Extra: Installing Drupal Manually (Ack!)
The purpose of this chapter is to focus on using a quick installer to get Drupal going, but if you really want to, you can also install Drupal manually. That’s outside the scope of this book, and I wouldn’t recommend it for beginners, but it can be done. For grins, even if you’re a beginner, you might want to browse through this section anyway, just to develop an appreciation for how much the quick installer makes your life easier.
And you might want to file it away, but perhaps working with content management systems would give you a boost in confidence, or a curiosity about the world of servers and the Linux operating system and how to be a “system admin.” Learning about these things is certainly possible—and being a system admin is a hot skill.
To install Drupal manually, you’ll need a hosting account, with direct access to a server. Typically, this means getting “command line” access (which means being able to type in commands to the server directly). However, it could also be done through a more conventional form, where you have a “graphical user interface,” you “unpack” the files, and you have other GUIs (graphical user interfaces) to help you create the databases. At this point, if your eyes are starting to glaze over or you are starting to feel very thankful for the quick installer, join the club. Maybe being a system admin is not for you. But if this paragraph has piqued your interest, best wishes! A future as a system admin awaits: http://drupal.org/documentation/install.
The documentation on installing Drupal will look something like Figure 5.19; notice the mention of the command line.
Then you can scroll down the page and click the basic installation link or visit http://drupal.org/documentation/install/basic. This is the overall process, as shown in Figure 5.20.
