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2010 | Buch

Beginning Drupal 7

verfasst von: Todd Tomlinson

Verlag: Apress

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

This book focuses on the nontechnical user who is responsible for building, maintaining, and managing Drupal web sites. The book covers why you should consider using Drupal when building a new web site, what Drupal is, installing and configuring Drupal, creating and managing content, managing users, adding functionality to your web site through Drupal modules, and more advanced topics on using themes, panels, and views. By reading this book, you will:

Understand why you should use Drupal and the power of the platform. Quickly build confidence in your ability to use Drupal. Gain the knowledge necessary to build, deploy, and manage web sites of moderate complexity on Drupal 7.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Chapter 1. Introduction to Drupal

Abstract

This chapter provides a basic overview of what a content management system (CMS) is, how Drupal fills the role as a CMS, the major building blocks of Drupal, and how to create content on your new Drupal website.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 2. Creating and Managing Content

Abstract

Remember, a website without content is as interesting and informative as a book without words. In this chapter, I focus on Drupal’s content creating, publishing, editing, and management features; providing you with the knowledge necessary to venture out and create, publish, and manage a wide variety of content on your new Drupal website. You started that process in the previous chapter; now let’s see what you can add.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 3. Creating and Managing Users

Abstract

Now that your site is up and running, you have a couple of decisions to make. First, will you have any administrators on the site other than yourself? Second, will your site be open to everyone, or will users need to log in to view content and other features? In this chapter, I cover the how Drupal treats visitors to your site, and how you as a site administrator can configure Drupal’s user account features to restrict the capabilities of those who have user accounts on your system.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 4. Taxonomy

Abstract

One of the Drupal features new Drupal users under-use and misunderstand is Taxonomy. New Drupal users are overwhelmed with all of the other features and functions provided by the platform, and they bypass what may be one of the most powerful and useful features that Drupal has to offer. In this chapter you will create and use taxonomy terms to categorize content so that visitors can easily find information related to a specific topic.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 5. Creating Menus

Abstract

Making it easy for visitors to find information on your website, and more important, making it easy for visitors to find the information that you want them to find, is a key factor in defining the success or failure of your new site. There are three basic mechanisms in Drupal to provide navigational capabilities to your site:

Text links embedded in content that direct the user to a new page.
Images and buttons that direct the user to a new page when clicked.
Menus, which are horizontal or vertical lists of text or image links.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 6. Installing Themes

Abstract

In this chapter I will explain the process of changing the overall look and feel of your site by installing a new theme. I will walk you through the process of selecting, downloading, and enabling your selected theme. You’ve added some neat things to your site in previous chapters, and we’ve seen some exciting features of Drupal; but this chapter will have you going “wow!”

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 7. Drupal Blocks

Abstract

In this chapter I focus on using blocks to assign content and what are called “widgets” (which include the user login form, latest blog posts, a list of who is currently logged into your site, the current weather conditions, and the like) to specific positions on a page. I will cover standard blocks that ship with Drupal 7, blocks that come with contributed modules, and information on how to build a custom block from scratch. At the end of the chapter you will have the ability to construct a page with some pretty exciting features.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 8. Drupal Modules

Abstract

Drupal is an amazing product in its off-the-shelf state. The features and functionality provided in Drupal 7 core is often more than adequate to meet the needs of many who build their websites with Drupal. But there are times when you need a feature that isn’t possible with Drupal core alone, and in those cases you need look no further than the thousands of contributed modules that have been written to address just about anything you could think of doing on a Drupal based website.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 9. Enabling Interactive Capabilities

Abstract

As the owner of your new Drupal site, one of the questions you should be asking yourself is, how are you going to engage site visitors so that they come back frequently? One of the most effective ways of ensuring visitor loyalty is to engage them with interactive features such as blogs, discussion forums, polls, and webforms. Site visitors are more likely to return if they posted a question or comment in a discussion forum on your site, or if they posted a comment to one of your blogs and want to see what others had to say about their comments.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 10. Content Types

Abstract

If you ask Drupal developers what the most powerful feature of Drupal is, many will say it’s Drupal’s ability to create custom content types. What is a content type? Think of a content type as a template that you provide to users who author content on your site. You may decide that the standard content types that come with Drupal out of the box, the basic page and article, provide all the features you need for your site. But it’s likely that you’ll encounter situations where you want more control over how users enter information and how that information is displayed on your site, and that’s where custom content types come into play. In this chapter I’ll show you how simple it is to create a new content type from scratch. Hold on to your tickets, we’re about to take off!

