What is the best way to set certain preferences already at installation.

For example, in the original News, I always had to set permission for Webmaster to be able to post messages.

xNews is fixing that by setting the permissions already during the installation.

What I am curious is, if this is the best way, or if there are better ways to do it?

The goal is to make the life of a first-time user much easier, i.e. he doesn't have to figure out permissions. If he is a Webmaster, he can do everything right away.

Plus maybe setting up some more common settings for a module.

Ideas? Suggestions?

Is it possible to do this using the MySQL file, i.e. writing the default permissions into the tables after the module installation creates the table?

No need of reinventing the wheel, check some 'old' modules like 'newbb', 'article'.

Thanks DJ, I'll look into them.

You're absolutely right - we definitely don't want to reinvent the wheel. That's exactly why I've asked here for advise and why I am looking for the best practices, so I can re-use it in the modules I am working on right now.

The issue is that we have a lot of modules that are, as you said, "old"

Things changed, improved, and there are newer modules, but I don't have the time to evaluate all of them, so I was curious if somebody did it already and can make recommendation on what is the best way to do it. Basically, what is the current best practice?

And it could be that the method in an "old" module is still the best

The basic issue is that there are many typical "functions" that are being used in modules, for example:
- set preferences at installation
- upload a file
- delete file
- create a menu tabs
etc.

so for people who are trying to update/refresh their "old" modules for 2.5.0, it might be useful to have a catalog of "best practices" on how to provide a specific function. The was the ideas behind "Blue move" and sharing "best practices" - see the example here