[Brad]

Doing it by hand is the best way, because it will allow you to learn in the process. Later on down the road you might need to do some custom code work, installing hacks by hand will give you a better idea about what dose what in the code.

There is a modification released here by kura called the hack tracking log, it will allow you to keep up with the modifications you have installed, and will also run SQL queries for you.

The only draw back to this is that when somthing gose wrong you might have a harder time fixing it, and you can only use hacks with the hack tracking log that come with [htl] installers.