Robin Hastings Missouri River Regional Library

Drupal 101

Robin Hastings

Info Tech Coordinator at Missouri River Regional Library

Web worker for 15 years

Pretty comfortable with Drupal, HTML/CSS and PHP, can edit other people’s JavaScript

Avid knitter, reader and sometimes World of Warcraft player

Objectives

• Understand what Drupal is and what it can do for you

• Be able to locate further training resources

• Understand how Drupal displays content

• Become familiar with Drupal concepts

• Learn how one library set up their site

Goals

What did you come here to learn?

CMS

• Content Management System > Drupal

• Database with a fancy UI

• Free– Drupal– Joomla– Wordpress

• Expensive– Lots of options, none we considered…

Application Development Platform

• Blogs

• Forums

• E-commerce sites

• Civic sites (CivicSpace is a port of Drupal geared toward municipalities)

• Social Networks

• ?

Resources

• Lynda.com – training videos

• DrupalCon – conference with LOTS of Drupal learning opportunities

• DrupalTrainer.com – seminars all around the country

• Drupal Handbook – community-created help for every part of Drupal, from Core to Modules

Best Practices

• Plan – not just for what you want now, but what you will want in the future

• Make backups a habit

• Test changes if possible (test servers are your friend)

• Do not “hack” core (makes updates crazy…)

• Get involved with the community – contribute what you can

From

Drupal’s W

ebsite:http://drupal.org/node/171194

Regions

• Blocks of content on the page

• Defined in .info

• Managed in the “blocks” area of the administration site

• VERY POWERFUL

Nodes vs. Content

Nodes Content

• Discrete bits of content contained in the database

• Any kind of content

• Building block of your site

• Made up of 1 or more nodes

• Can be pulled in from off-site

Administration Menu

CCK – Custom Content Kit

Views

Webforms

Scheduler

Embedded Media and Nice Menus

Themes

• Lots of “drop and use” options– www.osskins.com– www.themebot.com– www.topnotchthemes.com

• HTML/CSS to Drupal is possible – How we did it– Not the easiest– Not the cheapest

Planning Process

• Worked out what features were needed– Used old site’s logs– Used survey responses

• Did complete content inventory on old site– Got rid of unneeded content– Added content that was needed

• Planned out navigation/Information Architecture of new site

Training

• I went to hands-on administrator training

• Came back and trained staff– Group “what is Drupal” sessions– One-on-one “these are your pages” sessions

• Got a video for staff to use for refresher

• Made myself *very* available for questions/problems

Design

• Hired out the design to a local designer

• Designs were received and modified by Public Relations staff

• HTML and CSS were delivered to me

Theming

• 3 .info files created

• 3 template files created

• Kludges and workarounds abound…

• Best practice – get the theme in “drupal-ready state”

Content

• Copied and pasted content from old site

• Created “shells” of pages with staff in one-on-one training sessions

• Use log files to determine content needs (include search terms in that!!)

Launch

• Live on Nov 17th (board meeting)

• *Completely* forgot major content page (new materials)

• Otherwise, very smooth

Maintenance

• Update Drupal core monthly (roughly)

• Update Drupal modules as needed (weekly-ish)

• Update server (LAMP) monthly

• Keep learning about new ways to do stuff (daily)

Features

• Flickr Slideshow

• Twitter badge

• Facebook badge

• Blog headlines

• Content Spotlight

• Drop-down menus

• Announcements and Event Ads

• 2 Menus; 2 Menu styles

Drupal in Government

• Whitehouse.gov

• List of Drupal sites in Government (State and Federal) - http://groups.drupal.org/node/19885