Some Drupal gotchas

These have arisen in my recent workshops, and during programming....

  1. The Page content type isn't the same as the page template; nor is it the same as a page on the site, which is actually called a node.
  2. The file in your templates directory, called template.php: that's the only .php file that isn't actually a template (templates are suffixed .tpl.php).
  3. The region of the page called content is found in the variable $content, and any other regions you define with key foo, bar are found in variables $foo, $bar; but the left region is in $sidebar_left, the right region is in $sidebar_right, and the footer is in $footer_message.

That $footer_message was a two-hour time killer.