“Drupal: a Content Management Framework”
• What Drupal Is & What It Isn’t
• Advantages & Disadvantages to Using Drupal
• How to Get Started Using Drupal
1. Drupal
a content management framework
Thursday, January 28, 2010
2. What is Drupal?
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Drupal is a free and open-source content management framework that is stable, flexible, and
has a large community of contributors and maintainers.
3. PHP SQL
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it is built with PHP & is most commonly used with MySQL. However, it’s database abstraction
layer allows for it to easily support multiple database servers.
4. • Auto-complete
• Drag & Drop
jQuery • Table Sorting
• Sticky Table Headers
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Drupal is also distributed with jQuery and allows for easy integration of features such as
auto-complete, nested dray & drop ordering, table header sorting, & sticky table headers.
5. Is Drupal is easy to use?
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Yes, you can have it setup and you’ll be able to start posting content within 5 to 10 minutes
without a problem.
6. So I installed it, but it’s ugly.
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Yes, the default user interface is not as nice as some others out there.
7. I can’t stand it the UI though.
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There are several modules and themes available that only take a few minutes to download
and install. They help a lot. Or you could always take a little time and make your own pretty
easily once you get the hang of the theming system
8. Thursday, January 28, 2010
There are several modules and themes available that only take a few minutes to download
and install. They help a lot. Or you could always take a little time and make your own pretty
easily once you get the hang of the theming system
9. Thursday, January 28, 2010
There are several modules and themes available that only take a few minutes to download
and install. They help a lot.
10. It’s still ugly.
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With the help of the Devel module and a little bit of CSS you can come up with your own
admin theme easily.
11. Thursday, January 28, 2010
With the help of the Devel module and a little bit of CSS you can come up with your own
admin theme easily. This particular interface is for a Drupal-based aggregation applicaiton
called Managing News.
12. Why Drupal then?
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Drupal might lack in the pretty default interface, but it makes up for it with it’s stability,
flexibility and powerful API’s. Drupal also has a large collection of reliable modules that have
been contributed by the Drupal community.
13. • Custom Types
Content • Custom Fields
Types • No coding necessary
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Drupals gives administrators the ability to create custom content types and custom content
fields with the CCK module. quickly and via a simple interface is one of the top reasons
Drupal is so superior over other blog software and CMS solutions. While Drupal provides you
with base content types like story or page, you can remove these and create your own custom
types of content.
14. Thursday, January 28, 2010
Drupals gives administrators the ability to create custom content types and custom content
fields withthe CCK module. quickly and via a simple interface is one of the top reasons Drupal
is so superior over other blog software and CMS solutions. While Drupal provides you with
base content types like story or page, you can remove these and create your own custom
types of content.
15. Thursday, January 28, 2010
Drupals gives administrators the ability to create custom content types and custom content
fields withthe CCK module. quickly and via a simple interface is one of the top reasons Drupal
is so superior over other blog software and CMS solutions. While Drupal provides you with
base content types like story or page, you can remove these and create your own custom
types of content.
16. • Drag & Drop UI
Menu API • Attribute Control
• Internal/External
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The Menu API is available to the Drupal’s module system and also has an easy to use, drag &
drop interface to create menu’s from within the administration area. With the help of the
Menu Attributes module you can easily update all of the attributes the anchor tag provides
you, from the ID or class attribute down to the REL attribute.
17. • Alias System
Paths • 403/404 Redirects
• Automated URLs
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18. Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Menu API is available to the Drupal’s module system and also has an easy to use, drag &
drop interface to create menu’s from within the administration area. With the help of the
Menu Attributes module you can easily update all of the attributes the anchor tag provides
you, from the ID or class attribute down to the REL attribute.
19. • Drag & Drop UI
Taxonomy • Free-form (tags)
• Structured (category)
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Drupal also provides a multi-level, drag and drop user interface similar to the Menu API’s for
creating taxonomies.
20. • Files
• Nodes (basic content)
Form API • Revisions
• Taxonomy Terms
• Users
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The Form API provides module developers with a quick, array-based way to create, validate,
and submit custom form data to the settings table or to custom, module-specific tables.
21. • Administration
Access • Content Types
Control • Content Fields
• Settings
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Drupal provides adminstrators the ability to create an unlimited number of custom roles. The
administrator can turn around and apply fine-grained view and edit permissions on content
types, fields within content types, and even the ability to limit access to admin or user
created pages. Setting permissions and creating roles can be handle via a module or through
the easy to use admin interface.
22. Thursday, January 28, 2010
Drupal provides adminstrators the ability to create an unlimited number of custom roles. The
administrator can turn around and apply fine-grained view and edit permissions on content
types, fields within content types, and even the ability to limit access to admin or user
created pages. Setting permissions and creating roles can be handle via a module or through
the easy to use admin interface.
23. • Files
• Nodes (basic content)
Views • Revisions
• Taxonomy Terms
• Users
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Views is a UI for creating pages, page elements, and searchable indexes from practically any
site data.
24. • Blocks or Widgets
• Forms
Cache • Pages
& compress • Theme Templates
• Views
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Drupal provides easy to use ways to cache and compress the pages and elements you serve
ot your users.
25. • Stylesheets
Combine • Javascript
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CSS & JS can get a little out of hand from time to time. You’ll end up loading around 12
Javascript files and sometimes 15 or more CSS files. These files come from the core modules,
contributed modules, and of course your theme. Drupal provides a simple on/off CSS and JS
file combiners, granted you include your files correctly when using them within modules and
themes.
26. • Contributed Modules
Upgrades • Documentation
• Schema Changes
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Upgrades, primarily when using contributed modules, can be frustrating and difficult.
Depending on the module maintainer, upgrade paths form full version 1 to 2 or 2 to 3, often
contain bugs when updating database tables and sometimes the upgrade path’s just don’t
exist.
ALWAYS READ THE INSTALL & README DOCS... if all else fails SEARCH
27. • Contributed Theme
Default UI • Professional Theme
• Custom Theme
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28. • Drupal.org Search
Help • Confusing Tutorials
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Drupal.org’s search does not always work well. Use google site search, you’ll come up with
things quicker. The tutorials are often confusing are mostly written for individuals that have a
firm grasp on PHP.
29. • Backup & Migrate
Getting • CCK
• Context
Started • Panels
• Views
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basic
30. • Menu Attributes
• Nodewords
Getting • Path Redirect
Started • Page Title
• Pathauto
• XMLSitemap
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search engine optimization
31. • Admin Menu
Getting • Admin Theme
• Form Defaults
Started • Vertical Tabs
• WYSIWYG API
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UI
32. • Use Version Control
• Backup Often
Tips • Use Stable Versions
• Get to know PHP
• IRC
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• Always use Version Control - hosted sevices available
• Backup your database often, and especially before installing and testing contributed
modules
• Never use dev, alpha, rc of Drupal modules unless you really know what’s going on
• When you’re creating CCK fields use descriptive names
• Get to know PHP, Drupal is much more of a developer’s friend than a designers
33. • Demos
• Questions
Meetup • Tutorials
• Monthly
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• site/project demonstrations
• good place to ask questions
• present a tutorial (last one was Drush a drupal shell command module)
• 2nd or 3rd week of each month
34. @joshuapowell
www.developedsimple.com
Thursday, January 28, 2010