Online Drupal Training Syllabus 5x91w

WELCOME TO VIBRANT TECHNOLOGIES & COMPUTERS Online Drupal Training Syllabus

What is Drupal?  Open Source software written in php.  A CMS or content-management system.  A sophisticated web application building tool.

What can Drupal be? • • • • • • • • •

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

Why use a CMS?  It helps manage complexity.  It provides a interface (UI) for adding, editing and publishing content.  It provides a means for collaboration among many to perform the above tasks.

Why use Drupal over Wordpress? • 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 at being 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.

Why use Drupal over Joomla? (or other CMS)

• It has superior session handling for a CMS. • It has superior security. • It is a more consistent, reliable and flexible framework for development.

• It is considered better for SEO from our research. • It uses a ‘separation of concerns’ architecture to cleanly and consistently separate structure, function, form, and presentation in layers (ie: php from data as db/xml, layout and presentation as html and css).

Downsides to the Druup • Drupal has a steeper learning curve than wordpress or Joomla. • Drupal and it’s developers make no excuse for this fact- it is a robust, flexible tool • That said, the drupal community is constantly addressing usability and -experience issues because they want the industry market share.

What is a UI?  UI is a -interface, which is a general term for the layout of options, widgets and settings used to configure the system or manage content.  ‘Site-building’ activities refer to configuring settings or managing content through the UI, such as building navigation menus.

Drupal Structure  Drupal is a database-driven (‘dynamic’) application. It requires a database.  Drupal has a core filesystem whose functionality can be extended using the UI itself, modules and themes.  The UI settings are stored in the database.

Modules • Packages of files in a directory that you into drupal’s module space (/sites/all/modules) • Add functionality to drupal • ‘Core’ Modules come shipped with drupal • ‘Contributed’ Modules are s from drupal.org

Themes  Packages of files in a directory that you into drupal’s theme space (/sites/all/themes)  Themes adjust the site layout and style. Like ‘skinning’ your media player.  Themes can be easily changed in the UI.

Drupal Database Drupal’s database tracks things like : • • • • • • •

Site and Module settings, ’s information, Access information, Logging information, Permissions and Roles, System Paths Content and content metadata

Nodes • A node is the primary form of content in a drupal site. At a minimum it is a title and a body, and can be ‘specialized’. • A ‘page’ and ‘story’ for example are node types that have a specific node settings. • A node type is a blueprint for creating instances of content of a particular type.

Nodes (cont)  Not everything in Drupal is a node.  This is important!!  Ex: A is not a node. A taxonomy is not a node. An is not a node.  Knowing this is important for evaluation of what can and cannot be easily done through the UI, without additional programming.

Layout and Regions • A Region is an area in a layout, such as a header, footer, content, left/right sidebar into which blocks can be placed and arranged. • A block is a box containing some information • A node resides only in the content area of the layout (except in special circumstances).

Blocks • Blocks are added by modules. • Blocks can contain views, widgets, menus, nodes (in special circumstances), and s. • Blocks can be moved around through the UI • Blocks can be styled individually.

Additional Terminology • Views – an interface for making customized lists of the data contained in the drupal database. • s – an interface for making customized layouts of nodes available to the s module. • Widgets – a general term for interactive form elements or graphs that are enabled by modules.

Menu  The istrative menu is a part of the UI that allows one to configure Drupal’s settings.  The settings available depend on which modules are installed and enabled.  Permissions allow s to have ‘istrative’ access to module settings.

s  All CMSes (wordpress, Joomla, Drupal) have a system; s have a name/pw.  Drupal also s the concepts of 1) Roles and 2) Permissions.  Roles are designations to groups having the same set of permissions.

Anonymous  A (not-logged-in) site visitor is called a ‘guest’, ‘visitor’ or ‘anonymous ’.  Has a -id (uid) of 0 (zero).  All anonymous s belong to the ‘anonymous role’ (a role ID of 1) and have a set of permissions assigned to them.

Managing Permissions  KEY concept: if you grant permission to an authenticated , it applies to ALL roles except the anonymous .  To grant a permission to everyone on a site, you must grant the permission to both the anonymous and authenticated .

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