Module development and code questions

What function or method can I use within the submit method in a module to transfer data to the following page for display without having to use drupal_set_message() method?

Drupal code snippets will highly be appreciated...

Thanking you in anticipation.

Lullabot recently did a podcast on deprecated (or soon to be deprecated) modules. One of the modules mentioned was that the Image module could soon be deprecated, in light of the advancements in CCK, most notably ImageField and ImageCache. Since I am now at the point where I need to create an image gallery for my website, I began wondering if I should try to make it work work using CCK, ImageField, ImageCache, and Views (if needed).

My question is, is there a module that allows you to arrange nodes in groupings and sub-groupings (I hesitate to use the word "galleries"). I know about Acidfree, but I don't think that it makes use of custom node types. I know about Gallery and Coppermine, but they, too, fall under the same difficulty. What I'm looking for is, I suppose, a general module that will allow custom inclusion of node types. Is there anything like that available?

I tried using views, but I could not get it to list sub-groupings alongside the regular node listings (using taxonomy as the hierarchy).

Do I need to hold off until Drupal 6 with it's new (from the book module) hierarchy module?

I really want to get away from the Image module, if possible. I don't like the alternate sizes ("thumbnail", "original", etc.) showing up in the links below the node. Plus, I think that the ImageCache filters could be expanded to include watermarking.

I have a couple of CCK content types defined on an otherwise simple drupal site and I want to add captcha to the "create a node" action, but it just isn't working. I tried implementing this http://drupal.org/node/105525 patch, to no avail. I don't get any errors, I just don't get any captcha.

I feel like I'm doing somethint stupid here. Skipping an obvious step (I do that when I'm feeling peevish).

I just moved the whole site to 5.1 for the sole purpose of implementing captcha and I've gotten myself no where.

Hi,

I just wanted to know, how to edit modules such as the forum and keep the module itself updateable.

In detail, I want to extend the forum on certain parts or delete some things, which I do not need, in my actual project. But when there will be some updates, the module and its functionality will surely be broken, if I change the files and later on, there are updates etc.

So how is it supposed to work. Some links might be sufficient.
My templateengine is phptemplate.

Thanks so much.
Druballer

I am trying to get gmap "feeds" [http://photo-tips.ca/gmapfeeddemo] working on my site. I have recently upgraded to the newer gmap which caused problems because the DB schema changed for location.module but i can't upgrade the location.module because when i load the module & goto site.com/modules I get a 500 error. I could update the DB in PHPMyAdmin but don't I need the API? If you've got this to work, please give me a hand.

Stuart

I've got the prepopulate module working, but if the user is not logged in they are forwarded to the login screen and then forwarded to the submission form. The prepoulate variables are lost in the process, so all of the form fields are empty.