Insight to Drupal

What is Drupal?

Created by Dris Buytaert in 2005

Drupal is volunteers having all to contribute code. Nobody gets paid yet companies may pay to contribute.
A content management system (CMS) tool that let's users add, publish, edit or remove content from a website, using a web browser on a smartphone, tablet, and or desktop. The base of Drupal download which is known as Drupal Core, contains the PHP scripts needed to function. Several options of modules and themes are available. Modules and Themes can be downloaded from the Drupal.org website.

• Win and Mac can use Drupal as well.
• Web Server can be Nginx instead of Apache
• Database can be PostgreSQL or SQLite instead of MySQL.

What is the LAMP stack?
Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.

Why use Drupal?

• Simple build of small static websites.
• Modules help the build faster.
• Large Community to help.

What is a Module?

• a set of PHP, JS and/or CSS files that extends site features and add functionality. Core download provides modules for function such as ....
  • Manage user accounts
  • Managing basic content
  • Managing Nav menus
  • Making list, grids and blocks from existing content.

What is a Theme?

• a set of files that define the visual look and feel of your site. The core software includes modules that run on your site determine which content is displayed on the pages of your site. The theme determines the HTML markup and styling that wraps the content. You can also create a custom theme if you feel the 3rd party ones are suitable.

What are Distributions?

• Provides features and functions for a specific type of site as a single download containing the core software, contributed modules, themes and pre-defined configuration. 2 Types of Distributions:
  • Full Featured: is a project that provides a complete solution to set up a site for a specialized purpose such as academic, business, government, nonprofit, publishing, social, etc.
  • Other Distributions: can also be quick-start tools that developers and site builders can use as a starting point.

What are types of data?

• Content: info meant to be displayed to the site visitors.
• Configuration: info about your site that is not content, but is also relatively permanent, and is used to define how your site behaves or is displayed.
• State: Info of a temporary nature about the current state of your site, such as the item when jobs were last run.
• Session: Info about individual site visitors. Interactions with the site, such as logged in or not, their cookies and more. This is technically a subtype of State Information, since it is also temporary.

What is FOSS?

• Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is a software that is developed by a community of people, released under a non-commercial licensee, and whose source code is freely available.

Drupal Project?

• a FOSS project whose purpose is to develop the core content management system software, as well as add-on modules, additional themes, translations, documentation and special-purpose distributions.

What is the Drupal Association?

• a non profit organization dedicated to supporting the Drupal project and the community. It's main functions are
  • Putting on large conventions around the world
  • Maintain Drupal.org websites and the servers that they run on.
  • Promoting Drupal as a web platform
  • Supporting Drupal education and training
  • Providing grants to the Drupal community in support of it's mission
  • Raising funds for these purposes.

What is Drupal Licensing?

• GNU General Public Licensing (GPL) version 2 or later. That means you are free to download, reuse, modify, and distribute any files that are part of a project on Drupal.org.
• Contributors should follow these guidelines:
  • All files (PHP, JS, images, Flash, etc) that are part of the project on Drupal.org have to be under the GPL v.2 or later.
  • All Drupal contributors retain copyright on their code, but agree to release it under the same license as Drupal.l
  • All content on Drupal.org itself is copywrite and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 2.0
  • Sample code on Drupal.org is also available under GPL version 2 or later.

What is a region?

• Each theme provides a set of named regions, such as Headter, Content, and Sidebar where site builders may choose to place their content.

Planning Your Site

• It's a good idea to plan the site layout before you start building the site and writing content.
  • Make a list of the info that your site should present to visitors.
  • Decide which info should be on which pages or types of pages on the site.
  • Decide which of these pages should appear in the main site nav
  • Make a rough design (wireframe)