Drupal User Guide

This guide was written mainly for people with minimal knowledge of the Drupal content management
system. The topics will help them become skilled at installing, administering, site building, and/or maintaining
the content of a Drupal-based website. The guide is also aimed at people who already have some experience
with a current or past version of Drupal, and want to expand the range of their skills and knowledge or update
them to the current version. The guide is kept up-to-date with the current major version of the core software.
Currently Drupal 10.

i
Contents

Preface vii
Copyright . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Audience and Goal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii
Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Reporting Problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . viii
Conventions of the Guide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Guiding Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi

1 Understanding Drupal 1
1.1 Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 Concept: Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Concept: Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 Concept: Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.5 Concept: Types of Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.6 Concept: The Drupal Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.7 Concept: Drupal Licensing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

2 Planning Your Site 9

2.1 Concept: Regions in a Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.2 Planning Your Site Layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2.3 Concept: Content Entities and Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.4 Concept: Modular Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5 Planning your Content Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.6 Concept: Editorial Workflow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.7 Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

3 Installation 19
3.1 Concept: Server Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
3.2 Concept: Additional Tools . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
3.3 Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
3.4 Preparing to Install . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3.5 Using Composer to Download and Update Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.6 Downloading the Core Software Manually . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.7 Running the Interactive Installer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

4 Basic Site Configuration 35

4.1 Concept: Administrative Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
4.2 Editing Basic Site Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3 Installing a Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.4 Uninstalling Unused Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.5 Configuring User Account Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.6 Configuring the Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

5 Basic Page Management 51

5.1 Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5.2 Creating a Content Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5.3 Editing a Content Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.4 Designating a Front Page for your Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.5 Concept: Menu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.6 Adding a Page to the Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.7 Changing the Order of Navigation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60

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CONTENTS

6 Setting Up Content Structure 65

6.1 Adding a Content Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.2 Deleting a Content Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
6.3 Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
6.4 Concept: Reference Fields . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.5 Concept: Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6.6 Setting Up a Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6.7 Adding a Reference Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
6.8 Concept: Forms and Widgets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
6.9 Changing Content Entry Forms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
6.10 Concept: View Modes and Formatters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.11 Changing Content Display . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
6.12 Concept: Image Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.13 Setting Up an Image Style . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
6.14 Concept: Responsive Image Styles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
6.15 Concept: Text Formats and Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
6.16 Configuring Text Formats and Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

7 Managing User Accounts 109

7.1 Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
7.2 Concept: The User 1 Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7.3 Creating a Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
7.4 Creating a User Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
7.5 Assigning Permissions to a Role . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
7.6 Changing a User’s Roles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
7.7 Assigning Authors to Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121

8 Blocks 125
8.1 Concept: Blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
8.2 Creating A Custom Block . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
8.3 Placing a Block in a Region . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127

9 Creating Listings with Views 131

9.1 Concept: Uses of Views . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
9.2 Concept: The Parts of a View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
9.3 Creating a Content List View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
9.4 Duplicating a View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
9.5 Adding a Block Display to a View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

10 Making Your Site Multilingual 149

10.1 Adding a Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
10.2 Configuring Content Translation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
10.3 Translating Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
10.4 Translating Configuration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154

11 Extending and Customizing Your Site 157

11.1 Finding Modules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
11.2 Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
11.3 Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
11.4 Finding Themes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
11.5 Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
11.6 Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
11.7 Concept: Development Sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
11.8 Making a Development Site . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
11.9 Deploying New Site Features . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
11.10Synchronizing Configuration Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

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CONTENTS

11.11Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 184

12 Preventing and Fixing Problems 189

12.1 Concept: Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
12.2 Clearing the Cache . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190
12.3 Concept: Data Backups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
12.4 Concept: Log . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 193
12.5 Concept: Status Report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

13 Security and Maintenance 197

13.1 Concept: Cron . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
13.2 Configuring Cron Maintenance Tasks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
13.3 Concept: Security and Regular Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
13.4 Keeping Track of Updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
13.5 Updating the Core Software . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
13.6 Updating a Module . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
13.7 Updating a Theme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205

14 Final Thoughts 209

14.1 Connecting with the Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
14.2 Getting Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
14.3 Learning More . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211

15 Glossary 213

A Appendix 221
A.1 Guide-Wide Attributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221

Index 223

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Preface

Copyright
This guide was written by contributors to the Drupal open-source project. It is copyright 2015-2024 by the indi-
vidual contributors, and can be used in accordance with the Creative Commons License, Attribution-ShareAlike
2.0 (CC BY-SA 2.0). Each page in this document (including this one) has an Attributions statement at the bot-
tom, listing the people who contributed to writing and editing that page. See also Section A.1, “Guide-Wide
Attributions” for guide-wide editing, translating, and project management information.
The CC BY-SA license (very similar to the GPL) allows anyone to copy, modify, and redistribute modifica-
tions of all or part of this work, as long as the following is complied with:
• You provide appropriate credit (see the license for more information).
• You provide a link to the license.
• You indicate whether changes have been made.

• You distribute your work under the same license as this original.
Attributions
This page was adapted and edited by Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, from ”Documen-
tation copyright and licensing”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community
Documentation.
Copyright notice: Copyright 2015-2024 by the individual contributors; see the section called “Copyright”
for details. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Audience and Goal

This guide was written mainly for people with minimal knowledge of the Drupal content management system.
The topics will help them become skilled at installing, administering, site building, and/or maintaining the
content of a Drupal-based website. The guide is also aimed at people who already have some experience with
a current or past version of Drupal, and want to expand the range of their skills and knowledge or update them
to the current version.
This guide assumes that you have already decided you want to learn and use Drupal. If you need to learn
more before deciding, see Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”.
Depending on which aspects of Drupal you would like to learn, you will need some background knowledge
to understand this guide: general Internet skills and knowledge are assumed, and the guide concentrates on
how to use the software itself. For instance, the sections about installing Drupal on a web server assume you
can obtain web hosting and figure out how to transfer files to your chosen web host. Similarly, the sections
about content management assume you can log into a website and fill in a web-based form.
After reading this guide, you should be able to:

• Plan the content architecture for a Drupal-based site

• Build the site that you planned
• Manage and administer your site

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PREFACE ORGANIZATION

• Understand documentation and blog posts on topics not covered here, to expand your knowledge and
skills

• Connect with the worldwide Drupal community

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

Organization
This user guide contains a series of topics, each of which covers either a task (how to do something) or a concept
(background knowledge, terminology, and the like). Concept topics have names starting with Concept:, while
task topics have names containing verbs, like Editing Basic Site Information.
The topics are grouped into chapters in a logical order, with concepts and tasks interleaved so that concepts
are presented before related tasks, and tasks build on each other. To take advantage of this, you are encouraged
to read the entire guide in its presented order, possibly skipping topics that are not of interest or that present
information you already know. Remember to try out the tasks on your own site as you read the guide; most
people learn better by doing rather than reading.
If you prefer, you can also use the index or table of contents to jump straight to a topic that you’d like to learn
about, rather than reading the entire guide. To facilitate this approach, each topic lists the prerequisite knowl-
edge that you’d need in order to understand it, if any (with links to the topics that present that knowledge);
task topics also list site prerequisites (things that you would need to have configured or created on your site in
order to perform the task). Also, most topics have sections at the end where you can find related information
and/or tasks for expanded understanding, to continue your learning.
You may also want to refer to the Glossary section as you read — it gives brief definitions of most of the
terminology used in the guide, with links to topics having more detailed explanations.
Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

Reporting Problems
Goal
Report a problem with this guide, such as:
• Information that is incorrect or does not follow best practices

• Steps that do not work

• Screenshots or text that doesn’t match what you see on the screen
• Unclear writing

• Places where a table or screenshot would help clarify the text

• Failure to define terminology
• Missing knowledge prerequisites or site prerequisites for a topic
• Typographical, spelling, grammar, or formatting errors

• Broken links

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PREFACE CONVENTIONS OF THE GUIDE

Steps
1. Make a note of the topic or topics that contain the problem you have found.
2. Log in to Drupal.org (you will need to create a user account if you do not already have one).

3. Visit the User Guide issues page on Drupal.org.

4. Verify that the problem you found has not already been reported in another issue:

• If there are only a few open issues, scan the Summary column to see if any of their descriptions match
the problem you found. You may also need to read some of the issues to make sure, which you can
do by clicking the links in the Summary column.
• If the open issue list is long, enter either a keyword related to the problem you found or the title
of the topic where the problem occurs in the Search for box, and click Search to reduce the issue list.
Then either scan the summaries or read the issues to see if they match your problem.

5. If you determine that your problem has not already been reported, click Create a new issue, and fill in the
issue report as follows:

Field name Explanation Example value

Title Short summary of the problem Instructions in ”Adding a
you found Content Type” do not work
Category Type of issue being reported Bug report
Version Version of the guide you found 9.1.x-dev
the problem in
Issue summary Details of the problem you In the ”Adding a Content
found Type” topic, in step 3, when I
clicked Save, I got the
following error message: …

6. Reread the Title and Issue summary you entered, and verify that the following information is included in
your report:

• A complete description of the problem you found

• The name of the topic or topics where you found the problem
• The language you are reading the guide in (if not English)
• If you read the guide on a website, a link to the page or pages with the problem

7. Click Save to create the issue.

8. Check back on the issue in a few days. If one of the project maintainers has asked for clarification, respond
by adding a comment to the issue.

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

Conventions of the Guide

Assumptions and prerequisites
This guide has the following assumptions and prerequisites:
• This guide covers the current major version of the core software.

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PREFACE CONVENTIONS OF THE GUIDE

• This guide is organized into topics; see the section called “Organization” for details. Many topics include
a Prerequisite knowledge section, which lists other topics whose content knowledge is needed in order to
understand the topic you are reading. Some background knowledge that is not covered in the guide is
also assumed; see the section called “Audience and Goal” for details.
• Many task topics list Site prerequisites, which are tasks that you’ll need to have completed on your site
before you’ll be able to do the task in the topic you are reading.
• The specifics of the site prerequisites relate to the scenario used throughout this guide of building a site
for a farmers market (see the section called “Guiding Scenario” for details). You can adapt the tasks to
your own scenario, but you will also need to remember the changes you made when deciding if your site
satisfies the site prerequisites for a task.
• For all task topics after Section 3.7, “Running the Interactive Installer”, there is also an implicit prerequi-
site: you must have installed the latest stable version of the content management software on your site,
and be logged in to a user account with sufficient permissions to do the task (such as the user account
created when you installed your site, which automatically has full permissions).
• If you read all the topics in order, and perform all of the steps in the task topics as you go (staying logged
in), you should have the background knowledge and site prerequisites in place for each topic as you read
it.
• This guide demonstrates how to perform tasks using the administrative user interface, and wherever
possible, also using the latest stable version of the Drush command-line tool (see Section 3.2, “Concept:
Additional Tools”). You can feel free to use a different command-line tool, such as Drupal Console (if
you look up equivalent commands), or to only use the administrative interface for now.

Text conventions
The following conventions are used in the text of this guide:
• The URL example.com means the base URL of your website. See the Navigation section below for more
details on how URLs internal to your site are indicated.
• Text you should see in the user interface of your site is shown in italics, such as: Click Save configuration.
This only applies to text in the user interface that comes from the software, not to text that was entered
in a previous topic. For example, in a topic about editing, you might see this instruction: Click Edit in the
row of the About page (Edit would be in italics, but About would not be, because the About page was
created in a previous topic).
• URLs, file names, and newly-introduced terminology are also shown in italics.
• Text that you should type at a shell command line is shown in monospace type, such as:
drush cache:rebuild

• Within this guide, the word directory is always used to refer to file directories (which some people prefer
to call folders).

Navigation
To do most of the task topics in this guide, you will need to navigate to one or more pages in the administrative
interface of your site. You might see something like this in the instructions (this will make more sense after
you have the base software installed):
In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Taxonomy (admin/structure/taxonomy).
Navigation instructions like this assume that you have the core Toolbar module installed, and this ex-
ample means that in the menu bar at the top of your site, you would need to click Manage to expose the
menu choices, then click Structure, then Taxonomy, and that at the end, you would be on a page with URL
http://example.com/admin/structure/taxonomy (if your site base URL is http://example.com).

x
PREFACE GUIDING SCENARIO

Here’s another example:

In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > System > Basic site settings (admin/config/system/site-
information).
In this example, after clicking on Manage and Configuration, you would need to find the System section of the
page, and within that, click Basic site settings. After that, you’d end up on http://example.com/admin/config/system/site-
information.

One other note: if you are using the standard administrative core Seven theme, many ”Add” buttons in
the administrative interface are displayed with + signs on them. For instance, on admin/content, the Add new
content button appears as + Add new content. However, this is theme-dependent and is not really part of the text
on the button (for instance, it would not necessarily be read by a screen reader), so in this guide, the convention
is to not mention the + sign on the buttons.

Filling in forms
Many of the task topics in this guide include steps where you will fill out a web form. In most cases, a screen
capture image of the form will be included, along with a table of the values you will need to enter into each
form field. For example, you might see a table that starts out like this, explaining the site information form you
would see if you navigated to Configuration > System > Site information (admin/config/system/site-information):

Field name Explanation Example value

Site details > Site name Name of your site Anytown Farmers Market

To use this table, find the field labeled Site name in the section that is under Site details in the form, and enter
the name of your site in this field. An example site name of ”Anytown Farmers Market” is suggested in the
table, which relates to the scenario of building a website for a farmers market that you’ll find all through this
guide (see the section called “Guiding Scenario” for details). Also note that on some forms, you might have to
click a section title (like Site details in this example) to expand the section and find the field it contains.
Attributions
Written/edited by Jennifer Hodgdon.

Guiding Scenario
When reading this guide, it is helpful to have a website building project in mind. The following project scenario
provides context and links together the examples in this guide:

xi
PREFACE GUIDING SCENARIO

You are making a website for a farmers market. The site needs to display information about the location
and hours of the market, and an About page with the history of the market. It also needs to list the vendors.
Vendors should be able to edit their listings (including a logo or photo), and post recipes. Site visitors should
be able to browse recipes, or locate recipes using ingredients that they purchased at the market. Some visitors
to your site speak another language, so the main pages and vendor pages need to be translated.
As you read through the guide and try out the tasks it describes, you may choose to follow the scenario ex-
actly; you could also modify the tasks to suit your purposes. If you do want to follow the scenario exactly, you’ll
find that you need some image files, which are located in the assets directory of the .zip or .tgz file download
available on the User Guide project page.
Attributions
Written/edited by Jennifer Hodgdon.

xii
Chapter 1

Understanding Drupal

1.1 Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System

What is a Content Management System?
A content management system (CMS) is a software tool that lets users add, publish, edit, or remove content
from a website, using a web browser on a smartphone, tablet, or desktop computer. Typically, the CMS software
is written in a scripting language, and its scripts run on a computer where a database and a web server are
installed. The content and settings for the website are usually stored in a database, and for each page request
that comes to the web server, the scripts combine information from the database and assets (JavaScript files,
CSS files, image files, etc. that are part of the CMS or have been uploaded) to build the pages of the website.
The combination of the operating system that the CMS runs on, the scripting language it is written in, the
database it stores its information in, and the web server that runs the scripts to retrieve information and return
it to the site visitor’s web browser is known as the stack that the CMS runs on; the commonly used combination
of the Linux operating system, Apache web server, MySQL database, and PHP scripting language is known as
the LAMP stack.

What is Drupal?
Drupal is a flexible CMS based on the LAMP stack, with a modular design allowing features to be added and re-
moved by installing and uninstalling modules, and allowing the entire look and feel of the website to be changed
by installing and uninstalling themes. The base Drupal download, known as Drupal Core, contains the PHP
scripts needed to run the basic CMS functionality, several optional modules and themes, and many JavaScript,
CSS, and image assets. Many additional modules and themes can be downloaded from the Drupal.org website.
Drupal can also run on other technology stacks:
• The operating system can be Windows or Mac OS instead of Linux.
• The web server can be Nginx or IIS instead of Apache.
• The database can be PostgreSQL or SQLite instead of MySQL, or a MySQL-compatible replacement such
as MariaDB or Percona.
Other operating systems, web servers, and databases can also be made to work; however, the scripts that
the software uses are written in PHP, so that cannot be changed.

What are the reasons for using Drupal?

When building a website, you have your choice of using one of the many existing CMS packages and hosted
services, developing your own CMS, or building the site without using a CMS. Here are some of the reasons
you might choose to use Drupal:

1
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.2. CONCEPT: MODULES

• Building a small, simple site with static HTML pages is not difficult, and you can get a simple site up very
quickly. Setting up a site in a CMS generally requires more time initially, but brings you the benefits of
on-line editing (easier for less experienced content maintainers), uniformity (harder to maintain using
static HTML for larger sites), and the possibility of more complex features requiring a database.
• Some CMS software is special-purpose; for instance, there are packages and hosted services that you can
use to build a blog or a club membership website. Drupal, in contrast, is a general-purpose CMS. If you
are building a special-purpose site, you might choose to use a special-purpose CMS; however, if your site
falls even slightly outside the intended purpose, you will probably be better off using a general-purpose
CMS rather than trying to adapt a special-purpose CMS.
• Building your own CMS-type software can seem attractive. However, using a general-purpose CMS like
Drupal as a starting point is usually a better idea, because the basic CMS functionality (such as user
accounts and content management) has thousands of developer hours behind it, including many years
of user testing, bug fixing, and security hardening.
• Some CMS software packages are expensive to purchase a license for. Some are free or have a free version,
but have restrictive licenses that do not allow you to make modifications and extensions. You might prefer
to use a package (like Drupal) that has a less restrictive software license, and is developed by a world-wide
community. See Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project” for more on this topic.

Related topics
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

• Section 1.4, “Concept: Distributions”
• Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Understanding Drupal: Overview”

• Drupal.org page ”FAQ” (Frequently Asked Questions)

• Drupal.org page ”Case Studies”
• Wikipedia page ”Content management systems”

• Wikipedia page ”Modular design”

Attributions
Written and edited by Kristof van Tomme at Pronovix, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Michael Lenahan at erdfisch.

1.2 Concept: Modules

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

2
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.3. CONCEPT: THEMES

What is a module?
A module is a set of PHP, JavaScript, and/or CSS files that extends site features and adds functionality.
You can turn the features and functionality on by installing the module, and you can turn it off by unin-
stalling the module; before uninstalling, you may need to remove data and configuration related to the feature
or functionality.
Each module that is installed adds to the time needed to generate pages on your site, so it is a good idea to
uninstall modules that are not needed.
The core download provides modules for functionality such as:

• Managing user accounts (the core User module)

• Managing basic content (the core Node module) and fields (the core Field and Field UI modules; there
are also core modules providing field types)
• Managing navigation menus (the core Menu UI module)

• Making lists, grids, and blocks from existing content (the core Views and Views UI modules)
You can download additional contributed modules from the Drupal.org Module Downloads, or create your
own custom modules.

Related topics
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”
• Section 1.4, “Concept: Distributions”

• Section 4.4, “Uninstalling Unused Modules”

• Section 11.1, “Finding Modules”
• Section 11.3, “Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org”

• Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”

• Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Module developer’s guide”
Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

1.3 Concept: Themes

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

What is a Theme?
A theme is a set of files that define the visual look and feel of your site. The core software and modules that run
on your site determine which content (including HTML text and other data stored in the database, uploaded
images, and any other asset files) is displayed on the pages of your site. The theme determines the HTML
markup and CSS styling that wraps the content.
The core software provides several basic themes with the core distribution. These themes have largely been
designed and built by the community over the last several years and will all be good choices for building your
first sites and becoming more familiar with how the core software works.

3
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.4. CONCEPT: DISTRIBUTIONS

Drupal is a well-established CMS so the market for 3rd party themes - both free and paid - is very robust.
If none of the 3rd party options suit your needs, you’ll need to create a custom theme. A custom theme can
be as simple as a single CSS file that adds styling to the markup provided by the core software. Guidance for
creating custom themes in Drupal can be found in the Drupal.org community documentation page ”Theming
Drupal”.

Related topics
• Section 11.4, “Finding Themes”
• Section 11.5, “Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org”

• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Theming Drupal”
Attributions
Written and edited by John Grubb and Jennifer Hodgdon.

1.4 Concept: Distributions

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

What are Distributions?

Distributions provide site features and functions for a specific type of site as a single download containing the
core software, contributed modules, themes, and pre-defined configuration. A distribution makes it possible to
set up a complex site for a specific purpose, in fewer steps than installing and configuring elements individually.
There are two main types of distributions:
Full-featured Distributions A full-featured distribution 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. For example, you could use an existing distribution for farmers markets to build your own website,
or you could share your set-up for the farmers market site as a distribution for others to use.
Other Distributions Distributions can also be quick-start tools that developers and site builders can use as a
starting point.

Related topics
Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”

Additional resources
Drupal.org Drupal Distribution Downloads
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Diána Lakatos and Antje Lorch, from ”Distributions” and ”Download & Extend —
Distributions” copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

4
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.5. CONCEPT: TYPES OF DATA

1.5 Concept: Types of Data

What are the types of data?
The data and information on your site is divided up into four types, which are edited, translated, and stored
differently. These four types are:
Content Information (text, images, etc.) meant to be displayed to site visitors. This type of information tends
to be relatively permanent, but can normally be edited.
Configuration Information about your site that is not content, but is also relatively permanent, and is used to
define how your site behaves or is displayed. It is sometimes also displayed to site visitors, but tends to
be smaller pieces of text (like field labels, the name of your site, etc.) rather than larger chunks that you’d
normally think of as Content.
State Information of a temporary nature about the current state of your site, such as the time when cron jobs
were last run.
Session Information about individual site visitors’ interactions with the site, such as whether they are logged
in and their cookies. This is technically a subtype of State information, since it is also temporary.

Related topics
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 13.1, “Concept: Cron”
• Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”
• Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”

Attributions
Adapted by Jennifer Hodgdon from ”Overview of Configuration (vs. other types of information)”, copy-
right 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation

1.6 Concept: The Drupal Project

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

What is Free and Open Source Software?

Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is software that is developed by a community of people, released under
a non-commercial license, and whose source code (the program files that make up the software) is freely avail-
able. For more information on the non-commercial license used by Drupal, see Section 1.7, “Concept: Drupal
Licensing”.

What is the Drupal project?

The Drupal project is a FOSS project whose purpose is to develop the core content management system soft-
ware, as well as add-on modules, additional themes, translations, documentation, and special-purpose distri-
butions. The people who contribute their time and money to the Drupal project come from all over the world,
and are a diverse community that comes together for this common purpose.
The community encompasses many smaller groups who perform many different tasks such as develop-
ing a particular piece of Drupal-related software, writing documentation, maintaining the security of Drupal
software, translating Drupal software into a particular language, using Drupal for some specific purpose, and
coming together to meet in person within a particular geographical area.

5
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.7. CONCEPT: DRUPAL LICENSING

For more on how you can connect to and communicate with the world-wide community, see Section 14.1,
“Connecting with the Community” and Section 14.2, “Getting Support”.

What is the Drupal Association?

The Drupal Association is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Drupal project and community.
Its main functions are:
• Putting on large conventions around the world
• Maintaining the 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 its mission
• Raising funds for these purposes

Related topics
• Section 1.7, “Concept: Drupal Licensing”
• Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”
• Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”
• Section 14.2, “Getting Support”

Additional resources
• Drupal project governance
• Drupal Code of Conduct

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

1.7 Concept: Drupal Licensing

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

What is Drupal Licensing?

Drupal and all contributed files hosted on Drupal.org are licensed under the GNU General Public License (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 under the terms of GPL version 2 or 3. You can also run the core software in combination
with any code with any license that is compatible with version 2 or 3.
Drupal contributors should follow these guidelines:

• All files (PHP, JavaScript, images, Flash, etc.) that are part of a project on Drupal.org have to be under
GPL version 2 or later.
• All Drupal contributors retain copyright on their code, but agree to release it under the same license as
Drupal.

6
CHAPTER 1. UNDERSTANDING DRUPAL 1.7. CONCEPT: DRUPAL LICENSING

• Drupal modules and themes are a derivative work of Drupal. If you distribute them, you must do so
under the terms of GPL version 2 or later.

• All content on Drupal.org itself is copyrighted by its original contributors, and is licensed under the Cre-
ative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 2.0.
• Sample code on Drupal.org is also available under GPL version 2 or later.

Related topics
Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org page on ”Licensing”
• ”Drupal LICENSE.txt” page on api.drupal.org
• GNU General Public License, version 2
• GNU General Public License, version 3

• Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license 2.0.

• ”Legal Group” on groups.drupal.org

Attributions
Adapted by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix from ”Licensing” copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors
to the Drupal Community Documentation.

7
Chapter 2

Planning Your Site

2.1 Concept: Regions in a Theme

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

What is a region?
Besides its primary content, a web page contains other content such as site branding (site name, slogan, and
logo), navigation aids (menus, links, and icons), formatted text, and images. Each theme provides a set of
named regions, such as Header, Content, and Sidebar, where site builders may choose to place their content.
The available regions depend on the theme design. Only the Content region, which contains the primary
content, is required; others are optional. The core Olivero theme provides the regions highlighted in the fol-
lowing image.

9
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.1. CONCEPT: REGIONS IN A THEME

Related topics
• Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 8.3, “Placing a Block in a Region”

Attributions
Written and edited by John MacDonald, Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

10
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.2. PLANNING YOUR SITE LAYOUT

2.2 Planning Your Site Layout

Goal
Plan the navigation and layout of the site, for both mobile and desktop browsers.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

• Section 2.1, “Concept: Regions in a Theme”

• the section called “Guiding Scenario”

Steps
It is a good idea to plan the site layout before you start building the site and writing content; however, your
plan may need to be revised either before you start implementing it or after you have some of the site built with
draft content in place, based on budgetary concerns or stakeholder feedback.

1. Make a list of the information that your site should present to visitors. In the farmers market scenario,
this might include:

• Location of the market, with directions and a map

• Hours and days the market is open
• History of the market
• List of vendors
• Details about each vendor
• Searchable list of recipes
• Details about each recipe
• List of the most recently added recipes

2. Decide which information should be on which pages or types of pages on the site:
Information that should be on all pages Address, hours, and recently-added recipes list
Vendor details pages Information about each vendor on its own page
Recipe details pages Details of each recipe on its own page
Home page Location, map, directions, and hours
About page History of the market
Vendors list page List of vendors, with links to vendor detail pages
Recipe list page Searchable list of recipes, with links to recipe detail pages
3. Decide which information is the most important on each page. Site visitors using mobile phones or other
small browsers will often only see the content that is presented first, and they may not scroll down to see
all of the information.

4. Decide which of these pages should appear in the main site navigation. For instance, the main navigation
might consist of the Home, About, Vendors, and Recipes pages.
5. Make a rough design sketch for each page, showing how it would look when viewed on a small screen
such as a phone, as well as on a larger screen such as a desktop browser. Considering that most site
visitors will be using smaller browsers, it is a good idea to start with the phone-size layout, to make sure
that these visitors will be able to find the information they need without too much scrolling.

11
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.3. CONCEPT: CONTENT ENTITIES AND FIELDS

In making these page layout plans, you might find that you need to revise your plan for which information
should be on which pages. For example, you might decide that the address, hours, and recently-added
recipes list would all fit well in the right sidebar area of all pages, when the site is viewed on desktop-
sized browsers. On the other hand, you might decide that for mobile browsers, you would instead put
the address and hours in a short format at the top of each page, but only display the recent recipe list at
the bottom of the home page.

Expand your understanding

Section 2.5, “Planning your Content Structure”

Videos
Planning Your Site Layout
Planning Your Site Layout
Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

2.3 Concept: Content Entities and Fields

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

What is a content entity?

