Drupal 101
Introduction to Drupal
October 10, 2015
nedcamp.org
Rick Hood
richard.hood@commonmediainc.com
richardhoodcreative@gmail.com
www.drupal.org/user/54879
2011 - present
Project Manager & Drupal Developer
Common Media, Inc. located in Hadley, MA
www.commonmedia.com
2000 - 2010
Freelance web development and graphic design
Drupal since 2006 (Drupal 4.7)
1982 - 1999
President & COO Hood Enterprises (1991-1999)
Portsmouth, RI
Yacht Insider’s Guide
What we will cover
Some preliminaries, then dive into using Drupal
1. What is a CMS? What is Drupal? Why Drupal?
2. Using Drupal
dive into using a Drupal site
3. Creating a Drupal site
create the site we used above
4. Setting up your computer to run a website on it
PDFs are up on the session page
nedcamp.org/new-england-drupal-camp-2015/sessions/drupal-101
Drupal101_2015-10-10.pdf
What is a CMS?
CMS = Content Management System
= a database of content…
…as opposed to content scattered in various files
A CMS, like any database, uses forms to enter
content into the database.
Drupal is a CMS
Blogger, WordPress, Joomla, Django, SharePoint…
…are all CMS’s
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a CMS.
It can also be thought of as a
“framework” (a tool to build software).
It can also be thought of as a pre-built
Why Drupal?
Drupal does not assume what your
website functionality is going to be…
…it has the building blocks to build
pretty much anything.
Drupal’s Building Blocks
Three features that make Drupal great
Content types & fields
Views
…for easy queries (lists of content)
User permission control
Title
Body
(the main text area) Date Author Category Image ARTICLE Category Local News National News World News Person Posted By First Name Last Name Email Bio First Name Last Name Email Bio
Content Type Content Type
Taxonomy
User
OK, let’s use Drupal
We’ll be looking at Drupal 7, but everything applies to Drupal 8
Summary
1. Content types and fields
2. Taxonomy (for categories)
3. Modules (for adding functionality)
4. Themes (for changing layout and look)
5. Blocks (placed in regions of a theme’s layout)
6. Views (easy query building for lists of content)
7. Users, roles, permissions
Installing Drupal on your local computer
A. Create a folder on your computer (e.g.”nerds”) in the folder that you keep you websites (e.g. “Sites”)
B. Download the Drupal zip file (https://www.drupal.org/download) into that folder and unzip it, rename the folder (e.g. “root”).
C. Setup vhost (e.g. drupal101) in MAMP or WAMP to point the local site name to the root folder (from “B”above).
D. Go to your local site in the browser (e.g. http://vhostname:8888), this will start the install process.
E. Create the MySQL database on your computer that Drupal needs, using
phpMyAdmin (in MAMP and WAMP) to Sequel Pro (Mac) or Navicat (Windows). F. Continue the install process by entering the database name, user name and
password. G. Thats it!
