Module development and code questions

I'm just gonna keep doing this 'til somebody tells me to just shut up :)

When I'm in a forum, and I use the search, I've grown accustomed to the idea that my search can somehow be focused.

On Drupal.org, a search is a search of the entire site. It's not hard to see how that would quickly become frustrating.

Is there a workaround for this - and if so, why is it not implemented on this site?

And I hope I don't sound like I'm being negative - I'm a Drupal newbie. But some of this stuff is just SO aggravating :)

Is there any way to open the current module listings here on Drupal.org to commentary/review?

I think there would be a great deal of support for that, as I would most definitely rate my experience with each?

Currently each newbie user is presented with a list of modules available for download. As a newbie, I thought that each had passed some "litmus test" for inclusion, basically received the Drupal "seal of approval" - when in reality, as I've been told, it's simply a listing of available modules, some more stable than others.

I like interwiki ... but I haven't used it for the interwiki-tags which come bundled, but instead for two things: 1) linking to amazon affiliate links, 2) technorati tags.

I described the technorati work here: http://drupal.org/node/20652#comment-47586

I'm new to Drupal as a development environment, so go easy on me.

I'm a bit confused after reading the relevant documentation (it seems incomplete). So I thought I'd ask here. The goal is as follows:

I want to display a gallery style page that features arbitrary content. The user might see a page of rows and columns, each cell may contain a thumbnail image, some summary text, a link to a .doc file or any other type of file that has been uploaded through drupal.

The presentation would look something like this, but there would be additional text and some links to other areas of the site.

All the data required to populate these cells will be pulled from the drupal DB.

My question is what is the "proper", Drupal way to create a totally customized page? The page would retain the header and nav elements of the rest of the Drupal site, but the content area would be totally customized.

I initially thought I'd need to write a module, but it seems those are intended for customizing Drupal functionality not the site content.

I thought maybe I was supposed to create a new "page", but I'm still not clear what a Drupal page actually is (it seems like just another story or blog entry).

I thought maybe I was supposed to create an external .php file, but I'm not sure Drupal knows how to incorporate externally created pages.

I am building an application that needs many of the features of organic groups, but needs a simpler interface for creating them (it's a sort of "private club" type of application). To do this, I will need to create a node of type 'og' programatically, using data from an external database.

I know that I can create an object that "looks like" an og node, and pass it to og_insert. But this strikes me as pretty fragile (hell, it's a low level hack), and I'm wondering if there has to be a better way.

Hi!

I'm new to drupal, and I'm having BIG troubles the the forum... That's because I NEED to limit acces to some forum categories and there is NO way I can do it... I've tried taxonomy access... Nothing...

Anyone cané help out a newbie?...

I've researched drupal.org and no help yet..

Any help would be appreciated! :)

I reaaly loved the look and feel of drupal, but if there is no way of getting this right... I guess I will have to go with Xoops...

And... really... that one way I wouldn't like to go...