A content entity (or more commonly, entity) is an item of content data, which can consist of text, HTML markup,
images, attached files, and other data that is intended to be displayed to site visitors. Content entities can be
defined by the core software or by modules.
Content entities are grouped into entity types, which have different purposes and are displayed in very
different ways on the site. Most entity types are also divided into entity subtypes, which are divisions within an
entity type to allow for smaller variations in how the entities are used and displayed. Here is a table of some
common content entity types:

Entity type Entity subtype Defining Module Main uses

Content item Content type Node module Content intended to be
the main page area for
pages on the site
Example: In the farmers market site example, you might have content types
for basic pages, vendor pages, and recipe pages.
Comment Comment type Comment module Commentary added to
content entities
(typically to Content
item entities)
Example: On a blog site, blog posts might have comments. They are not
needed in the farmers market site example.
User profile (none) User module Data related to a person
with a user account
(login access) on the
site
Example: Every site has at least basic user profiles with user names and email
addresses; social networking sites may have more complex user profiles with
more information.

12
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.3. CONCEPT: CONTENT ENTITIES AND FIELDS

Entity type Entity subtype Defining Module Main uses

Custom block Block type Custom Block module Text and images in
smaller chunks, often
displayed in the site
header, footer, or
sidebar
Example: In the farmers market site example, you might put the hours and
location in a sidebar block.
Taxonomy term Vocabulary Taxonomy module Used to classify other
types of content
Example: In the farmers market site example, you might classify Recipe
content with an Ingredients taxonomy vocabulary, with taxonomy terms like
Carrots and Tomatoes. In a blogging site, blog posts might be classified using
a Tags vocabulary, and perhaps also a Categories vocabulary.
File (none) File module An image or attachment
file that is tracked and
managed by the site,
often attached to other
types of content
Example: In the farmers market site example, both Recipe and Vendor pages
might have image attachments, which would (behind the scenes) be managed
as File entities by the site.
Contact form Form type Contact module A form that lets site
visitors contact site
owners
Example: A contact form is needed in the farmers market site example.

What is a field?
Within entities, the data is stored in individual fields, each of which holds one type of data, such as formatted
or plain text, images or other files, or dates. Field types can be defined by the core software or by modules.
Fields can be added by an administrator on entity subtypes, so that all entities of a given entity subtype have
the same collection of fields available. For example, the Vendor content type in the farmers market example
might have fields for the vendor name, a logo image, website URL, and description, whereas the Basic page
content type might only have fields for the title and page body. When you create or edit entities, you are
specifying the values for the fields on the entity.

Related topics
• Section 2.5, “Planning your Content Structure”
• Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”
• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”

• Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy”

• Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”
• Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”

Attributions
Written and edited by Jennifer Hodgdon and Grant Dunham.

13
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.4. CONCEPT: MODULAR CONTENT

2.4 Concept: Modular Content

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

• Section 2.2, “Planning Your Site Layout”

What is modular content?

Given that the content of your site is stored in a database, it is desirable to make the content modular, meaning
that certain pages on your site, rather than being edited as a whole page, are instead generated automatically
from other content items. For instance, in the farmers market site scenario, you might create individual content
items for recipes. If the recipe content items have a field that keeps track of ingredients, then your site could
include a composite page that would list recipes, and allow visitors to search for a recipe that contained some
particular ingredient they had bought at the market.
Smaller sections of pages can also be generated as composites. For instance, recipe content items could have
a field that keeps track of which vendor submitted the recipe (see Section 6.4, “Concept: Reference Fields”),
with the vendor details edited in separate vendor content items. This would allow you to do the following on
your site:
• On each Recipe page, there could be an area that displays some information about the vendor that sub-
mitted the recipe, such as their name and market stall number.
• Each vendor page could have a section that lists the recipes they have submitted.
The key idea is that each piece of information is only edited in one place. When vendor information is
updated, all recipe pages that display that vendor information are automatically updated; when a recipe is
submitted by a vendor, it is automatically displayed on the vendor page. The core Views module is the usual
way to use modular content to create composite pages and page sections; see Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of
Views” for more information. Also, view modes are useful for defining different ways to display each content
item; see Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters” for more information.

Related topics
• Section 2.5, “Planning your Content Structure”
• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”

• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

• Section 6.4, “Concept: Reference Fields”
• Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters”

• Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of Views”

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

2.5 Planning your Content Structure

Goal
Make a plan for the content structure of the site (which type and subtype of entity to use for which content),
and which pages will contain listings of content.

14
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.5. PLANNING YOUR CONTENT STRUCTURE

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 2.4, “Concept: Modular Content”

• the section called “Guiding Scenario”

Steps
1. Brainstorm about what content your site needs to contain, which could include content that visitors would
be looking for, as well as content that you want to show to visitors. The result could be the description in
the section called “Guiding Scenario”.

2. For each identified piece of content, decide which content entity type would be the best fit. In doing this,
you’ll need to consider where and how the content will be used and edited on the site. For example, in
the farmers market site scenario, you might want to display the hours and location of the farmers market
on the sidebar of every page. For that content, a single custom block makes sense. As another example,
you might decide that pages displaying information about each vendor should be content items managed
by the core Node module, because you want vendors to be able to edit their own listings. The core Node
module permission system lets you do this easily.
These decisions do not necessarily always have only one right answer; for instance, you could decide that
vendor pages should be user profiles instead of content items, but if you did that the content would be
tied to a specific user account, and it would not be as easy to later change the ownership of a vendor page
to a different user account.

3. Within each content entity type you identified, decide what division into entity subtypes would make
sense. For example, in the farmers market site example, you would probably decide that under the Con-
tent item entity type, there should be one content type for basic pages (Home and About), one for vendor
pages, and one for recipe pages.
4. For each entity subtype you decided on, decide what fields are needed. For instance, the Vendor content
type might need fields for the vendor name, web page URL, image, and description.
5. Decide on what entity listings are needed, which could be entire pages or smaller areas on the page. For
each listing, you’ll need to determine which entities should be listed. Then you’ll need to decide in what
order and with what filtering options they should be displayed; for example, you might want to give the
site visitor the option to search by keyword, to filter the list down to a subset, or to sort the list. You’ll also
need to decide what information from the entities should be shown, which might result in adding to the
list of fields you determined in the previous step. The farmers market site, for example, needs to have a
Recipes listing page that lists content items of type Recipe, with the ability to filter by ingredients, so that
means that the Recipe content type needs an Ingredients field.
6. For each identified field on each entity subtype, identify what type of data it should contain (such as plain
text, formatted text, a date, an image file, etc.), and how many values should be allowed. Most fields are
single-valued, but for example, a Recipe should allow for multiple values in its Ingredients field.
7. Consider which fields would be best as references to taxonomy term entities: fields whose values should
be chosen from a list of allowed values. Allowed values that are expected to change and grow over time,
are good candidates. An example is the Ingredients field for the Recipe content type.
8. Consider which fields should reference other content entities. An example is that since vendors will be
submitting recipes, a field will be needed on the Recipe content type that references the Vendor content
item for the vendor who submitted the recipe.

Here’s an example of the resulting content structure for the farmers market scenario example site:

15
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.6. CONCEPT: EDITORIAL WORKFLOW

Entity type Entity subtype Examples Fields

Content item Basic page Home page, about page Title, page body
Content item Vendor A page for each vendor Vendor name, page
at the market body, image, URL
Content item Recipe A page for each Recipe name, page
submitted recipe body, image, reference
to Vendor who
submitted it,
Ingredients taxonomy
Custom block (generic) Copyright notice for No special fields
footer, Hours and
location for sidebar
Taxonomy term Ingredients Carrots, tomatoes, and No special fields
other recipe ingredients
Contact form (generic) Generic contact form Name, email, subject,
message
User profile (none) Will not be displayed No special fields
on site

And here are the listings the site needs:

Page or page area Entity type and Filter/sort/pagination Fields displayed

subtype
Vendors page Vendor content items All vendors, Image, vendor name,
alphabetical, paged trimmed body
Recipes page Recipe content items Filter by ingredients, Image, recipe name
alphabetical, paged
Recent recipes sidebar Recipe content items List 5 most recent Image, recipe name

Expand your understanding

• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

• Section 6.6, “Setting Up a Taxonomy”

Related concepts
Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy”

Videos
Planning Your Content Structure
Planning Your Content Structure
Attributions
Written and edited by Jennifer Hodgdon and Grant Dunham.

2.6 Concept: Editorial Workflow

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

16
CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.7. CONCEPT: USER INTERFACE, …

What is an editorial workflow?

An editorial workflow is the process organizations follow to create, review, edit, and publish content. Multiple
people in different roles in the organization can be part of the process. For example, content creators could
collect information and write content; editors could review, edit, ask for changes, and publish the content once
it’s ready to be shared with the audience. Later on, content revisions could go through a simple process for
small changes, or a more complex process with reviews for larger changes.

What tools are available for managing workflows?

Published/Unpublished status The Content item entity type supports marking each content item as either
Published or Unpublished. Viewing permissions are separate for published and unpublished content; for
example, all site visitors might be able to see published content items, while only content creators and
editors can see unpublished content items.
Revision tracking Some content entity types support revision tracking, meaning that as content is revised,
the software stores the older revisions, so that they can be compared or reverted.
Workflows The core Workflows module lets you define workflow states and transitions, beyond just having
content be published or unpublished. The companion core Content Moderation module lets you assign
permissions and roles to the workflow transitions. Both can be used with both Content item and Custom
block entity types.
Block placement The Custom block content entity lets you create a custom block and edit it, but only make
it visible on the site once it is ready.

Related topics
• Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”

• Section 5.3, “Editing a Content Item”

• Section 8.2, “Creating A Custom Block”
• Section 8.3, “Placing a Block in a Region”

Attributions
Written and edited by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix, Grant Dunham, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

2.7 Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

What languages does the software support?

The base language for the software that your site runs (core software, modules, and themes) is English. How-
ever, using this software you can create a site whose default language is not English, in which case anyone
viewing the site should see only that language (assuming that the site is fully translated). You can also use
this software to create a multi-lingual site, with a language switcher that site visitors can use to switch to their
preferred language. You need to have the core Language module installed in order to use a language other than
English on the site.

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CHAPTER 2. PLANNING YOUR SITE 2.7. CONCEPT: USER INTERFACE, …

What can be translated on your site?

There are three types of information that you can translate, each with its own method for translating:
User interface text Built-in text present in the core software, modules, and themes. This can be translated
from the base English language of the software into the language(s) of your site. Typically, rather than
needing to translate this text yourself, you can download translations. You need to have the core Interface
Translation module installed in order to translate this text, and the core Update Manager module installed
in order to automatically download translations.
Configuration text Text whose structure and initial values are defined by the core software, modules, and
themes, but that you can edit. Examples include the labels for fields in your content types, header text in
views, your site name, and the content of automatic email messages that your site sends out. After creating
configuration text in the default language of your site, you can translate it into other languages. For
default configuration supplied by the core software, modules, and themes, translation is included with
the downloads of user interface text translations. You need to have the core Configuration Translation
module installed in order to translate this text.

Content text and files If your site is multilingual, you can configure the content fields on your site to be trans-
latable. After creating content in one language, you can translate it into other languages. Fields can con-
tain textual information or uploaded files, and for each field on each entity subtype, you can configure it
to be translatable or non-translatable. You need to have the core Content Translation module installed in
order to translate this text.

What information will remain in English on my site?

Even if the default language of your site is not English, you will still see English text on certain administrative
pages used to manage configuration. The reason is that when you edit configuration, you are editing the base,
untranslated configuration values; translating configuration is a separate operation. For example, if you visit
the Menus administration page, you will see menu names in English (for the menus that were set up when you
installed your site), and if you click an Edit menu link, you will be editing the English name and description
of the menu. To edit the menu name in a different language, you would need to have the core Configuration
Translation module installed, and use the Translate link to edit the translated menu information.

Related topics
• Section 10.1, “Adding a Language”
• Section 10.2, “Configuring Content Translation”
• Section 10.3, “Translating Content”

• Section 10.4, “Translating Configuration”

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

18
Chapter 3

Installation

3.1 Concept: Server Requirements

What are the requirements for running the core software?
Disk space
The total amount of disk space needed for your site is not a fixed amount, as it depends on your site. The base
files for the core software take up about 100 MB on the web server. You will need more space if you install
additional modules or themes, and you’ll also need space for media, backups, and other files generated by and
uploaded to your site. The database also uses disk space, although that is typically not in the same area (and
in some cases, not even on the same server) as that used by the site files.

PHP
PHP 8.1 or a higher PHP 8 version. PHP must be set up with a minimum memory size of 64MB; if you are
running multiple modules on your site or using memory-intensive PHP-based command-line tools (such as
Composer), considerably more memory than that may be needed.
Certain PHP extensions are also required; the exact list of required PHP extensions depends on how you
install the core software and which modules you are using on your site. Generally, hosting service providers
have installed all the PHP extensions you will need. If you are self-hosting or running your site on your local
computer, you will get error messages during installation if any required PHP extensions are missing, and
should be able to install them and continue.

Web server

Apache (Recommended) Apache is the most commonly used web server. The core software will work on
Apache 2.4.7 or higher hosted on UNIX/Linux, OS X, or Windows that have the Apache mod_rewrite
module installed and enabled. The Apache VirtualHost configuration must contain the directive Al-
lowOverride All to allow the .htaccess file to be used.
PHP Local Server You can temporarily run a local demo site on your computer using just PHP, without in-
stalling web server software.
Nginx Nginx is a commonly used web server that focuses on high concurrency, performance and low memory
usage. The core software will work on Nginx 0.7 or greater hosted on UNIX/Linux, OS X, or Windows.
The ngx_http_rewrite_module must be installed and enabled.
Microsoft IIS Microsoft IIS is a web server and set of feature extension modules for use with Microsoft Win-
dows. The core software will work with IIS 5, 6, 7, 8, or 10 if PHP is configured correctly. Because clean
URLs are required, you may need to use a third party product. For IIS 7/8, you can use the Microsoft
URL Rewrite module or a third party solution.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.2. CONCEPT: ADDITIONAL TOOLS

Database
Use one of the following databases:
• MySQL - 5.7.8 (MariaDB 10.3.7, Percona 5.7.8) or higher with an InnoDB-compatible primary storage
engine
• PostgreSQL - 10.0 or higher with the pg_trgm extension
• SQLite - 3.26 or higher. Temporary local demo sites use SQLite, which is distributed as part of PHP
and doesn’t require installing separate database software, but make sure your version of PHP has the
minimum SQLite included.

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”System requirements”
• PHP Runtime Configuration (PHP memory limit and other settings)
• Installing a new Drupal application on your local machine

• Creating a Drupal demo application for evaluation purposes

Attributions
Adapted by Karl Kedrovsky, Brian Emery, and Jennifer Hodgdon from ”System requirements”, copyright
2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

3.2 Concept: Additional Tools

What tools are available for site builders?
There are several additional tools available that help you create sites faster, more accurately and with less effort.

Drush and Drupal Console See below for more about command-line tools.
Git See below for more about version control tools.
Composer See below for more about Composer.

Devel The contributed Devel module helps with development tasks such as debugging and inspecting code,
analyzing database queries, and generating dummy content.

What are command-line tools?

Command-line tools provide an alternative to using the administrative interface for various operations on your
site. Many site builders and maintainers have invested the time to install and learn a command-line tool, be-
cause:
• Administrative tasks are typically faster and less tedious when performed at the command line than in
the user interface.
• You can write scripts that combine site-related commands with other commands on the server, to auto-
mate more complicated tasks.
• Command-line tools provide additional functionality not available via the administrative interface; for
example, running database queries.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.2. CONCEPT: ADDITIONAL TOOLS

The most popular tools are Drush and Drupal Console. Drush has been available longer, and has commands
for both the core software and contributed modules; Drupal Console started as a tool for module programmers,
but has a growing list of commands for site builders. This guide documents commands from the latest stable
version of Drush for many tasks; it does not document Drupal Console commands or commands for older
versions of Drush, but you can look them up in the Drupal Console and Drush documentation.
To use these tools, you will need to have command-line terminal access to the server where your website
will be hosted, and you will need to install Composer first in order to install either the Drush or Drupal Console
tool.
To install Drush or Drupal Console first make sure your project is using Composer to manage dependencies.
See below for more about Composer. Then use the following commands:
# Install Drush
composer require drush/drush

# Install Drupal Console

composer require drupal/console:~1.0 --prefer-dist --optimize-autoloader

What is a version control system?

A version control system is software that keeps copies of files and revision history in a repository, and allows
you to add, delete, and update files. For a web site project, revision control software can help you:
• Test locally before deploying files on the live site
• Look at, compare with, and revert to previous versions of files

• Look at the added, changed, or deleted files before you commit the changes (update the repository)
• Merge changes from different team members together
• Keep files and configuration synchronized between local and live sites

There are many proprietary and open-source version control systems to choose from; a popular choice is
Git, which is open-source software that runs on most computer platforms. Git is a distributed version control
system that allows you to have one or more copies of your repository, which allows you to commit changes to a
copy and then only push them to the repository you’ve designated as canonical when you’re ready to share them
with others. The canonical git repository can be hosted on your local computer or a server at your company,
but many software projects and individuals host their Git repositories using third-party services provided by
GitLab or GitHub.

What is Composer used for?

Composer is a tool for managing PHP dependencies, where the developer specifies what version of each exter-
nal library is needed, and Composer manages the process of downloading and installing the libraries.
Composer can be installed on the local development environment or webserver but is often already available
in Drupal development tool kits.
The core software is a primary user of Composer, because it makes use of several externally-developed
software libraries, which must be downloaded and installed in order for the core software to work. When
you install the core software, you either need to download an archive that contains compatible versions of the
external libraries, or you need to run Composer to download the external libraries after the initial download.
The Drush and Drupal Console command-line tools are also downloaded using Composer.
Some contributed modules also make use of externally-developed software libraries; for example, a Face-
book integration module might require Facebook’s integration library to be installed for the module to work,
and a geographical module might make use of a standard library of geographical functions. To install a module
with external dependencies, you will need to run Composer.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.3. CONCEPT: METHODS FOR DOWNLOADING …

What tools are available for module and theme developers?

In addition to the site builder tools mentioned above, the following tools are useful for module and theme
developers.

Drupal Console Drupal Console is a command-line tool that generates boilerplate code and interacts with
a Drupal site. It can generate, for example, block or form code, install modules and themes, and create
dummy content. Drupal Console makes use of the Symfony Console.
Coder Coder is a command-line tool that checks if your modules and themes comply with coding standards
and other best practices. It can also fix coding standard violations.

Browser debugging tools Web browsers such as Firefox and Chrome include tools that allow viewing, edit-
ing, debugging, and monitoring CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. You can open the debugging pane or win-
dow by right-clicking the mouse in an area of your window, and choosing ”Inspect” or ”Inspect element”.

Related topics
Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download and Update Files”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Development tools overview”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Using Composer with Drupal”

• Wikipedia article ”Distributed version control”

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon. Some text adapted from ”Introduction to
Git”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

3.3 Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software
Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”
• Section 3.1, “Concept: Server Requirements”
• Section 1.4, “Concept: Distributions”

What methods are available for downloading the core software?

Before you can build a site, you will need to first download the core software. Depending on your plans, there
are several ways that you can download the core software:
Try a free online demo If you are evaluating whether or not to use Drupal to build a site, you can use an
online provider to get a demo installation of the core software in 20 minutes or less. See the Drupal.org
page ”Try Drupal”.

Use a one-click installer from your hosting provider If you choose to install the core software at your host-
ing provider, your hosting provider may have specific documentation and/or a one-click install that you
can use. See Drupal.org’s list of hosting providers that support Drupal.
Use a pre-configured environment Use a pre-configured environment or virtual machine that contains Dru-
pal and all the required supporting software to install Drupal locally. See the section for your operating
system under Drupal.org community documentation page ”Local server setup guide” for possible options.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.4. PREPARING TO INSTALL

Download manually from the web site If you plan to build a site without add-on modules that have compli-
cated dependencies, you can download the core software, or a distribution that contains the core software
and additional modules or themes, from the web site. See Section 3.6, “Downloading the Core Software
Manually” for instructions.
Use Composer If you plan to use the Drush tool (see Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”), or if you
are building a site that might use modules with complicated dependencies, you should use Composer to
download the core software, because Composer will manage the dependencies properly. If you start your
site by downloading manually, however, you can convert to using Composer to manage dependencies
later. See Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download and Update Files” for downloading and conversion
instructions.

What happens when I install the core software?

Installing the core software means setting up some database tables, configuration, and an administrative user
account, so that you can build and use your site.

What methods are available for installing the core software?

There are several ways to install the core software:
Behind-the-scenes installer If you choose to use an online demo or one-click installer from a hosting provider,
the core software may be installed for you automatically.
Interactive installer The core software has an interactive installer that presents you with several on-line forms,
and then completes the installation using the information you provide in the forms. See Section 3.4,
“Preparing to Install” and Section 3.7, “Running the Interactive Installer”.
Demo site installer If you download the core software to your local computer, you can quickly create a tem-
porary demo site that uses the built-in web server and SQLite database that are part of PHP. The command
to set up a demo site is given at the end of Section 3.6, “Downloading the Core Software Manually”. In
this case, you will not run the interactive installer.
Command-line tool Command-line tools (see Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”) can also be used to
perform the installation steps.
Attributions
Written and edited by Drew Gorton, Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at
Red Crackle.

3.4 Preparing to Install

Goal
Download the core software, and handle any required prerequisites.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 3.1, “Concept: Server Requirements”
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”
• Section 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”
• How to install and configure server software (if installing on your own computer)
• How to set up hosting for a generic web site
• How to create a database

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.5. USING COMPOSER TO DOWNLOAD AND …

Site prerequisites
Server software must be installed on the computer where you plan to host your site. See Section 3.1, “Concept:
Server Requirements”.
Depending on how you plan to download the core software, you may need to install additional software
tools first. See Section 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software” and Sec-
tion 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
1. Choose methods for downloading and installing the core software, from those listed in Section 3.3, “Con-
cept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”. The rest of these instructions apply
to the Composer and manual download options and the interactive installer; if you chose other options,
the software should be installed for you.
2. Set up a URL and hosting for your site on the server. Verify that the hosting is working by putting a simple
HTML file in the web root directory of the hosting, and visiting the URL for your site.
3. Create a database, along with a database user account with full access.

4. Download the core software files to the web root directory, using the method you decided on. See Sec-
tion 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software” for links to instructions.

Expand your understanding

See Section 3.7, “Running the Interactive Installer” to run the interactive installer.
Alternatively, you can use the following Drush command, from inside the directory that you downloaded
the software to, where DB_NAME, DB_USER and DB_PASS are your database’s credentials:
drush site:install standard --db-url=’mysql://DB_USER:DB_PASS@localhost/DB_NAME’ -- ←-
site-name=example

Videos
Preparing to Install
Preparing to Install

Additional resources
Drush
Attributions
Written and edited by Drew Gorton, Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at
Red Crackle.

3.5 Using Composer to Download and Update Files

Goal
Use Composer to download or update files and dependencies in the core software, or in add-on modules and
themes. Skip this topic if you are not using Composer.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.5. USING COMPOSER TO DOWNLOAD AND …

Site prerequisites
If you want to use Composer, it must be installed either on a local development server or your live site. See
Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
If you are unable to install the Composer tool on your live server, you can follow the steps in any of the sections
below on your local server, and then transfer any updated or added files to your live server. The recommended
procedure is to make an archive or zip file of the new and changed directories, transfer the archive to your live
server, delete the directories that have changed, and extract the archive. Make sure to check for updates and
additions to the following files, in the root of your installation:
• vendor directory

• autoload.php
• composer.json
• composer.lock

Using Composer to download the core software

Follow these steps if you have not yet downloaded or installed the core software, and you want to use Composer
to download both the core software and its external dependencies:
1. At the command line, change to one level above the directory where you want the software to reside.

2. Enter this command, where mydir is the directory you want to create:
composer create-project drupal/recommended-project mydir

3. The latest release of the core software will be downloaded to the mydir/web sub-directory.

Converting a previously-downloaded site to use Composer

If you previously downloaded the core software without using Composer, you may find later that you want
or need to use Composer to manage and update dependencies. For sites created using version 8.8.0 or later
of the core software the files already contain the necessary Composer configuration and you can start using
Composer at any time.
If your site includes modules, themes, or profiles, that are not part of the core software it is a good idea to
add them to the composer.json file in the root directory of your site.
Run the following command once for each module, theme, or profile downloaded from Drupal.org substi-
tuting module_name for the name of the project you want to add:
composer require drupal/module_name

See below for more on managing site dependencies with Composer.

To convert a site that was created using a version of the core software prior to 8.8.0, or that was installed
from a zip or tar.gz file downloaded from Drupal.org, see the instructions at Add Composer to an existing site.

Using Composer to download a module or theme

Follow these steps if you are already using Composer to manage the core software, and you want to use Com-
poser to add a contributed module or theme with its dependencies.

1. Each time you want to add a contributed module or theme, determine the project’s short name. This is the
last part of the URL of the project page; for example, the Geofield module, at https://www.drupal.org/-
project/geofield, has short name geofield.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.6. DOWNLOADING THE CORE SOFTWARE …

2. To download the contributed module or theme, along with its external dependencies, enter the following
command at the root of your site (substituting the short name of the module or theme for geofield):
composer require drupal/geofield

Using Composer to update previously-downloaded files

Follow these steps to update the files for the core software or a contributed module or theme, after having
already started to manage dependencies with Composer:

1. Determine the short name of the project you want to update. For the core software, it is core. For con-
tributed modules and themes, it is the last part of the URL of the project page; for example, the Geofield
module, at https://www.drupal.org/project/geofield, has short name geofield.
2. If you want to update to the latest stable release, use the following command, substituting the short name
of the project to be updated for geofield:
composer update drupal/geofield --with-dependencies

3. If you need a specific version, determine how to enter the version number you want to update to. For
example, for version 8.x-1.16 of a contributed module, you would enter just the 1.16, and for the core
software version 9.0.7, you would enter 9.0.7. Then enter the following command at the root of your site
(substituting the short name of the project for geofield and the correct version number):
composer require drupal/geofield:1.16

Expand your understanding

You can learn more about Composer commands by using Composer’s built-in help system. For example, to
learn more about the create-project command, enter composer help create-project in your com-
mand window.

Videos
Using Composer and Git to Download Files
Using Composer and Git to Download Files

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Using Composer to manage Drupal site dependencies”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Update Drupal core via Composer”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Add Composer to an existing site”

Attributions
Adapted by Jennifer Hodgdon, Hans Fredrik Nordhaug, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me from ”Using
Composer to manage Drupal site dependencies”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the
Drupal Community Documentation.

3.6 Downloading the Core Software Manually

Goal
Download the core software or a distribution manually. Skip this topic if you are downloading using some
other method.

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.6. DOWNLOADING THE CORE SOFTWARE …

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.4, “Concept: Distributions”
• Section 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”

Steps
1. Go to https://www.drupal.org and navigate to Build > Download & Extend in the top-level menu.

2. If you want to download just the core software, click the Download Drupal zip or download tar.gz link, and
save the file to your local machine.

3. If you want to download a distribution, click the Distributions icon or link, choose a distribution from the
list, click through to its project page. On the project page click the link to view the release notes for the
latest release, and click the link to download a zip or tar.gz file to your local machine.
4. Upload the downloaded file to your hosting account. Log in to the control panel and navigate to the
HTML directory. Save the file there.

5. Uncompress the tar.gz or zip file, which will create a new directory. If you do not have terminal access,
or your hosting server is not running Linux, your hosting control panel’s file manager should provide a
way to extract the files. If you have terminal access to your hosting server (running Linux), you can use
a command like:
tar -xzf drupal-9.0.7.tar.gz

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CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

6. Delete the compressed file from the server, unless your unpacking method already deleted it.

7. Rename the directory or reconfigure your web hosting, so that the directory name matches the directory
your web hosting is configured to use for your site.

Expand your understanding

Once you have the software downloaded, you can install a temporary demo site (see Section 3.3, “Concept:
Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”) by running the following command from the
top-level directory of the core software:
php core/scripts/drupal quick-start standard

The demo site will be installed, and your web browser should open to log in to the new site, which will only
run as long as the PHP command is active. To learn more about this functionality, use its help command:
php core/scripts/drupal quick-start --help

Videos
Downloading the Core Software Manually
Downloading the Core Software Manually
Attributions
Written and edited by Drew Gorton, Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at
Red Crackle.

