an introduction to drupal
DESCRIPTION
Are you looking at Drupal as your new CMS? This presentation gives an overview of Drupal and some common use cases. Targeted at IT managers looking to chose a new CMS or who just want to get more familiar with Drupal.TRANSCRIPT
An Introduction To
Drupal
What? Who? This is an overview of Drupal and some common use cases. It‘s mainly intended for
• IT managers or consultants tasked to choose a new CMS.
• Editorial and technical staff getting acquainted with Drupal.
• Anyone looking for a summary of Drupal.
The origin of this presentation is a consulting engagement at the European Institute for Gender Equality, an EU organization based in Vilnius, Lithuania.
About Me
• Tobias Ratschiller
• Working the Internets since almost
15 years.
• Wrote Web App Development with
PHP in 2000, initial versions of
phpMyAdmin, phpAds (openX), using
Drupal since 2005.
• Now owner of a small company,
runing many sites on Drupal,
2.5million uniques per month.
About Me
For example, Denmark.net
• 424,000 nodes
(„pages“).
• High traffic.
• Business directory, jobs,
events, forums, weather,
hotels, blog.
Drupal 101 – What is Drupal?
Drupal allows you to easily publish and
manage a wide variety of content on a
website.
Hundreds of thousands of people and
organizations are using Drupal to
power an endless variety of web sites,
including
• Community web portals.
• Intranet applications.
• Personal web sites or blogs.
• E-commerce applications.
Drupal 101 – What is Drupal?
• Open Source project
created by Dries Buytaert in
2000.
• Supported by a community
of over 400,000.
• Commercial support
available via Dries‘
company Acquia and
others.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35034362831@N01/2660877655
Drupal 101 – Open Source
• Drupal is released under
the GPL, version 2.
• You can download, reuse,
modify, and distribute it.
• If you distribute derivative
work (modules, themes,
etc), the same terms have
to be applied.
Drupal 101 – Community
• Large community - Drupal is
easy to get started with.
• Drupal.org/forum for
support, finding developers
and designers.
• Elance, Freelancer.com
have many Drupal-skilled
professionals.
• Contribute yourself -
modules, themes, bounties,
sponsorships.
Agenda – Drupal in Real Life
• Setup
• Create a page
• Create a blog
• Change layout
• Install modules
Drupal in Real Life - Setup
Setting up a Drupal website
(Unix/Linux):
1. Download from drupal.org to
your server.
2. Create DB.
3. cp sites/default/default.settings.php sites/default/settings.php
4. chmod 666 sites/default/settings.php
5. Go to the home of your website
and finish the install script.
Drupal in Real Life - Setup
Setting up a Drupal website
(Windows):
One-click install through the Acquia
Drupal Installer
(http://acquia.com/downloads).
Includes all components (Apache,
PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin) to get
up and running with a single
installation.
Drupal in Real Life - Setup
Drupal 5.x Drupal 6.x Drupal 7
Status Outdated Current Coming late 2010
Support Legacy support (bug
fixes)
Supported (bug
fixes, small feature
enhancements)
Not supported for
production
Recommended For legacy
applications
Choose this for new
sites going online
2010
Choose for sites
going online 2011
Major versions (5, 6, 7) are released every 12-24 months.
When choosing Drupal, you should plan a major update to your
site every 24 months at least.
Real Life - Create a Page
1. /node/add/page
2. Enter title.
3. Enter menu name.
4. Enter body.
5. Submit!
Real Life - Create a Page
Real Life - Create a Blog
1. Make sure the „blog“ module is
enabled (in Administer -> Site
Building -> Modules).
2. /node/add/blog
3. Enter title and body as before –
no menu entry necessary.
4. Blog posts are published to the
front page by default.
Real Life - Create a Blog
Real Life - Create a Poll
1. Make sure the „poll“
module is enabled (in
Administer -> Site Building
-> Modules).
2. /node/add/poll
3. Enter title and choices.
4. Poll is published to
frontpage by default.
Real Life - Create a Poll
Real Life – Change Layout
• Layouts/styles are called
„themes“ in Drupal.
