Post on 19-Feb-2020
Introduction to Drupal
Andrew Rudy
Outline • What is Drupal • Why use Drupal (Pros and Cons) • Examples of what Drupal can do • How to download and install Drupal • How to use Drupal’s user interface
What is Drupal? • Drupal is a free tool used to build web sites. • Content management framework • Similar to Wordpress • Hybrid between a web application framework
and a Content Management System • Cross-platform, PHP, and highly modular
What is Drupal?
• Drupal allows you to change your website from a point and click interface. – Add content/articles – Create sidebars and menus – Add or change the theme (look and feel) – Add, edit, or remove people – Add, edit, or remove roles – Extend your sites functionality with modules
Why use Drupal?
• Out of the box functionality and flexibility – No need to reinvent the wheel – Much more functionality than Wordpress
• Large Community – 900,000+ users, Drupal forums, DrupalCon
• Drupal Modules – Many free prebuilt modules readily available – Ex. Captcha, Auto log out, Calendar, and many
many others
Pros
• Large learning curve – Much more than Wordpress, Joomla
• Slower due to amount of resources • Drupal developers are scarce • Minor updates can be difficult
Why use Drupal? Cons
What can Drupal do?
• It is used as a back-end for 2.1% of all the websites worldwide
• Example Drupal sites
Design + User Experience + Functionality
Drupal Core
• The standard Drupal download comes with just the most common functions as seen above
• To add things like forms, emailing, groups and more specific things, a module will need to be added
The 5-minute Install • Download https://drupal.org/download Unzip
• Create Database - myNewSiteName
• Duplicate sites/default.settings.php
• Rename to settings.php - Set permissions
everyone read/write
• Create folder: sites/default/files - Set permissions
everyone read/write
• View site: http://localhost/myNewSiteName
• Done!
Modules
• Functionality is included in modules, which can be enabled or disabled after install
• The functionality of modules are almost endless, from a Drupal command line (Drush) to an e-commerce payment form
Conclusion • Drupal is tool used to build functional
websites with content management systems
• Drupal has more of a learning curve, but can provide a lot of functionality
End
• Slideshare.net/ucdrupal