3.7 Running the Interactive Installer

Goal
Install the core software and create the admin account by running the included installer.

Site prerequisites
Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install”

Steps
1. If you are using a 1-click install from a hosting provider or demo site, you will most likely see some or
all of the following screens as part of the installation process. If you uploaded the core files manually or
using Composer, to start the installer, open a browser and visit the URL that you set up for your hosting.
2. Select a language on the first page of the installer; for example, English. You could optionally choose
from any of the other listed languages. The language files for the chosen language will be downloaded
and installed so that the rest of the installation process can be finished in the chosen language. After
choosing a language, click Save and continue.

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3. Select an installation profile. Installation profiles provide site features and functions for a specific type
of site as a single download containing the core software, contributed modules, themes, and pre-defined
configuration. Core contains two installation profiles. Select the core Standard installation profile. Click
Save and continue.

4. The next step in the installer will verify that your system meets the minimum requirements. If it does
not, you’ll be presented with an outline of what needs to be corrected in order to proceed. If it does, the
installer will automatically advance to the next step.
5. Provide details of the database you created in the Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install” chapter. Then click
Save and continue.

29
CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

Field name Explanation Value

Database name The custom name given to the drupal
database
Database username Username created databaseUsername
Database password Password chosen

6. The next step will display a progress bar under the heading Installing Drupal. After the installer has
completed, it will automatically advance to the next step.

30
CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

7. The next step is to configure some basic information about your new site (also notice if there is a warning
about file permissions, for a later step). Note that the user account you create in this step is the site’s
admin account. See Section 7.2, “Concept: The User 1 Account” for important information about this
unique account. You can safely name this account ”admin”, and make sure to choose a secure and unique
password.
Fill in the form with the following information:

Field name Explanation Value

Site name The name chosen for the site Anytown Farmers Market
Site email address The email associated with the [email protected]
site
Username The designated user’s admin
credentials
Password The password chosen
Confirm password Repeat the password
Email address The user’s email [email protected]

The remaining fields can likely be left at their default values.

31
CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

32
CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

8. Click Save and continue.

9. You will be redirected to the front page of your new site and you should see the message Congratulations,
you installed Drupal! displayed at the top of the page.

10. You may have seen a warning in the Configuration step about file permissions, and you may continue to
see this warning until you fix the permissions. To avoid the warning and make your site more secure,
change the permissions on the sites/default directory and the sites/default/settings.php file so that they are
read-only (you may need to consult your hosting company documentation about how to do that).

Expand your understanding

Check the Status Report to see if there are any problems with the installation. See Section 12.5, “Concept: Status
Report”.

Related concepts
• Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

Videos
Running the Installer
Running the Installer

33
CHAPTER 3. INSTALLATION 3.7. RUNNING THE INTERACTIVE INSTALLER

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Create a database”
• Drupal.org community documentation section ”Webhosting issues”

Attributions
Written and edited by Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

34
Chapter 4

Basic Site Configuration

4.1 Concept: Administrative Overview

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

What is the administrative menu?

The toolbar provided by the core Toolbar module displays the Manage administrative menu at the top or left side
of the site, for users with permission to see it. This menu provides access to all of the administrative areas of the
site. The menu links will vary depending on which modules are active on your site and the permissions of the
person viewing the menu; if you install using the core Standard installation profile and have full administrative
permissions, the top-level links are as follows:

Content Lists and manages existing content, and allows creation of new content.

Structure Contains a list of links for managing structural elements of the site, such as blocks, content types,
menus, and taxonomy.
Appearance Manages themes and appearance-related settings.
Extend Manages the installation and uninstallation of modules.

Configuration Contains links to settings pages for various site features.

People Manages users, roles, and permissions.
Reports Contains links to logs, update information, search information, and other information about the site’s
status.

Help Lists help topics for installed modules that provide them.
The arrow button on the far right side of the second line of the toolbar (or far left side, if the site is being
viewed using a right-to-left-reading language like Arabic) can be used to switch the menu from appearing
horizontally at the top of the page, to a vertical format on the left side (or right side, in right-to-left languages).
When viewed vertically, the menu becomes an interactive tree.

35
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.1. CONCEPT: ADMINISTRATIVE OVERVIEW

36
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.1. CONCEPT: ADMINISTRATIVE OVERVIEW

This guide has a standard way to describe navigation to administrative pages using the administrative tool-
bar. See the section called “Conventions of the Guide” for more information.

What are contextual links?

Some administrative and editing functionality on the site can be accessed through the contextual links displayed
by the core Contextual Links module. Contextual links take you to some of the same pages that you can access
through the administrative menu, but instead of having to navigate through the menu hierarchy, these links
are provided near where the related content is displayed on your site.
Contextual links have to be activated to be visible. If your site’s theme uses the default styling for contextual
links, a pencil icon is used to indicate that contextual links are present and activated, and if you click the icon,
you will see the contextual links. There are two ways to activate the pencil icons that provide access to the
contextual links:
• If you are using a mouse in a browser, the icon will temporarily appear when you hover over an area that
has related contextual links.

• You can click the master pencil icon (or its Edit link) at the right end of the top bar in the toolbar, which will
activate all of the contextual links on the current page. This icon is only visible on pages with contextual
links.

37
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.2. EDITING BASIC SITE INFORMATION

Attributions
Written by Scott Wilkinson and Jennifer Hodgdon.

4.2 Editing Basic Site Information

Goal
Change basic site information such as Site name, Slogan, Default time zone.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 4.1, “Concept: Administrative Overview”

38
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.2. EDITING BASIC SITE INFORMATION

Steps
Configuring the basic site information
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > System > Basic site settings (admin/config/system/site-
information) to change the Site name, Slogan, administrative Email address, or the Default front page path.

2. Fill in the available fields as appropriate for your site.

Field name Explanation Example value

Site details > Site name Used to identify the site and Anytown Farmers Market
displayed in browsers
Site details > Slogan How this is used depends on Farm Fresh Food
your site’s theme. Not
displayed by default when
using the Olivero theme.
Site details > Email address Used as From address in [email protected]
automated email messages
(registrations, password
resets, etc)

3. After editing the fields, click Save configuration to see the changes applied to the site.

Configuring default Regional settings

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Regional and language > Regional settings
(admin/config/regional/settings).
2. Fill in the form as follows:

Field name Explanation Example value

Locale > Default country The primary country for your United States
site
Locale > First day of week The day when the week starts Sunday
on calendars

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CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.2. EDITING BASIC SITE INFORMATION

Field name Explanation Example value

Time zones > Default time The primary time zone for America > Los Angeles
zone your site
Time zones > Users may set Whether logged-in users can Unchecked
their own time zone choose a different time zone
for display of dates and times
on the site

3. After editing the fields, click Save configuration to see the changes applied to the site.

Videos
Editing Basic Site Information
Editing Basic Site Information

40
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.3. INSTALLING A MODULE

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Getting started with Drupal administration”
Attributions
Written and edited by Sree Veturi, Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, Antje Lorch, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Joe
Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

4.3 Installing a Module

Goal
Install a core module, or a contributed module whose files have already been uploaded to the site, through the
administrative interface or using Drush.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

Site prerequisites
If you want to use Drush to install modules, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional
Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface or Drush to install modules.

Using the administrative interface

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Extend (admin/modules). The Extend page appears show-
ing all the available modules in your site.
2. Check the boxes for the module or modules you want to install. For example, check the box for the core
Actions UI module.

3. Click Install. The checked modules will be installed.

41
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.4. UNINSTALLING UNUSED MODULES

Using Drush
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Extend (admin/modules). The Extend page appears show-
ing all the available modules in your site.

2. Find the machine name of the module you want to install, by expanding the information area for the
module. For instance, the core Actions UI module’s machine name is action.
3. Run the following Drush command to install the module:
drush pm:enable action

Expand your understanding

If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Videos
Installing a Module
Installing a Module

Additional resources
Drush
Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

4.4 Uninstalling Unused Modules

Goal
Uninstall the core Search and History modules, as well as the core Actions UI module if you installed it in
Section 4.3, “Installing a Module”, to reduce overhead.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

Site prerequisites
• You must have at least one unused module on your site that you want to uninstall, such as the core Search
module.
• If you want to use Drush to uninstall modules, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Ad-
ditional Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface or Drush to uninstall modules.

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CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.4. UNINSTALLING UNUSED MODULES

Using the administrative interface

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Extend > Uninstall (admin/modules/uninstall) where you
will find the list of modules that are ready to be uninstalled.

2. Check the boxes for the modules you are uninstalling (Search, History, and Actions UI). Click Uninstall at
the bottom of the page.

NOTE
You cannot uninstall a module if it is required by some other module(s) and/or func-
tionality. For example, the core File module is required by the core Text Editor,
CKEditor, and Image modules. It can’t be uninstalled unless you uninstall its de-
pendent module(s) and functionality first. A module that cannot be uninstalled yet
will have a disabled checkbox, restricting you from uninstalling it.

3. Step 2 will prompt you to confirm the module uninstall request. Click Uninstall.

43
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.4. UNINSTALLING UNUSED MODULES

44
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.5. CONFIGURING USER ACCOUNT SETTINGS

Using Drush
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Extend (admin/modules). The Extend page appears show-
ing all the available modules in your site.

2. Find the machine name of the module you want to uninstall, by expanding the information area for the
module. For instance, the core Actions UI module’s machine name is action.
3. Run the following Drush command to uninstall the module:
drush pm:uninstall action

Expand your understanding

• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

• Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”

• You can also uninstall the core Comment module by following these steps, but only after comment fields
have been removed, which is a side effect of Section 6.2, “Deleting a Content Type”.

Videos
Uninstalling Unused Modules
Uninstalling Unused Modules
Attributions
Written and edited by Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me, Surendra Mohan, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

4.5 Configuring User Account Settings

Goal
Turn off the ability for people to register user accounts on the site. Also, review and/or edit the email messages
generated by the site for events related to user accounts.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 4.1, “Concept: Administrative Overview”

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > People > Account settings (admin/con-
fig/people/accounts).
2. Under Registration and cancellation, select Administrators only as the people with permissions to register
user accounts. You can check Require email verification when a visitor creates an account in case you want to
change the settings for account registration later on.

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CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.5. CONFIGURING USER ACCOUNT SETTINGS

3. Optionally, change the default email address from which user account notifications from the farmers
market website will be sent. This will help you maintain a separate email address from the one used for
the website in general. For example, this email address for user account notifications will be useful for a
staff member(s) communicating with vendors.

4. Optionally, edit the email templates under Emails to customize automated emails. There are several email
templates provided by the core software. They are meant for different user-specific occasions. All of them
can be personalized and three can be disabled via checkboxes: activation, blocking, and cancellation.
You can send out your own text (for example, welcoming the new vendors for whom accounts were just
created) by editing the Welcome (new user created by administrator) template.

46
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.6. CONFIGURING THE THEME

5. Click Save configuration to save the changes.

Expand your understanding

• Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”
• Section 7.4, “Creating a User Account”

Related concepts
See Chapter 7, Managing User Accounts for more information about user accounts and permissions.

Videos
Configuring User Account Settings
Configuring User Account Settings

Additional resources
Securing your site can help you with a more safety-focused approach to configuration.
Attributions
Written and edited by Laura Vass at Pronovix, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

4.6 Configuring the Theme

Goal
Edit the settings of the default core Olivero theme to change the color scheme and to add a logo.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

47
CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.6. CONFIGURING THE THEME

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Appearance (admin/appearance).
2. Under Installed themes, you will find Olivero listed as your default theme. Under Olivero (default theme),
click Settings.

3. Under Logo image, uncheck Use the logo supplied by the theme.

4. Under Upload logo image, locate a logo file and upload it to your site. Note: You can also set a universal logo
for all themes under Appearance > Settings (admin/appearance/settings). A custom logo for your theme will
override the universal logo.
Once you have selected the file you would like to upload, you will see its filename next to the Choose File
or Browse button in your browser.
5. Under Olivero Utilities, you can choose to use a different color scheme for the theme. You can choose from
a list of existing color scheme’s, or enter a color and the core software will generate a new scheme based
on that color.

For example, use the following custom color:

+

Field Color
Primary base color #7db84a (green)

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CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.6. CONFIGURING THE THEME

+ Note: You can also use a color picker by pressing the colored square on the right to select a color of your
choice. The web color codes will be added for you.

1. In order to save your changes and see the updated colors and logo on your site, click Save configuration at
the bottom of the page.
2. Click Return to site or Home in the toolbar to verify that you have updated the core Olivero theme settings
for your website.

Expand your understanding

• Section 11.4, “Finding Themes”

• Section 11.5, “Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org”

• If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

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CHAPTER 4. BASIC SITE CONFIGURATION 4.6. CONFIGURING THE THEME

Videos
Configuring the Theme
Configuring the Theme
Attributions
Written and edited by Ann Greazel, Amanda Luker at Advomatic, Jack Haas, and Joe Shindelar at Drupal-
ize.Me.

50
Chapter 5

Basic Page Management

5.1 Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs

What is a URL?
URL is the abbreviation for ”Uniform Resource Locator”, which is the page’s address on the web. It is the
”name” by which a browser identifies a page to display. In the example ”Visit us at example.com.”, example.com
is the URL for the home page of your website. Users use URLs to locate content on the web.

What is a Path?
A path is the unique, last part of the URL for a specific function or piece of content. For example, for a page
whose full URL is http://example.com/node/7, the path is node/7.
Here are some examples of paths you might find in your site:
• node/7
• taxonomy/term/6

• admin/content/comment
• user/login
• user/3

What is an Alias?
The core software has a feature called ”URL Alias” that allows you to provide a more understandable name
to the content. So, if you have an ”About Us” page with the path node/7, you can set up an alias so that your
visitors will see it as http://www.example.com/AboutUs. The core Path module, which supports URL aliasing,
provides this functionality.

Related topics
• Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”
• Section 5.3, “Editing a Content Item”

Attributions
Adapted by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix from ”URL aliases”, and ”URL paths” copyright 2000-2024 by the
individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation

51
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.2. CREATING A CONTENT ITEM

5.2 Creating a Content Item

Goal
Create and publish a content item that will be used as the home page of the site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs”
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

Site prerequisites
The Basic page content type must exist. This is created on your site when you install with the core Standard
installation profile.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content > Add content > Basic page (node/add/page). The
Create Basic page form appears.
2. Click Edit summary.
3. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Title Title of the page. Will also be Home
used as a meta tag in the
source code, URL alias, and as
label of the content item in
administration screens
Summary Summary of the value of the Opening times and location of
body field. Can be used as City Market.
teaser in overview pages
Body Full content of the page Welcome to City Market - your
neighborhood farmers market!
Open: Sundays, 9 AM to 2 PM,
April to September
Location: Parking lot of Trust
Bank, 1st & Union, downtown
Published Whether the content is Checked
published for public view or
not
URL alias > URL alias Alternate relative path for the /home
content

By clicking the Source button in the rich text editor toolbar, you can see the HTML source code of the text
that you are editing.

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CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.2. CREATING A CONTENT ITEM

4. Click Preview to ensure everything looks like expected.

5. Click Back to content editing.
6. Click Save. The content is saved and can be found on the Content page.
7. Follow the same steps to create an About page, with title ”About”, and a body telling about the history of
the farmer’s market.

Expand your understanding

• Section 5.4, “Designating a Front Page for your Site”
• Section 5.6, “Adding a Page to the Navigation”
• Section 10.3, “Translating Content”

Related concepts
• Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”
• Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs”
• Section 5.3, “Editing a Content Item”

53
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.3. EDITING A CONTENT ITEM

Videos
Creating a Content Item
Creating a Content Item

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”About nodes”
Attributions
Written by Agnes Kiss and Boris Doesborg.

5.3 Editing a Content Item

Goal
Update the hours on the Home page content item.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”

Site prerequisites
A content item for the Home page must exist. See Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content (admin/content).
2. If the content item you want to edit was updated or created recently, it should appear near the top of the
content list on that page. If not, you can use the Content type, Title, or other filters to locate the content
item.

3. Click Edit in the row of the content item you want to edit (Home), to open the content editing form.
Update the opening hours in the Body field. See Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item” for an explanation
of the fields and a screenshot.
4. Check Create new revision under Published, if it is not already checked, and enter a Revision log message
explaining what changes you are making (for example, you might enter ”Updated opening hours”). This
text will appear in the revision log for the page.

54
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.4. DESIGNATING A FRONT PAGE FOR YOUR SITE

5. Click Save to save your changes.

6. You will be redirected back to the Content administrative page, and there should be a message showing
that the content item was updated.

Expand your understanding

As an alternative to the first two steps above, you can also reach the content edit form as follows:
1. Starting from your site’s home page, use the site’s navigation menus to locate the page where the content
you want to edit is displayed to visitors.
2. Most themes will display an Edit link or tab near the top of that page to people with permission to edit
the page; clicking the link will take you to the full content edit form.

Videos
Editing a Content Item
Editing a Content Item
Attributions
Written by Chris Dart and Jennifer Hodgdon.

5.4 Designating a Front Page for your Site

Goal
Configure which content item is displayed as the front page of your website.

Site prerequisites
The content item that you want to designate as the front page of your site must exist. See Section 5.2, “Creating
a Content Item”.

55
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.4. DESIGNATING A FRONT PAGE FOR YOUR SITE

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > System > Basic site settings (admin/config/system/site-
information).

2. Under Front page, replace /node with the name of the page you would like to make the home page. To use
the home page that was previously created, provide its path /home. Click Save configuration.

3. Navigate to the home page to verify that it displays content as configured by you.

Expand your understanding

• Section 5.6, “Adding a Page to the Navigation”

• Follow Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item” to create an error page to be used as a 404 (page not found)
or 403 (not authorized) response on your site. Then following the steps here, you can designate it as the
error response, in the Error pages section of the configuration.

56
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.5. CONCEPT: MENU

Related concepts
Section 5.5, “Concept: Menu”

Videos
Designating a Front Page for Your Site
Designating a Front Page for Your Site
Attributions
Written and edited by Ann Greazel, Jack Haas, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

5.5 Concept: Menu

What is a menu?
Menus are a collection of links used to navigate a website. The core Menu UI module provides an interface
to control and customize the menu system. Menus are primarily displayed as a hierarchical list of links. By
default, new menu links are placed inside a built-in menu labeled Main navigation, but administrators can also
create custom menus.
The core Standard installation profile contains five menus:
Main navigation Links to sections intended for site visitors. They are usually created by site administrators.
Administration Links to administrative tasks. This menu mainly contains links supplied by modules on your
site.
User account menu Links to tasks associated with the user account such as My account and Log out.
Footer Links to important pages within the site intended for the footer. They are usually created by site
administrators.
Tools Links to tasks necessary for site visitors. Some modules feature their links here.
You can customize menus in the following ways, using the menu administration functionality:
• Creating new custom menus.
• Adding new menu links.
• Reordering menu links by setting their ”weight” or by dragging them into place.
• Renaming menu links (link title).
• Changing the link description (the tooltip that appears when you mouse over a menu link).
• Moving a menu link into a different menu by editing its Parent link property.
A menu link will only be shown to a visitor if they have the rights to view the page it links to. For example,
the admin menu link is not shown to visitors who are not logged in.

Related topics
• Section 5.6, “Adding a Page to the Navigation”
• Section 5.7, “Changing the Order of Navigation”
• To display a menu, you will need to place the block that corresponds to the menu in a region of your
theme; see Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”, Section 2.1, “Concept: Regions in a Theme”, and Section 8.3,
“Placing a Block in a Region”. The core Standard installation profile places all of the menus it defines
except Administration in regions of the core Bartik theme. The core Toolbar module, which is installed
by the core Standard installation profile, displays the Administration menu; it is also displayed by the
contributed Admin Toolbar module.

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CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.6. ADDING A PAGE TO THE NAVIGATION

Attributions
Written and edited by Ajay Viswambharan, Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, Jennifer Hodgdon and Bill Seremetis.

5.6 Adding a Page to the Navigation

Goal
Add a page to the navigation. For example, the About page.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 5.5, “Concept: Menu”

• Section 5.3, “Editing a Content Item”

Site prerequisites
The About page content item must exist. See Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content (admin/content).
2. Find the About page, and click Edit in that row. The content editing form appears.

3. Click Menu settings on the right to expand it.

4. Check Provide a menu link for the menu options to appear.
5. Enter values from the table below:

Field name Explanation Example value

Menu link title Title that will be displayed in About
the menu
Description Text that will be displayed History of the market
when a visitor hovers over the
link
Parent link Location of the page in the <Main navigation>
menu hierarchy. For example,
if you choose <Main
navigation>, the page will
appear in the highest level of
the navigation. By choosing
another menu link as parent,
you can create a menu
hierarchy of multiple levels.
Weight The order in which the page -2
should appear in the menu
(lower-weighted menu links
will be shown before
higher-weighted menu links)

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CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.6. ADDING A PAGE TO THE NAVIGATION

6. Click Save to save the changes. Click Home or Return to site in the navigation bar to see the result, which
could look like the picture below.

59
CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.7. CHANGING THE ORDER OF NAVIGATION

Expand your understanding

Section 5.7, “Changing the Order of Navigation”

Videos
Adding a Page to the Navigation
Adding a Page to the Navigation

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Adding a link to a menu”
Attributions
Adapted by Boris Doesborg from ”Adding a link to a menu”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual con-
tributors to the Drupal Community Documentation; edited by Jack Haas.

5.7 Changing the Order of Navigation

Goal
Reorder the links in a menu.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 5.5, “Concept: Menu”
• Section 5.6, “Adding a Page to the Navigation”

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CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.7. CHANGING THE ORDER OF NAVIGATION

Site prerequisites
Home and About pages must exist in the main navigation menu. See Section 5.6, “Adding a Page to the Navi-
gation”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Menus (admin/structure/menu) where all
menus on your site are listed. Click Edit Menu from the Operations dropdown for Main navigation. You can
also reach this page using contextual links (refer to Section 4.1, “Concept: Administrative Overview”) for
the menu. Note that the names and descriptions of the menus that were provided by your installation
profile are shown in English on this page; see Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and
Content translation” for an explanation.

2. The Edit menu page will display a list of each link in the menu you chose (Main navigation).

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CHAPTER 5. BASIC PAGE MANAGEMENT 5.7. CHANGING THE ORDER OF NAVIGATION

3. Drag the cross bar handles of menu links to change their order: Home, then About. As an alternative
to dragging, you can click the Show row weights link at the top of the table and select numerical weights
(menu links with lower or more negative weights will be shown first).

4. Click Save.
5. The home page now displays the main navigation with the Home menu link displayed first.

Expand your understanding

Add a menu link called Contact, leading to the /contact page, to your Main navigation menu. The contact page
is provided by the core Contact module; you may want to edit its layout and fields (see Section 6.9, “Changing
Content Entry Forms”).

Related concepts
Section 5.5, “Concept: Menu”

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Videos
Changing the Order of Navigation
Changing the Order of Navigation
Attributions
Written by Ann Greazel.

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Chapter 6

Setting Up Content Structure

6.1 Adding a Content Type

Goal
Add and configure a new content type Vendor.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

Site prerequisites
You need to have a plan in place for your content structure. See Section 2.5, “Planning your Content Structure”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). The
Content types page appears showing all the available types of content. Note that the names and descrip-
tions of the content types that were provided by your installation profile are shown in English on this page;
see Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation” for an explanation.
2. Click Add content type. The Add content type page appears. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Name Name of the content type Vendor
Description Explain the use of the content Information about a vendor
type

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3. Under Submission form settings, configure the form that is used for creating and editing content of this
type. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Title field label Label of the Title field that is Vendor name
shown when editing or
creating content of this type.
Preview before submitting Option to choose whether you Optional
should preview the content
before submitting.
Explanation or submission Instructions for creating or (Leave blank)
guidelines editing content.

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4. Under Publishing options, decide on default options for new content of this type. Fill in the fields as shown
below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Published Make the content item Checked
published by default.
Promoted to front page In a default website, this Unchecked
setting can be used to show
content on the homepage.
Sticky at top of lists In a default website, this Unchecked
setting can be used to keep
content on top of a list.
Create new revision Create a new revision each Checked
time the vendor is being
edited.

Changing these settings does not affect the content items that have already been created.

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5. Under Display settings, decide if the author and publication date will be visible in the content item. Fill in
the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Display author and date Display the author username Unchecked
information and publication date on each
vendor page.

6. Under Menu settings, fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Available menus Menus that this type of content Unchecked
can be added to. Vendors do
not need to appear in menus,
so uncheck all menu options.

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7. Click Save and manage fields to save the content type. The Manage fields page appears that allows you to
add fields to the content type. See Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

8. Follow the same steps to create a content type for recipes. Example values for the fields in the forms,
where they are different from the steps above:

Field name Example value

Name Recipe
Description A recipe submitted by a vendor
Submission form settings - Title Recipe name

Expand your understanding

• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

• Install and configure the contributed Pathauto module so that content items get automatically generated
URLs/path aliases. See Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs” for more on URLs within your
site, Section 11.1, “Finding Modules” for instructions on finding contributed modules, and Section 11.3,
“Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org” for instructions on downloading and installing
contributed modules.

Videos
Adding a Content Type
Adding a Content Type

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Attributions
Written and edited by Sree Veturi, Boris Doesborg, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

6.2 Deleting a Content Type

Goal
Delete the unneeded content type Article.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 4.1, “Concept: Administrative Overview”

Site prerequisites
The Article content type must exist. It is created on your site when you install with the core Standard installation
profile.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). The
Content types page appears.
2. Click Delete in the Operations dropdown button for the Article content type. Note that the name of this
content type is in English on this page; see Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and
Content translation” for an explanation.

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3. A confirmation page is displayed. Click Delete.

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4. The Content types page appears with a confirmation message saying that the content type has been deleted:

Videos
Deleting a Content Type
Deleting a Content Type
Attributions
Written and edited by Sree Veturi and Boris Doesborg.

6.3 Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type

Goal
Add a link field and an image field to the Vendor content type.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

Site prerequisites
The Vendor content type must exist. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”.

Steps
Add the fields Vendor URL and Main image to the Vendor content type.
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). Then
click Manage fields in the dropdown button for the Vendor content type. The Manage fields page appears.
From here you can either create a new field for the content type or re-use an existing field. Note that the
names and descriptions of the content types and fields that were provided by your installation profile are
shown in English on these pages; see Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content
translation” for an explanation.
2. Click Add field. The Add field page appears.
3. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Label Label that is visible in Vendor URL
administration pages
Choose a type of field Field type Link

A machine name is automatically generated, based on the Label value. Click Edit if you want to override
the default name.

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4. Click Continue. The page _Vendor URL settings for Vendor appears which allows you to configure the field.
Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Label Label that is visible in the Vendor URL
content form
Allowed number of values The number of values that can Limited, 1
be entered
Help text The instruction that is shown (leave blank)
below the field
Required field Whether the field is required Unchecked
or not
Allowed link type The kind of links that can be External links only
entered

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Field name Explanation Value

Allow link text Whether a link text can be Disabled
entered

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5. Click Save settings. The Vendor URL has been added to the content type. Continue creating the Main
image field.

6. Click Add field. The Add field page appears. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Label Label that is visible in Main image
administration pages
Choose a type of field Field type File upload
Choose an option below Field sub-type Image

7. Click Continue. The page Main image settings for Vendor appears. Fill in the fields as shown below.
+

Field name Explanation Value

Label Label that is visible in the Main image
content form
Allowed number of values The number of values that can Limited, 1
be entered
Default image You can set a default image here. (leave blank)
This will be used when you do
not provide an image when
creating a Vendor content item.
Help text The instruction that is shown (leave blank)
below the field
Required field Whether the field is required or Checked
not
Allowed file extensions The type of images that can be png, gif, jpg, jpeg
uploaded
File directory The directory where the files vendors
will be stored. By providing a
file directory value, you ensure
that all images uploaded via the
Main image field will be located
in the same directory.
Minimum image dimensions The minimum dimensions of the 600 x 600
uploaded image
Maximum upload size The maximum file size of the 5 MB
uploaded image
Enable Alt field Whether an alternative text can Checked
be entered
Alt field required Whether an alternative text is Checked
required

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1. Click Save settings. Main image has been added to the content type.

