Up until quite recently, the most important thing a newcomer to the Web could do in order to prepare for building a website was to buy a book on how to learn programming in any one of the major web-centric languages like PHP or Perl. Then, the not inconsiderable task of learning the niceties of the chosen language to a respectable degree would consume a fair chunk of time and patience. Once our hapless newcomer had sufficient mastery of the fundamentals, applying that knowledge to program efficiently and reliably, with the tenacity to stick with a job until the site was developed could arguably be described as a Herculean accomplishment.
This state of affairs is, and quite rightly should be, entirely unacceptable to someone like yourself! It's like forcing lawyers to learn the intricacies of architecture, construction, and masonry simply because they require a courtroom in which to work. It should be quite apparent that separating the technical task of developing the software for a website from the function of that website is a very sensible thing to do, the main reason being that it allows people to focus on what they are good at without them having to devote time and energy to becoming good software developers too.
It's not surprising then, that in recent years the open-source community has been hard at work pulling the programming world out of the software dark ages by providing us with flexible frameworks for building web-based enterprises. These frameworks untie website creators from the intellectual burden of learning software development ideas and concepts, allowing them instead to focus more on goal-/business-oriented configuration and customization tasks.
Drupal is one such result of the software-development evolution and this book seeks to provide you with the fundamental information needed in order to use it effectively to meet your requirements. Because this book focuses more on beginner-level aspects of administering Drupal, you will be pleased to know that there will be little to no coding involved—you're not required to learn how to develop your own Drupal modules, for example. That's not to say your introduction will be elementary; on the contrary, this book will teach you in such a way that you are able to apply your knowledge to tackle problems beyond the scope of this material with confidence.
Before we begin actually building anything that resembles a website, I'm sure you have plenty of questions about the how, what, where, and why of Drupal. Consequently, this chapter will not only provide a backdrop for the rest of the book, but will also serve as an introduction to the technology as a whole, incorporating a discussion on the following:
- Drupal—an overview
- How Drupal came to be
- What Drupal has to offer
- Uses of Drupal
- Building a Drupal site
- The Drupal community
- The Drupal license
One of the bullets above mentions Building a Drupal Site—this section incorporates a look at the demo website, which serves as a basis for all our practical examples. This is needed here because, throughout the book, we will systematically build on each chapter's new information to create a fully functional website. Doing things this way will help relate the lessons you learn to the outcome you can expect on the site. This in turn helps foster sound administration, configuration, and customization methodologies that will help you to develop your own Drupal skills.
Let's begin…
The most concise description for Drupal is that it is an Open-Source Content Management System. If you are new to both computing and Drupal, then this probably doesn't clear things up very much. Let's analyze this phrase quickly to gain a better understanding. First of all, the term open-source is used to describe software whose source code is made available, most often subject to certain conditions, for use or modification by users or other developers as they deem fit. The specific conditions under which Drupal is made available will be scrutinized more closely in the section The Drupal License later in this chapter.
Above and beyond that, what open source means for you as someone who intends to make use of Drupal, is that you don't have to pay for this unquestionably valuable software. You also join a large community (also to be discussed later in this chapter) of Drupal users, developers, and administrators who subscribe to the open-source philosophy—in other words, someone out there will probably be willing to spend time helping you out should you get stuck.
If you think about it, that's a pretty good deal for those who are still not convinced about open‑source technologies as a whole—not only do we not have develop the entire site ourselves, but we also get to take advantage of the collective wisdom of thousands of other people. Is there anything else we can say about open source? Sure for one thing, you can be pretty certain that with an active community like the one associated with Drupal, development advances rapidly and flexibly because any problems can be spotted early and dealt with effectively. This means that you can expect a high level of stability, security, and performance from your website.
So far so good, but what is the Content Management System (CMS) part all about? It is necessary for us to take a closer look at what this means in order to gain a sufficient understanding of what we are getting into. We can define a content management system to be software that facilitates the creation, organization, manipulation, and removal of information in the form of images, documents, scripts, plain text (or anything else for that matter). If you have a need to organize and display fairly large amounts of information, especially when it is likely that content will be created or delivered from a variety of different sources, then a content management system is undoubtedly what you need.
That's basically all you have to know. Drupal provides a free platform, along with its attendant community, for satisfying a wide variety of content-management requirements. Precisely, what type of things one can achieve is the subject of the section entitled What Drupal Has to Offer later in this chapter. For now though, let's turn back the hands of time and take a look at how we ended up with Drupal as we know it today.