Steve Maxey • Maxey MediaWorks • steve@maxeymediaworks.com

INTRODUCTION TO DRUPALWhat Kind of Site Do You Want to Build Today?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

ABOUT ME:BUILDING WEB SITES SINCE 1997

• 1988–1997: Print production editor—from light tables and Xacto knives to fully digital Quark/Illustrator/Photoshop production.

• 1997–2001: Took over a half-dozen related Microsoft FrontPage sites, migrated them to Dreamweaver/Fireworks, migrated from from tables and font tags to semantic markup and CSS. Started working with podcasting, video and other technologies.

• 2001–2008: Acquired into a team with sites driven by custom php, where I repeated the front end migration from tables and font tags to semantic markup and CSS and managed the building of custom unctionalities. Also administered and modified WordPress and Mambo/Joomla sites.

• 2009: Launched Maxey MediaWorks and made the leap into Drupal, which I had recommended for the Joomla sites. Active member of CDMUG (Chicago Drupal Meetup Group).

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOOL:

• “Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress are the 3 most popular content management systems according to Alexa and most webmasters” —Slayerment: http://www.slayerment.com/blog/drupal-vs-joomla-vs-wordpress

• Customers pay a little more up front, but than can change and add page content themselves, rather than calling their web guru for every small text change.

• A lot of the “behind-the-scenes” things that aren’t really part of design (RSS feeds, SEO-friendly page titles and URLs, minimizing CSS and javascript and placing them in external files, etc.) are built into the CMS or its core modules and don’t have to be manually copied from page to page, or baked into a template.

• Helps you conceptualize your online content not as “web pages” but as structured web content—which it is when you move beyond the browser.

Why a CMS?

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

WHAT IS DRUPAL?

• Free and Open Source (PHP, MySQL/PostgresSQL)

• Extensible (by design: a basic set of common features with a rich API)

• With a Multi-Hierarchical Taxonomy System

• and Granular User-Permissions Control Suitable for Community-based Sites

Drupal Is a Content Management System (CMS) Platform

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOOL:

• A great blogging tool with an intuitive interface

• Many plug-ins with specific functionality and some pluggable CMS features

• Many attractive free and inexpensive themes

• Great for a single user. Extensible to a controlled group of users

• Go from zero to an attractive working blog with your logo in hours; more complex sites will take longer to set up

• A CMS based on a hierarchical tree-structure taxonomy

• Many free and for-pay plug-ins extend functionality (some for-pay modules are compiled so you can’t see the code)

• Many attractive free and inexpensive themes

• Great for a controlled group of users with publishing rights

• Structured layouts mean you can go from zero to a working site in a few days

• A multi-hierarchical CMS supporting multiple content types and ways of organizing your data.

• Many modules to extend functionality—all of them free as in beer, free as in speech

• Ugly default theme, few free themes—but zen theme encourages custom design

• Great for multiple types of users with various permissions—up to community sites

• More flexibility = longer development time

WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal

WordPress Joomla Drupal

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOOL:WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal

WordPress Joomla Drupal

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

CHOOSING THE RIGHT TOOL:WordPress vs. Joomla vs. Drupal

WordPress Joomla Drupal

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

DRUPAL: A BRIEF HISTORY

• Created by Dries Buytaert as a bulletin board for a College student and his friends.

• “Drupal” is an English-language rendering of the Dutch word for word “drop” (as in water droplet).

• Open sourced in 2001.

• Maintained by about 800 developers worldwide.

• Now powers 1% of the web

• Soon to release version 7

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

ANATOMY OF DRUPAL• Node/Content

• Content Type

• Taxonomy/Vocabulary

• Menu

• Path

• Region

• Block

• Theme

• Core

• Contrib

• Module

• User

• Role

• PermissionAnatomy of a Drupal Page Theme

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

MODULAR STRUCTURE

• Don’t hack core. Ever.

• Over 6500 “contrib” modules in Drupal CVS

• Little concrete information on what they do

• Most start as solutions to specific problems

• Also 570 contrib themes

• CCK/Fields

• Views

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

LET’S TAKE A LOOK:A Browser View of a Fresh Drupal Install

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

LEARNING MORE

Front End Drupal: Designing, Theming,

Scripting

Pro Drupal Development

Using Drupal

Building Powerful and Robust Websites with

Drupal 6

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

LEARNING MORE

• Online

• Drupal.org - http://drupal.org/

• Getting started - http://drupal.org/getting-started

• Drupal handbooks - http://drupal.org/handbook

• The APIs - http://api.drupal.org

• Groups.drupal.org - http://groups.drupal.org

• #drupal, #drupal-support and #CDMUG on IRC

• Live

• Chicago Drupal Meetup Group - http://cdmug.org/

• DrupalCon Chicago - March 2011 - http://chicago2011.drupal.org/

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

LEARNING MORE

• Video Tutorials:

• Lullabot DVDs on Views, CCK, Theming and more

• Learn by the Drop: http://learnbythedrop.com/video

• Got Drupal: http://gotdrupal.com/

• Mustard Seed Media: http://mustardseedmedia.com/

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

REFERENCES

• Comparison Articles:

• The Open Sourcery: “Best Open CMS: WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal” http://www.theopensourcery.com/keepopen/?p=2211 (May 2010)

• Slayerment: “Drupal VS Joomla VS Wordpress - Which Is The Best CMS?” http://www.slayerment.com/blog/drupal-vs-joomla-vs-wordpress (December 2007, updated March 2010)

Wednesday, September 15, 2010