2. Add a Main image field to the Recipe content type, using similar steps. Start by navigating to the Recipe
content type’s Manage Fields page. Then use the Re-use an existing field button to open the modal dialog
and press the Re-use button that corresponds with the Main image field in the table. Then skip to step 7
and follow the remaining steps.

3. Create two Vendor content items (see Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”) called ”Happy Farm” and
”Sweet Honey”. Make sure that they include images and URLs.

Expand your understanding

• Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles”
• Section 6.11, “Changing Content Display”
• Section 6.9, “Changing Content Entry Forms”

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Videos
Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type
Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Add a field to a content type”
Attributions
Written by Sree Veturi and Boris Doesborg, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

6.4 Concept: Reference Fields

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

What is a reference field?

A reference field is a field that represents a relationship between an entity and one or more other entities, which
may belong to the same or different entity type. The three most commonly-used reference fields are:
Content reference A reference to a content item. For example, you might want to connect recipes to the
vendors who submitted them. You would set up a content reference field called Submitted by referencing
Vendor content items on the Recipe content type.
Taxonomy term reference A reference to a taxonomy term. For example, you might want to connect recipes
to their ingredients. You would set up a taxonomy term reference field called Ingredients on the Recipe
content type. This reference field will point to the vocabulary Ingredients.
User reference A reference to a user account. For example, you might want to connect recipes with their
chefs. You would set up a user reference field called Chefs on the Recipe content type.

Related topics
Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy”
Attributions
Written and edited by Surendra Mohan, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

6.5 Concept: Taxonomy

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 6.4, “Concept: Reference Fields”

What is Taxonomy?
Taxonomy is used to classify website content. One common example of taxonomy is the tags used to classify or
categorize posts in a blog website; the farmers market website could use an ingredients taxonomy to classify
recipes. Individual taxonomy entities are known as terms (the blog tags or recipe ingredients in these examples);
and a set of terms is known as a vocabulary (the set of all blog post tags, or the set of all recipe ingredients in
these examples). Technically, taxonomy terms are an entity type and the entity subtypes are the vocabularies.
Like other entities, taxonomy terms can have fields attached; for instance, you could set up an image field to
contain an icon for each term.

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An individual vocabulary can organize its terms in a hierarchy, or it could be flat. For example, blog tags
normally have a flat structure, while a recipe ingredients vocabulary could be hierarchical (for example, toma-
toes could be a sub-term of vegetables, and under tomatoes, you could have green and red tomatoes).
Taxonomy terms are normally attached as reference fields to other content entities, which is how you can
use them to classify content. When you set up a taxonomy reference field, you can let users enter terms in two
ways:
Free tagging New terms can be created right on the content editing form.

Fixed list of terms The list of terms is curated and managed outside the content editing form, and users can
only choose from the existing list when editing content.
Taxonomy reference fields can be added to any entity, such as user accounts, custom blocks, or regular
content items. If you use them to classify regular content items, your site will automatically be set up with
taxonomy listing pages for each term; each of these pages lists all of the content items that are classified with
that term. For example, if you created several recipes that all had carrots as an ingredient, you might see
something like this on the Carrots taxonomy listing page:

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Related topics
• Section 6.6, “Setting Up a Taxonomy”.
• The listing pages are views, which are covered in Chapter 9, Creating Listings with Views.

Attributions
Adapted and edited by Surendra Mohan, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle from ”Orga-
nizing content with taxonomies” and ”About taxonomy”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors
to the Drupal Community Documentation.

6.6 Setting Up a Taxonomy

Goal
Create an Ingredients vocabulary and add it to the Recipe content type as a field that can contain an unlimited
number of values and that allows adding new terms to the vocabulary.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy”
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

Site prerequisites
The Recipe content type must exist. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Taxonomy (admin/structure/taxonomy). You
will see the Tags vocabulary that was created with the core Standard installation profile. (Note that the
name and description of this vocabulary are shown in English on this page; see Section 2.7, “Concept:
User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation” for an explanation.)

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2. Click Add vocabulary, and fill in the values below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Name The name of the vocabulary Ingredients
Description A brief note about the (Leave blank)
vocabulary

3. Click Save. You will be taken to the Ingredients page, which shows a list of all the terms in this vocabulary.

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4. Click Add term. Enter ”Butter” in the Name field. Click Save.

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5. You will receive a confirmation about the term you created. Add more terms. For example, ”Eggs” and
”Milk”.

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6. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content Types (admin/structure/types). Click
Manage fields for your Recipe content type.

7. Click Add field, and enter values from the table below. Click Save and continue.

Field name Explanation Value

Label The title to give the field Ingredients
Choose a type of field Select the field type Reference
Choose an option below: Type of content to reference Taxonomy term

8. On the following configuration screen, enter the values from the table below. Click Save settings.

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Field name Explanation Value

Help text Help shown to users creating Enter ingredients that site
content visitors might want to search
for
Type of item to reference The type of entity that is Taxonomy term
referenced by the field
Allowed number of values The number of values a user Unlimited
can enter
Reference type > Reference Select the method used to Default
method choose allowed values
Reference type > Vocabulary Select the vocabulary to choose Ingredients
allowed values from
Reference type > Create Whether new ingredient terms Checked
referenced entities if they don’t can be created from the
already exist content editing form

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9. Click Save settings. You will be taken back to the Manage Fields page. A message will be displayed saying
that the configuration for Ingredients is complete.

Videos
Setting up a Taxonomy
Setting up a Taxonomy
Attributions
Written and edited by Bob Snodgrass, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

6.7 Adding a Reference Field

Goal
Add a reference field so that recipes can be linked to the vendor that has submitted it.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”
• Section 6.4, “Concept: Reference Fields”
• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”

Site prerequisites
The Recipe and Vendor content types must exist. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). Then
click Manage fields in the dropdown button for the Recipe content type. The Manage fields page appears.
2. Click Add field. The Add field page appears. Fill in the fields as shown below. Click Save and continue.

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Field name Explanation Value

Add a new field Option to specify the field type Reference > Content
Label The title you want to give the Submitted by
field

3. The page Submitted by appears which lets you set the allowed number of values. Fill in the fields as
shown below. Click Save settings.

Field name Explanation Value

Type of item to reference Option to select the type of Content
referenced entity
Allowed number of values Specify the count of values Limited, 1
associated with the field

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4. The page Submitted by settings for Recipe appears which allows you to configure the field. Fill in the fields
as shown below. Click Save settings.

Field name Explanation Value

Label Title shown for this field on Submitted by
the page
Help text Brief text aiding the person Choose the vendor that
creating content submitted this recipe
Required field Whether a value has to be Checked
provided or not
Reference type > Reference Option to select reference Default
method method
Reference type > Content type Specify the content type Vendor
Reference type > Sort by Sorting field Vendor name
Reference type > Sort direction Sorting order Ascending

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5. The Submitted by field has been added to the content type.

Videos
Adding a Reference Field
Adding a Reference Field
Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

6.8 Concept: Forms and Widgets

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

What are forms and widgets?

The content management system software that your site is running allows administrators to edit content and
configure settings online, using various web forms. In particular, content editing forms are used to edit your
site’s content entities, and they are configurable by administrators; settings configuration forms are provided
by modules and cannot themselves be configured.
The data in your site’s content entities is stored in one or more fields that are attached to the entity type
and/or subtype. When you configure the content editing form for each entity subtype, you can:
• Select a widget for each field. A widget defines the method used to enter the data for the field. For example,
a taxonomy term can be chosen using an autocomplete field, a select list, or a tags-style field that lets
editors add new tags automatically.
• Configure widget settings. For example, you can choose the size of a plain-text entry field.
• Hide one or more fields from the editing form.
• Reorder the fields.

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In principle, you can also have multiple content editing forms available for each entity subtype. This feature
is rarely used, however; the only exception in common use is for the user profile fields: you can use different
forms for user registration and user editing. For example, you might have a limited set of fields shown when
users first register on the site, and more fields shown later on when they edit their profiles.

Related topics
• Section 6.9, “Changing Content Entry Forms”
• Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters”

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

6.9 Changing Content Entry Forms

Goal
Change the Recipe form to use a different widget to enter terms in the Ingredients field.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

• Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy”

• Section 6.8, “Concept: Forms and Widgets”

Site prerequisites
The Recipe content type must exist, and it must have an Ingredients taxonomy term reference field. At least
one Vendor content item must exist. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type” and Section 6.6, “Setting Up a
Taxonomy”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content > Add content > Recipe (node/add/recipe) to look
at the content entry form that is set up by default. Notice how you have to enter ingredients one by one,
instead of having a more compact format.
2. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). Then
click Manage form display on the dropdown button for the Recipe content type. The Manage form display
page appears.
3. For the Ingredients field, select Autocomplete (Tags style) in the Widget column.

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4. Click Save.

5. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content > Add content > Recipe (node/add/recipe) to verify
the changed behavior of the content form. The Ingredients field is now a single text field that accepts
multiple values.

6. Create two Recipe content items (see Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”), such as recipes for ”Green
Salad” and ”Fresh Carrots”. Make sure all the fields have values, including images, ingredients, and
submitted by (set this to one of the Vendor content items you created in Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields
to a Content Type”).

Expand your understanding

Change the main site Contact form by navigating in the Manage administrative menu to Structure > Contact
forms. For instance, you may want to hide the Send yourself a copy or Language fields.

Videos
Changing Content Entry Forms

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Changing Content Entry Forms

Attributions
Written by Boris Doesborg.

6.10 Concept: View Modes and Formatters

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”

What is a View mode?

How an entity (such as content, a user or a comment) is displayed, depends on the context in which it is shown.
This context is known as a view mode. Examples of view modes are:
• a full page of the content with all the field values
• a teaser of the content with a thumbnail image and a Read more link

• a full user profile with a zoomable portrait photo

• a user avatar with username and a link to the profile
Every view mode can be configured through the administration pages. To see the configuration options for
the view modes of the Recipe content type, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Structure > Content
types (admin/structure/types) and click Manage display from the dropdown button. In each view mode, all fields
can be hidden or displayed, and if they are displayed, you can choose and configure the field formatter.

What is a field formatter?

A field formatter is a setting for displaying the field values. For example, long text fields can be displayed
trimmed or full-length, and taxonomy term reference fields can be displayed in plain text or linked to the
taxonomy term page. Consult the Manage display page to see the field formatters for the fields of the Recipe
content type.

Related topics
• Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”

• Section 6.11, “Changing Content Display”

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”View modes”
Attributions
Adapted by Boris Doesborg from ”View modes”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the
Drupal Community Documentation.

6.11 Changing Content Display

Goal
Make the content items more readable, accessible, and visibly attractive by reordering the fields, hiding labels,
and tuning the output of the fields.

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Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters”

Site prerequisites
The Vendor content type must exist, it must have Main Image and Vendor URL fields, and your site must have
at least one Vendor content item. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields
to a Content Type”, and Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.

Steps
1. Find and view a Vendor content item you created in Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”.
Notice that there are several things that could be done to improve how the page looks:

• The Main Image and Vendor URL fields should not have labels.
• The order of the fields should be changed so that the image comes first.
• The image should be smaller.

2. To fix the first two problems, and update some additional settings, in the Manage administrative menu,
navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types). Then click Manage display in the dropdown
button for the Vendor content type.

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3. Under the Label column, select Hidden for Main image. Do the same for Vendor URL.

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4. Click the gear wheel for the Vendor URL field, to open the configuration options.

5. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Trim link text length Maximum displayed length for Blank (no trimming)
link text
Open link in new window Whether links should open in Checked
a new window or the same
window

6. Click Update.
7. Drag the cross bar handles of the fields to reorder as Main image, Body, Vendor URL, and Links. As an
alternative to dragging, you can click the Show row weights link at the top of the table and enter numerical
weights (fields with lower or more negative weights will be shown first).

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8. Click Save.
9. Find the Vendor content item from step 1 again, and verify that the updates have been made.
10. Repeat similar steps to manage the display of the Recipe content type fields.

Expand your understanding

• Make the main image smaller. See Section 6.13, “Setting Up an Image Style”.

• If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Related concepts
Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles”

Videos
Changing Content Display
Changing Content Display

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Specify how fields are displayed”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Rearrange the order of fields”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”View modes”

Attributions
Written by Ann Greazel and Boris Doesborg.

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6.12 Concept: Image Styles

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

What are image styles?

Image styles allow you to upload a single image but display it in several ways; each display variation, or image
style, is the result of applying one or more effects to the original image.
As an example, you might upload a high-resolution image with a 4:3 aspect ratio, and display it scaled
down, square cropped, or black-and-white (or any combination of these effects). The core software provides a
way to do this efficiently:
1. Configure an image style with the desired effects on the Image styles page (admin/config/media/image-
styles).
2. The effects will be applied the first time a particular image is requested in that style.
3. The resulting image is saved.
4. The next time that same style is requested, the saved image is retrieved without the need to recalculate
the effects.
The core software provides several effects that you can use to define styles; others may be provided by
contributed modules.
Visit the Image styles page via the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Media > Image
styles (admin/config/media/image-styles) to see the image styles that are defined by default.

Related topics
• Section 6.13, “Setting Up an Image Style”

• Section 6.14, “Concept: Responsive Image Styles”

• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Working with images”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Boris Doesborg, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, from ”Working with images”
copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation

6.13 Setting Up an Image Style

Goal
Add an image style and use it to display images on Vendor pages.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”
• Section 6.11, “Changing Content Display”
• Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles”

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Site prerequisites
• Vendor and Recipe content types must exist. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”.
• Main image fields must exist for both content types. See Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content
Type”.
• Content items must exist for both content types. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3,
“Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”, and Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Media > Image styles (admin/config/media/image-
styles).

2. Click Add image style.

3. Enter the name Extra medium (300x200)
4. Click Create new style. The page Edit style Extra medium (300x200) appears.

5. In the Effect table, select Scale and crop. Click Add.

6. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Value

Width 300
Height 200

7. Click Add effect. The image style is saved with the chosen effects.

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8. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Content types (admin/structure/types).

9. Click Manage display in the Operations dropdown for the Vendor content type. The Manage display page
(admin/structure/types/manage/vendor/display) appears.
10. Ensure that the secondary tab Default is selected.
11. Click the gear wheel for the Main image field, to open the configuration options.

12. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Image style Which image style to use Extra medium (300x200)
Link image to Page to visit if image is clicked Nothing

13. Click Update.

14. Click Save. The new image style will be used while displaying Vendor content.
15. Open a Vendor content item and verify that it now shows up with the scaled-down image. See Section 5.3,
“Editing a Content Item” for information on how to locate an existing content item.
16. Repeat steps 8-15 for the Recipe content type.

Related concepts
• Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”
• Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles”
• Section 6.14, “Concept: Responsive Image Styles”

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Videos
Setting up an Image Style
Setting up an Image Style

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Working with images”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Boris Doesborg, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle from ”Working with images”,
copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

6.14 Concept: Responsive Image Styles

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”
• Section 6.11, “Changing Content Display”
• Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles”

What are responsive image styles?

The core Responsive Image module provides responsive image styles. This allows you to have images in your
website that are specifically sized for different screen sizes. This is useful, for example, to make your site load
faster on mobile devices because image sizes are optimized for smaller screens.
A responsive image style is a mapping between image styles and breakpoints. Breakpoints are the points
where a responsive design needs to change in order to respond to different screen sizes. Responsive image
styles can either work with breakpoints defined in your theme or with breakpoints defined in the responsive
image style settings.
When a responsive image style is defined, it can be used in the display settings for Image fields. This allows
the site to display responsive images using the HTML5 picture tag, or using the srcset and sizes attributes in an
img tag, depending on how the responsive image style is set up.

Related topics
Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Responsive web design”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Responsive Images”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Working with breakpoints in Drupal”
• Blog post ”Responsive Images in Drupal 8 using srcset”

Attributions
Adapted by Boris Doesborg from Responsive images, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to
the Drupal Community Documentation.

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CHAPTER 6. SETTING UP CONTENT STRUCTURE 6.15. CONCEPT: TEXT FORMATS AND EDITORS

6.15 Concept: Text Formats and Editors

What are text formats and filters?
Text formats change how HTML tags and other text are processed and displayed on your site. Text formats
are composed of a series of filters, each of which transforms text. When users create content, a text format is
associated with the content, and the full, original text is stored in the database. The content is then passed
through the filters in the text format before it becomes output on the site.
The core Filter module provides text format functionality, and the core Standard installation profile sets up
Basic HTML, Restricted HTML, and Full HTML text formats. Each text format has an associated permission,
so that you can allow only trusted users to use permissive text formats. This restricts untrusted users to text
formats like Basic HTML, which filters out dangerous HTML tags.

What are the editors associated with text formats?

Each text format can be associated with an editor, such as a visual WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
HTML editor. The core Text Editor module provides the ability to associate editors with text formats, and to
configure the editors (such as adding and removing buttons from their toolbars). The core CKEditor module
provides the industry-standard editor known as CKEditor, so that it can be used to edit HTML content on your
site.

What is cross-site scripting?

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a security vulnerability typically found in websites. In a site that is not well pro-
tected, malicious users can enter script into web pages that are viewed by other users (for example, in a comment
or in the body of a page). A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to login as another user.
It is important to configure the text formats of your website to prevent such abuse.

Related topics
Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Filter module overview”
• Wikipedia page ”Cross-site scripting”

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon.

6.16 Configuring Text Formats and Editors

Goal
Add a horizontal rule tag to the Basic HTML text format, and a corresponding button to its editor configuration.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 6.15, “Concept: Text Formats and Editors”

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Site prerequisites
• The core Filter, Editor, and CKEditor modules must be installed. They are installed on your site when you
install with the core Standard installation profile.

• The Basic HTML text format must exist. This is created on your site when you install with the core Standard
installation profile.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Content authoring > Text formats and editors
(admin/config/content/formats). The Text formats and editors page appears. Note that the names of the
text formats that came with your installation profile are shown in English on this page; see Section 2.7,
“Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation” for an explanation.

2. Click Configure for the Basic HTML text format. The Basic HTML page appears.
3. Note that CKEditor is selected in the Text editor field. This allows you to configure the editor’s toolbar.
4. Drag the horizontal line button from Available buttons to the Active toolbar. Toolbar items can be visually
grouped together using a vertical divider. As an alternative to dragging, you can tab to select buttons and
then move them using keyboard arrow keys.

5. Note that you can change the Filter processing order.

6. Under Filter settings > Limit allowed HTML tags and correct faulty HTML, in the field Allowed HTML tags,
verify that <hr> is present (adding its editor button will automatically update the allowed tags).

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7. Click Save configuration. You will be taken back to the Text formats and editors page. A message will be
displayed saying that the text format has been updated.

Expand your understanding

If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Videos
Configuring Text Formats and Editors
Configuring Text Formats and Editors
Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

108
Chapter 7

Managing User Accounts

7.1 Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions

What are Users?
Anyone who visits your website is a user, including you. There are three groups of users:
• Users who are not logged in, or anonymous users

• Users who are logged in, or authenticated users

• The administrative user account that was automatically created when you installed your site, or User 1.
See Section 7.2, “Concept: The User 1 Account”.

What are Permissions?

The ability to do actions on your site (including viewing content, editing content, and changing configuration)
is governed by permissions. Each permission has a name (such as View published content) and covers one action
or a small subset of actions. A user must be granted a permission in order to do the corresponding action on
the site; permissions are defined by the modules that provide the actions.

What are Roles?

Rather than assigning individual permissions directly to each user, permissions are grouped into roles. You
can define one or more roles on your site, and then grant permissions to each role. The permissions granted
to authenticated and anonymous users are contained in the Authenticated user and Anonymous user roles, and
depending on the installation profile you used when you installed your site, there may also be an Administrator
role that is automatically assigned all permissions on your site.
Each user account on your site is automatically given the Authenticated user role, and may optionally be
assigned one or more additional roles. When you assign a role to a user account, the user will have all the
permissions of the role when logged in.
It is a good practice to make several roles on your site. In the farmers market site example, you might want
the following roles:

• A Vendor role that allows vendors to edit their own vendor listing page
• A Content editor role for editing the general farmers market pages
• A User manager role for managing the vendor accounts
• The Administrator role that was installed with your site, for expert users to manage the site configuration

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Related topics
• Section 7.3, “Creating a Role”
• Section 7.5, “Assigning Permissions to a Role”
• Section 7.6, “Changing a User’s Roles”
• Section 7.4, “Creating a User Account”
• Section 7.2, “Concept: The User 1 Account”
• Section 7.7, “Assigning Authors to Content”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Users, roles and permissions”
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Managing Users”
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”User Roles”

Attributions
Adapted by Mark LaCroix, Boris Doesborg, and Jennifer Hodgdon from ”User Roles”, copyright 2000-2024
by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

7.2 Concept: The User 1 Account

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”

What is the user 1 account?

During the installation of your site, you created the first user account. Each user account internally has a
numeric user ID, and since the ID of this user is one, it is commonly referred to as the user 1 account. This user
account is special, because independent of what roles it is assigned, someone logged in as user 1 has permission
to do all actions on the site, including viewing and editing all content, editing any user account, changing site
configuration, installing and uninstalling modules, and running the update script.
Because of this level of permission, some people refer to this account as the root user, similar to the ”root”
user account that has full administrative permissions in Linux and other operating systems.
It is usually better to make separate accounts for each administrative user, giving them the Administrator
role, rather than having all administrative users log in using the user 1 account. There are several reasons for
this:
• Some actions and updates on the site are logged, and if everyone uses the same account, it is difficult to
know who did them if you have questions.
• The Administrator role permissions can be modified to be safer than the full permissions of the user 1
account, so that people do not inadvertently change site features that shouldn’t be changed.
• People’s responsibilities on a site may change over time. With ordinary user accounts, this can be mirrored
in permissions by assigning or unassigning roles to their user accounts. If they are all using the user 1
account, this is more difficult.
• On some sites, the author of content or comments is displayed or tracked, and if everyone uses the same
account to create content, it is difficult to know who created the content.
It is not possible to delete the user 1 account from the administrative user interface. It would be possible to
do with a database query, but it could cause problems in your site and is not advisable.

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Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Accounts and roles”
Attributions
Written and edited by Mark LaCroix and Jennifer Hodgdon.

7.3 Creating a Role

Goal
Create a Vendor role to allow some - but not all - users to perform specific tasks.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to People > Roles (admin/people/roles).
2. You will find default roles Anonymous user, Authenticated user, and Administrator already present.

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3. Click Add Role to add a custom role.

4. Type Vendor in the Role name field. Click Save.

5. You will see the message ”Role Vendor has been added.” displayed at the top of the page.

Expand your understanding

• Section 7.5, “Assigning Permissions to a Role”
• Section 7.6, “Changing a User’s Roles”

Videos
Creating a Role
Creating a Role

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”User Roles”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Jack Probst, Boris Doesborg, and Joe Shindelar from ”User Roles”, copyright 2000-
2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation

7.4 Creating a User Account

Goal
Create Vendor user accounts for Sweet Honey and Happy Farm vendors.

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Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”
• Section 7.2, “Concept: The User 1 Account”

• Section 7.3, “Creating a Role”

Site prerequisites
The Vendor role must exist on your site. See Section 7.3, “Creating a Role”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to People (admin/people).
2. Click Add user.

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3. Fill in the form fields. See the table below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Email address A valid email address for the [email protected]
vendor. All emails from the
system will be sent to this
address. The email address is
not made public.

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Field name Explanation Example value

Username A username for the vendor Sweet Honey
that they will use to sign in or
author content items. Spaces
are allowed; punctuation is not
allowed except for periods,
hyphens, apostrophes, and
underscores.
Password A password the vendor will (Make a secure password)
use to sign in to the site. You
can see how safe the password
is on the Password strength
gauge. You also get tips on
how to make it safer.
Confirm password Type the same password to (Repeat password)
avoid any typing mistakes.
Status Set the status of the user Active
account. Blocked users will not
be able to sign in.
Roles Set the role of the user account. Vendor
Notify user of new account Whether or not to send a Checked
notification to the vendor’s
email address.
Picture Click Browse and select a Photo of the vendor
picture to upload. Pay
attention to size restrictions.
Contact settings Enable or disable the display Checked
of a contact form for the
account.

4. Click Create new account. You will get a notification about the user account creation.

5. Create a second Vendor account for Happy Farm by following the steps above.

Expand your understanding

Create a user account for yourself.

Videos
Creating a User Account
Creating a User Account
Attributions
Written by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix.

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7.5 Assigning Permissions to a Role

Goal
Change the permissions for the Vendor role so that users can create, edit, and delete Recipe and Vendor content,
format the content, and contact each other.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”

Site prerequisites
The Vendor role must exist on your site. See Section 7.3, “Creating a Role”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to People > Roles (admin/people/roles). The Roles page ap-
pears.
2. Click Edit permissions in the dropdown for the Vendor role. The Edit role page appears where you can
see all the available actions for the website such as, for example, Post comments or Administer blocks. The
available permissions depend on the modules that are installed in the site. Note: Some permissions may
have security implications. Be cautious while assigning permissions to roles.
3. Check the boxes for the following permissions, listed by module:

Module Permission
Contact Use users’ personal contact forms
Filter Use the Restricted HTML text format
Node Recipe: Create new content
Node Recipe: Edit own content
Node Recipe: Delete own content
Node Vendor: Edit own content

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4. Click Save permissions. You will get a message saying your changes have been saved.

Expand your understanding

• Log in as one of the new users you created in Section 7.4, “Creating a User Account”. Verify whether you
have the correct permissions.

• Section 7.6, “Changing a User’s Roles”

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Related concepts
Section 7.2, “Concept: The User 1 Account”

Videos
Assigning Permissions to a Role
Assigning Permissions to a Role

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Managing Users”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Boris Doesborg, Brian Emery, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, and Joe Shindelar at
Drupalize.Me, from ”User Roles”, copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community
Documentation.

7.6 Changing a User’s Roles

Goal
Change or add roles to a given user, either by editing a single-user or by applying a bulk operation.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”

Site prerequisites
The user account that you want to update, and the role you want it to have, must already exist. See Section 7.4,
“Creating a User Account”, Section 7.3, “Creating a Role”, and Section 7.5, “Assigning Permissions to a Role”.

Steps
Updating the roles using single-user editing method
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to People (admin/people).
2. Locate the user 1 account (named ”admin”) to assign it the Administrator role. If it is not immediately
visible, use the Name or email contains filter, or other filters, to narrow down the list.
3. Click Edit to update the user account.

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4. On the Edit page, scroll down to Roles section. Check the Administrator role for the user account.

5. Click Save to update the user account. You should be returned to the People page and see a message saying
that the changes have been saved.

Updating the roles using bulk editing method

1. If the users Happy Farm and Sweet Honey did not already have the Vendor role, here is how you would
add it. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to People (admin/people).
2. Locate Vendor user accounts Sweet Honey and Happy Farm and check them. If they are not immediately
visible, use the Name or email contains filter, or other filters, to narrow down the list.
3. Select Add the Vendor role to the selected user(s) from the Action select list.

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4. Click Apply to selected items. You should see a message indicating that the desired changes were made.

Videos
Changing a User’s Roles
Changing a User’s Roles
Attributions
Written by Chris Dart and Jennifer Hodgdon

7.7 Assigning Authors to Content

Goal
Assign Vendor content items Happy Farm and Sweet Honey to the corresponding Vendor user accounts, so
they can edit their own Vendor profiles on the site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions”

Site prerequisites
• The Vendor content type must exist, and your site must have at least two Vendor content items. See Sec-
tion 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”, and Section 5.2,
“Creating a Content Item”.
• User accounts for at least two vendors must exist. See Section 7.4, “Creating a User Account”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content (admin/content).
2. Find Vendor content item Happy Farm in the list. If it is not immediately visible, you can filter the list
by Published status, Content type (Vendor), Title, or Language. Click Edit for the Vendor content item you
would like to assign an author to.

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3. Under Authoring information, start typing the Vendor’s user name Happy Farm in the Authored by field.
The field lists matching user names. Select the Vendor’s user name from the list.

