal themes as they currently were. It's a justification piece for the next article, Technical discussion on Drupal themeing.. The second article is far more technical in nature, and discussed a high level architectural change for solving the problems encountered currently. This post contains an update on the progress towards this goal, aswell as a discussion of the nuts and bolts of the new system.

An issue has been created on the Drupal issue tracker, that contains the first patch against Drupal HEAD.

In my opinion, this is a very good solution for file upload and image management in drupal.

http://www.zhuo.org/htmlarea/docs/index.html

I have seen this converted to a WordPress plugin, and it does not require users to use HtmlArea. Because all you need is a link to pop-up the ImageManager dialog box, and you can start working at it.

Anyway, has it been decided which file upload module will make it into 4.5 ?

The problem is with coding. My language is Polish and I changed default locale to polish by setlocale(LC_ALL, 'pl_PL'); in conf.php and my date is displayed in polish but with "bushes" in place of polish characters. All the rest of charsets on my site is OK. Wher's the problem?.

Please consider handling MySQL errors more gracefully instead of just letting it spit out an error message. My web host was having problems with MySQL recently, so when anyone visited my site, they would just see the MySQL error. At the least, Drupal should put up a decent error page.

Seeking developer for project work.
Personal Democracy Forum, a pre-launch online political advocacy
enterprise, is looking for an enthusiastic and experienced developer to
help build an online media and community space. Ideally NY-based, this
developer will evaluate and ultimately install and configure a
customized content management system and community based toolset built
using Drupal, an open-source CMS platform. In addition to the initial
installation and configuration work, this project candidate would be