Drupal Training Intro v1

8/3/2019 Drupal Training Intro v1

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Old School: Simple HTML◦ Note: HTML is NOT a programminglanguage, but a MARKUP language

(tags and NOT commands)◦ Many developers would use texteditors, FrontPage, Dreamweaver



Not-so-Old-School: HTML-in-style◦ CSS or Cascading Style Sheets, Flash sites

◦ Client-side processing with scripts

(JavaScript, VBScript)◦ Server-side processing with ASP / PHP

◦ Need for dynamic sites and pagesemerged



STATIC DYNAMIC

Normally just

plain html orwith CSS

Design doesn't

changedepending onuser input.

Uses client-sidescripting (e.g.

JavaScript, DHTML) tochange interfacebehaviors within aspecific web page

Changes aretriggered by mouseand keyboardactions, or timeintervals



All content is placedmanually by

developers (design-time pageconstruction)

No back-endprocessing

The site itself cannotoffer any other serviceto visitors except forviewing of content

Pages of content canprobably be constructed"on the fly“

Users may be able to“update” the site by puttingin content over time,without the need of adeveloper / the webmaster.

Has back-end processingan a database

May have more capabilitieslike a search tool, and moreservices for visitors, or

members.

STATIC DYNAMIC



New School: CMS

◦ A movement to create web siteswithout having to download anydesktop software had begun



The Idea

User logs in the

site through the

browser

Makes the

necessary

changes ONLINE

without the need

downloading the

pages and

editing with

desktop

programs

Saves the

changes hassle-

free, and claps

their hands in

sheer delight.



The Solution



• Content - any information published on

a Web site, be it text, HTML, images,videos• Management - the workflow and

processes in place to create, share, and

control information during its lifecycle.• System - an application that enables the

creation, collection, publishing, andpresentation of content

Content Management System



Proprietary Open Source

Expression Engine Vivvo CMS

Squarespace

Joomla! Wordpress

Drupal Movable Type

eZ Publish Mambo Textpattern



1. CMS stands for ___________________________

2. Dynamic pages use __________ scripting (e.g. JavaScript, DHTML) to change interface behaviors

within a specific web page.

3. A ___________ site allows pages of content to beconstructed "on the fly“ by users and notnecessarily by developers.

4 and 5. Name at least two (2) examples of opensource CMSs.

Content Management System

client-side

Drupal, Joomla!, Wordpress,Mambo, etc.

dynamic



An overview of the architecture, features andbasic site-building workflow of the CMS.



Originally written by Dries Buytaert as a messageboard, Drupal became an open source project in2001.

Drupal is an English rendering of the Dutch word“druppel”, which means “drop” (as in “a water

droplet”). The name was taken from the now-defunct

Drop.org website, whose code slowly evolvedinto Drupal. Buytaert wanted to call the site

“dorp” (Dutch for “village”) for its communityaspects, but mistyped it when checking thedomain name and thought the error soundedbetter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_forum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dries_Buytaert

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source





http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/druppel


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_language








Now has a vast online community: drupal.org Drupal 6.20 was released in December 2010,

and so far the most stable and widely-usedversion.

Drupal 7, the latest version, was released on5 January 2011, with release parties inmultiple countries.

Support for Drupal 5 has been discontinued,while D6 and D7 are actively maintained.

http://www.drupal.org/

http://www.drupal.org/



• blog• Forum• Online newspaper, Portal / Directory• Brocure site, portfolio, flickr like photo drop• Social community site, job post board• Video site like youtube• Project management site• CRM, ERP, SCM, Wiki• Shopping cart system• E-learning, training site• Dating site• Anything you can think of…



As of July 2010, hundreds of well-knownorganizations use Drupal, includingcorporations, media & publishing companies,governments, non-profits, schools, and

individuals. An estimated 7.2 million sites used Drupal as

of July 2010. Drupal also won several Packt Open Source CMS Awards and three times (in

a row) won the Webware 100. Joomla! and Wordpress, however, are still

more popular and used by developers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packt


http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Webware_100&action=edit&redlink=1








• Wordpress was designed only to be a blog with some easy add-ons.• Drupal was designed to be more of a generalist: it‟s for making

„anything‟ and is far more robust.

