This document provides instructions for getting a Drupal website ready in 45 minutes by installing Drupal, selecting a theme, setting up basic website settings, blogs, forums, and comments. It outlines downloading and extracting Drupal, creating a database, enabling modules like blog and forum, configuring content types and permissions, and adding sample blog posts and forum topics. The goal is to have a functional website with blogs, forums, and commenting enabled in under an hour by following the provided steps.

1. Get your Drupal Website
ready in 45 mins
Rachit Gupta (https://drupal.org/user/403301),
Charmi Shah
June 14th, 2013

2. Agenda
• Install Drupal
• Select Theme
• Basic Website Settings
• Setup Blogs
• Setup Forums
• Comments on Website
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3. Install Drupal
• Go to Drupal.org and download a tar ball from
Drupal project page.
• Extract and put it in web root (i.e. /var/www).
• Rename it to your site name (e.g. my_site).
• Go to default directory located in
/var/www/my_site/sites/default
• Copy default.settings.php and rename as
settings.php
• Login to MySQL and create a database to
install site (e.g. my_site).
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4. 4
Install Drupal
• Access your Drupal directory using browser
via http://localhost/my_site.
• Follow the on-page instructions and fill
required details.
Contid.

5. 5
Install Drupal
Contid.

6. 6
Install Drupal
• Enter the database details as required and the
installation begins.
Contid.

7. 7
Select Theme
• Using your browser navigate to
http://drupal.org/project/Themes and download
the theme you want to apply.
• Extract the downloaded theme in
sites/all/themes directory located in your
Drupal directory.
• Login to site and go to
Administrator => Appearance.
• Click on “Enable and set default” on the
theme you’ve downloaded.

8. 8
Select Theme
Contid.

9. 9
Basic Website Settings

10. 10
Setup Blogs
• Navigate to Modules page via
Administrator => Modules
• Select the blog module and click on “Save
Configuration” button at bottom.
• You now have “Blog Entry” content type listed
in “Add content”.
• Once you’ve blog module enabled, set its
permissions for creating, editing by going to
Administrator => People => Permissions

11. Setup Blogs
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• Congratulations... You’ve installed and
configured blog module successfully and now
is the time to add one blog.
• Navigate to “add blog entry” using
Administrator => Content => Add content =>
Blog Entry.
• Fill required details and click on “Save”.
• Here you go with it, you’ve your first blog
ready.
Contid.

12. 12
Users’ Blogs

13. 13
Users’ Blogs
• Now to access your all blogs, navigate to
users blog page via
My Account => View recent blog entries.
• To see all available blogs in site, navigate
http://example.com/blog

14. Setup Forums
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• Navigate to Modules page via
Administrator => Modules
• Select forum module (basic forum), Advanced
Forum (AF), Chaos Tools (required by AF), Views
(required by AF) and click on “Save
Configuration” button at bottom.
• Now you’ll have another content type listed in
“Add Content” menu, called “Forum Topic”.
• Once you’ve forum and related modules
enabled, set its permissions for creating, editing
by going to
Administrator => People => Permissions

15. Setup Forums
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• Forums are basically categorized using the
Groups/Types of forums, to configure/add
these forum groups navigate to Forum admin
page using
Administrator => Structure => Forums
• You can see default group here, if you need
you can add more by clicking on “Add forum”.
• These groups can be used to view forum
topic specific to that group.
Contid.

16. Setup Forums
16
• Congratulations... You’ve installed and
configured forum module successfully and
now is the time to add one forum.
• Navigate to “add forum topic” using
Administrator => Content => Add content =>
Forum topic.
• Fill required details and click on “Save”.
• Hooray… you’ve your first forum topic ready.
Contid.

17. 17
All Forums

18. 18
All Forums
• To see all available forum topic in
site, navigate http://example.com/forum.
• This page gives a detailed information about
the forum topics available in site.

19. 19
Comments on Website
• Comments are users discussion about blog
post, forum topic, etc.
• As a site administrator you can specify which
content types should have comments
enabled, where users can post comments
and access them, etc.
• You can start using all these by just enabling
a comment module.

20. 20
Comments on Website
• You can enable comment module via
Administrator => Modules.
• Once you’ve enabled comment module, you
can configure comments for each content type
by going to Edit settings of content type via
Administrator => Structure => Content Types
=> Blog Entry.
• After you’ve configured comments properly
make sure you’ve given proper permissions to
each roles, for accessing comment, adding
comment, etc.
Contid.

21. 21
Comments on Website
• Woo-hoo!!! You’ve installed and configured
comments for Blog module, this will allow site
users to comment on Blogs on site.
• Now you can create a blog on site and other
users can come to your site, make a
comment and access all comments for any
blogs (only users with specific permissions).
Contid.

22. 22
Comments on Website
Contid.

23. 23
References
• Installing Drupal –
http://drupal.org/documentation/install/beginners
• Blogs –
http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/blog/
• Forums –
http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/forum
• Comments –
http://drupal.org/documentation/modules/comme
nt/

24. Questions?
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