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 ContentManagement 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 isDrupal good for?

Examples: http://www.pdx.edu/ – Showcase: University web

site. http://www.symantec.com/connect/ – Interaction

and Community: 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 (download and

install separately), or custom (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 region of your site’s theme (header, sidebar, footer, etc.), and configured to display on one or more pages

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)