Drupal Workshop

Introduction to Drupal Part 1: Web Content Management, Advantages/Disadvantages of Drupal, Drupal terminology, Drupal technology, directories

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This presentation was created by Jennifer Hodgdon of Poplar ProductivityWare LLC.

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What does using a Content Management System (CMS) buy you?

 Content and settings stored in a database: edit content, menus, navigation, etc. on the web  Web pages are generated by scripts from information in the database, not stored as individual files  Enter information once, display in different ways on different pages (lists, grids, calendars, …)  Content is separate from style/presentation, so style is consistent across site  Permissions system: different users have permission to do different actions on the site

What are your options?



Many Content Management Systems (CMS) are available:

 Drupal  Joomla  WordPress  Expression Engine  WebGUI   Plone …

Advantages of Drupal

   

Free and Open Source

 software You don’t have to pay for a software license  You can modify the software Large and vibrant

community

of users and developers    Many people testing it, finding security issues, etc.

Many modules freely available from developers Many people donating their time to writing documentation, helping new users, etc.

Flexible architecture

  You can create your own modules for custom features You can create your own themes for custom design

Based on standards

:   Core software is PHP/MySQL, giving many hosting options Output uses XHTML, CSS, JavaScript, so compatible with most browsers

Disadvantages of Drupal

 Flexibility = Complexity  May not be the best alternative for simple or single functionality sites   Takes some time to learn Takes some time to set up  Free and Open Source = No guarantees    Free support options may or may not be responsive (but you can pay for support) Features you need may or may not be available Your feature requests and bug reports may or may not be acted upon

What types of sites is Drupal good for?



Examples:

  http://www.pdx.edu/ – site.

Showcase

: University web http://www.symantec.com/connect/

and Community:

–

Interaction

Visitors can submit and answer questions 

See http://drupal.org/cases for more

Technology of Drupal

 Drupal runs on a “LAMP” platform: – L = Linux operating system(but it can also run on Windows, Mac) – A = Apache web server (but it can also run on other web servers; not so well on Microsoft IIS as on Apache) – M = MySQL database (but it can also run on PostgreSQL, SQLite, and others) – P = PHP scripting language (no choices there!)

Drupal Terminology

  

Module

   Def: Add-on code that adds functionality to Drupal Can be

core

(comes with Drupal),

contributed

install separately), or

custom

(download and (written specifically for your site) Examples: Forum, Blog, Web Form

Theme

  Def: Set of PHP files, CSS files, and images that defines the layout and styles for your site Can be core, contributed, or custom

Path

 Def: Part of the URL of your site that follows the base URL for your site. For example, in http://example.com/node/add, the path is “node/add”

Drupal Terminology p. 2

 

User

    Def: Anyone who visits your site Non-logged-in visitors are known as

anonymous

Users with accounts are assigned to

roles

that you can define, such as Master Admin, Content Editor, Member Permissions are generally assigned by role

Content Item (called “Node” prior to Drupal 7)

    Def: A piece of content on your site, which could be displayed on its own page or as part of another page (or both) Basic content items have a Title, Body, a unique ID number, and some meta-data (creation time, last updated, author, etc.) Each item also has a

content type

, such as “Page”, “Article”, “Press release”, “Event”, or “Member profile”.

Content types can have additional custom fields besides Title and Body, such as location, event date, banner image, etc.

Drupal Terminology p. 3



Taxonomy

 Def: Categories, tags, or other classifications that can be applied to content on your site 

Menu

 Def: List of links to pages on your site, generally used for navigation in headers, sidebars, footers 

Weight

 Def: Number that defines the order of a list, such as of menu items. Larger numbers “sink” to the bottom of the list.



Block

 Def: Text, links, images, etc. that can be placed in a configured to display on one or more pages

region

of your site’s theme (header, sidebar, footer, etc.), and

Drupal’s Directory Structure

Drupal’s core areas (DO NOT MODIFY!):

 (files such as index.php, .htaccess, install.php, update.php) (you might need to modify .htaccess only)   includes misc     modules profiles scripts themes

Contributed and custom modules, themes, and libraries to be shared by all sites hosted here:

 sites/all  modules   themes libraries

Subdirectories defining the individual web sites hosted here:

 sites/(other subdirectories)    settings.php (file) modules (directory) themes (directory)