Noffbaughs.net

I've set up several websites based on Drupal, and it's an excellent CMS that generally has very sensible default settings, but there are a few things I always find myself changing after I get a site running. Most things in Drupal can be adjusted as you go along, but these few are really best done right at the start:

Set "Download method" to Private (Administer > Site configuration > File system)
From the description of this setting: "If you want any sort of access control on the downloading of files, this needs to be set to private. You can change this at any time, however all download URLs will change and there may be unexpected problems so it is not recommended."
Since I usually want at least the option of limiting access to files, I set this to private.

Set the "Default time zone" and turn off "Configurable time zones" (Administer > Site configuration > Date and time)
If you have any interest at all in keeping track of what time things get posted, set these right away to save yourself confusion. I usually don't need users to set their own time zone, so I turn that off; in any case, it's much easier to turn it on when needed than to sort out why your user in Boulder has their time zone set to GMT+545.

Turn "Public registrations" off (Administer > User management > User settings)
I initially set this to "Visitors can create accounts but administrator approval is required." This isn't a security risk, but it's a pain to have to delete a bunch of bogus accounts if forum spam bots find your site before you're ready.

I could probably write an "install profile" that would care for these things; for now, I'd rather just take 2 minutes to fix them by hand!