4. Click Save.
5. You will get a notification that the Vendor content item has been updated.

6. Follow these steps again to assign Vendor content item Sweet Honey to the Vendor user account Sweet
Honey.

Videos
Assigning Authors to Content

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Assigning Authors to Content

Attributions
Written by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix.

123
Chapter 8

Blocks

8.1 Concept: Blocks

What is a block?
Blocks are individual pieces of your site’s web page layout. They are placed inside the regions (see Section 2.1,
“Concept: Regions in a Theme”) of your theme, and can be created, removed, and rearranged in the Block
layout (admin/structure/block) administration page. Examples of blocks include the Who’s online listing, the
main navigation menu, and the breadcrumb trail. The main page content is also a block.
Some modules make new blocks available for placement on your site. For example, when the core Search
module is installed and configured, it provides a block that contains a search form. You may also create and
place your own custom blocks.
Each block has its own configuration settings, which allow you to select which pages of your site will display
the block. It is even possible to place multiple copies of a block, each with its own separate configuration and
visibility rules.

Related topics
• Section 2.1, “Concept: Regions in a Theme”
• Section 8.2, “Creating A Custom Block”
• Section 8.3, “Placing a Block in a Region”

Attributions
Adapted by Les Lim from ”Managing blocks” copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the
Drupal Community Documentation.

8.2 Creating A Custom Block

Goal
Create a block showing the hours and location of the farmers market.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”
• Section 2.1, “Concept: Regions in a Theme”

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CHAPTER 8. BLOCKS 8.2. CREATING A CUSTOM BLOCK

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content_ > Blocks (admin/content/block).
2. Click Add content block. The Add content block page appears.

3. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Block description Name of the block shown to Hours and location block
administrators
Body Content of the block when it is Open: Sundays, 9 AM to 2 PM,
displayed April to September<br
/>Location: Parking lot of
Trust Bank, 1st & Union,
downtown Anytown.

4. Click Save. A message appears indicating the block has been saved.

Expand your understanding

• Edit the content of your custom block. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content > Blocks
(admin/content/block). Find your block in the list and click Edit to make changes.

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• Place the block you created in the sidebar. See Section 8.3, “Placing a Block in a Region” for details.

Videos
Creating a Custom Block
Creating a Custom Block

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Managing blocks”
Attributions
Adapted by Jacob Redding and Boris Doesborg from Managing blocks, copyright 2000-2024 by the individ-
ual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

8.3 Placing a Block in a Region

Goal
Place the Opening hours and location block in the website’s sidebar.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”

Site prerequisites
• The core Olivero theme must be installed and set as default. See Section 4.6, “Configuring the Theme”.

• The Opening hours and location block must exist. See Section 8.2, “Creating A Custom Block”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Block layout (admin/structure/block). The Block
layout page appears, listing the theme’s regions.
2. Ensure that in the secondary tab the core Olivero theme is selected. Block placement is defined per theme.
3. Locate the region Sidebar in the list and click Place block next to it. The Place block window appears, listing
all the blocks.
4. Locate the block Opening hours and location and click Place block next to it. The Configure block window
appears. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Title Title to be displayed for the Hours and location
block
Display title Whether or not to display the Checked
title with the block
Region Which theme region to display Sidebar second
it in

You can also hide or display the block on specific pages. In the case of the Farmer’s market website you
do not set any of these configuration options because you want to show the block everywhere.

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5. Click Save block. The Block layout page appears. You can drag the cross bar handles of blocks to change
their order within each region. As an alternative to dragging, you can click the Show row weights link at
the top of the table and select numerical weights (blocks with lower or more negative weights will be
shown first).
6. Verify that the Opening hours and location block is listed in the Sidebar second region, and click Save blocks.
The block has been placed on the sidebar of all pages that use the core Bartik theme.

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Expand your understanding

• Remove the Powered by Drupal block from the Footer Bottom region by clicking Disable or Remove in the
Operations dropdown button. Clicking Disable will let you enable the block easily later with the same
configuration; if you click Remove and you want the block back, you would need to go through the steps
in this topic to place it in a region again. Note that the names of the blocks that are provided by the core
software, such as Powered by Drupal and User login, are shown in English on this page; see Section 2.7,
“Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation” for an explanation.
• Place the User login block in a region.
• If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Videos
Placing a Block in a Region

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Placing a Block in a Region

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me

130
Chapter 9

Creating Listings with Views

9.1 Concept: Uses of Views

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.4, “Concept: Modular Content”
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”

What is a view?
A view is a listing of content on a website. The core Views module handles the display of views, and the core
Views UI module allows you to create and edit them in the administrative interface. When you define views,
you are interested in taking data from your website and displaying it to the user.

What types of data can be displayed using views?

You can create views to output practically any content entity that is stored in the system. For example, you can
create the following lists for the farmers market site:
• Lists of vendors
• Lists of recipes
• Lists of the most recent content on the site
• Lists of users on the site

What are the ways data can be output using views?

A listing created by a view can be in any of the following forms:
• Table with sortable fields
• Grid layouts
• Teasers or pictures that link to articles
• Blocks
• JSON output
• RSS feeds
• Calendars
• On-screen slideshows

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Related topics
• Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View”
• Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”

Attributions
Written and edited by Michael Lenahan at erdfisch, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

9.2 Concept: The Parts of a View

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 2.4, “Concept: Modular Content”

• Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of Views”

• Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs”
• Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks”

What are the parts of a view?

When you are editing a view in the administrative interface, you will see the following parts (or sections),
which allow you to specify what data to output, in what order, and in what format:
Display Each view can have one or more displays, each of which produces one type of output. Options for
display types include:
Page Makes output at a particular URL, for the main page content at that URL.
Block Makes output in a block, which can be placed on pages.
Feed Makes an RSS or another type of feed.
Attachment Makes output that you can attach to another display.
Format Depending on the display type, you can choose to output your data in a table, grid, HTML list, or
another format. Some formats also give you a second choice that lets you output either rendered entities
or fields; other formats do not give you this choice (for example, if you use a table format, you must always
use fields).
Fields Depending on the format choice, you may be able to choose which content fields are output. For
example, if you were making a view of recipe content items, in a block display you might show only the
recipe names, while in a full page display you might also show an image field because you have more
space.
Filter criteria Filters limit the data to be output, based on criteria such as whether the content has been pub-
lished or not, the type of content, or a field value. For instance, to make a view of recipe content items,
you would need to filter to the Recipe content type, and to published recipes. Filters can also be exposed,
which means that users will have a form where they can choose their own filter values. You might use
this on a Recipe page to let users filter for recipes with certain ingredients.
Sort criteria Defines the order to present the output, which can be based on any content field.
Contextual filters Contextual filters are like regular filters, except that the values come from the context of the
view display, such as the full URL of the page being displayed, the current date or time, or some other
value that can be detected by the view calculation.

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Relationships Relationships allow you to expand what is displayed in your view, by relating the base content
being displayed to other content entities. Relationships are created using fields on the base content that
relate it to the other content; one example is that all regular content items have an author field, which
references the user account of the person who authored the content. Once you have created a relationship,
you can display fields from the referenced entity in the view.

Related topics
Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”
Attributions
Written and edited by Surendra Mohan and Jennifer Hodgdon.

9.3 Creating a Content List View

Goal
Create a page listing vendors that will be automatically updated whenever a vendor is added, deleted, or up-
dated on the site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of Views”
• Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View”

Site prerequisites
• The core Views and Views UI modules must be installed. These are installed for you when you install
with the core Standard installation profile.
• The Vendor content type must exist, with URL and Main image fields. Your site must have a couple of
Vendor content items. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a
Content Type”, and Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.
• The Medium (220x220) image style must be defined. This is created on your site when you install the core
Image module (installed with the core Standard installation profile) but can be recreated if deleted. See
Section 6.13, “Setting Up an Image Style”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Views > Add view (admin/structure/views/add).
The Add view wizard appears.
2. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

View basic information > Name of the view that will be Vendors
View name visible in the administration
pages
View settings > Show Type of information listed in Content
the view
View settings > of type Specify content type Vendor
View settings > sorted by List order Title
Page settings > Create a page Create a page that displays the Checked
view
Page settings > Page title Title show above the view Vendors

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Field name Explanation Example value

Page settings > Path Address of the page vendors
Page settings > Page display Type of list Table
settings > Display format
Page settings > Items to Number of items visible on the 10
display page
Page settings > Use a pager Split up the list in several Checked
pages if there are more items
Page settings > Create a menu Add the view page to the Checked
link menu
Page settings > Menu Menu in which to add the link Main navigation
Page settings > Link text Label of the link in the menu Vendors

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3. Click Save and edit. The view configuration page appears.

4. Under Fields, click Add from the dropdown button. The Add fields pop-up appears.

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5. Enter the word ”image” in the search field.

6. Check Main image in the table.

7. Click Apply. The Configure field: Content: Main Image pop-up appears.
8. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Create a label Add a label before the field Unchecked
value
Image style The format of the image Medium (220x220)
Link image to Add a link to the content item Content

9. Click Apply. The view configuration page appears.

10. Under Fields, click Add from the dropdown button. The Add fields pop-up appears.
11. Enter the word ”body” in the search field.

12. Select Body in the table.

13. Click Apply. The Configure field: Content: Body pop-up appears.
14. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Create a label Add a label before the field Unchecked
value
Formatter The presentation of the field Summary or trimmed
value
Trimmed limit: The number of maximum 120
characters shown

15. Click Apply. The view configuration page appears.

16. Under Fields, click Content: Title (Title). The Configure field: Content: Title pop-up appears.

17. Uncheck Create a label. This will remove the label that was created by the wizard.
18. Click Apply. The view configuration page appears.
19. Under Fields, click Rearrange in the dropdown button. The Rearrange fields pop-up appears.

20. Drag the cross bar handles of fields to put them into the right order: Image, Title, Body. As an alternative
to dragging, you can click the Show row weights link at the top of the table and enter numerical weights
(fields with lower or more negative weights will be shown first).
21. Click Apply. The view configuration page appears.
22. Optionally, click Update preview for a preview.

23. Click Save.

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24. Navigate to the homepage and click Vendors from the main navigation to see the result.

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Expand your understanding

The link to the view in the main navigation will probably not be in the right place. Change the order of the
menu links in the main navigation. See Section 5.7, “Changing the Order of Navigation”.

Videos
Creating a Content List View
Creating a Content List View
Attributions
Written/edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon.

9.4 Duplicating a View

Goal
Create a page listing recipes by duplicating the existing Vendors view. Modify the page so that the recipes are
displayed in a grid and can by filtered by ingredients.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of Views”

• Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View”

• Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”

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Site prerequisites
• The Vendor and Recipe content types must exist; both must have Main image fields, and the Recipe content
type must have an Ingredients field. Your site must also have a couple of Recipe content items. See
Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a Content Type”, Section 6.6,
“Setting Up a Taxonomy”, Section 6.9, “Changing Content Entry Forms”, and Section 5.2, “Creating a
Content Item”.
• The Vendors view must exist. See Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Views (admin/structure/views). Find the view
”Vendors” and click Duplicate in its dropdown button. (Note that the names of views that came with
your installation profile are shown in English on this page; see Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface,
Configuration, and Content translation” for an explanation.)

2. Name the duplicate ”Recipes” and click Duplicate. The view configuration page appears.
3. To change the title of the view page to ”Recipes”, click Vendors in the Title field under Title. The Page: The
title of this view pop-up appears. Enter ”Recipes”. Click Apply.

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4. To change from a table to a grid format, click Table in the Format field under Format. The Page: How should
this view be styled pop-up appears. Check Grid and click Apply. The Page: Style options pop-up appears.
Retain the default values and click Apply.
5. To retain only the title and image fields for the Recipes view, click Content: Body under Fields. Click Remove
in the pop-up that appears.
6. To change the content type filter to use the Recipe content type, click Content: Type (=Vendor) under Filter
criteria. In the Configure filter criterion: Content: Type pop-up, check Recipe and uncheck Vendor. Click
Apply.
7. To add a further filter that is exposed to visitors, click Add in the dropdown button under Filter criteria.
Search for ”ingredients” and check ”Ingredients (field_ingredients)”. Click Add and configure filter criteria.

8. The appearing pop-up offers extra settings on vocabulary and selection type. Click Apply and continue.
The next pop-up allows you to expose this filter to visitors. Fill in the fields as shown below, and click
Apply.

Field name Explanation Example value

Expose this filter to visitors, to Allow visitors to filter and Checked
allow them to change it search
Required Whether a value has to be Unchecked
provided or not
Label Label shown for this filter on Find recipes using…
the view page

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9. To change the Path label field to ”Recipes”, click ”/vendors” in the Path field under Page settings. In the
pop-up that appears, enter the path ”recipes” and click Apply.
Note that when editing a view, you enter paths without the leading ”/”, unlike on other administrative
pages (such as when providing a path to a content item page).
10. To change the menu link title, click ”Normal: Vendors” in the Menu field under Page settings. In the pop-up
that appears, change the title to ”Recipes” and click Apply.

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11. In order to use Ajax (see Ajax entry in the Glossary) to make filtering and paging faster for users, under
Advanced > Other, click No in the Use AJAX field. Check Use AJAX in the pop-up that appears, and click
Apply.
12. Click Save to save the view.
13. Go back to the home page and click Recipes in the navigation to view the new Recipes page.

Expand your understanding

The link to the view in the main navigation will probably not be in the right place. Change the order of the
menu links in the main navigation. See Section 5.7, “Changing the Order of Navigation”.

Related concepts
• Section 2.5, “Planning your Content Structure”
• Ajax entry in the Glossary

Videos
Duplicating a View
Duplicating a View

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Attributions
Written and edited by Laura Vass at Pronovix, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

9.5 Adding a Block Display to a View

Goal
Add a block display to the Recipes view to display the most recent recipes in a sidebar, and change its config-
uration without changing the existing Recipes page view.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 9.1, “Concept: Uses of Views”
• Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View”
• Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”

Site prerequisites
• The Recipe content type must exist, it must have a Main image field, and your site must have a couple
of Recipe content items. See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”, Section 6.3, “Adding Basic Fields to a
Content Type”, Section 6.9, “Changing Content Entry Forms”, and Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.
• The Thumbnail (100x100) image style must be defined. This is created on your site when you install the
core Image module (installed with the core Standard installation profile) but can be recreated if deleted.
See Section 6.13, “Setting Up an Image Style”.
• The Recipes view must exist. See Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View” and Section 9.4, “Duplicating
a View”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Structure > Views (admin/structure/views). Find the view
”Recipes” and click Edit from its dropdown button. Alternatively, navigate to the Recipes page in the
main site navigation, and click the Edit view contextual link in the main area of the page. See Section 4.1,
“Concept: Administrative Overview” for information about contextual links.
2. Create a new block display by clicking Add under Displays. Click Block from the list of links that appears.
The new display is created, and the focus is automatically switched to its configuration.

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3. To change the title of this display, click Block in the Display name field. The Block: The name and the description
of this display pop-up appears. Change the Administrative name to ”Recent recipes”. Click Apply.

4. To change the title of the block, click Recipes in the Title field under Title. In the pop-up that appears,
select This block (override) from the For select list. Change the Title field to ”New recipes” and click Apply
(this display).

5. To change the block’s style, click Grid in the Format field under Format. In the pop-up that appears, select
This block (override) from the For select list. Select Unformatted list and Click Apply (this display). You can
further configure the style options in the next pop-up that appears. Then click Apply.
6. To configure the image field, click Content: Main image under Fields. In the pop-up that appears, select This
block (override) from the For select list. Select Image style Thumbnail (100x100). Click Apply (this display).

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7. To remove ingredients as a filter, click Content: Ingredients (exposed) under Filter criteria. In the pop-up
that appears, select This block (override) from the For select list. Click Remove at the bottom.

8. To configure how you want the content to be sorted in the view, click Add from the dropdown button
under Sort criteria. In the pop-up that appears, select This block (override) from the For select list. Check
Authored on (in the Content category), and then click Add and configure sort criteria.
9. In the appearing configuration pop-up, select Sort descending to have the most recent recipes appear first.
Click Apply.

10. To specify the number of items to be displayed, click Mini in the Use pager field under Pager. In the pop-
up that appears, select This block (override) from the For select list. Under Pager, select Display a specified
number of items. Click Apply (this display). In the Block: Pager options pop-up, provide ”5” as the value for
Items to display. Click Apply.
11. Click Save. You will either see the view editing page again, or the Recipes page, depending on what you
did in step 1. You should also see a message saying that the view has been saved.

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12. Place the ”Recipes: Recent Recipes” block in the Sidebar second region. See Section 8.3, “Placing a Block
in a Region”. Navigate to the site’s home page to see the block.

Videos
Adding a Block Display to a View
Adding a Block Display to a View
Attributions

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Written and edited by Laura Vass at Pronovix, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

147
Chapter 10

Making Your Site Multilingual

10.1 Adding a Language

Goal
Add one or more languages to your site and define which one is used by default.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”

Steps
1. Install the four core multilingual modules (Language, Interface Translation, Content Translation, and
Configuration Translation), by following the steps in Section 4.3, “Installing a Module”.

2. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Region and language > Languages (admin/-
config/regional/language).
3. Click Add language.
4. Select Spanish (or your preferred language) from the Language name select list. Click Add language. Af-
ter waiting for translations to finish downloading, you will be returned to the Languages page, with a
confirmation message and the new language shown.

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5. Follow the steps in Section 8.3, “Placing a Block in a Region” to place the Language switcher block in the
Sidebar second region. This will enable site visitors to switch between languages, once the site has been
translated.

Expand your understanding

• Section 10.2, “Configuring Content Translation”
• Section 10.3, “Translating Content”

Videos
Adding a Language
Adding a Language

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Multilingual guide”
Attributions
Written and edited by Leila Tite, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Boris Doesborg.

10.2 Configuring Content Translation

Goal
Make Custom block, Custom menu link, and Content entity types translatable. Select specific subtypes and set
which fields of these can be translated.

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Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields”
• Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”

Site prerequisites
The core Content Translation module must be installed, and your site must have at least two languages. See
Section 10.1, “Adding a Language”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Regional and language > Content language
and translation (admin/config/regional/content-language).
2. Under Custom language settings, check Content, Content block and Custom menu link to make these entity
types translatable.

3. Configuration options appear for Content, Content block and Custom menu link. Choose the subtypes you
want to translate for each entity type. Check Basic page for Content, Basic block for Content block and Custom
menu link for Custom menu link.
4. Verify the settings for the entity types as shown below:

Field name Explanation Example value

Default language The default language for the Site’s default language
entity subtype (English)
Show language selector on Whether or not the language Checked
create and edit pages selector should be shown
while editing and creating
content

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5. Choose the fields that should be translatable for Basic page as shown in the table below. If a field is not
translation-dependent, leave it unchecked.

Field name Explanation Example value

Title The title of the content Checked
Authored by The author Unchecked
Published Whether the content has been Checked
published or not
Authored on Date of publishing Unchecked
Changed Date of last update Unchecked
Promoted to front page Whether the content will be Unchecked
included in some content
views
Sticky at top of lists Whether the content will be Unchecked
displayed first in some content
views
URL alias Nicer URL for the content Checked
Body The main content of the page Checked

6. Similarly, check the appropriate boxes for translatable fields belonging to Basic block and Custom menu link.

7. Click Save configuration.

Expand your understanding

• Section 10.4, “Translating Configuration”
• Section 10.3, “Translating Content”

Videos
Configuring Content Translation
Configuring Content Translation

Additional resources
• Blog post ”Multilingual Drupal 8 tidbits, part 5”
• Blog post ”Multilingual Drupal 8 tidbits, part 17”

Attributions
Written and edited by Laura Vass at Pronovix, Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

10.3 Translating Content

Goal
Translate the home page to Spanish.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”

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Site prerequisites
• The Home content item must exist. See Section 5.2, “Creating a Content Item”.
• The core Content Translation module must be installed, and your site must have at least two languages.
See Section 10.1, “Adding a Language”.
• The Basic page content type must be configured to be translatable. See Section 10.2, “Configuring Content
Translation”.

Steps
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Content (admin/content).

2. Locate the home page. You can search for it by entering ”Home” in the title field.
3. Select Translate from the dropdown button in the row of the Home content item. The page Translations of
Home appears.
4. Click Add in the row Spanish.

5. Note that the user interface has switched to Spanish. To switch it back to English, remove the first instance
of es in the browser’s URL. For example, if your URL looks like example.com/es/node/5/translations/add/en/es,
remove the es that comes immediately after example.com.
6. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Title Translated title of the page Página principal
Body Translated body of the page Bienvenido al mercado de la
ciudad - ¡el mercado de
agricultores de tu barrio!
Horario: Domingos de 9:00 a
14:00. Desde Abril a
Septiembre Lugar: parking del
Banco Trust número 1. En el
centro de la ciudad
URL alias > URL alias Translated address of the pagina-principal
webpage

7. Click Save (this translation).

8. Go to your site’s home page to view the newly translated page.

Expand your understanding

• Follow the steps above to translate more content on your site.

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• Section 10.4, “Translating Configuration”

Videos
Translating Content
Translating Content
Attributions
Written by Boris Doesborg.

10.4 Translating Configuration

Goal
Translate the labels on the Recipes view page into Spanish.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 2.7, “Concept: User Interface, Configuration, and Content translation”
• Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View”

Site prerequisites
• The core Configuration Translation module must be installed, and your site must have at least two lan-
guages. See Section 10.1, “Adding a Language”.

• The Recipes view must exist. See Section 9.3, “Creating a Content List View” and Section 9.4, “Duplicating
a View”.

Steps
The basic steps for translating any configuration on your site are:
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Regional and Language > Configuration
translation (admin/config/regional/config-translation).
2. Locate the configuration item that you would like to translate. For example, to translate the site name,
you need to find System information. For configuration that is grouped by type (for example, views or
date formats), click the List button to list all configuration of that type, and then locate the item you are
looking for.

3. Click Translate for the item you located.

4. Find a button that will let you add a translation in the desired language, and click this button.
5. Enter the translation in the form, and save.
Most configuration is fairly straightforward and intuitive to edit in this manner. Views configuration is an
exception, because the translation editing form is nothing like the view editing form, and it is complex and
hierarchical rather than being a simple form with just a few fields. As an example of how to translate a view,
here are the steps to translate the labels in the Recipes view to Spanish:
1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Regional and Language > Configuration
translation (admin/config/regional/config-translation).

2. Click List in the Views row.

3. Click Translate in the Recipes row.

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4. Click Add in the Spanish row. The page Add Spanish translation for Recipes view appears.

5. Under Displays > Master Display settings > Recipes default display Options, translate Display title from ”Recipes”
to ”Recetas”.
6. Under Displays > Master display settings > Recipes default display options > Exposed form > Reset options,
translate Submit button text from ”Apply” to ”Applicar”. The other buttons and labels in this section do
not appear on the Recipes page or block, and do not need to be translated.

7. Under Displays > Master display settings > Recipes default display options > Filters > (Empty) taxonomy term ID
> Find recipes using… Expose, translate Label from ”Find recipes using…” to ”Encontrar recetas usando…”.
8. Click Save translation.
9. Navigate to the Recipes page and switch to Spanish using the Language switcher block. Verify that the
labels have been translated.

Expand your understanding

• Translate the block display title in the Recent recipes display settings section of the Recipes view.

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• Translate the page title in the Vendors view.

• Translate other configuration. Some examples of where to find the translation pages:

– To translate the site name, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Configuration > System >
Basic site settings > Translate system information (admin/config/system/site-information/translate).
– To translate the contact form, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Structure > Contact forms
(admin/structure/contact). Click Translate in the dropdown button in the Website feedback row.
– To translate the name of a menu, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Structure > Menus
(admin/structure/menu). Click Translate in the dropdown button for the menu whose name you want
to translate.
– Menu links within a menu are considered to be content (not configuration); see Section 10.2, “Con-
figuring Content Translation” to enable translation. Once translation is enabled, navigate in the
Manage administrative menu to Structure > Menus (admin/structure/menu). Click Edit menu in the
dropdown button for the menu whose links you want to translate. Click Translate in the dropdown
button for the link you want to translate.
– To translate field labels on a content type, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Structure
> Content types (admin/structure/types). Click Manage fields in the dropdown button for the content
type whose field labels you want to edit. Click Translate in the dropdown button for the field whose
label you want to edit.

• Translate content. See Section 10.3, “Translating Content”.

Videos
Translating Configuration
Translating Configuration
Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon.

156
Chapter 11

Extending and Customizing Your Site

11.1 Finding Modules

Goal
Find and evaluate modules on Drupal.org.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

Steps
1. Go to Drupal.org, and navigate to Download & Extend > Modules (https://www.drupal.org/project/project_module).
2. Filter your search using the categories on the module search page. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Example value

Maintenance status How actively should the Actively maintained
module be maintained?
Development status What kind of development Any
should the module undergo?
Module categories The module’s topic area. Administration
Core compatibility The version of the core 9.x
software the module is
compatible with.
Status Project status: Sandbox projects Full projects
are experimental projects. Full
projects have already gone
through an approval process,
but they can still be in
development.
Stability Whether or not the project Has a supported stable release
maintainer has created a
production-ready version.
Security advisory coverage Whether or not the project Has security advisory coverage
maintainer has agreed to
follow Drupal Security Team
procedures.

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Field name Explanation Example value

Search modules Search for Admin Toolbar, a Admin Toolbar
module that will be covered in
detail later. Alternatively, you
can also leave the field blank if
you are not sure which
module to search for.
Sort by Order your search results by Most installed
criteria like Most installed
(popular modules that many
sites use) or Last release (date
of latest version released).

3. Click Search. Search results will appear.

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4. To further evaluate a module, click its title in the list of search results to visit its project page.
Some aspects to pay attention to when evaluating modules:
• Project description: The description of the module on its project page should be clear and useful. You
should get an idea of its features and requirements.
• Project information: There may be warnings in this area of the page, such as if a module is no longer being
developed, or is not covered by the security advisory policy.
• Project information > Reported installs, downloads: You can see how many people have downloaded
and how many sites use the module. If it’s only used by a few sites, it might be a unique solution that not
many people need, or it might be a warning sign that you shouldn’t use it either.
• Maintainers: When was the last commit (the last time someone updated something on the module) or
last release (new version)? If the project has few open issues, a long time since commits/releases might
be appropriate, but if it has a lot of open issues and there are no commits/releases, that would be a clue
that it might be abandoned.
• Issues: See if there are any open issues, potential problems with the module. Check the Statistics to see
how regularly issues are responded to.
• Documentation, Resources: Check if the module has documentation or a README file, that can help you
install, configure, explore, and test it.

Expand your understanding

Section 11.3, “Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org”

Videos
Finding Modules
Finding Modules
Attributions
Written by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix.

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11.2 Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode

Goal
Put your site in maintenance mode to allow users with the right permissions to use the site while users without
this permission are presented with a message that the site is under maintenance.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”

Site prerequisites
If you want to use Drush to enable or disable maintenance mode, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2,
“Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface or Drush to enable or disable maintenance mode.

Enabling maintenance mode using the administrative interface

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Maintenance mode (admin/-
config/development/maintenance). The Maintenance mode page appears.
2. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Put site into maintenance Enable the maintenance mode Checked
mode
Message to display when in The information that is shown @site is currently under
maintenance mode to website visitors when the maintenance but should be
mode is enabled. Variables back shortly. Thank you for
such as @site can be used in your patience.
the message

3. Click Save configuration.

4. Verify that the site is in maintenance mode by accessing it from another browser where you aren’t logged
in. If you are not able to verify, try clearing the cache. See Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”.

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Disabling maintenance mode using the administrative interface

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Maintenance mode (admin/-
config/development/maintenance). The Maintenance mode page appears.

2. Fill in the fields as shown below.

Field name Explanation Value

Put site into maintenance Disable the maintenance mode Unchecked
mode
Message to display when in No message required while
maintenance mode disabling. You can leave the
field blank.

3. Click Save configuration.

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4. Verify that the site is no longer in maintenance mode by accessing it from another browser where you
aren’t logged in. If you are not able to verify, try clearing the cache. See Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”.

