LITA Preconference: Getting Started with Drupal (handout)

Getting Started with Drupal – LITA Preconference Nina McHale & Rachel Vacek

ALA Midwinter Conference – January 20, 2012

Popular Contributed & Core Modules Administration

• Admin (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/admin o Use with the clean administrative theme Rubik which separates all administrative

navigation into a clean and concise side menu that is much more familiar to the casual user familiar with other CMSs.

• Administraion Menu (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu o For admins/developers to quickly navigate various parts of the site. An

alternative to the Admin module above. • Admin Role (6, now part of Drupal 7 core)

o http://drupal.org/project/adminrole o Add multiple super users.

• Backup/Migrate (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate o For admins/developers, this simplifies the task of backing up and restoring your

Drupal database or copying your database from one Drupal site to another. Content Management

• Book (part of core) o This specializes in hierarchically sequenced content, like a tree-structure. Used

alongside the Menu Breadcrumb and Pathauto modules, the Book module provides a flexible way to manipulate content hierarchy while retaining auto-defined breadcrumb navigation trails with easily readable URLs.

o Can also create site maps from this module. • CCK (6, now part of Drupal 7 core)

o http://drupal.org/project/cck o This flexible interface lets you create custom fields attached to content nodes.

• Context (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/context o This allows you to manage contextual conditions and reactions for different

portions of your site. Think of each context as representing a "section" of your site.

• Views (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/views o This provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and

tables of content are presented. This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It’s very powerful and one of the most used modules on this entire list.



• Panels (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/panels o The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for

multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout.

• Webform (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/webform o Make surveys and webforms within Drupal.

• Lightbox2 (6) o http://drupal.org/project/lightbox2 o Create lightboxes by using a simple, unobtrusive script that is used to overlay

images on the current page. It is easy to setup and works on most modern browsers, and integrates well with Views and CCK.

• WYSIWYG (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg o This lets you edit content and simplifies the installation and integration of the

editor of your choice. This module replaces all other editor integration modules. o You’ll need to choose an editor such as CKEditor or MCE

• Captcha + Recaptcha (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/captcha and http://drupal.org/project/recaptcha o This supplies the standard anti-spam system used on webforms.

• Mollom (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/mollom o This is an "intelligent" content moderation web service. By monitoring content

activity on all sites in the Mollom network, Mollom is in a unique position to determine if a post is potentially spam; not only based on the posted content, but also on the past activity and reputation of the poster.

Performance

• Boost (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/boost o This provides static page caching for Drupal enabling a very significant

performance and scalability boost for sites that receive mostly anonymous traffic. Navigation

• Taxonomy Menu (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_menu o This transforms any of your taxonomy vocabularies into existing menus easily.

Publishing

• Scheduler (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/scheduler o This module allows nodes to be published and unpublished on specified dates.



• Workflow (6) o http://drupal.org/project/workflow o This has a bit of a learning curve, but it’s good for more involved workflows

where content has to be approved by other types or users or groups before being published.

User Management

• Organic Groups (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/og o Enable users to create and manage their own 'groups'. Each group can have

subscribers, and maintains a group home page where subscribers communicate amongst themselves.

SEO & Analytics

• Google Analytics (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/google_analytics o This offers more options and is cleaner than just pasting google analytics code in

your site. • Pathauto (6,7)

o http://drupal.org/project/pathauto o This automatically generates human-friendly URL path aliases for content nodes.

Events & Calendars

• Date (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/date o This supplies a CCK field for handling dates, and date ranges.

• Calendar (6,7) o http://drupal.org/project/calendar o This module will display any Views date field in calendar formats, including CCK

date fields, node created or updated dates, etc. Switch between year, month, and day views. Back and next navigation is provided for all views.

