Drupal

Content Management System

• Simply put, a CMS is a website you build using the website itself.

• CMS is a software tool that allows you to create, edit, and publish content.

• The goal of a CMS is to provide an intuitive user interface for building and modifying webpage content. Each CMS also provides a web publishing tool that allows one or more users to publish updates live on the Web.

History Of Drupal

• Drupal was created by Dries Buytaert in year 2000 by a college student at University in Begium

• Dries made the software allowing the group of friends to leave each other notes about the status of the network, to announce where they were having dinner, or to share some noteworthy news items.

What is Drupal

• Drupal is a Content Management System that allows individuals to easy publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website.

• The software did not have a name until the day after Dries moved out after graduation

• Dries settled for 'drop.org'. Dorp is the Dutch word for 'village', which was considered a fitting name for the small community.

• It was only later, in January 2001, that Dries decided to release the software behind drop.org as "Drupal." The purpose was to enable others to use and extend the experimentation platform so that more people could explore new paths for development. The name Drupal, pronounced "droo-puhl," derives from the English pronunciation of the Dutch word "druppel," which means "drop."

Drupal Quick Facts

• Drupal is Free and Open Source• Drupal is written in a programming language

called PHP• Drupal Resides on a web server• Drupal is flexible enough to create something

as simple as small personal blog to something as complex as a large corporate or political website.

What can Drupal be?• Blog• Forum• Online newspaper, Portal / Directory• Brocure site, portfolio, flickr like photo drop• Social community site, job post board• Video site like youtube• Project management site• CRM, ERP, SCM, Wiki• Shopping cart system• E-learning, training site• Dating site• Anything you can think of…

Famous sites using Drupal

Why Use Drupal

Drupal Will Save you Time

• Quickly add content to and edit your website in the same time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

Drupal will save you money

• No need to hire an expensive web designer everytime you want to update your website, make changes yourself!

Drupal is easy to use

• Once setup, Drupal requires no advanced technical skills. Adding content to your website requires no more skill than it takes to compose and send an email.

• Any website whether it be corporate, community, education or personal can benefit by using the Drupal platform. Drupal helps tou managhe your visitor collaboration and feedback.

• Effective Web design is driven by the need to balance flexibility and simplicity. If a system is too simple, it can only be used for a single purpose - but if it is too flexible, it may be too difficult for new users to learn.

• 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.

Why use Drupal over Wordpress?• Wordpress was designed only to be a blog with some easy add-ons.

• Drupal was designed to be more of a generalist: it’s for making ‘anything’ and is far more robust.

• Wordpress could be the better choice for blogs since it is better at being a blog than Drupal. This is something of debate.

• Wordpress is still a sound choice of CMS for SEO and security; so if wordpress satisfies a simpler project’s requirements then by all means use it- it is easier and faster to set up than Drupal.

• Wordpress is not designed to be highly scalable to many simultaneous users, nor does it have flexible roles, permissions, extensible content types, nor does it have plentiful well-tested, quality add-ons. It has a few and a lot of really poor plugins.

What is a UI?

• UI is a user-interface, which is a general term for the layout of options, widgets and settings used to configure the system or manage content.

• ‘Site-building’ activities refer to configuring settings or managing content through the UI, such as building navigation menus.

Drupal Structure

• Drupal is a database-driven (‘dynamic’) application. It requires a database.

• Drupal has a core filesystem whose functionality can be extended using the UI itself, modules and themes.

• The UI settings are stored in the database.

The Drupal Structure

• Modules• Nodes• Layout and Region• Blocks

Modules

• Packages of files in a directory that you upload into drupal’s module space (/sites/all/modules)

• Add functionality to drupal

• ‘Core’ Modules come shipped with drupal

• ‘Contributed’ Modules are downloads from drupal.org

Themes

• Packages of files in a directory that you upload into drupal’s theme space (/sites/all/themes)

• Themes adjust the site layout and style. Like ‘skinning’ your media player.

• Themes can be easily changed in the UI.

Nodes

• A node is the primary form of content in a drupal site. At a minimum it is a title and a body, and can be ‘specialized’.

• A ‘page’ and ‘story’ for example are node types that have a specific node settings.

• A node type is a blueprint for creating instances of content of a particular type.

Nodes

• Not everything in Drupal is a node.• This is important!!• Ex: A user is not a node. A taxonomy is not a

node. An account is not a node.• Knowing this is important for evaluation of

what can and cannot be easily done through the UI, without additional programming.

Layout and Regions

• A Region is an area in a layout, such as a header, footer, content, left/right sidebar into which blocks can be placed and arranged.

• A block is a box containing some information

• A node resides only in the content area of the layout (except in special circumstances).

• Think of the content region as a big ‘node’ block that allows other blocks in it but the node itself can’t move.

Blocks

• Blocks are added by modules.

• Blocks can contain views, widgets, menus, nodes (in special circumstances), and panels.

• Blocks can be moved around through the UI

• Blocks can be styled individually.

Taxonomy

• Categorization• Set up master Categories• Set up Sub Categories

Additional Terminology

• Views – an interface for making customized lists of the data contained in the drupal database.

• Panels – an interface for making customized layouts of nodes available to the panels module.

• Widgets – a general term for interactive form elements or graphs that are enabled by modules.