• To change, go to Administer
-> Site Building -> Themes.
• Chose any theme there as
enabled and default.
Real Life – Reorder Site Elements
Drupal themes define site elements,
for example a sidebar or the footer.
These elements are known as
„blocks“.
Modules expose snippets that can be
shown in blocks. For example, the
„blog“ module has a block showing the
latest blog entries.
Go to Administer -> Site Building ->
Blocks to set up blocks.
Real Life – Change Layout
Before
Real Life – Change Layout
After
Real Life – Change Layout
Where to find themes?
• Drupal.org
• Themegarden.org
How to install themes?
1. Download and extract to
sites/all/themes.
2. Enable via Administer ->
Site Building -> Themes.
Real Life – Change Layout
• Layouts/styles are called
„themes“ in Drupal.
• To change, go to Administer
-> Site Building -> Themes.
• Chose any theme there as
enabled and default.
Real Life – Reorder Site Elements
Real Life – Reorder Site Elements
Real Life – Install Modules
Modules extend Drupal‘s
functionality.
Over 2,000 modules can
be downloaded from
Drupal.org.
Place into
site/all/modules, enable
in Administer -> Site
Building -> Modules.
Agenda – How To
• Prevent spam
• Resize photos
• Add a forum
• Add a job board
• Add an event calendar
• Add a photo gallery
• Add a newsletter
How To – Prevent Spam?
• Mollom by Acquia/Dries – an all-in-one solution to combat
spam. Three subscriptions: free, 30 Euro/month/site, 3,600
Euro/year/site
• Or roll your own:
„spam“ module
image captcha
comment notification
How To – Prevent Spam?
Spam module
• Checks comments (and optionally other content).
• Shows potential spam on Administer -> Content management -
> Spam.
How To – Prevent Spam?
CAPTCHA module
• Different flavors of captchas: text, image, quiz.
• Captcha can be shown on user signup, login, comments, etc.
How To – Prevent Spam?
Comment notification
• Administrators should get notified when a new comment is
posted.
• Drupal 6.x can do this with triggers and actions.
1. Enabled trigger module.
2. Create a new action
„Send e-mail.“
3. Associate with
trigger „New
comment
notification.“
How To – Resize Photos?
Imagecache module
• Automatic actions for uploaded images, for example resizing
or watermarking.
• Perfect for standardizing sizes for embedded photos.
How To – Add a Forum?
Forum module
• Make sure the module is enabled.
• Go to
admin/content/forum/add/container,
enter name.
• Go to
admin/content/forum/add/forum,
enter name.
How To – Add a Forum?
How To – Add a Forum?
Advanced Forum
module
• More advanced
like a real forum.
• Typical forum
homepage, avatars
in posts, private
messages, etc.
• All-in-one install.
• But: Alpha
How To – Add a Job Board?
• There really is no good out of the box job
board for Drupal:
– Be prepared for some custom dev.
– Or choose a third party board.
• Try the job_posting or job_search modules.
– Jobs can have expiration, location,
categories, multiple employers.
– Users can apply and send their resumes
as attachments.
How To – Add a Job Board?
How To – Add an Event Calendar?
Calendar module
• Very flexible module to create any
calendar-based view you would ever
want.
• Based on Views. Views are Drupal‘s
way to create complex pages. It‘s like
a query builder.
• To install the module,follow the quick
and easy 31-step procedure:
http://drupal.org/node/797042
How To – Add an Event Calendar?
How To – Add a Photo Gallery?
Image and Image_Gallery modules
• Creates thumbnails to be
shown on gallery.
• Easy to set up: install
module, create album.
How To – Add a Photo Gallery?
How To – Add a Newsletter?
SimpleNews module
• HTML and plain text newsletters.
• Users can subscribe and
unsubscribe.
• Web archive available.
Agenda – Running Drupal
• Backups
• Updates
• Monitoring
• Deployment
• Security
• Performance
Running Drupal - Backups Backup and Migrate module
• Backup DB and files to server, FTP, Amazon S3 or
email.
