beginner's guide to drupal

Website for Startups

The Drupal project was started in 2000 by a student in the Netherlands named Dries Buytaert. The code was originally designed for a site called Drop.org. In 2001 the source code for this project was released as Drupal. More information on Drupal history is available at http://drupal.org/node/769.

Community Web SiteWeblogForumsSocial Network SiteWiki/Knowledge BaseBusiness Web Application

PHPApache/IIS

AppServ is recommended for Windows Lighttpd works as well

• MySQL/PostgreSQL Oracle support is coming IBM is working on DB2 support

Most basic CMS features are included

Highly Customizable Plenty of Modules Good Architecture and API Good Documentation

PerformanceGood Community

Learning Curve PHP knowledge needed

few ThemesLack of Commercial Support

High reliability on Community support

And many others like Playstation, Ubuntu, Green peace,

Download Latest Drupal release from www.drupal.org.

Upload the file on www folder of your webserver.

Make a new MySQL databaseRun web based installation script

Nodes: Nodes are the basic building blocks of all Drupal sites. Every item of content that you add to a Drupal site becomes a node. When you create a page you have created a node. When you create a blog post you have created a node.

One differentiating feature of Drupal is the fact that you have the ability to create custom node types by using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module.

Drupal comes with a built in taxonomy system. The taxonomy system allows you to categorize the nodes on your site. The taxonomy system allows you to define vocabularies which consist of one or more terms. Vocabularies allow you to organize your terms into groups.

This taxonomy system makes Drupal very flexible and very powerful because you can use your categories and terms to display the content on your site in a variety of different ways. For example, a contributed module called Tagadelic allows you to display categories as a tag cloud.

Drupal generates a wide variety of RSS feeds. RSS allows site administrators and visitors to keep track of new content by subscribing in a feed reader.

Every Drupal site has a site level RSS feed that shows at the address www.yoursite.com/rss.xml. RSS fi\eds are generated by each category you create as well. When viewing a particular category look for the feed icon

Modules add functionality to your Drupal site. The core installation of Drupal includes several modules which are known as core modules. There are several key core modules that you should consider enabling on any Drupal-powered website.

PathMenuBlogCommentsSearchUploadProfileTracker

Menu Systems – Primary and Secondary

A closer look into Content CreationBlocks Books – Organizing contentsTaxonomyURL Aliasing Site maintenanceError Reporting

Installing contributed module – DHTML Menu Download the module from drupal.org Upload and unzip the file in

/sites/all/modules folder of your drupal installation folder on the server.

Navigate to Site building ->modules. Activate the module. Enjoy the new functionality.

This module allows Drupal to replace textarea fields with the FCKeditor - a visual HTML editor, sometimes called WYSIWYG editor.

You should Enable file upload feature for uploading image.

A Office 2003 like editing interface. Embed Flash videos, upload image,

and do rich text formatting – No more HTML.

User RolesPermissions User Settings

Whenever you install a new module, always check the permission to suit your needs.

Image Image Module Image Field Gallery

Video Directly Embed Videos Flash Video Module FLV Media Player Module. Kaltura Module

Audio Audio Module MediaField Module

Creates a new Content type Image.Allow Images to be automatically

resized like thumbnails and preview.Create Image Gallery.Bulk image import

You are familiar with URL Alias we talked about.

Pathauto automate the process of giving unique search engine friendly path to nodes.

We will need token module to install pathauto.

Configure pathauto by going to URL Alias settings

Download Contributed module from www.drupal.org

Unzip and upload the theme folder to sites/all/modules folder.

Go to Site building -> ThemesEnable the new detected theme.Configure theme specific settings. Add slide logo and favicon image.

Forum allow threaded discussion on your site.

Enable forum moduleSet up new discussion forum and use

containers to organize.

Enable Clean URLsPathauto moduleNever rename previously existent

links Install Global Redirect Module Install metatag/ Nodeword module

Meta description – an important metatag The meta description should be different on every page for best results. The meta description should be one or two brief sentences to summarize the page.

Page Title ModuleThere should be one H1 tag in every

fileAlways use a custom front page.

Drupal provides the CCK module as a way to build custom content types that can be tailored to suit your needs.

In addition to the basic field types provided by the CCK module, you should also keep an eye out for contribs that extend CCK functionality to provide a huge range of useful field enhancements.

Text, number, node reference, user reference options widget fields are provided by default.

Imagefield MediafieldEmail fieldLink fieldDate FieldAnd many more

Using PHP Install Content Template ModuleBut, we will consider Composite

Layout – its easy and simple to start with.

You can use blocks as a very simple way to customize the look of your site.

Blocks can contain lists of posts, widgets or even custom php code snippets.

You have a great amount of control over who sees a block and where they are placed.

Many modules will add special blocks to your site.

More advanced site builders can utilize the views module to create dynamic blocks from content on their site.

The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists of content of almost anything are presented.

This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results.

Every Drupal install requires regular actions to handle maintenance tasks such as cleaning up log files and checking for updates. Cron.php is the file that Drupal uses to run the maintenance process.

For instance, if your site were www.example.com, loading the URL http://www.example.com/cron.php in your browser would run the maintenance.

Sitemap moduleSliderTicketyboo News TickerPaging IpaperCollapse TextPanelTabsNice Menu

Routinely change administration password. Protect your site registration form,

contact form and comments with anti-spam measures. – Mollen, Akismet, Capcha

Block Access to offending IP Allow only Basic HTML to Anonymous users Routinely update modules and core Don’t worry, drupal is very secure