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 11. Views

Abstract

If you ask anyone who has used Drupal for a while what the “killer module” is, the answer will likely be Views, Panels, or the Content Construction Kit (CCK). Views is usually mentioned first, and it’s the module that many users say they can’t live without. What does the Views module do that is so special? Simply stated, Views provides an easy-to-use tool for selecting and displaying lists of content on your website. Examples of how you might use Views include:

Displaying the most recent news articles posted to your website, sorted in descending order by the date of posting.
Displaying a list of company locations as a table that is sortable by clicking on the titles for the location name, city, state, and country.
Displaying a photo gallery.
Displaying a list of blog postings that is filterable by subject.
Creating an RSS feed that lists the most recent content posted on your website.
Displaying just about any kind of list that you can think of, created from the content that is stored on your website, as a list, table, or RSS feed.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 12. Panels

Abstract

The third of the “holy trinity” of must-have Drupal modules is the Panels module. You may have noticed that, up to this point, our page layouts have been constrained to the regions that were defined by the developer of the theme we are using. If you look at the Garland theme shown in Figure 12-1, there are three primary “containers” for elements on our site: the left sidebar, the right sidebar, and the center content area (I exclude the footer and header from this list because you would typically not put dynamic content in either of those regions, although you could if you wanted to).

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 13. Theming

Abstract

One of the most significant challenges you are likely to encounter while building your new Drupal site is deciding on the visual design. Using Drupal, the general term that is associated with creating the look of your site is “theming.” The concept applies to the overall visual design of your site, as well as to how an individual element on a page is displayed, such as a title. In this chapter I’ll walk you through the process of taking an off-the-shelf Drupal theme and customizing the overall look, as well as the look for individual elements on a page. This is your chance to take the concepts covered in this book and apply them to your site, taking it from ho-hum to sizzle!

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 14. Administering Your Drupal Site

Abstract

If you have followed along in the previous chapters, you now have enough knowledge to build a Drupal 7-based website. Building your website and releasing it to the world is an exciting experience, and one that often brings with it great pride a joy. Whether your site has two or three pages or hundreds, deploying a website and seeing traffic on it is a rewarding and enriching experience. Deploying your website is just a step along the journey; it is by no means the end. As the proud owner of a website, you must monitor it, nurture it, expand it, and support it, all of which are involved in administering your website.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 15. Putting It All Together

Abstract

Reading this book has given you the foundation of knowledge on which to continue to build your Drupal skills. If you are new to the concept of a web content management system, you may not be able to jump in and build a highly complex site as your first endeavor with Drupal. But like all things in life, you have to start somewhere, and you now have the tools and knowledge to begin your journey. For those of you who had content management experience, hopefully the book helped to cast a light on how Drupal works so you can correlate what you know from other CMS platforms with what Drupal provides.

Todd Tomlinson

Chapter 16. Case Study

Abstract

In this chapter I will walk you through the process of creating a brand-new Drupal website using the concepts and tools covered in the first 15 chapters of this book. The focus of the case example is designing and developing a website for a non-profit organization that is focused on children with Asperger’s syndrome (AS). The organization requested that I build a site that provides its staff with the ability to author and publish content that is focused on parents, teachers, caregivers, and those living with AS.

Todd Tomlinson

Backmatter

Titel: Beginning Drupal 7
verfasst von: Todd Tomlinson
Verlag: Apress
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-4302-2860-8
Print ISBN: 978-1-4302-2859-2
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4302-2860-8