ARGH! It Doesn't Look Right!
When I'm working with Drupal, every once in a while I find myself tearing my hair out trying to figure out what the heck is going on. I think I have the module turned on, and I'm still not seeing what I expected to see. It's enough to make a guy kick his dachshund. (Not that there's ever a lack of reasons to kick your dachshund!).
What I've found is that, in most cases, I can solve most of these problems with the same handful of checks.
1. Clear the Performance Cache. We LOVE the performance cache, it makes all the difference in the world for the speed and reliability of our web sites, but it can be damn frustrating to make a change to the way something is themed only to have the change not appear. If your change doesn't show up right away, go to Admin > Site Configuration > Performance and click "clear cache" and try it again.
2. Check Permissions. In most cases where a module or bit of functionality on the site is not available to a user you expect to see it, it has something to do with permissions. Go to Admin > User > Permissions and check.
One of the most frustrating things about problems with permissions is that we very often don't spot these problems ourselves -- if you're configuring the site using the User 1 account, you have access to everything without having to set any permissions. More than once I've turned functionality on and been able to use it myself, but no one else can.
Actually, the opposite of this is sometimes true. In some cases like the WYSIWYG module, access to the WYSYWYG editor is based on user roles -- if you have not given your user 1 account the appropriate roles (which we sometimes forget to do because we don't need the roll to access everything on the site) you won't see the editor.
One module I LOVE for helping to troubleshoot permissions problems is Masquerade. This module allows you to pretend to be a different user on the site temporarily, without logging out and logging back in again. This is VERY useful on a production site where you don't know your user's passwords -- you can still masquerade as that user and see exactly what they see when they use the site.
3. Check for updates. Very often the module you're trying to configure has a problem that has been fixed since you downloaded it -- the module maintainers are usually very quick to respond to glitches and problems, so if your problem isn't a cache or permissions problem, make sure it isn't a fixed (or known) problem with the module before you go nuts trying to figure out how to fix it yourself.
Those three solve about 9 out of 10 of my problems when I'm trying to figure out what's going wrong, so make sure you keep them in mind as you contemplate kicking your own dogs around the house.
Trust me. The little bugger may be cute as all hell, but if he eats my shoes one more time . . ..