Enabling or disabling maintenance mode using Drush

1. Follow the user interface steps above to edit the site maintenance message, if desired.
2. Run the following Drush commands to enable maintenance mode and clear the cache:
drush config:set system.maintenance message ”Optional message” -y
drush state:set system.maintenance_mode 1 --input-format=integer
drush cache:rebuild

3. Run the following Drush commands to disable maintenance mode and clear the cache:
drush state:set system.maintenance_mode 0 --input-format=integer
drush cache:rebuild

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4. After running either set of commands, verify that your site is either in or out of maintenance mode by
visiting the site in a browser where you are not logged in.

Expand your understanding

• Section 13.5, “Updating the Core Software”
• Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme”
• Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”

Videos
Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode
Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode
Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

11.3 Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org

Goal
Download and install the contributed Admin Toolbar module, which allows you to easily browse through the
administration section of the website.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”
• Section 11.1, “Finding Modules”
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

Site prerequisites
• If you want to install modules via the website, the core Update Manager module must be installed. See
Section 4.3, “Installing a Module” for instructions on installing modules.
• If you want to use Drush, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface to download and install a contributed module. If you are installing
a custom module rather than a contributed module, if you see a message saying Installing modules and themes
requires FTP access to your server, or if the steps below do not work to download and unpack the module files,
follow the steps in Section 11.6, “Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files”. If you are using Composer
to manage the files in your site, follow the steps for downloading in Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download
and Update Files”. In either of these cases, you can then install the module using Drush, or by continuing with
step 7 in the instructions for the administrative interface below.

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Using the administrative interface

1. On the Admin toolbar project page on drupal.org (https://www.drupal.org/project/admin_toolbar), scroll to
the Downloads section at the bottom of the page.

2. Copy the address of the tar.gz link. Depending on your device and browser, you might do this by right
clicking and selecting Copy link address.

3. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Extend (admin/modules). The Extend page appears.
4. Click Add new module. The Add new module page appears.

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5. In the field Add from a URL, paste the copied download link. This value could look like this: https://ftp.drupal.org/files/pro
8.x-2.4.tar.gz
6. Click Continue to upload and unpack the new module on the server. The files are being downloaded to
the modules directory.

7. Click Enable newly added modules to return to the Extend page. If you used the manual uploading procedure
mentioned earlier, then you can continue with this step, and reach the Extend page by using the Manage
administrative menu and navigating to Extend (admin/modules).
8. Locate the Admin toolbar module and check it.
9. Click Install to turn on the new module.

Using Drush to install a module

1. Find the project name for the module you want to install, which is the last segment of the module’s project
page URL. For example, if the project URL is https://www.drupal.org/project/admin_toolbar, the project
name is ”admin_toolbar”.

2. Download the module using either the steps in Section 11.6, “Manually Downloading Module or Theme
Files” or Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download and Update Files”.

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3. Run the following Drush command, giving the project name (for example, admin_toolbar) as a pa-
rameter:
drush pm:enable admin_toolbar

4. Follow the instructions on the screen.

Expand your understanding

• Verify that the contributed Admin Toolbar module is working by browsing through the menu in the
administration section.
• Install and configure the contributed Pathauto module so that content pages in your site get nice URLs
by default. See Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs” for more on URLs.
• If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Videos
Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org
Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Installing Drupal modules”
• ”Download and Extend” page on Drupal.org
• Admin Toolbar module on Drupal.org

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

11.4 Finding Themes

Goal
Find and evaluate themes on Drupal.org.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

Steps
1. Go to https://www.drupal.org, and navigate to Download & Extend > Themes (https://www.drupal.org/-
project/project_theme).
2. Filter your search using the categories on the theme search page. For example, you might use these filters:

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Field name Explanation Example value

Maintenance status How actively is the theme Actively maintained
maintained? If a theme is
actively maintained, you can
expect bug fixes and
improvements on a regular
basis.
Development status What kind of development is Any
the theme undergoing? If you
select Under active development,
you can expect new features to
be added, and some aspects
may still change. If you select
Maintenance fixes only, it means
that the theme is considered
complete.
Core compatibility The Drupal version the theme 9.x
is compatible with.
Status Sandbox projects are Full projects
experimental projects. Full
projects have already gone
through an approval process,
but they can still be in
development.
Stability Whether or not the project Has a supported stable release
maintainer has created a
production-ready version.
Security advisory coverage Whether or not the project Has security advisory coverage
maintainer has agreed to
follow Drupal Security Team
procedures.
Search themes Search by search term in the -
theme’s description.
Sort by Order your search results by Most installed
criteria like Most installed
(popular themes that many
sites use) or Last release (date
of latest version released).

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3. Click Search. Search results will appear.

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4. To further evaluate a theme, click its title in the list of search results to visit its project page.

Some aspects to pay attention to while evaluating themes:

• Introduction: The description of the theme on its project page should be clear and useful. A screenshot
of the theme helps your evaluation as well.
• Project information: There may be warnings in this area of the page, such as if a theme is no longer being
developed, or is not covered by the security advisory policy.
• Project information > Reported installs, downloads: You can see how many people have downloaded
and how many sites use the theme.

• Issues: See if there are any open issues, potential problems with the theme. Check the Statistics to see
how regularly issues are responded to.
• Documentation, Resources: Check if the theme has documentation or a README file, that can help you
install, configure, explore, and test it.

Expand your understanding

• Section 11.5, “Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org”

Videos
Finding Themes
Finding Themes
Attributions
Written by Diána Lakatos.

11.5 Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org

Goal
Download and install a theme from Drupal.org.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 11.4, “Finding Themes”
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

Site prerequisites
If you want to install via the website, the core Update Manager module must be installed. See Section 4.3,
“Installing a Module” for instructions on installing modules.
If you want to use Drush, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface to download and install a contributed theme. If you are installing a
custom theme rather than a contributed theme, if you see a message saying Installing modules and themes requires
FTP access to your server, or if the steps below do not work to download and unpack the theme files, follow
the steps in Section 11.6, “Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files”. If you are using Composer to
manage the files in your site, follow the steps for downloading in Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download
and Update Files”. In either of these cases, you can then install the theme using Drush, or by continuing with
step 7 in the instructions for the administrative interface below.

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Using the administrative interface

1. On the theme’s project page on drupal.org (for example, https://www.drupal.org/project/honey), scroll to
the Downloads section at the bottom of the page.

2. Right-click tar.gz to copy the address.

3. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Appearance (admin/appearance). The Appearance page ap-
pears.

4. Click Add new theme. The Add new theme page appears.

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5. In the field Add from a URL, paste the copied download link. This value could look like https://ftp.drupal.org/fi
6. Click _ to upload and unpack the new theme on the server. The files are being downloaded to the _themes directory.
7. Click Install newly added themes to return to the Appearance page. If you used the manual uploading pro-
cedure mentioned earlier, then you can continue with this step, and reach the Appearance page by using
the Manage administrative menu and navigating to Appearance (admin/appearance).
8. Locate the new theme under Uninstalled themes and click Install and set as default to use it. All non-
administrative pages on the site will now use this new theme.

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Using Drush to install a theme

1. Find the project name for the theme you want to install, which is the last segment of the theme’s project
page URL. For example, if the project URL is https://www.drupal.org/project/honey, the project name is
honey.
2. Download the theme using either the steps in Section 11.6, “Manually Downloading Module or Theme
Files” or Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download and Update Files”.
3. Run the following Drush commands, giving the project name (for example, honey) as a parameter:
drush theme:enable honey
drush config:set system.theme default honey

4. Follow the instructions on the screen.

Expand your understanding

• In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Appearance (admin/appearance) and uninstall any themes
that you are not using.
• Section 11.1, “Finding Modules”
• Section 11.3, “Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org”
• If you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache”.

Videos
Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org
Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org
Attributions
Written and edited by Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me, and Boris Doesborgh.

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11.6 Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files

Goal
Manually download module or theme files and upload them to your site, if the website or Drush methods for
installing or updating a module or theme do not work, or if you are placing a custom-written module or theme.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”
• Section 11.1, “Finding Modules”
• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”
• Section 11.4, “Finding Themes”

Site prerequisites
You need to be facing any of the following to perform the manual download described in this topic:
• File permission issues
• FTP permission issues
• You created a custom module/theme or received its files from someone

• You could not successfully complete the instructions in Section 11.3, “Downloading and Installing a Mod-
ule from Drupal.org”, Section 11.5, “Downloading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org”, Section 13.6,
“Updating a Module”, or Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme”
Skip this topic if none of the above applies to you. If you are using Composer to manage the files in your
site, follow the file updating steps in Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download and Update Files” instead of
this topic.

Steps
If you are installing a module or theme from Drupal.org, follow the downloading instructions, and then the
uploading/unpacking instructions. If you created the module or theme, skip the downloading step. Instead,
create an archive file (that you know how to extract on the server) and proceed with the steps in uploading/un-
packing, using whatever method is appropriate for the way you initially created the archive file.

Downloading the files

1. Open the module or theme project page on drupal.org; for example, the Admin toolbar page (https://www.drupal.org/-
project/admin_toolbar).
2. Scroll to the Downloads section near the bottom of the page.

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3. Click tar.gz to download the file to your computer. Alternatively, if you have terminal access to your
hosting server (running Linux), you can copy the link address for the tar.gz file from your browser, and
use this command to download the file (substituting the copied URL):
wget https://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/admin_toolbar-8.x-2.4.tar.gz

Uploading the files to your site and unpacking them

1. If you are adding a new module or theme, create subdirectories in your top-level modules and themes
directories (if they don’t already exist). Typically, people make a contrib subdirectory for contributed
modules and themes that are downloaded from Drupal.org, and a custom subdirectory for modules and
themes that they created. Your modules directory might look like this:

2. If you are replacing an existing module or theme with an updated version, put the site into maintenance
mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.
3. If you are replacing an existing module or theme with an updated version, find and delete all the existing
files and directories for the existing module or theme. Modules are normally located in directories under
the top-level modules directory, and themes are normally located in directories under the top-level themes
directory.
4. Upload the .tar.gz file (or whatever archive you created) to your site. Place it in either the same loca-
tion from which you deleted the directory (if replacing an existing module or theme) or the appropriate
subdirectory of modules or themes (if adding a new module or theme).
5. Extract the files from the .tar.gz archive (or whatever archive you created), making a subdirectory in the
same location as the archive file. If you do not have terminal access, or your hosting server is not running
Linux, your hosting control panel’s file manager should provide a way to extract the files. If you have
terminal access to your hosting server (running Linux) and you are using a tar.gz file, you can use a
command like:
tar -xzf admin_toolbar-8.x-2.4.tar.gz

6. Delete the compressed file from the server, unless your unpacking method already deleted it.

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7. Refer to Section 11.3, “Downloading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org”, Section 11.5, “Download-
ing and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org”, Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”, or Section 13.7, “Updat-
ing a Theme” to complete the installation or update of the module or theme. Start at the step after the
automatic download has been completed.

Expand your understanding

• If you work with multiple environments (for example, a local development site and a production site)
you will have to repeat the steps on each environment, or re-clone the environment. See Section 11.8,
“Making a Development Site”.
• If you added a new theme, navigate in the Manage administrative menu to Appearance (admin/appearance)
and uninstall the old theme.

Videos
Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files
Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Updating modules”
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Installing Drupal modules”
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Installing themes”

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg, Jennifer Hodgdon, and Marc Isaacson.

11.7 Concept: Development Sites

What are Development Sites?
Development Sites are different copies of the same site used for developing, updating, and testing a site without
risking the integrity of the live site.
An example deployment workflow for site building will usually include the sites mentioned below:
Local environment The development process starts with developers working on new features, bug fixes,
theming, and configuration in their local environment.
Development site Developers push the changes they’ve been working on to the development site. For a team
of more than one developer, version control is usually used. Git is a version control system that tracks
your files for any changes. You can then commit those changes to a repository. Using Git allows team
members to work on the same site without overriding each other’s work. It also makes it possible to easily
roll back to previous stages of the development.
Staging site The staging site can be used for testing, or presenting the changes to the client for approval. QA
(Quality Assurance) and UAT (User Acceptance Testing) are most often carried out on the staging site.
It is recommended to have live content on both the development and staging sites, so that you can test
how the new features will work with the existing content.
Production site The live site on the web available to visitors. It contains new features that have been proven
safe to go live.
Based on the project’s size, scope, requirements, or stakeholders, stages from the above workflow can be
removed, or additional stages can be added. For example, a testing site before staging can be added to separate
testing and user acceptance processes.

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Related topics
• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”
• Section 2.6, “Concept: Editorial Workflow”

• Section 11.11, “Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git”

Attributions
Written and edited by Diána Lakatos, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

11.8 Making a Development Site

Goal
Make a copy of a site that you can use to develop new features and test updates on.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”

Site prerequisites
• You have a live, developed site that you would like to make a copy of for development purposes.
• If you want to use Drush for some of the steps in this task, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2,
“Concept: Additional Tools”.

Steps
1. Follow the steps in Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install”, so that you have hosting set up for your development
site, you know where the web root is for your development site, and you have an empty database and
database user for your development site to use.
2. The next step is to make a database dump file, containing the contents of your site’s database. This file
can be quite large, but there are two things you can do to reduce the size:

• Compress the file, using gzip or another compression utility.

• Exclude the contents of the database tables for the internal caching system, by truncating these tables.
Their data is temporary, and you need only the table structure and not the table contents in order to
make a copy of the site.
To make the database dump, try one of the following methods:
• If you use Drush, use this command, which will include only the structure and not the contents of
the cache tables, and gzip-compress the output:
drush sql:dump --gzip --structure-tables-list=”cache,cache_*” \
--result-file=’PATH/TO/BACKUPFILE.sql’

• If you are using MySQL and have access to the command line, use this command after truncating
the cache tables (substituting in your site’s database name, user name, and password):
mysqldump -u’USERNAME’ -p’PASSWORD’ DATABASENAME | \
gzip > PATH/TO/BACKUPFILE.sql.gz

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• If you are using MySQL as your database, and your live site’s server has phpMyAdmin installed (it
is available from many hosting control panels), you can truncate the cache tables by selecting them
in the phpMyAdmin table structure list and choosing the Empty operation at the bottom of the page.
Then use the Export tab in phpMyAdmin to export in SQL format, with gzip compression to reduce
the file size.
• Use the contributed Backup and Migrate module from within your live site. See Section 11.3, “Down-
loading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org” for instructions on installing contributed modules.
You now have a database dump stored in the file BACKUPFILE.sql.gz. For security reasons, avoid
storing this file on your hosting server anywhere under the Drupal site root. This will prevent others
from getting a copy of your database.

3. Copy all of the files from the web root of your live site to the web root of your development site. You may
wish to use Git to do this; if so, see Section 11.11, “Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git”.

4. Edit the sites/default/settings.php file under your development site’s top-level directory in a plain-text ed-
itor. Find the lines near the end that contain the database name, database username, and database pass-
word, and update them to the information about the development site database you set up. The lines
look something like this (before editing):
$databases[’default’][’default’] = [
’database’ => ’live_site_database_name’,
’username’ => ’live_site_database_username’,
’password’ => ’live_site_database_password’,
b’’…b’’

5. Check whether your settings.php file has the following setting; if yes, then you will need to edit this to
point to your development site URL instead of your production site URL:
$settings[’trusted_host_patterns’]

6. Check whether your settings.php file has the following setting, and has it set to a random string value. If
it does not, then you will need to add or edit it in order to prevent fatal errors:
$settings[’hash_salt’] = ’any_string_value’;

One way to produce a random string for the hash salt is the following Drush command:
drush php-eval ’echo
\Drupal\Component\Utility\Crypt::randomBytesBase64(55) . ”\n”;’

If you don’t use Drush, there are numerous web sites and applications that provide random string gen-
erators; you’ll want to generate a string that is about 74 characters long.
7. Import the database dump file you created, into the development site’s database. Try one of the following
methods:

• If you are using MySQL as your database, and your live site’s server has phpMyAdmin installed (it
is available from many hosting control panels), use the Import tab in phpMyAdmin. You may find
that you have to restart the import a few times, if your database was large.
• If you are using MySQL and have access to the command line, use this command (substituting in
your site’s database name, user name, and password; if you made a gzip-compressed backup file,
you will also need to uncompress it first):
gunzip < PATH/TO/BACKUPFILE.sql.gz | \
mysql -u’USERNAME’ -p’PASSWORD’ DATABASENAME

• If you prefer to use Drush, use this command:

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drush sql:query --file=’PATH/TO/BACKUPFILE.sql.gz’

8. If your development and live sites need to have different configuration, then you have to use configuration
overrides in the settings.php file. The $config variable will help you maintain override values separately
from the standard configuration data. For instance, you might want the site name to be ”Anytown Farmers
Market” on the production site, but ”Development Site for Anytown Farmers Market” on the development
site. To do that, you could have the production value in the site configuration (in the database), and on
the development site, in the settings.php file, you would need to have:
$config[’system.site’][’name’] =
”Development Site for Anytown Farmers Market”;

Expand your understanding

• Verify that the development site is working correctly.
• Log in to the development site as an administrator, and clear the cache. See Section 12.2, “Clearing the
Cache”.
• Section 11.9, “Deploying New Site Features”

• Section 11.11, “Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git”

Videos
Making a Development Site
Making a Development Site

Additional resources
• Installing a new Drupal application on your local machine
• Creating a Drupal demo application for evaluation purposes

Attributions
Written and edited by Jennifer Hodgdon, Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

11.9 Deploying New Site Features

Goal
Copy a view that you have created in a local development site to the production site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”

• Section 11.10, “Synchronizing Configuration Versions”

• Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”

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Site prerequisites
• The core Configuration Manager module must be installed in both the development and production sites.
See Section 4.3, “Installing a Module” for instructions on installing core modules.

• The Vendor content type must exist in both the development and production sites, with the same fields.
See Section 6.1, “Adding a Content Type”.
• The Vendors view must exist in the development site but not the production site. See Section 9.3, “Creat-
ing a Content List View”.

Steps
1. Open the local development site.

2. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Configuration synchroniza-
tion > Export > Single item (admin/config/development/configuration/single/export). The Single export page
appears.
3. Select View from the Configuration type list.

4. Select Vendors from the Configuration name list. The configuration appears in the textarea.
5. Copy the configuration from the textarea.

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6. Open the production site.

7. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Configuration synchroniza-
tion > Import > Single item (admin/config/development/configuration). The Import page appears.
8. Select View from the Configuration type list.

9. Paste the configuration in the textarea.

10. Click Import. The confirmation page appears.
11. Click Confirm.
12. Verify that the view was imported by navigating in the Manage administrative menu to Structure > Views.

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Expand your understanding

The steps in this topic show how to export and import a single configuration item. However, often if you develop
functionality on a development website and want to transfer it to your production site, you will need to transfer
multiple configuration items. For instance, if you developed a new content type with fields, you would need
to transfer several configuration items for each field, one for the content type itself, and possibly multiple view
mode and form mode items, and they would have to be transferred in the right order. Getting this right can be
both tedious and difficult.
As an alternative, you can export and import the complete configuration of the site. For this, you would need
a local development site that is a clone of the production site (see Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”),
and then you can follow the steps in Section 11.10, “Synchronizing Configuration Versions” to synchronize
configuration between development and production sites.
Another alternative is to use the contributed Features module, which allows exporting and importing bun-
dled functionality (for example, all the configuration for a photo gallery).
Finally, if you do not see the effect of these changes in your site, you might need to clear the cache. See
Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”.

Related concepts
• Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”
• Section 2.6, “Concept: Editorial Workflow”

Videos
Deploying New Site Features
Deploying New Site Features
Attributions
Written by Boris Doesborg.

11.10 Synchronizing Configuration Versions

Goal
Synchronize the configuration between a development and live site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data”
• Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install”
• Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”
• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”

Site prerequisites
• You must have a development copy of your production site. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development
Site”.
• The core Configuration Manager module must be installed on both the development and production sites.
See Section 4.3, “Installing a Module” for instructions on how to install core modules.
• You must have changed configuration on either the production or development site (the source site), and
want to synchronize the changes to the other site (the destination site). As an example, you can develop a
new content type, fields, and views on your development site, and when it is all working correctly, deploy
the changes to the live site.

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• All configuration that should not be synchronized between the source and destination sites must be stored
in configuration overrides in the settings.php file rather than in the database. See Section 11.8, “Making a
Development Site”.

Steps
1. In the source site, in the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Config-
uration synchronization > Export (admin/config/development/configuration/full/export).
2. Click Export. Your site will generate an archive of the full site configuration. Save the file on your local
computer.

3. In the destination site, in the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development >
Configuration synchronization > Import (admin/config/development/configuration/full/import).
4. Browse to find the downloaded configuration archive, and click Upload. Your configuration archive will
be uploaded to the destination site, and you will be redirected to the configuration Synchronize page (ad-
min/config/development/configuration) with a message saying your files were uploaded.

5. Verify that the differences shown on the page are what you expect. You may see configuration items that
have been added, deleted, or changed; for changed items, you can click View differences to see what the
changes are.
6. When you are satisfied, click Import all to import the configuration changes.

Expand your understanding

• If the changes you have made involve only one configuration item (such as one view), you can use the sin-
gle configuration export/import feature to deploy the change between sites. See Section 11.9, “Deploying
New Site Features”.
• After the step where you export the full configuration from the source site, you might also want to un-
pack the archive and commit it to a version control system, such as Git, to track changes in your site
configuration. See Section 11.11, “Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git”.

Videos
Synchronizing Configuration Versions
Synchronizing Configuration Versions
Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

11.11 Managing File and Configuration Revisions with Git

Goal
Use the Git revision control tool to manage revisions to files and configuration on your site.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”
• Section 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”

• Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”

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• How to set up a Git repository and find its clone URL. For example, if you want to use GitLab to host your
repository, see GitLab ”Create a project” page and GitLab ”Command Line basic commands” page. And
if you want to use GitHub to host your repository, see GitHub ”Create a repo” page and GitHub ”Which
remote URL should I use” page.
• How to open and use a command terminal window and a plain-text editor.
• To manage configuration, how to unpack and pack archive files (such as .zip and .tar.gz).

Site prerequisites
• You must have downloaded the software for your site, using one of the methods in Section 3.3, “Concept:
Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software”. If you want to manage configuration, you
must have installed the software and have a running site.
• Git client software must be installed on your site’s server. See Git for instructions.
• You must have a new repository created and know its Git clone URL.

Steps
Initializing the repository
Do these steps once, after creating a Git repository, to connect your local directory to the repository and add
the initial files to it.
1. Open a command terminal window, and change to the directory where your site’s files are located. This
is your ”top” directory.
2. Determine where your web root is. If the core, modules, and themes directories are located directly in this
directory, then you are in your web root. If you have used Composer to download the software, then these
files are located inside the web subdirectory (which is your web root).
3. In a plain text editor, create a new file called .gitignore in the top directory (or edit it if it already exists).
This file contains a list of files and directories that Git should ignore (not add to the repository). For
example, the settings.php file for your site should not be added to Git, because it contains your database
account information, and the media files uploaded to your site (usually in sites/default/files) should not
be in Git either — the objective is to have the software in the repository, not the site content.
4. Make sure the following lines are in the .gitignore file. If your web root is not your top directory, check
each of these to see if they need a prefix. For example, sites may need to be replaced with web/sites.
sites/*/settings*.php
sites/*/files
config

5. Enter the following commands:

git init
git add -A

6. Optionally, verify the list of files you will be adding to your Git repository by entering this command and
scrolling through the (very long) list:
git status

7. Enter the following commands. You can substitute your own commit message for ”Initial file add” if you
wish, and you will need to substitute your own Git clone URL for the URL in the second command:

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git commit -m ”Initial file add”

git remote add origin https://gitlab.com/example-name/example-repo.git
git push -u origin master

8. If you are using GitLab, GitHub, or another host with online access, you can now go to your repository
page and see that the files are there.

Updating files in the repository

Use these steps when you have updated, added, or deleted one or more files in your site, in order to send the
changes (push) to your repository.
1. Open a command terminal window, and change to the directory where your site’s files are located.
2. Check the list of files that have been added, changed, or deleted:
git status

3. Optionally, for text files that have been changed (not images), look at the differences between the new
and old versions of the file:
git diff path/to/file.txt

4. Stage all the changes for the next commit, and verify that they are staged:
git add -A
git status

5. You can omit a particular file from the commit that you have already staged, or add another file to the
ones you have already staged. If a particular file or directory keeps getting added by mistake, consider
adding it to the .gitignore file so that it will be ignored by Git. Omit/add commands:
git reset HEAD path/to/file.txt
git add path/to/file.txt

6. Commit and push your changes. Substitute something meaningful for the commit message:
git commit -m ”commit message here”
git push

7. If you have other copies of your repository, update them by opening a command window in the directory
of each copy and running the following command:
git pull

Making a copy of the files in your repository

Follow these steps if you want to copy all the files in your repository to a new location. For example, you might
have both a local development copy of your site and a production site, or several team members might all have
local copies of the site.
1. Open a command window in the location where you want the files to be.
2. Enter the following command, substituting your repository clone URL for the URL, and the name of the
subdirectory you want them in for dirname:
git clone https://gitlab.com/example-name/example-repo.git dirname

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Managing configuration in the repository

1. Follow the instructions on Section 11.10, “Synchronizing Configuration Versions” to export a complete
archive of your site’s configuration.

2. If you have not already initialized configuration in the repository, unpack the configuration archive into
a new directory, preferably above the web root directory, and follow the instructions above to add these
files to your repository.
3. After initializing, whenever your site configuration changes, export and unpack the configuration archive
in the same location. Follow the instructions above to update these files in your repository.

4. To import updated configuration to another site, make an archive of the configuration directory from
your repository. Then follow the instructions on Section 11.10, “Synchronizing Configuration Versions”
to upload and import this archive into the site.

Related concepts
Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Jennifer Hodgdon from ”Building a Drupal site with Git”, copyright 2000-2024 by
the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

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Chapter 12

Preventing and Fixing Problems

12.1 Concept: Cache

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

What is the page cache?

The software that runs your site, on each page request, must perform calculations and retrieve data from the
database, in order to compose the page that is sent to the web browser or other application that is accessing the
site. These calculations take time, which can mean that your page load time is longer than would be desirable.
There are several ways that page load time can be sped up, including installing software on the server. The
system includes the core Internal Page Cache and Dynamic Page Cache modules, which do not require any
additional server software; they use a database cache mechanism to speed up your site. The way these modules
work is that during page calculations, intermediate results and the final page output are stored in a special
database area (known as the cache). Then the next time a compatible request is made, intermediate or final
results, as appropriate, can be retrieved and used rather than redoing the entire calculation. In addition, when
content or data that affects a particular calculation is updated, the affected cached data is removed from the
cache, forcing that part of the calculation to be redone the next time it is needed.
These caching modules normally work reasonably well, and offer at least some speed-up for most sites.
However, sometimes the page cache can have problems, such as:
• Corrupted data in the cache, leading to garbled or incorrect page output

• Old data remaining in the cache too long, leading to outdated page output
• Insufficient caching, leading to slow page loads

What other data is cached?

Independent of whether the two page cache modules are installed on your site, the software that your site runs
will still cache the output of many internal calculations. The core systems that cache data include:

• The theme system caches information in the database cache about which template files are used to render
various types of data. If you are developing a new theme and add a new template file, you’ll need to clear
this cache to have your theme file recognized.
• CSS and JavaScript files can optionally be optimized and compressed (depending on your site settings).
If so, the compressed versions are stored in the file system so that they don’t have to be re-optimized too
often. If you are developing a module or theme, you may need to either turn off or clear this file cache to
have changes to CSS or JavaScript files be recognized.

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• The system locates certain low-level PHP functions and classes, such as hook implementations and plugin
classes, from your installed modules and stores information about which module has which functionality.
If you are developing a new module or adding features to an existing module, you may need to clear this
cache to have your new features be recognized.

Related topics
If you have problems with your site, the first thing to try to fix it is usually to clear the cache. See Section 12.2,
“Clearing the Cache” for more information.

