Drupal A non technical Introduction

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Drupal – Content Management System a non technical

introductionBarCamp Kathmandu 2010

28 August 2010

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What am I going to tell?• I am going to boast about Drupal.• How good it is, who uses it, why use it?• How to really start clicking and building

your Drupal website.• What I am not going to do or talk about?

– Install Drupal– Tell about Drupal jargon (may be some)– Show you the system inside out – Why not use Drupal? (Ask me later)

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What is a CMS?

• A content management system (CMS) is the collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment.

• Simple: Lets users mange content – store, archive, retrieve and show content in some logical manner.

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What is a web CMS?• A web content management

system (WCMS) is a software system.• Provides website authoring and

administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages.

• Helps to create and manage the site's content with relative ease.

• Usually has a template/presentation layer.

Web CMS in simple terms• A web content management system is a system

that makes content adding, moderating, updating, deleting, archiving and retrieving easy.

• It allows non technical users to build and use a website with little or no training.

• It is a web application that manages various forms of content from text, images to video.

• Also helps to manage users and other things like comments.

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What is Drupal?• Drupal is a free and open source content

management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.

• It is used as a back-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to larger corporate and political sites including whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk.

• It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.

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What is Drupal?• A great free web application that helps you to build

dynamic feature rich and maintainable websites in very less time.

• It is a system that lets you create content with just clicks and not coding a website.

• The content you created can be retrieved and shown in a way you desire.

• With just clicks and not a single line of code you can run your website be it a blog or even larger websites.

• Built on PHP and primarily runs on MYSQL.

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Drupal Components• The basic system you use to build your

website is called the Drupal Core. • The more features you want the more

modules you add.• You want to make your website look

different choose a theme (thousands available for free)

• You can even buy one or pay someone to custom design one for you.

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Where and When did it all start?

• Dries Buyteart from Antwrep, Belgium started it in 2000 in his college dorm.

• Derived from “Druppel,” the Dutch word for “Drop” which also means village in Dutch.

• Drop.org to now http://drupal.org

• Just celebrated its 10th Birthday.

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Why Use Drupal• Because it is:

– Flexible– Modular– Robust– Scalable– Secure– Feature rich (5800 Free modules)– Themable (1000+ Themes)– Huge community to support– Etc etc

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Who uses Drupal?

• www.whitehouse.gov

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www.data.gov.uk

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http://research.yahoo.com

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http://about.digg.com

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www.sa2010.gov.za

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http://research.nokia.com

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http://www.symantec.com/community

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http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites

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Who uses Drupal in Nepal?

• www.ncell.com.np

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www.Cellroti.com

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www.mapmandu.com

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www.barcamp.org.np

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www.yipl.com.np

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www.dishnepal.com.np

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www.unicef.org.np/voy

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Drupal Versions

• Drupal 5 Branch – Drupal 5.23

• Drupal 6 Branch – Drupal 6.19 (released 11 August 2010)

• Drupal 7 Branch – Drupal 7.0-alpha 6 (released 9 July 2010) – Official stable release being awaited.

• Drupal 8 Branch – May be in the offering

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When to use Drupal?

• For A blog

• For a company website

• For a robust application

• For any website that is running in your mind right now even a social networking site.

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How to start your Drupal website?

• Go to www.drupalgardens.com and start a website for free.

• Design to online in 15 minutes. – it claims.

• You will get a sub-domain like: http://yourname.drupalgardens.com

• For more see: http://sampler.drupalgardens.com for what is possible.

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Register free at Drupalgardens.com

DrupalGardens Registration

Create a Drupal powered sub domain 1

Choose a template

And your site is live.

Change the theme/look

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A good Drupal Gardens site

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More clicks to explore

• You can even try buzzr at http://buzzr.com for a free 7 day trial.

• If you are adventurous enough try installing it in local computer with local server setup like XAMPP or try Acquia Drupal stack installer.

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Learn more about Drupal

• http://drupal.org

• Starter’s guide: http://geshan.blogspot.com/2007/11/drupal-how-to-for-beginners-and-all.html

• Try http://drupal.org/handbooks

• Google for Drupal or search for Drupal in youtube.

• Have fun Drupalling.

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And after that

• More research more tutorial hunting.

• If you are comfortable with the things you have done migrate to a live server.

• Or hire someone who can do that or initial setup for you.

• Drupal may be just like your OS, someone needs to install the OS and some needed software then you can easily use it.

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Thank you – no conclusions• Geshan Manandhar @geshan• http://geshan.blogspot.com• http://www.geshanmanandhar.com• http://www.yipl.com.np • http://www.google.com/profiles/geshan