I am working on a Drupal site with a few friends. Obviously we can Version control the code... but what do we do to keep each others databases in check?
I have managed to get all the theming into files (contemplate etc), but ideally my views settings, menu settings would be in line also... (Not worried about Content either way as we're just building the framework)
Any suggestions?
Using Features along with Context is very powerful. Context lets you create a "section" for your site. It's best illustrated through an example:
Lets say we define the "Forum" context as anything with the url of forums/*. Context lets us say: "I want to show these three views in the right side bar, only when I am in the "Forums" context.
Now, using Features, we can create "module" define by the context. So, we will end up with a module called "youSite_forums", which will include all the views, blocks, etc. that was define in your Forums context. It also will determine the correct dependencies, as well as Content Types used in the context. All will be bundled up nicely in a module.
As for versioning content such as node, you can user either Node Export, or just do a DB dump using Backup and Migrate. We use these occasionally, but we never have every node versioned in SVN.
Links:
You can find some more opinions on this here: Drupal DATABASE deployment strategies?