Additional resources
Learn about additional caching and performance optimization methods in the Drupal.org community docu-
mentation page ”Caching overview”.
Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

12.2 Clearing the Cache

Goal
Clear or rebuild your site’s internal caches to ensure they are up-to-date with the most recent data, using the
user interface or Drush.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 12.1, “Concept: Cache”
• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”

Site prerequisites
If you want to use Drush to clear the cache, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional
Tools”.

Steps
You can use the administrative interface or Drush to clear the cache. You can also use the rebuild script or
Drush to do a more complete cache rebuild.

Using the administrative interface to clear the cache

1. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > Development > Performance (admin/con-
fig/development/performance). If you cannot access this page in the administrative interface, use one of the
other methods to clear or rebuild the cache.
2. Click Clear all caches.
3. A message saying the cache has been cleared appears at the top of the page.

4. If this doesn’t resolve the problem that caused you to want to clear the cache, try a rebuild instead.

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Using the rebuild script

1. Open settings.php (/sites/default/settings.php) in any plain text editor. Add this line to the end of the file
and save it:
$settings[’rebuild_access’] = TRUE;

2. Visit http://www.example.com/core/rebuild.php in your browser (where www.example.com is your site’s URL).

After a short pause, you should be redirected to the home page of your site, and the cache should be re-
built.
3. Open settings.php (/sites/default/settings.php) in a text editor. Find the line you added with $settings[rebuild_access],
remove this line, and save the file.

Using Drush to rebuild or clear the cache

You can use one of two commands:
• Use the command drush cache:rebuild to clear and rebuild all cached data for a site. After running
this command, you will see the output message ”Cache rebuild complete.”
• Use the command drush cache:clear to see a list of individual caches and then choose the specific
cache you would like to clear. Running this command should produce output like the following:
> drush cache:clear
Enter a number to choose which cache to clear.
[0] : Cancel
[1] : drush
[2] : theme-registry
[3] : menu
[4] : css-js
[5] : block
[6] : module-list
[7] : theme-list
[8] : render
[9] : views

Choose a cache to clear by entering the number associated with that cache. Press ”Enter” to continue.
To clear a specific cache type, you can specify it in the cache:clear command. For example to clear the render
cache:
drush cache:clear render

Videos
Clearing the Cache
Clearing the Cache

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Clearing or rebuilding Drupal’s cache”
Attributions
Adapted and edited by Joe Shindelar and Jack Haas from ”Clearing or rebuilding Drupal’s cache”, copyright
2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

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12.3 Concept: Data Backups

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”

• Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install”

What is a site backup?

If something happens to the computer (or computers) that your site and its database are running on, or if you
lose access to this computer, you could lose some or all of your site’s data. You could also lose data if your site
is hacked, or if someone with administrative privileges on your site deletes or alters data mistakenly from the
administrative interface. In order to prevent scenarios like this from being permanent, expensive data losses, it
is important to make regular backups of your site’s data, and to store them in a location that is separate from
the computer where your site is running.
The frequency with which you should make data backups, and how many backups you should keep, de-
pends on how frequently your site is changing. If you have a very large amount of content on your site that
is being added to or updated many times per day, you would want to make more frequent backups than you
would for a site that changes rarely. Also consider that some time could pass between when a data problem
occurs and when you notice that it is a problem, so storing a sequence of backups (so that you can go back
to the last known good data and retrieve that), rather than overwriting a single backup repeatedly, is a good
practice.
Another consideration is that whatever format you store your backups in, it is a good idea to verify that you
can actually retrieve lost data from your backups. You might want to test several possible data loss scenarios,
and make sure that your data can be restored to the site in all cases.
In order to make a complete backup of your site, you will need to make copies of the following:

• The data in the sites directory, including the sites/default/settings.php file.

• The data in your site’s database. A few tables can be truncated, such as those storing the temporary data
cache and user login session information, but it is always safe to back up the entire database.
• Uploaded files, such as images and other attachments. The location of these files is configurable; the
standard location is the sites/default/files directory under your site root. In the Manage administrative
menu, navigate to Configuration > Media > File system (admin/config/media/file-system) to check the file
upload locations; to change them, you’ll need to edit your settings.php file.
• Modules, themes and any other software files you have customized. You can find customized modules
and themes in the modules and themes directories respectively. Some people prefer to back up all software
files, including core files and contributed modules and themes (which you could recover by downloading
them again from the source), rather than trying to pick out specific files that definitely need to be backed
up.
You can perform a test to confirm whether your backup has been done right by making a development copy
of the site (see Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”).

Related topics
• Section 13.5, “Updating the Core Software”

• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”

• Section 12.1, “Concept: Cache”

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Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Backing up a site”
• The contributed Backup and Migrate module, which can be used to set up automatic backups of the
database and uploaded files.

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

12.4 Concept: Log

What is a Log?
Your site captures system events in a log to be reviewed by an authorized individual at a later time. The log is a
list of recorded events containing usage data, performance data, errors, warnings, and operational information.
It is vital to check the log on a regular basis as it is often the only way to tell what is going on.
You can find your site’s recent log messages in the Manage administrative menu by navigating to Reports
> Recent log messages (admin/reports/dblog). These logs may be cleared by administrators and automated cron
tasks, so they should not be used for forensic logging. For forensic purposes, use the Syslog module.

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Attributions
Adapted by Diána Lakatos from ”Reports” copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal
Community Documentation

12.5 Concept: Status Report

What is a Status Report?
The status report is a short overview of your site’s parameters as well as any problems detected with your
installation. It may be useful to copy and paste this information into support requests filed on Drupal.org’s
support forums and project issue queues or when asking for help on other channels.
You can find the status report in the Manage administrative menu by navigating to Reports > Status report
(admin/reports/status).

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Related topics
Section 14.2, “Getting Support”

Additional resources
If you have an error about trusted host settings in your status report, see Drupal.org community documentation
page ”Trusted Host settings”.
Attributions

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CHAPTER 12. PREVENTING AND FIXING … 12.5. CONCEPT: STATUS REPORT

Adapted by Diána Lakatos from ”Reports” copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal
Community Documentation

196
Chapter 13

Security and Maintenance

13.1 Concept: Cron

What are cron tasks?
To ensure that your site and its modules continue to function well, a group of administrative operations should
be run periodically. These operations are called cron tasks. Examples of cron tasks are: checking for module
and theme updates, indexing content for search, or cleaning up temporary files.

What is the relationship between the site’s cron tasks and Unix cron?
Linux/Unix-based operating systems have a cron scheduler that can be used to run periodic tasks. You can
use the server’s cron scheduler to schedule runs of the site’s cron tasks. Alternatively, you can use the core
Automated Cron module to run tasks. You can check the site’s cron tasks’ status in the status report.

Related topics
• Section 13.2, “Configuring Cron Maintenance Tasks”
• Section 12.5, “Concept: Status Report”

Additional resources
Drupal.org community documentation page ”Setting up cron”
Attributions
Written and edited by Diána Lakatos at Pronovix, Dave Hansen-Lange at Advomatic, and Boris Doesborg.

13.2 Configuring Cron Maintenance Tasks

Goal
Check whether cron maintenance tasks are run regularly, and if not, either install the core Automated Cron
module or run cron maintenance tasks from outside the website.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 13.1, “Concept: Cron”

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Steps
1. Review the Status report (see Section 12.5, “Concept: Status Report”) to see when cron maintenance tasks
were last run.
If you installed the website using the core Standard installation profile (or similar), then cron maintenance
tasks might already be running via the core Automated Cron module. By default, these tasks are run
about every three hours.
2. Choose whether to run cron maintenance tasks using the core Automated Cron module, or by other
means. The core Automated Cron module might not be suitable for some websites because:

• Each time someone accesses a page on the site, the module checks how long it has been since cron
maintenance tasks have last run, and then runs them if necessary. If no one visits the website for a
long time, cron maintenance tasks will not be run.
• Cron maintenance tasks are run after the page has been generated. This means there is less time for
the tasks to be run before various server timeouts are reached (for example, PHP execution timeout).
If this happens, the logs (see Section 12.4, “Concept: Log”) will show error messages that cron is
unable to complete.
• There is a small scalability cost associated with the core Automated Cron module. This is because
one of the web server’s processes is occupied (and can’t serve other web pages) until the cron main-
tenance tasks are complete.

3. If you want to use the core Automated Cron module, first make sure it is installed (it is installed with the
core Standard install profile; see Section 4.3, “Installing a Module” if it is not installed).
Next, configure the module to control how frequently cron maintenance tasks are run. In the Manage
administrative menu, navigate to Configuration > System > Cron (admin/config/system/cron). Select the
desired interval from the Run cron every field under Cron settings, and click Save configuration.

4. If you want to run cron maintenance tasks from outside the website, uninstall the core Automated Cron
module (see Section 4.4, “Uninstalling Unused Modules”). Next, find the cron URL. This URL is shown
in the Status report (see Section 12.5, “Concept: Status Report”), and in the Cron administration page (see
previous step). The URL looks like this: http://www.example.com/cron/0MgWtfB33FYbbQ5UAC3L0LL3RC0PT3RNUBZI

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Whenever this URL is visited, cron maintenance tasks will run. Set up one of the following schedulers to
access this URL regularly:

• The Cron daemon (Linux, OS X, Solaris, BSD)

• Scheduled Tasks (Windows)
• A cron SASS provider (software as a service)
• A cron manager provided by your web hosting provider (see the documentation provided by your
provider)

Related concepts
Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”

Videos
Configuring Cron Maintenance Tasks
Configuring Cron Maintenance Tasks

Additional resources
• Drush page ”Running Drupal cron tasks from Drush”

• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Setting up cron”

Attributions
Written and edited by Dave Hansen-Lange at Advomatic, Boris Doesborg, and Jennifer Hodgdon.

13.3 Concept: Security and Regular Updates

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
• Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”

• Section 1.3, “Concept: Themes”

• Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project”

What are security updates?

Any software occasionally has bugs, and sometimes these bugs have security implications. When security
bugs are fixed in the core software, modules, or themes that your site uses, they are released in a security update.
When critical security updates are announced, they will be shown in the administration pages of your website.
You will need to apply security updates in order to keep your site secure. See Section 13.4, “Keeping Track
of Updates” to learn how to be notified of security updates by email, and Section 13.5, “Updating the Core
Software”, Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”, and Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme” to learn how to make
updates.

What is the security team?

The Drupal open-source project has a team of volunteers who track security-related bugs and release security
updates. They also help other developers fix bugs, and maintain information for users on how to keep their
websites secure. You can learn more about the security team and their practices and processes at the Drupal.org
Security Team page.

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How are security bugs reported?

It is important that security problems be kept confidential until they are fixed, so that sites are less likely to be
compromised before they can be secured. If you find a potential security problem in any of the software you
downloaded from the Drupal.org website, follow the procedures on the Drupal.org Security Team page to report
it.

What are regular (non-security) updates?

The core software, modules, and themes also periodically have regular updates to add new features and fix
bugs. These updates are less critical than security updates. As a general best practice, updates should be
applied as long as they do not cause problems with your site. Testing on a development copy of your site is
always a good idea before applying updates on a live site. This is because some updates may include changes
that are not compatible with the modules or themes on your site, or that will break a particular functionality
on your site.

Related topics
• Section 13.4, “Keeping Track of Updates”
• Section 13.5, “Updating the Core Software”
• Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”

• Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme”

• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”

Additional resources
• Drupal.org community documentation page ”Securing your site”
• ”Security advisories” on Drupal.org

• Drupal.org Security team

Attributions
Written and edited by Boris Doesborg and Jennifer Hodgdon.

13.4 Keeping Track of Updates

Goal
Keep your site safe and up-to-date by keeping up with the latest security updates.

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”

Steps
There are a few different ways to receive notifications of security releases:
• Highly critical security announcements will be displayed on the administration pages of your website. A
link will be shown to the announcement on Drupal.org which explains when and how you can update
your website.

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• In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Reports > Available updates > Settings. Enter the email
addresses to be notified when updates are available. You can also specify whether you want daily or
weekly updates. Click Save configuration.
• Subscribe to the security announcements email list. To subscribe, log in to Drupal.org, go to your user
profile page and subscribe to the security newsletter on the Edit > My newsletters tab.
• Follow @drupalsecurity on Twitter.

• Subscribe to RSS feeds for core security updates, contributed project updates and public service announce-
ments.

Related concepts
• Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”
• Section 13.5, “Updating the Core Software”

• Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”

• Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme”

Videos
Keeping Track of Updates
Keeping Track of Updates

Additional resources
• ”Security advisories” on Drupal.org

• Drupal.org Security Team

• @drupalsecurity on Twitter

Attributions
Written by Sarah German at Advomatic.

13.5 Updating the Core Software

Goal
Update the core software, either through the administrative interface or by using Drush.

Site prerequisites
• If you want to use Drush, Drush must be installed. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”.
• If your site is live, you should test this process in a development environment before running it on your
production site. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”.

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Steps
1. Make a complete backup of your site. Refer to Section 12.3, “Concept: Data Backups”.
2. Open settings.php (/sites/default/settings.php) in any plain text editor. Find the line with the $settings[update_free_access
variable. By default, it is set to ”FALSE” due to security reasons. Change the setting to ”TRUE”:
$settings[’update_free_access’] = TRUE;

3. Disable any caching technique (memcache, varnish, and so on) your application might be using.
4. Put your site in maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.

5. If you are using Composer to manage dependencies, skip the next six steps, and instead see Section 3.5,
“Using Composer to Download and Update Files” for instructions on downloading updated files. Con-
tinue with the update.php step.
6. Download the tar.gz or zip file archive for the latest version of Drupal core for the branch you are currently
using (such as 8.x or 9.x) from Drupal.org Drupal Core Downloads. See Section 3.4, “Preparing to Install”
for more details on how to find the latest version.
7. Upload the archive file to your web hosting server.
8. Extract the archive file to a temporary directory on your server (should be outside the directory where
the site is hosted). Your hosting control panel’s file manager should provide a way to extract the files. Or,
if you have terminal access to your hosting server (running Linux), you can use a command like:
tar -xzf drupal-8.3.2.tar.gz

9. In your site hosting directory, delete the core and vendor directories, and all files that are not in a sub-
directory, including .htaccess, composer.json, and autoload.php. Don’t delete custom and customized files
because you may end up losing the custom functionality stored in them.

10. Copy the core and vendor directories and the non-custom/non-customized files that you deleted in the
preceding step from the temporary directory to your site directory.
11. Run the update.php script using either of the following:

• Visit http://www.example.com/update.php in your browser (where www.example.com is your site’s URL).

Click Continue in the first screen to run the updates and successfully complete the script.
• Run the following Drush command: drush updatedb

12. If you get any error or warning, re-run the update.php script again till all the updates have been completed
successfully.
13. Open settings.php (/sites/default/settings.php) in a text editor. Find the line with the $settings[update_free_access]
variable and update it to ”FALSE”:
$settings[’update_free_access’] = FALSE;

14. Click Administration pages to return to the administration section of your site.
15. Take your site out of maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.

16. Clear the cache. See Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”.
17. Re-enable any caching technique you disabled at Step 3.
18. You should have the updated version running. You can verify the current version of your software by
checking the Status report (see Section 12.5, “Concept: Status Report”).

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Expand your understanding

• Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools”
• Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”

• Section 12.3, “Concept: Data Backups”

Related concepts
Section 12.5, “Concept: Status Report”

Videos
Updating the Core Software
Updating the Core Software

Additional resources
• ”Drupal Core Downloads” page on Drupal.org

• ”Registry Rebuild” page on Drupal.org

• The file /core/UPDATE.txt within your installation.

Attributions
Written and edited by Surendra Mohan, Boris Doesborgh, and Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

13.6 Updating a Module

Goal
Update a contributed module and run the Database updates script.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”
• Section 13.1, “Concept: Cron”

Site prerequisites
• A contributed module has been installed and there is an update available for it. See Section 11.3, “Down-
loading and Installing a Module from Drupal.org” and Section 13.4, “Keeping Track of Updates”.

• If your site is live, you should test this process in a development environment before running it on your
production site. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”.
• You have created a full-site backup. See Section 12.3, “Concept: Data Backups”.
• If you want to use the user interface, the core Update Manager module must be installed. See Section 4.3,
“Installing a Module” for instructions on installing core modules.

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Steps
Before you start, check for module-specific update instructions. This is typically necessary while updating
modules that involve the usage of third-party libraries. Read and understand all module-specific requirements
before proceeding with the updates. To find instructions, check the module’s project page Read Documentation
link.
To view further instructions, download the tar.gz or .zip file from the project page to your local computer.
Unzip the file and look for README.txt, INSTALL.txt, and UPGRADE.txt that come with the module’s installa-
tion file. Also, review the release notes on the project page by clicking the version number you’re downloading.

You can use the administrative interface to update a contributed module. If you are updating a custom
module rather than a contributed module, if you see a message saying Installing modules and themes requires
FTP access to your server, or if the steps below do not work to obtain the new module files, follow the steps in
Section 11.6, “Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files”. You can then continue here with step 6 in the
instructions for the administrative interface below.
If you are using Composer to manage the files in your site, follow the steps in Section 3.5, “Using Composer
to Download and Update Files” to update the files, then continue here with step 5 in the instructions for the
administrative interface below.

Using the administrative interface

1. Put your site in maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.
2. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Reports > Available updates > Update (admin/reports/up-
dates/update).
3. Find and check the module in the list. Click Download these updates for the module.

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4. Click Continue.

5. Click Run database updates. If you obtained the new module files manually, start with this step, and reach
the database updates page by typing the URL example.com/update.php in your browser.
6. Click Continue and apply all updates. The database update scripts will be executed.
7. Click Administration pages to return to the administration section of your site.

8. Take your site out of maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.
9. Clear the cache (refer to Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”).

Expand your understanding

• Review the site log (refer to Section 12.4, “Concept: Log”) once the updates are complete to check for
errors.
• Section 13.7, “Updating a Theme”

Videos
Updating a Module
Updating a Module
Attributions
Adapted by Boris Doesborgh, and Sarah German at Advomatic, from ”Update modules”, copyright 2000-
2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.

13.7 Updating a Theme

Goal
Update a contributed theme on your site and run the Database Updates script.

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates”
• Section 13.1, “Concept: Cron”

Site prerequisites
• A contributed theme has been installed and there is an update available for it. See Section 11.5, “Down-
loading and Installing a Theme from Drupal.org” and Section 13.4, “Keeping Track of Updates”.
• If your site is live, you should test this process in a development environment before running it on your
production site. See Section 11.8, “Making a Development Site”.

• You have created a full site backup. See Section 12.3, “Concept: Data Backups”.
• If you want to use the user interface, the core Update Manager module must be installed. See Section 4.3,
“Installing a Module” for instructions on installing core modules.

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Steps
You can use the administrative interface to update a contributed theme. If you are updating a custom theme
rather than a contributed theme, if you see a message saying Installing modules and themes requires FTP access
to your server, or if the steps below do not work to obtain the new theme files, follow the steps in Section 11.6,
“Manually Downloading Module or Theme Files”, and then continue with step 5 in the instructions for admin-
istrative interface below.
If you are using Composer to manage the files in your site, follow the steps in Section 3.5, “Using Composer
to Download and Update Files” to update the files, then continue here with step 6 in the instructions for the
administrative interface below.

Using the administrative interface

1. Put your site in maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.
2. In the Manage administrative menu, navigate to Reports > Available updates > Update (admin/reports/up-
dates/update).

3. Find and check the theme in the list. Click Download these updates for the theme.

4. Click Continue.
5. Click Run database updates. If you obtained the new theme files manually, start with this step, and reach
the database updates page by typing the URL example.com/update.php in your browser.
6. Click Continue to run the updates. The database update scripts will be executed.
7. Click Administration pages to return to the administration section of your site.
8. Take your site out of maintenance mode. See Section 11.2, “Enabling and Disabling Maintenance Mode”.

9. Clear the Drupal cache (refer to Section 12.2, “Clearing the Cache”).

Expand your understanding

• Review the site log, see Section 12.4, “Concept: Log”, once the updates are complete to check for errors.
• Section 13.6, “Updating a Module”

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Videos
Updating a Theme
Updating a Theme
Attributions
Written by Boris Doesborg.

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Chapter 14

Final Thoughts

14.1 Connecting with the Community

Prerequisite knowledge
Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project”

How can you connect with the community?

The Drupal project has a world-wide community of developers and users. One of the best ways to improve
your knowledge of the platform is to connect with others that are using it, and get involved in the open-source
community. There are many ways that you can get started:

Attend an event There are both regional and international Drupal events held around the world. See the
”DrupalCon” page on Drupal.org to find international events, and the ”Event Calendar” on groups.drupal.org
or drupical.com to find regional events.
Join a local group There are Drupal user groups all around the world. Many of them have regular meetings,
which you can attend to learn more about Drupal and connect to other Drupal users. Find local user
groups on groups.drupal.org.
Participate in a topical or language group There are also interest groups for a wide range of topics, which
have on-line discussion forums. Find topical groups on groups.drupal.org. Many languages have their
own websites too; you can find them on the ”Language-specific communities” page on Drupal.org.

Chat online The Drupal project uses Slack and DrupalChat for on-line chatting. There are regional, topi-
cal, and general-purpose chat groups available. Find out more on the ”Slack” page on Drupal.org and
”DrupalChat” page on Drupal.org.
Report a problem See below.
Contribute You can contribute your time and expertise to the community in many ways, such as:

• Developing modules or themes. See the ”Contribute to Development” page on Drupal.org, or im-
proving them (using the issue queues for existing projects).
• Translating the user interface. See localize.drupal.org.
• Writing documentation. See ”Contribute to Documentation” on Drupal.org.
• Answer Support questions. See Section 14.2, “Getting Support”.

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How can you report a problem or suggest a feature?

Each project within the community (such as the Drupal Core project for the base software, and projects for each
contributed theme and module) uses issues to keep track of software bugs and plans for new features. You can
participate by creating a bug report when you find a problem, creating a feature request, or commenting on
existing issues. Search before creating an issue, to make sure that the problem or feature has not already been
reported or requested. See the Drupal.org page ”Use the issue queue” and the Drupal.org page ”Reporting a
problem” for more information.
If you find a problem that you believe is related to security, such as a cross-site scripting vulnerability, do
not report it in the standard issue queue. Instead, report it to the security team. See the Drupal.org page ”How
to report a security issue” for details.

Related topics
Section 14.2, “Getting Support”

Additional resources
• ”Code of Conduct” on Drupal.org
• ”Event Calendar” on groups.drupal.org or drupical.com
• ”Community page on Drupal.org

• groups.drupal.org
• ”Slack” page on Drupal.org
• ”DrupalChat” page on Drupal.org

• ”Ways to get involved” page on Drupal.org

• Drupal.org page ”Why get involved?”
• Drupal.org page ”Contributor tasks”
• Drupal.org page ”Use the issue queue”

• Drupal.org page ”Reporting a problem”

• Drupal.org page ”How to report a security issue”

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

14.2 Getting Support

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project”
• Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”

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Where can you find support?

The Drupal project is open-source, so if you have questions about or problems with the software, your options
for finding answers and fixes are somewhat different from what they would be for commercial software.
There are several options for free support provided by community volunteers. First, some Slack channels,
DrupalChat channels, local groups, and language communities encourage support questions, through on-line
chat, in-person meetings, or websites (find out more about these on Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Com-
munity”).
Second, some (but not all) contributed module, distribution, and theme projects encourage you to post
support requests in issues. Generally, projects that have a very large number of users do not allow support
requests in their issues (Drupal Core is in that category), while projects with a smaller number of users welcome
the occasional support question. Be respectful of developer time and read the documentation for the project
before posting a question in an issue. On the other hand, all projects encourage you to use issues to report
problems and bugs; see Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community” to learn more about that.
In addition to those resources, the following sites provide free forums where volunteers answer support
questions about Drupal:

• The Drupal.org Forums

• ”Drupal Answers” on StackExchange
If you prefer to pay for support (presumably in exchange for more extensive service or better availability),
you can find service providers in the ”Drupal Marketplace” on Drupal.org.

Related topics
• Section 14.3, “Learning More”
• Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”

Additional resources
• ”Support” page on Drupal.org
• ”Drupal Marketplace” on Drupal.org

• The Drupal.org Forums

• ”Drupal Answers” on StackExchange

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon.

14.3 Learning More

Prerequisite knowledge
• Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal Project”
• Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community”

Where can you go to learn more?

The following resources should prove useful to you, as you continue to advance your skills:
Drupal Community Documentation Wiki-like documentation contributed by the Drupal community, rang-
ing from basic to advanced, about all aspects of Drupal (site building and administration, theming, de-
velopment, and contributed modules).

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api.drupal.org Reference documentation for programmers about the Drupal API.

”Drupal Planet” page on Drupal.org An aggregation of blog posts about Drupal from around the web, posted
by blogging members of the Drupal community who have applied for inclusion. Topics range from pro-
gramming to site building to Drupal news.
Groups, events, and meetups See Section 14.1, “Connecting with the Community” for more about topical,
regional, and language groups, as well as local, regional, and international events.

”Training Marketplace” page on Drupal.org The Marketplace lists paid training providers. For free training,
check whether events include training sessions; there are also free or very low-cost training events listed
on the ”Global Training Days” page on Drupal.org.
Support sites See Section 14.2, “Getting Support” to locate support forums; searching them can be useful for
learning about specific topics.

Attributions
Written by Jennifer Hodgdon, and Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me.

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Chapter 15

Glossary

Ajax
A web technology used to exchange data with a server to dynamically update parts of a web page (for
example, forms) without needing entire page reloads.
Alias
A user-friendly name to replace the internal path that the system assigns to a URL on the site. For example,
you might assign an alias of /about to the About page on your site, to replace the internal path /node/5.
This would give the page a URL of http://example.com/about instead of http://example.com/node/5. See
Section 5.1, “Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs” for more information.
Anonymous
A person (user) interacting with the site who is not logged in. See Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles,
and Permissions” for more information.
Authenticated
A person (user) interacting with the site who is logged in. See Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and
Permissions” for more information.
Block
A chunk of content (text, images, links, etc.) that can be displayed on a page of a site. Blocks are displayed
in regions. See Section 8.1, “Concept: Blocks” for more information.
Breakpoint
Breakpoints are used to separate the height or width of browser screens, printers, and other media out-
put types into steps. A responsive site adjusts its presentation at these breakpoints. See Section 6.14,
“Concept: Responsive Image Styles” for more information.
Bundle
Synonym for Entity subtype.
Cache
The site’s internal cache stores the output of time-consuming calculations, such as computing output for
an HTML page request, and then retrieves them instead of recalculating the next time they are needed.
External caching systems can also be used on the web server to speed up a site’s response. See Section 12.1,
“Concept: Cache” for more information on the internal cache.
Coding standards
Coding standards are the rules for programmers that define best practices, formatting, and various other
rules, so that everyone uses the same conventions and has the same expectations when they see code. See
Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools” for more information.

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CHAPTER 15. GLOSSARY

Composer
The PHP dependency manager used by Drupal, Drush, Drupal console, the Symfony framework and oth-
ers. It is the preferred means of installing Drupal projects. See Section 3.5, “Using Composer to Download
and Update Files” for more information.
CMS
Acronym for Content Management System.
Configuration
Information about your site that is not content, and is meant to be more permanent than state information,
such as the name of your site, the content types and views you have defined, etc. See Section 1.5, “Concept:
Types of Data” for more information.
Content
Information meant to be displayed on your site, such as text, images, downloads, etc. See also Configu-
ration and State. See Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data” for more information.
Content item
An item of content that is typically meant to be displayed as the main content of a page on your site. This
is an entity type. See Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields” for more information.
Content Management System (CMS)
A collection of tools designed to allow the creation, modification, organization, search, retrieval and re-
moval of information on a website. See Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System”
for more information.
Content type
An entity subtype for the content item entity type. Each content type is used for some particular purpose
on the site, and each has its own fields. For example, a site for a farmers market might have a content type
for simple pages, and another for a vendor listing page. See Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and
Fields” for more information.
Contextual Filter (in a View)
Limits the data to be output in a view, based on the context of the view display, such as the full URL of
the page. See Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View” for more information.
Contextual link
A link to an administrative page for editing or configuring a feature of the site, shown in the context where
that feature is displayed. Example: a link to configure a menu that is shown when you hover your mouse
over the menu. See Section 4.1, “Concept: Administrative Overview” for more information.
Contributed
Modules, themes, and distributions that are not part of the Drupal core download, and that can be down-
loaded separately from the Drupal.org website.
Cron
On some operating systems, cron is a command scheduler application that executes commands or scripts
periodically. Your site defines periodic tasks, also known as cron tasks, that need to be triggered either by
an operating system cron scheduler, or internally. See Section 13.1, “Concept: Cron” for more information.

