What's the Buzz about Drupal?
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What is Drupal? Why use Drupal? What are the benefits of Drupal? How to use Drupal? When you Drupal, what should you consider? Presented at the St. John's University Department of Library Science Spring Symposium March 23, 2013. http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/graduate/liberalarts/departments/lis/dlis_ev/dlis_symposium/spring_2013_symposium_invitation.stj
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What's the Buzz about Drupal?
- 1. What’s all the buzz about DRUPAL?
- 2. Who Is Susan Berdinka? BS in Computer Science SUNY Utica/Rome Worked for an Air Force Contractor, using Visual C++ (Winsock & Network Application Programming), and Dreamweaver / Cold Fusion development. MLS (technology track) St. John’s University Technical Services / Web Development Librarian. Web development using Drupal / WordPress / Silverstripe.
- 3. What is Drupal? Open Source Content easily editable Scalable Secure
- 4. WHY DRUPAL?
- 13. WHY DRUPAL (FOR THE DEVELOPER) ?
- 14. Benefits of Drupal •Open Source •Well documented. •20,000+ free community-contributed addons
- 15. System Requirements http://drupal.org/requirements Be sure and follow the complete installation instructions, including permissions, etc., found at drupal.org/documentation/install Hot Drupal Librarian Web Services
- 16. The Start of a Basic Website
- 17. Themes
- 18. Drupal Gardens If your needs are not complex, an alternate way to use the Drupal CMS Modules are limited – therefore customization is limited.
- 19. DRUPAL CORE – OUT OF THE BOX
- 20. Just a Starting Point With Dupal Core alone you can create a very simple basic website.
- 21. Content Types in Drupal 7 Core Articles are generally used for information that is updated more frequently and often cross-referenced and categorized (such as news items or resources). By default, Articles are sorted with the most recent post at the top, but this can be customized with contributed modules like Views. Basic pages are typically used for static content that can (but are not required to) be linked into the main navigation bar. Blog Entry. A Blog (short for weblog) is an online journal or diary, and the core Blog module allows registered users on your site to create their own blogs. Each entry in a user blog has content type Blog Entry. Book pages are designed to be part of a collaborative book, enabled by the core Book module. An example of a collaborative book is the Drupal developer documentation. In Drupal 7 nodes of any content type can be part of a book.
- 22. Core Content Types, cont’d. Comments actually aren't nodes, so Comment is technically not a "content type". Enabled by default, the Comment module allows site visitors to add comments (typically short notes and replies to other comments) to nodes on the site. A Forum node defines a topic for a forum discussion; people can reply to the topic by using comments. Forum nodes are organized into subject areas via a Taxonomy (list of categories). A Poll is a question that offers the visitor a set of multiple choice responses. A poll, once created, automatically provides a simple running count of the number of votes received for each response.
- 23. Creating Custom Content Types This is where Drupal Shines!
- 25. WHEN YOU DRUPAL – IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS
- 30. Buytaert, D. (n.d.). Drupal. Retrieved from http://drupal.org. Berry, Addison (2012). Using Drupal. Sebastopol, CA: O'Reilly Media. Coombs, K. A. (2010). Open source web applications for libraries. Medford, NJ: Information Today. Engard, N. C. (2009). Library mashups. Medford, NJ: Information Today. Hill, C. (2009). Inside, outside, and online : building your library community. Chicago: American Library Association. Lascarides, Michael (2012). Next-gen library redesign. Chicago: ALA TechSource. Miles, E. & L. (2011). Drupal’s building blocks. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Addison Wesley. Varnum, K. J. (2012). Drupal in libraries. Chicago: ALA TechSource. Mustard Seed Media. (n.d.). Drupal video podcasts. Retrieved from http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast. Drupal4Lib listserve
Editor's Notes
- I am Susan Berdinka, and am a librarian in the Suffolk Cooperative Library System (Suffolk County, NY). My primary focus is on cataloging: creating metadata and classifying materials so patrons and other information professionals can actually find what they are looking for. Additionally I am involved with the digital collections and, of course, Drupal and WordPress development. I currently work for three Suffolk County libraries - Westhampton, Mastics-Moriches-Shirley, and Longwood and I have worked in various capacities of library service since 2005. On the side I also develop websites using Drupal, WordPress, and now am learning Silverstripe. Prior to that I developed Win32 network applications in an R&D environment, and developed web documents using Dreamweaver and Cold Fusion tags. I have a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from SUNY Institute of Technology at Utica/Rome, and a Master of Library and Information Science from St. John’s University in Queens.But more importantly, I am the wife of a wonderful man Mike, the mom of four beautiful children, the stepmom / stepgrandma to three terrific stepchildren and their four kids.
- Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Open Source: This means the developer is free to use, study, share (copy) and modify the source code. Content easily editable: this means your non-technical users can add content without technical assistance - pages, blog posts, slideshows - whatever you want! Scalable: Drupal can be used for a wide range of sites - small to large and busy. Any limitations you might have would be related to the hardware of the server, not Drupal. Secure: Drupal has a very good track record in terms of security, and has an organized process for investigating, verifying, and publishing possible security problems. Drupal's security team is constantly working with the community to address security issues as they arise.
- What can you build with Drupal? Out of the box, one can develop:
- A basic Website.......
- and/or.A Blog ........ Drupal has a built in blogging module.
- Drupal is incredibly flexible. With custom development, one can also build:Subject Guides ......
- E-Learning ..........
- Calendars of Events .......
- Catalog Search ......
- Mobile ready website………
- Wiki .........
- Drupal is Open Source : Open source software can be modified as desired. Each installation can be made truly unique. I mentioned this earlier, but as librarians who value collaboration we can't sing the praises of open source enough. Drupal is Well documented: There are Discussion forums on Drupal.org ; There are many published books on Drupal development ; there are Many internet user groups. If you have a question, it has probably already been asked and answered! Drupal has a Proven community of developers, creating 20,000+ free community-contributed addons (modules). This means that the developer often doesn't have to reinvent the wheel, and can use, modify, and build on other developer's work.
- The requirements for installing Drupal can be found at drupal.org, which is beyond the scope of this presentation. But be sure to read these requirements, and the requirements of your prospective host, BEFORE you select your hosting company. For example, not too long ago I was asked to install Drupal for an organization who already had a hosting relationship with GoDaddy using Microsoft IIS web server software. While Drupal can be installed on IIS, GoDaddy won't let you. GoDaddy will only allow you to install Drupal on an Apache server. So do your homework BEFORE you proceed.
- After installing Drupal, this is what your barebones website will look like. Right here, there is enough built in functionality to create a basic website.
- You probably would want to change the look and feel of your Drupal site with a theme. You can use a community-contributed theme, or with practice you can build your own. I used the Zero point theme for this site....... I used Danland for these two sites..........And this site I used Zen as a starter theme and built my own using custom CSS.
- If you just want to focus on design and content, and want to allow someone else to worry about maintenance and security, Drupal Gardens is a solution. Customization is limited, but for many people this meets their needs.
- --As I said before, Drupal core "out of the box" has everything you need to build a basic website.
- --Drupal core includes seven content types that which can build a basic website.
- --Custom content types is where Drupal shines! I developed a website for a local church. One of the specifications was that the staff wanted to be able to upload the weekly bulletin, and have it available for viewing on the website. I created a content type called bulletin, with these features (look at page). The bulletin is scanned to a pdf file and uploaded to the website using an upload form.
- And here is how the list of bulletins are displayed on their site. A library could use something similar to upload board reports or forms, making it easy for a non-technical user to add content.
- Drupal pays attention to security and can automatically notify the administrator about new versions of modules, themes, or the Drupal core. But this doesn't do you any good if this feature is not utilized. There is no CMS that you can install and deploy, and let run happily ever after with no attention to updates and security.I recently was asked to look at someone else's Drupal 6 installation that was behaving oddly. I thought at first there might be an issue with the query involved, but there seemed to be nothing amiss. Then I took a look at the status report (a function in Drupal core), and this is what I found...
- When you see red on a status report, it is not a good thing. So I viewed the Available Updates report for more details and this is what I found....
- This installation had not been updated at all for over a year.I informed the owner of the installation of what I found, and that a developer needed to install every single security update, one at a time. Since any upgrade of any module can bring down the entire Drupal site, it should be done only by someone with the skills to know how to fix things if they break (if not me, the developer who actually created their installation). Hopefully they will follow my advice. It is only a matter of time that there is a security breach.Take-a-way from this: While your content and design are very important, maintenance on the back-end is critical and not to be brushed off (even if you have to pay for it)... the security of your data, and the safety of your website users depends on it. (malware injection, etc.)
- The Drupal community believes in the open source movement – working collaboratively to make the web, information, and technology easier for everyone to use. As librarians we appreciate the value of collaboration. If you require functionality with multi-user support and workflows where each aspect on your site can be themed and configured based on your vision.. then Drupal might be the right content management system for you!