Online Drupal Training Syllabus
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.
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
What is a UI?
UI is a user-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 upload into drupals
module space (/sites/all/modules)
Add functionality to drupal
Core Modules come shipped with drupal
Contributed Modules are downloads from drupal.org
Themes
Packages of files in a directory that you upload into drupals
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
Drupals database tracks things like :
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 user is not a node. A taxonomy is not a node. An
account is not a node.
Knowing this is important for evaluation of what can and
cannot be easily done through the UI, without additional
programming.
Blocks
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.
Additional Terminology
Views an interface for making customized lists of the data
contained in the drupal database.
Panels an interface for making customized layouts of
nodes available to the panels module.
Widgets a general term for interactive form elements or
graphs that are enabled by modules.
Admin Menu
The administrative menu is a part of the UI that allows one
to configure Drupals settings.
The settings available depend on which modules are
installed and enabled.
Permissions allow users to have administrative access to
module settings.
Users
All CMSes (wordpress, Joomla, Drupal) have a user login
system; users have a username/pw.
Drupal also supports the concepts of 1) Roles and 2)
Permissions.
Roles are user designations to groups having the same set
of permissions.
Anonymous User
A (not-logged-in) site visitor is called a guest, visitor or
anonymous user.
Has a user-id (uid) of 0 (zero).
All anonymous users belong to the anonymous user 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
user, it applies to ALL roles except the anonymous user.
To grant a permission to everyone on a site, you must grant
the permission to both the anonymous user and
authenticated user.
THANK YOU