Drupal is a PHP-based web application framework, similar to Symfony (but also wildly different and with much worse documentation).

  1. Basic non-trivial Drupal form validation example
  2. Creating a JSON callback page in a Drupal module

Disabling Broken Drupal Modules

Enabled modules are stored within the database (such as MySQL), so you will need to edit the database manually. To list all the currently enabled modules:

select name,status from system where type='module';

To disable a specific module:

update system set status=0 where name='alfresco_browser' and type='module';

The CTools CSS cache directory, ctools/css could not be created due to a misconfigured files directory.

This refers to the CSS cache directory in sites/default/files/ctools (not sites/all/modules/ctools), and will also occur if the directory exists and a hidden file (such as .svn) already exists within it.

Also make sure that it is group writable and directory executable:

chmod -R a+X sites/default/files
chmod -R g+rwX sites/default/files

The destination directory is not configured correctly

The Drupal notice File temporary://xxx could not be copied, because the destination directory public://avatars is not configured correctly. means that the folder sites/default/files/avatars (based on your location for public://) does not exist or cannot be written by Drupal.

Fatal error: Class ‘CMISService’ not found

If you are using the CMIS 2.x module, make sure that you have placed the CMIS library into sites/all/libraries/cmis-phplib/cmis-lib.php, and refresh your cache.