• Create automated schedules.
• Great for small,
non-critical sites
with no uptime
or performance
guarantees.
Running Drupal – Updates
Updating Drupal
• Minor versions (eg 6.10 to 6.11):
– Manual process to download new version
and copy it over.
– See http://drupal.org/upgrade
• Every 12-24 months: major upgrade.
Running Drupal – Updates
Update modules
• The update module checks for newer versions
of Drupal and installed modules.
• To update a module:
1. Download new version.
2. Remove old module code, copy updated.
3. Run /update.php.
Running Drupal – Monitoring
• The Acquia Network comes with rudimentary
monitoring (heartbeat and email notification).
• Alternatively install own monitoring or
subscribe to pingdom etc.
• Keep an eye on /admin/reports/dblog.
Running Drupal – Deployment
Typically, small setups
use a local development
environment and a live server.
For larger setups, a typical
scenario is
• Version control (SVN etc)
• Live server
• Staging server
• Dev server or local dev servers
Running Drupal – Deployment
The problem is the
database:
• Content from live has to
be brought to staging/dev.
• One strategy is daily import
of parts of the live DB (eg
import nodes, but don‘t import
live user data, sessions, billing data).
There is no out-of-the-box solution.
Running Drupal – Security
Most security problems come from the
system, custom code or contributed
modules, not from Drupal core.
• Keep Drupal up to date, pay special
attention to security updates.
• Have good system administration
processes.
• When writing code, follow
http://drupal.org/writing-secure-
code
Running Drupal – Performance
Drupal, by default, is resource intensive.
• Many database queries.
• The more modules, the slower.
• Easy to write sloppy code.
But: Drupal performance is largely a solved problem.
• Use a PHP cache. enable Agressive Caching, Block Cache,
custom cache.
• Lots of anonymous traffic? Consider the Boost module.
• Split DB/webserver. Examples available on Drupal.org.
Agenda – Grown Up Drupal
• Editing
• Multilanguage
• On Site SEO
• Workflows
• Acces control
• Extending
Grown Up Drupal - Editing
Wysiwyg module
• Adds visual text editors to text area fields.
• You can chose from different editors.
• TinyMCE is probably most common.
Grown Up Drupal - Editing
Grown Up Drupal – Multilanguage
Drupal 6.x + i18n module + Translation Management module provide everything that is needed for multilingual websites:
• Out of the box translations for the system.
• Web interface to add translations.
• Central overview of content that needs to be translated.
Grown Up Drupal – On Site SEO
• Pathauto module: Creates path like /this-is-a-test.html instead
of /node/14.
• Global Redirect module: Makes sure content is only available at
one location (for example, /node/14 redirects to /this-is-a-
test.html)
• Path Redirect module: Redirects old paths to new paths. For
example, when you change the title of the node, /this-is-a-
test.html redirects to /this-is-the-new-title.html .
Grown Up Drupal - Workflows
Roles and permissions
• Users can have roles, such as
„author“ or „editor.“
• Roles have permissions, such as
„create page content.“
• All functionality that is not
explicitely allowed is hidden.
Grown Up Drupal - Workflows
Workflow module
• Defines editorial processes, for example:
– Author writes article as draft.
– Editor is notified via email.
– Editor approves the article, publishes.
• Flexible, for example define an action to reject a draft and notify author.
Grown Up Drupal - Workflows
Grown Up Drupal – Access Control
Nodeaccess and menuaccess modules
• Restrict access to node types and menus for specific user
roles.
• For example, to provide an extranet:
– Only users of role „partners“ can
see the „Extranet“ menu entry
and access nodes of type
„ExtranetPage“.
Grown Up Drupal - Extending
Really, Drupal is a framework.
Writing modules and using Drupal as database, user management and permission layer is often easier than writing a web app using another framework, even if the app is not a classic example for a CMS.
Need a custom module?
• Write your own.
• Elance, Freelancer.com.
• Publish a bounty on Drupal.org.
Thank You
Contact:
www.senzalimiti.com