Learning Drupal and Building a Website in 7 Weeks - Update 1

Tasks completed:

• Enabled my Mac's Apache and PHP
• Installed MySQL 5.5
• Installed Drupal 7 (sandbox)
• Gone thru chapters 1 to 4 of "Drupal 7" by David Mercer

Had to do a couple of fixes:

1. In order for MySQL to startup either automatically or via the System Preferences Panel, It is necessary to execute the following command in Terminal. It appears this is only necessary for MySQL 5.5. Earlier versions (according to support forums) do not need to this fix.
   
   "sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM"
   
   
2. To allow Drupal to rewrite the URL properly, it is necessary to change $base_url in settings.php (in folder sites/default/).
   
   “$base_url = ‘http://localhost/~luke/drupal’;"
   

The concept of modules, blocks, theme, roles, and permissions seems easy enough and make sense. Can't wait to learn more.