You have probably used Drupal without even knowing it. It is powering an ever-growing number of websites around the world. In some cases, it is chosen because it is open source software and the price is right: There are no annual license fees or up-front costs. In other cases, it is used because it lets people put up websites with many sophisticated features and put them up remarkably quickly. Still, other sites choose Drupal because of its sophisticated security mechanism that allows you to manage contributions and site management by many people.
This book is aimed at direct users of Drupal—the people who use it to develop websites, rather than the end users who visit Drupal sites (often without even knowing that Drupal is playing a role). If you are about to start a Drupal project, this book gets you up to speed quickly. If you are thinking about a Drupal project, you will find out what you need to know to carry that thought into action.
If you are already working with Drupal, this book can help organize your experiences. Drupal has changed dramatically over the past few years, and many of those changes have involved Drupal incorporating suggestions and ideas from various sources. What you had to write PHP code to accomplish in Drupal 4 often has been implemented directly in Drupal 5 and Drupal 6—and now in Drupal 7. The bar to entering the world of Drupal is much lower than it ever has been, but you may need a roadmap to the new and often simpler world.
As this book was written, the conversion from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 was under way. Once a new version of Drupal is available, users begin to convert their sites to use the new Drupal. Although Drupal is committed to keeping content safe from version to version, some aspects of the user interface (that is, the interface you use to build the Drupal site) change. In addition, contributed modules and themes that can be used with Drupal may lag behind the official release of Drupal. For that reason, you will sometimes find alternate URLs and ways of doing things for the two versions. Because the transition was not complete at the time of writing, visit the author’s website (northcountryconsulting.com) for updates to the new features.
This book is divided into four parts that will get you quickly up to speed with Drupal:
• Part I, “Getting Started with Drupal,” shows you how to administer Drupal and work with its basic concepts of modules, notes, and images.
• Part II, “Socializing and Communicating,” deals with the aspects of Drupal that implement modern social websites. These include comments, discussions, polls, user bookmarks, and even user-contributed content along with organizational (taxonomy) tools and search techniques that help people navigate a website that may be growing through dynamic contributions.
• Part III, “Creating a Site,” puts it all together as you learn how to create pages, use themes, implement primary and secondary menu systems, use Drupal’s workflow management tools, handle events, use calendars, and learn how to actually take your site live.
• Part IV, “Appendixes,” consists of two appendixes with additional information on updating Drupal and the background of Drupal.
This book includes the following special features:
• Chapter roadmaps— At the beginning of each chapter, you will find a list of the toplevel topics addressed in that chapter. This list enables you to quickly see the type of information that the chapter contains.
• Q&A— At the end of each chapter is a Q&A section that explores some of the topics raised in that chapter.
• Workshop— In this section, you will find a brief quiz to help you remember the high points. Workshop sections also include a few activities that you can use to test your knowledge of the material in the chapter.
• Try It Yourself— Numbered lists of steps to complete tasks (such as installing a Drupal module) help organize the material. You can use them as a checklist for your Drupal development.
• By the Way— These notes provide additional commentary or explanation that doesn’t fit neatly into the surrounding text. You will find detailed explanations of how something works, alternative ways of performing a task, and other tidbits to get you on your way.
• Did You Know?— This element gives you shortcuts, workarounds, and ways to avoid pitfalls.
• Watch Out!— Every once in a while, something can have serious repercussions if done incorrectly (or, rarely, if done at all). These elements give you a heads-up.
• Cross-references— Many topics are connected to other topics in various ways. Cross-references help you link related information, no matter where that information appears in the book. When another section is related to one you are reading, a cross-reference directs you to a specific page in the book on which you will find the related information.
Updates as well as a number of files are available from the author’s website (northcountryconsulting.com) and from the publisher’s site (www.informit.com/title/9780672331268). There also is an RSS feed from the author’s site that provides information on updates to the modules used in this book.
Because each package of modules can be updated separately within a given release of Drupal, the interfaces for the various modules can differ from the interfaces shown here. In addition, remember that you can access a Drupal website using any browser and operating system that you like. The fact that most of the figures in this book were generated using Mac OS X and Safari reflects the author’s preference and nothing about Drupal.