Du Vien Trang is a Freelance Web Designer / Developer based in Edinburgh, Scotland. This is his portfolio, blog and digital playground.

Each time you start a new website, one always has to go through a really mundane and tedious process of installing a clean version and then adding many modules before you get to the fun part and the is the build of the site. Having used Drupal for quite some time now. It's easy to figure out which modules will be used most (if not all) the time.

So to cut out the tedious tasks and be more productive, it'll probably be best to build up a generic custom install Drupal version where most of the initial setup is there and you can begin to start to build your new site.

There are two ways of doing this first method is to just do a backup of the site and DB and zip this up as a package. The other method is to build up a Profile Installation. The latter is essentially a backup copy but allows the user to actually install it as if they were going thru a clean install routine. Because of this, for the first attempt it would make sense make a package out of a backup site. This can then evolve into a Profile Installation since you will need a backup site anyway as the sql statements needs to go into your profile install file. A good place to start is Bryght.

The first one i'll create will be a package for a blog site which will come bundled with Austere template. There will be changes to Austere template and that is to make it as a sub theme of Zen, and a bit of rework to the design. Gonna drop the suppost for color module. I've used the Zen theme as the based for a custom theme for almost of my projects and just love the way it already has many of the nice features that makes one's life so much more easier. I'm aiming at getting a Drupal 6 version package because it's stable and so is most modules for it. Also it makes working in the admin panel less painless than Drupal 5 where it seems to take so many clicks just to get a simple task done. I'll upload this package for download when it's available.

Next, i will be the attempt to build this backup package into a profile installation for newbies to just install with a few clicks.

Before i begin, i'll need to work out what modules should be included for a blog type of site. If you have any suggestions why a module should be included, please leave a comment.

In my next post, i'll post up a list of modules that i think should be part of this package.

Also, any suggestions for other types of Profile Installation?

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