drupal basics
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Drupal BasicsMay 30, 2012
By Sean Fitzpatrick
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Welcome
We're going to talk about Drupal We're going to keep it pretty basic You should leave with enough curiosity to experiment
on your own This is not a Drupal vs. Wordpress smackdown, but
we will be making some comparisons
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Scope of the workshop
We're going to try to cover the basics I am assuming most of you are beginners If you are a total beginner, I apologize for going
fast and using technical terms If you are not a total beginner, I apologize for
going slow and using basic terms
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
What is Drupal?And why is it awesome for library sites?
Open source content management framework “Allows you to create and maintain many different
types of websites without needing to know any coding languages” – http://drupal.org/node/258
No prescribed configurations, but many features common to library sites are easily available in Drupal
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Why Drupal?
Lots of stuff available for typical library sites: News Feeds Calendar Taxonomies Image handling (such as galleries) Search Comments and other social functionality
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Drupal 6 or Drupal 7?
It's a shame I even put this slide in here. Just use Drupal 7.
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Core, Contrib, and Theme
These three components are the basis of an open framework for building beautiful bespoke websites.
Drupal is like a Lego kit. Skilled developers have already made the building blocks - in the form of contributed modules - that you need to create a site that suits your needs, whether that is a news site, an online store, a social network, blog, wiki, or something else altogether.
From http://drupal.org/getting-started/before/overview
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Drupal core
Talks to the database (so you don't have to) Provides some basic functionality for organizing
content Builds content into web pages Gives some basic options for a front end (theme) (i.e, Drupal core gives you a basic, dynamic website)
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Contributed modules
Thousands of modules extend Drupal's core This makes anything possible. (“There's a module for
that...”) Modules have already done all the “heavy lifting” And all this comes with benefits and challenges
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Theme
Theme layer presents content and markup to the browser Rendered with PHP And HTML, JS, CSS, etc Drupal offers lots of template files and overrides
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Good and Bad
Ultimate flexibility Future extendability Scalability
vs Learning Curve Staff time
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Learning curve?
I believe the “learning curve” inexperienced people associate with Drupal pertains to site building and back-end development. This is irrelevant for day-to-day content managers.
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Technology stack
Web Server: Apache or Microsoft IIS PHP: 5.2 or higher Database Server: MySQL - 5.0 or higher, PostgreSQL
- 8.3 or higher, or SQLite (Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle are supported by an additional module)
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Personnel and skill sets Project manager Information designer Copywriters (don't tell me you're going to migrate...) Web designer Developer – could be two – front- and back-end IT/Systems guy
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Let's stop for some questions
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Installation From scratch...
provision server Install apache, mysql, php, some other packages Installing Drush is a good idea for command line people Download Drupal Set directory permissions Create a database Run the installation script
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Post install: Dream big, code little
Installing Drupal is pretty trivial. Then the real work starts.
By selecting great contributed modules and learning how to implement them, you can achieve amazing functionality without any programming.
Similarly, some themes offer a lot of robust configuration options for creating beautiful sites without writing any code.
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Content types and Views
Content types are extended with custom fields. Fields store data in the database. Lots of data types
are available, such as dates, files, location coordinates, and so forth.
The Views module (contrib) is a tool set for building complex queries with a graphical UI (no coding).
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
API and theme libraries
You can go a long way without programming, but big, complex sites need custom development.
Drupal offers a rich API for extending functionality. Similarly, base themes and theme functions allow for
implementing any kind of front-end design.
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Buzzword compliance
HTML5, CSS3 Mobile-first Responsive design SASS/Compass Etc.
(I pretty much only follow buzzwords from the front-end dev world)
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Third-party content
Drupal has some amazing tools for integrating third-party content (try the Feeds module) RSS, XML, CSV, SQL Evanced ILS ???
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Users and Workflows
Custom user roles/permissions by module (no pre-defined roles to limit flexibility)
Simple publishing and editing for small institutions. Ability to create complex workflows to scale up for
large institutions. (Check out the Rules module.)
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Security
Yes, sites get hacked. Keep modules up-to-date (especially security
updates). Keep other stuff up-to-date. Be careful about permissions. Keep track of users, logs, spam, etc.
Sean Fitzpatrick | [email protected]
Additional Resources drupal.org/documentation groups.drupal.org api.drupal.org Drupal4Lib
(http://listserv.uic.edu/archives/drupal4lib.html) #drupal (irc) [email protected] Print?