Drupal Basics
May 30, 2012
By Sean Fitzpatrick

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 | sean@lishost.org

Introductions

Who am I?

What is LISHost?

What do we do?
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

Drupal 6 or Drupal 7?
It's a shame I even put this slide in here. Just use
Drupal 7.
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

Good and Bad

Ultimate flexibility

Future extendability

Scalability
vs

Learning Curve

Staff time
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

Let's stop for some questions
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

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 | sean@lishost.org

Scalability
Oh yeah, some big library sites too.
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org

Additional Resources

drupal.org/documentation

groups.drupal.org

api.drupal.org

Drupal4Lib
(http://listserv.uic.edu/archives/drupal4lib.html)

#drupal (irc)

info@lishost.org

Print?
Sean Fitzpatrick | sean@lishost.org