Authentication

• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) (7) o http://drupal.org/project/ldap o This provides integration with LDAP for Drupal authentication, user provisioning,

and authorization. It strives to provide an API for other Drupal modules also. • CAS (6,7)

o http://drupal.org/project/cas o Allows for single sign-on



Library-Specific Modules Library Thing for Libraries (6,7)

• http://drupal.org/project/lt4l • The LT4L module uses the Library Thing for Libraries related content feature to provide a

connection between the tagging of Drupal content and items in a library's catalog.

Question/Answer Module for email Reference (6) • http://www.oregonlibraries.net/code • This module manages Oregon’s statewide email reference service.

Fedora REST API Module (6)

• http://github.com/dongourley/fedora_rest • This lets you build custom interfaces to Fedora Commons repositories

eXtensible Catalog Drupal Toolkit (6)

• http://drupal.org/project/xc • The Drupal Toolkit is a modular system that handles the creation and manipulation of metadata

to recreate the functionality of your catalog all within Drupal, plus way more! Summon API (6, maybe 7)

• http://mblog.lib.umich.edu/blt/archives/2011/06/announcing_a_dr.html • The University of Michigan Library's Web Systems department built a Drupal module for

searching Serials Solutions' Summon product using the Summon API. Masterkey (MkDru) (6,7)

• https://www.indexdata.com/software/mkdru • The purpose of the plugin is to allow libraries and others to embed discovery and metasearch

functionally directly into their websites. The plugin uses Index Data's Open Source Pazpar2 platform to search across standards-compliant information sources as well as data indexed using the SOLR/Lucene search engine.

Cite Module (6)

• http://drupal.org/project/cite • This module allows users to retrieve citation information for nodes within a site.

EZProxy (6)

• http://drupal.org/project/ezproxy • Allows EZProxy to use Drupal as an external authentication source.

Millennium Integration (6)

• http://drupal.org/project/millennium • This module is oriented towards libraries with Innovative Interfaces Inc.'s Millennium who want

to put up a Drupal-based web catalog. It crawls the Millennium WebOpac for MARC records and maps some of the MARC tags onto the specified node type.

More are listed at Drupalib, http://drupalib.interoperating.info/



Drupal Resources Books

• Foundation Drupal 7, by Robert J. Townsend • Cracking Drupal: A Drop in the Bucket, by Greg Knaddison • The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7, tons of authors, published by Apress • Beginning Drupal 7, by Todd Tomlinson • Drupal in Libraries, by Ken Varnum (#14 in The Tech Set)

Online Tutorials & Training

• Lynda, http://www.lynda.com/ • Lullabot, http://www.lullabot.com/ • Drupal Easy, http://drupaleasy.com/, Free podcasts on Drupal

Drupal Communities

• ALA LITA Drupal Interest Group o http://connect.ala.org/node/71787

• Drupalib o http://drupalib.interoperating.info/ o a place for library Drupallers to hang out that lists library specific modules

• Drupalcons o Conferences for Drupallers, different cities every year

• Drupal Meetup Groups o http://drupal.meetup.com/

Publications

“Creating a Library Database Search using Drupal,” by Danielle Rosenthal and Mario Bernardo, Florida Gulf Coast University Library, http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/2920

“Improving the Drupal User Experience,” by Rachel Vacek, Sean Watkins, Christina M. Morris, and Derek Keller, University of Houston Libraries, http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/4578

“Drupal Done Right,” by Karen Coombs, Product Manager for the OCLC Developer Network, http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6705363.html

“Designing and Building a Collaborative Library Intranet for All,” Jason J. Battles Journal of Web Librarianship, 1932-2917, Volume 4, Issue 2 & 3, 2010, Pages 251 – 263.

“Adventures in Drupal: Designing a Library Website Using a CMS,” by Danielle A. Becker, Online, Medford: Sep/Oct 2010. Volume 34, Issue 5, Pages 19-21.

“Drupal in Libraries,” Library Technology Report, by Andy Austin and Christopher Harris, http://www.alatechsource.org/ltr/drupal-in-libraries