Upgrades. They just never stop.

Sure, I'm as grateful as the next guy to have thousands of world-class Drupal developers straining to keep my Drupal sites secure. For free.

But I still hate upgrades. For every cool new feature, it feels like there's ten or twenty ways that things can break.

Now for the good news. The tools are out there to manage this stress. Enter Drupal platforms. When you use the Aegir way of thinking about your Drupal site, you find a radical new way to upgrade your site.

First, you organize all your modules into a platform. Then, instead of upgrading modules on your current platform, you make a new platform with the upgraded modules, then carefully migrate your site to the new platform.

Instead of blindly slinging code, you're using Aegir to make automatic backups, in case anything goes wrong. Aegir also helps you check the module version numbers quickly and accurately.

Most importantly, you start thinking of combinations of core and modules as "platforms", as stable entities that shouldn't be lightly tinkered with. If you want to tinker, make a new platform. Leave your live sites alone.

(I wish I'd known all this before I downloaded that module that not only broke one of my sites, but then wouldn't disable.)

Want to learn more about Drupal and WordPress in your free time? How about free podcasts? I've collected lists of Drupal podcasts and WordPress podcasts for your listening pleasure. Ditch the morning news, and turn your commute into quality CMS time.

If podcasts won't slake your thirst for knowledge, maybe it's time you climbed the "Drupal ladder". This free set of lessons is geared towards bringing you from Drupal newbie to core contributor, rung by rung.

And if that's not enough, expert Drupal developers are standing by, offering free core mentoring. It's never been easier to explore the crystalline palaces of Drupal code.

Your Drupal site is just a bunch of rectangles.

At least, that how it looks from a certain theming perspective. The biggest rectangles are (usually) regions. Regions have names like "header" and "footer". They're the logical areas of your site.

Regions come with your theme, and you don't normally tweak them much. (Although you can add a region if you need to.)

Blocks, on the other hand, are the little bits of content that you shuffle around the site. Do you want the "User login" block in the "left sidebar" region or the "right sidebar" region? How about that "Powered by Drupal" block in the "footer" region?

Blocks are fun, and you can even add your own. But I actually don't recommend adding custom blocks.

Instead, add a custom box. All the cool kids use boxes, man. Seriously.

I love writing for my Drupal sites, but I've grown to detest HTML tags. Yes, HTML is worth knowing, but all those <strong> and <em> and <p> tags can wear on a guy.

I want something simple. Solution? Markdown.

With the Markdown module, you can write your posts in the simple Markdown syntax. For instance, here's how I wrote the previous paragraph:

I want something **simple**. Solution? _Markdown_.

Here's how that would look in HTML:

<p>I want something <strong>simple</strong>. Solution?
<em>Markdown</em>.</p>

The Markdown module gives you a filter that you can enable in one or more of your Drupal text formats. You can compose in Markdown, and Drupal takes care of converting it to HTML.

Try Markdown. Whether you've been writing HTML or using some WYSIWYG solution, Markdown will be simpler, quicker, and even elegant.