Introduction to Drupal

Andrew Rudy

Outline • What is Drupal • Why use Drupal (Pros and Cons) • Examples of what Drupal can do • How to download and install Drupal • How to use Drupal’s user interface

What is Drupal? • Drupal is a free tool used to build web sites. • Content management framework • Similar to Wordpress • Hybrid between a web application framework

and a Content Management System • Cross-platform, PHP, and highly modular

What is Drupal?

• Drupal allows you to change your website from a point and click interface. – Add content/articles – Create sidebars and menus – Add or change the theme (look and feel) – Add, edit, or remove people – Add, edit, or remove roles – Extend your sites functionality with modules

Why use Drupal?

• Out of the box functionality and flexibility – No need to reinvent the wheel – Much more functionality than Wordpress

• Large Community – 900,000+ users, Drupal forums, DrupalCon

• Drupal Modules – Many free prebuilt modules readily available – Ex. Captcha, Auto log out, Calendar, and many

many others

Pros

• Large learning curve – Much more than Wordpress, Joomla

• Slower due to amount of resources • Drupal developers are scarce • Minor updates can be difficult

Why use Drupal? Cons

What can Drupal do?

• It is used as a back-end for 2.1% of all the websites worldwide

• Example Drupal sites

Design + User Experience + Functionality

Drupal Core

• The standard Drupal download comes with just the most common functions as seen above

• To add things like forms, emailing, groups and more specific things, a module will need to be added

The 5-minute Install • Download https://drupal.org/download Unzip

• Create Database - myNewSiteName

• Duplicate sites/default.settings.php

• Rename to settings.php - Set permissions

everyone read/write

• Create folder: sites/default/files - Set permissions

everyone read/write

• View site: http://localhost/myNewSiteName

• Done!

Modules

• Functionality is included in modules, which can be enabled or disabled after install

• The functionality of modules are almost endless, from a Drupal command line (Drush) to an e-commerce payment form

Conclusion • Drupal is tool used to build functional

websites with content management systems

• Drupal has more of a learning curve, but can provide a lot of functionality

End

• Slideshare.net/ucdrupal