• Wordpress could be the better choice for blogs since it is better atbeing a blog than Drupal. This is something of debate.

•

Wordpress is still a sound choice of CMS for SEO and security; so if wordpress satisfies a simpler project‟s requirements then by all means use it - it is easier and faster to set up than Drupal.

• Wordpress is not designed to be highly scalable to manysimultaneous users, nor does it have flexible roles, permissions,extensible content types, nor does it have plentiful well-tested,

quality add-ons. It has a few and a lot of really poor plugins.• Caveat: Trying to force Wordpress to do something it cannot do

easily with very popular plug-ins can be worse than suffering thelearning curve of Drupal.



• It has superior session handling for a CMS.• It has superior security.

• It is a more consistent, reliable and flexible framework fordevelopment.

• It is considered better for SEO.

• It uses a „separation of concerns‟ architecture to cleanly andconsistently separate structure, function, form, andpresentation in layers (ie: php from data as db/xml, layoutand presentation as html and css).

• It heavily uses „defaults overrides‟ in code in the form of hooks and in themes in the form of templates . This makes itextremely flexible.

• Other CMS‟es do a very very bad job of at least one of theabove.



• Drupal has a steeperlearning curve thanwordpress or Joomla.

• Drupal and it‟s developers

make no excuse for thisfact- it is a robust, flexibletool

• That said, the drupalcommunity is constantlyaddressing usability anduser-experience issuesbecause they want theindustry market share.



UI is a user-interface,which is a general termfor the layout of options, widgets andsettings used toconfigure the systemor manage content.

„Site-building‟activities refer toconfiguring settings or

managing contentthrough the UI, such asbuilding navigationmenus.





• Packages of files in a directory that youupload into drupal‟s module space(/sites/all/modules)

• Add functionality to drupal

• „Core‟ Modules come shipped with drupal

• „Contributed‟ Modules are downloads fromdrupal.org



Packages of files ina directory that youupload into drupal‟s theme space(/sites/all/themes)

Themes adjust thesite layout andstyle. Like„skinning‟ yourmedia player.

Themes can beeasily changed inthe UI.



Drupal‟s database tracks things like :

• Site and Module settings,

•

User‟s information, • Access information,

• Logging information,

• Permissions and User Roles,

• System Paths• Content and content metadata



• A node is the primary form of content in adrupal site. At a minimum it is a title and abody, and can be „specialized‟.

• A „page‟ and „story‟ for example are nodetypes that have a specific node settings.

•

A node type is a blueprint for creatinginstances of content of a particular type.



Not everything in Drupal is a node. This is important!!

Ex: A user is not a node. A taxonomy is not anode. An account is not a node.

Knowing this is important for evaluation of what can and cannot be easily done throughthe UI, without additional programming.



• A Region is an area in a layout, such as a header,footer, content, left/right sidebar into whichblocks can be placed and arranged.

•

A block is a box containing some information

• A node resides only in the content area of thelayout (except in special circumstances).

• Think of the content region as a big „node‟ blockthat allows other blocks in it but the node itself can‟t move.



• Blocks are added by modules.

• Blocks can contain views, widgets, menus,nodes (in special circumstances), and panels.

• Blocks can be moved around through the UI

• Blocks can be styled individually.



• Views – an interface for making customizedlists of the data contained in the drupaldatabase.

• Panels – an interface for making customized

layouts of nodes available to the panelsmodule.

• Widgets – a general term for interactive form

elements or graphs that are enabled bymodules.



The most stable and widely-used version ofDrupal.

These modules are shipped with Drupal.

Contributed modules can be downloaded fromthis community site, including the Drupalreleases.

These are building components in Drupal thatmay contain different types of web elements,moved around the UI and styled individually.

The primary form of content in a Drupal site,having a title and a body at the minimum.

This adjusts the site layout and style, like„skinning‟ your media player.

An interface for making customized lists of the data contained in the drupal database.

Ver. 6.2Core Modules

drupal.org

blocks

node

theme

views

Drupal Training Intro v1

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