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

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