Cross Site Scripting

Security vulnerability typically found in websites. In a site that is not well protected, malicious users can
enter script into web pages that are viewed by other users. See Section 6.15, “Concept: Text Formats and
Editors” for more information.
Devel
Module that helps with development tasks such as debugging and inspecting code, analyzing database
queries, and generating dummy content. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools” for more informa-
tion.

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Development site
Copy of the live website that is used for developing, updating, and testing the website. See Section 11.7,
“Concept: Development Sites” for more information.
Display (in a View)
Type of output of a view, for example a page, a block or a feed. See Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a
View” for more information.
Distribution
A single download that provides a shortcut for setting up a specific type of site, such as a website for
a club or for e-commerce. A distribution contains Drupal core, along with contributed modules and/or
themes; many distributions also pre-configure the site or even create sample content upon installation.
See Section 1.4, “Concept: Distributions” for more information.
Drupal Association
Non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Drupal project and community. See Section 1.6,
“Concept: The Drupal Project” for more information.
Drupal core
The files, themes, profiles, and modules included with the standard project software download. See
Section 1.1, “Concept: Drupal as a Content Management System” for more information.
Drupal console
Command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal. Comparable with Drush. See Section 3.2, “Con-
cept: Additional Tools” for more information.
Drush
Command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal. Comparable with Drupal console. See Section 3.2,
“Concept: Additional Tools” for more information.
Editorial Workflow
Process to create, review, edit, and publish content. Multiple people in different roles (for example content
creators and editors) can be part of the process. See Section 2.6, “Concept: Editorial Workflow” for more
information.
Entity
An item of either content or configuration data, although in common usage, the term often refers to
content entities. Examples include content items, custom blocks, taxonomy terms, and definitions of
content types; the first three are content entities, and the last is a configuration entity. See also Entity type,
Entity subtype, and Field. See Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields” for more information.
Entity subtype
Within a content entity type, a grouping of entities that share the same fields. For example, within the
content item entity type, a farmers market site might have subtypes (known as content types) for static
pages and vendor pages, each with its own group of fields. You may also see the term bundle used (espe-
cially in programmer documentation) as a synonym of entity subtype. See Section 2.3, “Concept: Content
Entities and Fields” for more information.
Entity type
The overall type of an entity; in common usage, it is only applied to a content entity. Examples in-
clude content types, taxonomy terms, and custom blocks. See Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities
and Fields” for more information.
Field
Data of a certain type that is attached to a content entity. For instance, on a farmers market site’s vendor
content type, you might have fields for an image, the vendor description, and a taxonomy term. See
Section 2.3, “Concept: Content Entities and Fields” for more information.
Field bundle
Synonym for Entity subtype.

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CHAPTER 15. GLOSSARY

Field formatter
Configuration that defines how the data in a field is displayed. For example, a text field could be displayed
with a prefix and/or suffix, and it could have its HTML tags stripped out or limited. See also View mode
and Field widget. See Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters” for more information.
Field widget
Configuration that defines how someone can enter or edit data for a field on a data entry form. For
example, a text field could use a single-line or multi-line entry box, and there could be a setting for the size
of the box. See also Field formatter. See Section 6.8, “Concept: Forms and Widgets” for more information.

Filter (in a View)

Limits the data to be output in a view, based on criteria such as publication status, type of content, or
field value. See Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View” for more information.
Formatter
See Field formatter.
FOSS
Acronym for Free and Open Source Software, meaning software that is developed by a community of peo-
ple and released under a non-commercial license. See also GPL. See Section 1.6, “Concept: The Drupal
Project” for more information.
Git
Version control system used by Drupal developers to coordinate their individual code changes. Git
records everyone’s changes to a given project in a directory tree called a git repository. See Section 3.2,
“Concept: Additional Tools” for more information.
GPL
Acronym for the GNU General Public License, a non-commercial software license. All software downloaded
from the Drupal.org website is licensed under the ”GNU General Public License, version 2”. See also FOSS.
See Section 1.7, “Concept: Drupal Licensing” for more information.
Image style
A set of processing steps that transform a base image into a new image; typical processing includes scaling
and cropping. See Section 6.12, “Concept: Image Styles” for more information.
Installing
Preparing Drupal core or any contributed theme or module for usage. In the case of Drupal core this
means downloading the necessary files, creating the database, configuring and running the installation
script. See Section 3.3, “Concept: Methods for Downloading and Installing the Core Software” for more
information.
LAMP
Acronym for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP: the software on the web server that the scripts commonly
run on (although it can use other operating systems, web servers, and databases). See Section 3.1, “Con-
cept: Server Requirements” for more information.
Log
A list of recorded events on the site, such as usage data, performance data, errors, warnings, and opera-
tional information. See Section 12.4, “Concept: Log” for more information.
Menu
A set of links used for navigation on a site, which may be arranged in a hierarchy. See Section 5.5, “Con-
cept: Menu” for more information.
Module
Software (usually PHP, JavaScript, and/or CSS) that extends site features and adds functionality. The
Drupal project distinguishes between core and contributed modules. See Section 1.2, “Concept: Modules”
for more information.

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CHAPTER 15. GLOSSARY

Path
The unique, last part of the internal URL that the system assigns to a page on the site, which can be a
visitor-facing page or an administrative page. For example, the internal URL for the About page on your
site might be http://example.com/node/5, and in this case, the path is node/5. See also Alias. See Section 5.1,
“Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs” for more information.
Permission
The ability to perform some action on the site, such as editing a particular type of content, or viewing user
profiles. See also Role. See Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles, and Permissions” for more information.
Reference field
A field that represents a relationship between an entity and one or more other entities, which may be the
same entity type or a different type. For example, on a farmers market site, a recipe content item might
have a reference field to the vendor (also a content item) that posted the recipe. Taxonomy term fields
are also reference fields. See Section 6.4, “Concept: Reference Fields” for more information.
Region
A defined area of a page where content can be placed, such as the header, footer, main content area, left
sidebar, etc. Regions are defined by themes, and the content displayed in each region is contained in
blocks. See Section 2.1, “Concept: Regions in a Theme” for more information.
Relationship (in a View)
Expansion of the data that is displayed in a view, by relating the base content to other content entities.
See Section 9.2, “Concept: The Parts of a View” for more information.
Repository
Location where a version control system stores all the files and directories for a project. See Section 3.2,
“Concept: Additional Tools” for more information.
Responsive
A site or theme is said to be responsive if it adjusts its presentation in response to the size of the browser
screen, printer, or other media output type. See also Breakpoint. See Section 6.14, “Concept: Responsive
Image Styles” for more information.
Revision
A record of the past or present state of a content entity, as it is edited over time. See Section 2.6, “Concept:
Editorial Workflow” for more information.
Role
A named set of permissions that can be applied to a user account. See Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles,
and Permissions” for more information.
Security update
An update that fixes a security-related bug, such as a hacking vulnerability. See Section 13.3, “Concept:
Security and Regular Updates” for more information.
Session
Information about individual site visitors’ interactions with the site, such as whether they are logged in
and their cookies. See Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data” for more information.
Staging site
Copy of the live website that can be used for testing, or presenting the changes to the client for approval.
See Section 11.7, “Concept: Development Sites” for more information.
State
Information of a temporary nature about the current state of your site, such as the time when cron was
last run, etc. See also Content and Configuration. See Section 1.5, “Concept: Types of Data” for more
information.

217
CHAPTER 15. GLOSSARY

Taxonomy
The process of classifying content. See Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy” for more information.
Taxonomy term
A term used to classify content, such as a tag or a category. See also Vocabulary. See Section 6.5, “Concept:
Taxonomy” for more information.
Text format
Configuration that defines the processing that happens to user-entered text before it is shown in the
browser. This might include stripping or limiting HTML tags, or turning URLs into links. See Section 6.15,
“Concept: Text Formats and Editors” for more information.
Theme
Software and asset files (images, CSS, PHP code, and/or templates) that determine the style and layout of
the site. The Drupal project distinguishes between core and contributed themes. See Section 1.3, “Concept:
Themes” for more information.
UI
Acronym for User Interface.
Update
A newer version of your site’s software, either Drupal core or a module or theme. See also Security update.
See Section 13.3, “Concept: Security and Regular Updates” for more information.
URL
A web page’s unique address on the web. For example https://example.com/node/7. See Section 5.1,
“Concept: Paths, Aliases, and URLs” for more information.
User
A person interacting with the site, either logged-in or anonymous. See Section 7.1, “Concept: Users, Roles,
and Permissions” for more information.
User interface
The text, styles, and images that are visible on a site, separated logically into the user interface for site
visitors and the administrative user interface.
User one (User 1)
The initial user account that is created when you install the site (whose ID number is 1). It automatically
has all permissions, even if it is not assigned an administrative role. See Section 7.2, “Concept: The User
1 Account” for more information.
Version Control System
Software that keeps copies of files and revision history in a repository, and allows you to add, delete, and
update files. See Section 3.2, “Concept: Additional Tools” for more information.
View
A formatted listing of data; typically, the data comes from content entities. For example, on a farmers
market site, you might create a content item for each vendor. You could then make view that generates a
listing page that shows a thumbnail image and short description of each vendor, linking to the full-page
content item. Using the same data, you could also make a view that generates a new vendors block, which
would show information from the most recently added vendors. See Section 2.4, “Concept: Modular
Content” for more information.
View mode
A set of field formatter configuration for all of the fields of a content entity, some of which may be hidden.
Each entity subtype can have one or more view modes defined; for example, content types typically have
Full and Teaser view modes, where the Teaser view mode displays fewer or trimmed-down fields. See
Section 6.10, “Concept: View Modes and Formatters” for more information.

218
CHAPTER 15. GLOSSARY

Vocabulary
A group of taxonomy terms to choose from when classifying content in a particular way, such as the list
of all of the vendor categories on a farmers market site. Technically, vocabularies are the entity subtype
for the taxonomy term entity type. See Section 6.5, “Concept: Taxonomy” for more information.
Widget
See Field widget.
Wizard
A web form that allows you to fill in a few values, and creates something with sensible defaults based on
the values you chose. For example, there are wizards for creating views of different types. See Section 9.3,
“Creating a Content List View” for more information.
WYSIWYG
Acronym for What You See is What You Get, meaning a method for editing content where what you see on
the editing screen closely resembles the final product. See Section 6.16, “Configuring Text Formats and
Editors” for more information.
Workflow
See Editorial Workflow.
XSS
Acronym for Cross Site Scripting.

219
Appendix A

Appendix

A.1 Guide-Wide Attributions

This guide was written by contributors to the Drupal open-source project, and is licensed under the CC BY-SA
2.0 license. See the section called “Copyright” for more information. Details about the contributors for guide-
wide tasks are below. For individual topics, the attributions for writing, editing, and/or translating are at the
end of each topic.

Project coordination of original (English, Drupal 8) text

Writing of the initial version of this guide was coordinated by the following people:
• Amber Matz - Volunteer coordination and project management

• Jennifer Hodgdon - Content oversight

• Joe Shindelar - Content oversight
• Antje Lorch - Content oversight

Writing, editing, and testing of original text

The following people contributed to guide-wide writing:

• The glossary was written and adapted by Jennifer Hodgdon, with parts from ”Glossary”, ”Overview
of Configuration (vs. other types of information)”, and ”Working with breakpoints in Drupal”, each
copyright 2000-2024 by the individual contributors to the Drupal Community Documentation.
• The index was improved and curated by Anna van Raaphorst.

• Topic summaries were written by Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle.

Guide-wide editing was done by the following people:
• Amber Matz at Drupalize.Me
• Anna van Raaphorst

• Antje Lorch
• Balu Ertl
• Boris Doesborg

• Charles Leverington

221
APPENDIX A. APPENDIX A.1. GUIDE-WIDE ATTRIBUTIONS

• chirag shah

• Grant Dunham
• Jennifer Hodgdon
• Joe Shindelar at Drupalize.Me
• Jojy Alphonso at Red Crackle — who copy edited the vast majority of the User Guide

• Kamal Kant Pansari at Intelliswift

• Michael Lenahan at erdfisch
• Swarad Mokal at Blisstering Solutions

The content was tested by:

• Zach Carter
• A workshop organized by the ”Spokane Drupal User Group” on groups.drupal.org, with students from
the Web Development Certificate program at Spokane Community College

Images
Most of the images in the guide are screen captures from the Drupal software, generated by software written
by Jennifer Hodgdon.
The word Drupal, the Druplicon logo (which appears as part of several images throughout the guide), and
the Drupal wordmark logo (which is part of the cover image), are registered trademarks of Dries Buytaert).
The cover image is a CC BY-SA 2.0 licensed illustration by Amanda Luker at Advomatic.
The Anytown Farmers Market logo, which appears as part of several images throughout the guide, is a CC
BY-SA 2.0 licensed illustration by Justin Harrell at Drupalize.Me.
The honey bee image, which appears as part of several images throughout the guide, is a public domain
image by John Severns at the English Wikipedia project via Wikimedia Commons.
The farm image, which appears as part of several images throughout the guide, is a public domain image
by Xianmin Chang via Wikimedia Commons.
The salad image, which appears as part of several images throughout the guide, is a public domain image
by Yinan Chen via Wikimedia Commons.
The carrot image, which appears as part of several images throughout the guide, is public domain image
K11611-1 by Stephen Ausmus at the Agricultural Research Service of the United States Department of Agricul-
ture via Wikimedia Commons.

222
Index

A definition, 213
Account setting overview, 105
configuring, 45 Bug
Admin Toolbar module reporting, 199, 209
downloading, 164 Bundle
installing, 164 definition, 213
Administration
overview, 35 C
Administrative interface Cache
using to update the core software, 201 clearing, 190
Administrative menu definition, 213
overview, 35, 57 overview, 189
Administrative user account rebuilding, 190
overview, 109 Chatting online, 209, 211
Ajax CKEditor module
definition, 213 configuring, 106
Alias CKEditor text editor
definition, 213 default assignment to text format, 106
overview, 51 CMS (Content Management System)
Anonymous definition, 214
definition, 213 overview, 1
Anonymous user Coder
overview, 109 definition, 213
Apache web server Coder tool
version requirements, 19 overview, 20
Appearance menu link Color scheme
administrative menu, 35 configuring, 47
Attributions for this document, 221 Comment entity type
Authenticated overview, 12
definition, 213 Comment module
Authenticated user entity type, 12
overview, 109 Community
Author connecting with, 209
assigning, 121 Composer
Automated Cron module definition, 213
configuring, 197 Composer tool
overview, 197 overview, 20
using to download modules, 24
B using to download the core software, 24
Backup using to download themes, 24
overview, 192 Composite page
Basic page creating with modular content, 14
creating, 52 Configuration
Block as a type of data, 5
creating, 125 copying, 180
creating from a view, 143 definition, 214
definition, 213 deploying, 180
entity type, 12 synchronizing between development and live site,
overview, 125 183
placing in a region, 127 translating, 17, 154
Breadcrumb region Configuration Manager module
overview, 9 using to synchronize the configuration between a
Breakpoint development and live site, 183

223
INDEX INDEX

Configuration menu link overview, 17

administrative menu, 35 Content type
Configuration Translation module adding, 65
installing, 149 adding field to, 73
overview, 17 definition, 214
Configuring deleting, 70
content translation, 150 Contextual Filter
home page, 55 definition, 214
site, 38 Contextual filters part of view
text format, 106 overview, 132
Contact form entity type Contextual link
overview, 12 definition, 214
Contact module overview, 35
entity type, 12 Contributed
Content definition, 214
adding to menu while editing, 58 Contributed module
as a type of data, 5 definition, 214
assigning author, 121 downloading, 24, 164, 175
backing up, 192 evaluating, 157
definition, 214 finding, 157
displaying, 96 installing, 164
editing, 54 overview, 3
editing entry form, 93 updating, 24, 203
entity type, 12 Contributed theme
finding, 54 definition, 214
modular, 14 downloading, 24, 171, 175
translating, 17, 152 enabling, 171
translation, 150 evaluating, 167
Content attributions for this document, 221 finding, 167
Content display installing, 171
changing, 96 updating, 24, 205
managing, 96 Contributing to the project, 209
Content editing form Copyright for this document, vii, 221
overview, 92 Core module
Content entity type overview, 3
overview, 12 Core software
Content item downloading, 22, 24, 26
creating, 52 installation requirements, 19
definition, 214 installing, 22, 28
Content list view updating, 24, 201
creating, 133 Core theme
Content Management System (CMS) overview, 3
definition, 214 Country setting
overview, 1 configuring, 38
Content menu link Critical security announcement, 200
administrative menu, 35 Cron command scheduler
Content reference field definition, 214
adding, 89 Cron task
overview, 80 configuring, 197
Content region definition, 214
overview, 9 overview, 197
Content structure Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
planning, 14 definition, 214
Content Translation module Cross-site scripting (XSS)
installing, 149 preventing, 106

224
INDEX INDEX

Custom block Downloading

creating, 125 core software, 22–24, 26
entity type, 12 distribution, 26
Custom block module module, 24, 164
entity type, 12 module or theme files manually, 175
Custom menu theme, 24, 171
overview, 57 Drupal Association
Custom theme overview, 5
enabling, 171 Drupal Association (DA)
installing, 171 definition, 215
overview, 3 Drupal console
definition, 215
D Drupal Console tool
DA (Drupal Association) overview, 20
definition, 215 Drupal content management system
Data type overview, 1
configuration, 5 server requirements, 1
content, 5 Drupal core
overview, 5 definition, 215
session, 5 installing, 28
state, 5 overview, 1
Database preparing install, 23
backing up, 192 Drupal licensing
configuring during the installation process, 28 overview, 6
installation requirements, 19 Drupal project
Deployment workflow connecting with, 209
overview, 177 overview, 5
Devel Drupal training
definition, 214 resources for, 211
Devel tool Drupal user group
overview, 20 finding, 209
Development site Drupal.org website
definition, 214 downloading and installing module from, 164
making, 178 downloading and installing theme from, 171
overview, 177 downloading modules and themes from, 1
synchronizing with live site, 183 finding and evaluating modules on, 157
Disk space finding and evaluating themes on, 167
installation requirements, 19 DrupalChat
Display using to chat online, 209, 211
definition, 215 Drush
Display part of view definition, 215
overview, 132 Drush tool
Distribution overview, 20
definition, 215 using to install module, 164
downloading, 26 using to install theme, 171
full-featured, 4 using to uninstall module, 42
overview, 4 using to update the core software, 201
quick-start, 4 Dynamic Page Cache module
Documentation overview, 189
about Drupal, 211
about the Drupal API, 211 E
available on drupal.org, 211 Editing content, 54
contributed by the Drupal Community, 211 Editor
Drupal Planet blog posts, 211 configuring, 106
for programmers, 211 Editor module

225
INDEX INDEX

configuring, 106 overview, 96

Editorial Workflow Field module
overview, 17 overview, 3
Editorial workflow Field UI module
definition, 215 overview, 3
Effect Field widget
image, 101 definition, 216
Email address Fields part of view
configuring, 38 overview, 132
Enabling File
module, 164 backing up, 192
theme, 171 File module
Entity entity type, 12
definition, 215 Filter
overview, 12 definition, 216
Entity reference field Filter criteria part of view
adding, 89 overview, 132
Entity subtype Filter module
definition, 215 configuring, 106
overview, 12 First day of week
Entity type configuring, 38
definition, 215 Footer menu
overview, 12 overview, 57
Entity view mode Footer regions
overview, 96 overview, 9
Error Form
log report, 193 overview, 92
Error page Form entity type
configuring, 38 overview, 12
Event Format part of view
Drupal, 209 overview, 132
Extend menu link Formatter
administrative menu, 35 definition, 215
overview, 96
F Forum
Farmers market user support, 211
usage scenario for this document, xi FOSS (Free and Open Source Software)
Feature definition, 216
copying, 180 overview, 5
deploying, 180 Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)
Featured regions definition, 216
overview, 9 overview, 5
Field Front page
adding to content type, 73 configuring, 38, 55
content reference, 80 Full-featured distribution
definition, 215 overview, 4
for adding references, 89 Functionality
overview, 12, 92 extending, 164
reference, 80
taxonomy term reference, 80 G
user reference, 80 Git
Field bundle definition, 216
definition, 215 Git tool
Field formatter overview, 20
definition, 215 using, 184

226
INDEX INDEX

Glossary, 213 module, 164

GNU General Public License staging site, 177
definition, 216 theme, 171
overview, 6 Interest group
GPL (General Public License or GNU General Public finding, 209
License) Interface Translation module
definition, 216 installing, 149
overview, 6 overview, 17
Group Internal Page Cache module
finding, 209 overview, 189
Guiding scenario for this document (farmers market),
xi L
Label
H translating, 154
Header region LAMP (Linux Apache MySQL PHP)
overview, 9 definition, 216
Help menu link Language
administrative menu, 35 adding, 149
Help region Language module
overview, 9 installing, 149
Highlighted region overview, 17
overview, 9 Languages
Home page overview, 17
configuring, 55 Layout
creating, 52 planning, 11
HTML5 picture tag Learning resource
and responsive images, 105 link to, 211
Legal
I overview, 6
Image Licensing
resizing, 101 overview, 6
Image effect Linux Apache MySQL PHP (LAMP)
overview, 101 definition, 216
Image field Listing content
adding, 73 using Views module to, 133
Image module Live site
creating a view, 133 synchronizing with development site, 183
Image style Locale setting
creating, 101 configuring, 38
definition, 216 Log
overview, 101 definition, 216
responsive, 105 overview, 193
Installation process, 28 Logo image
Installation profile, 28 configuring, 47
Installation requirements
database, 19 M
disk space, 19 Maintenance mode
overview, 19 disabling, 161
PHP programming language, 19 enabling, 161
web server, 19 overview, 161
Installer tool Manage administrative menu
running, 28 overview, 35
Installing Manually downloading module or theme files
core software, 19, 22 overview, 175
definition, 216 Menu
development site, 177 adding a link to page, 58

227
INDEX INDEX

administrative, 57 Views, 3, 133, 138, 143

custom, 57 Views UI, 3
definition, 216 Multilingual modules
footer, 57 enabling, 149
main, 57 installing, 149
overview, 57 MySQL database
user account, 57 version requirements, 19
Menu links
reordering, 60 N
Menu region Navigation
overview, 9 changing the order of menu links, 60
Menu UI module linking menu to page, 58
overview, 3 Nginx web server
Metadata version requirements, 19
creating, 83 Node module
Microsoft IIS web server entity type, 12
version requirements, 19 overview, 3
Modular content
overview, 14 O
Module Olivero theme
Admin Toolbar, 164 configuring, 47
CKEditor, 106 regions in, 9
Comment, 12
P
Configuration Manager, 183
Page
Configuration Translation, 17, 149
adding to menu while editing, 58
Contact, 12
composite, 14
Content Translation, 17, 149
Page cache
contributed, 3, 164
overview, 189
core, 3
Path
custom, 164
definition, 216
Custom Block, 12
overview, 51
definition, 216
People menu link
downloading, 24, 164, 175
administrative menu, 35
Dynamic Page Cache, 189
Performance
Editor, 106
improving, 42
enabling, 41, 164
log report, 193
evaluating, 157
status report, 194
Field, 3
Permission
Field UI, 3
changing, 117
File, 12
changing role, 119
Filter, 106
definition, 217
finding, 157
denying, 117
Image, 133
granting, 117
installing, 41, 164
overview, 109
Interface Translation, 17, 149
PHP programming language
Internal Page Cache, 189
version requirements, 19
Language, 17, 149
PHP version
Menu UI, 3
status report, 194
Node, 3, 12
Planning
overview, 3
site layout, 11
Taxonomy, 12
PostgreSQL database
uninstalling unused, 42
version requirements, 19
Update Manager, 164, 171
Primary menu region
updating, 24, 203
overview, 9
User, 3, 12
Profile

228
INDEX INDEX

installation, 28 changing, 119

Published flag changing permission, 117
overview, 17 creating, 111
definition, 217
Q overview, 109
Quick-start distribution
overview, 4 S
Scenario for this document (farmers market)
R overview, xi
Reference field Secondary menu region
adding, 89 overview, 9
content, 80 Security
definition, 217 assigning permission, 117
overview, 80 cross-site scripting, 106
taxonomy term, 80 managing user accounts, 45
user, 80 overview, 199
Region status report, 194
breadcrumb, 9 text format, 106
content, 9 user account settings, 45
definition, 217 user one account, 110
featured, 9 Security announcement
footer, 9 subscribing to by email, 200
header, 9 subscribing to on Twitter, 200
help, 9 Security bug
highlighted, 9 reporting, 199
menu, 9 Security team
overview, 9 overview, 199
placing a block in, 127 Security update
primary menu, 9 applying, 24, 203, 205
secondary menu, 9 definition, 217
sidebar, 9 keeping track of, 200
Regional setting Server information
configuring, 38 status report, 194
Relationship Session
definition, 217 as a type of data, 5
Relationships part of view definition, 217
overview, 132 Sidebar regions
Report overview, 9
Recent log messages, 193 Site email address
Reports menu link configuring, 38
administrative menu, 35 Site information
Repository status report, 194
definition, 217 Site layout
Resource planning, 11
documentation and training, 211 Site name
Responsive configuring, 38
definition, 217 Site plan
Responsive image style content structure, 14
overview, 105 Site slogan
Revision configuring, 38
definition, 217 Site tagline
overview, 17 configuring, 38
Role Slack
administrator, 111 using to chat online, 209, 211
anonymous user, 111 Slogan
authenticated user, 111

229
INDEX INDEX

configuring, 38 custom, 3, 171

Software dependencies definition, 218
managing, 24 downloading, 24, 171, 175
Software version enabling, 171
status report, 194 evaluating, 167
Sort criteria part of view finding, 167
overview, 132 installing, 171
SQLight database overview, 3
version requirements, 19 regions in, 9
Staging site third-party, 3
definition, 217 updating, 24, 205
making, 178 Third-party theme
overview, 177 overview, 3
State Time zone setting
as a type of data, 5 configuring, 38
definition, 217 Tool
Status report Coder, 20
overview, 194 Composer, 20
Structure menu link Devel, 20
administrative menu, 35 Drupal Console, 20
Style Drush, 20
image, 101 Git, 20, 184
Support Toolbar
finding, 211 overview, 35
Training
T Global Training Days, 211
Tagline resource, 211
configuring, 38 Training Marketplace, 211
Taxonomy Translating
creating, 83 configuration, 154
definition, 217 content, 152
overview, 80 label, 154
Taxonomy module overview, 17
entity type, 12 view, 154
Taxonomy term Troubleshooting
definition, 218 log report, 193
overview, 12 status report, 194
Taxonomy term reference field
adding, 89 U
overview, 80 UI (User Interface)
Term (taxonomy) definition, 218
fixed list, 80 Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
free tagging, 80 definition, 218
overview, 80 overview, 51
Term list Uninstalling
creating, 83 unused modules, 42
Terminology (Glossary), 213 Unpublished flag
Text format overview, 17
configuring, 106 Update
definition, 218 definition, 218
overview, 106 keeping track of, 200
Theme overview, 199
configuring, 47 status report, 194
contributed, 171 Update Manager module
core, 3 overview, 200

230
INDEX INDEX

using to install module, 164 definition, 218

using to install theme, 171 display part, 132
Update status duplicating, 138
status report, 194 fields part, 132
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) filter criteria part, 132
definition, 218 format part, 132
overview, 51 overview, 131
URL alias parts of, 132
overview, 51 relationships part, 132
URL field sort criteria part, 132
adding, 73 translating, 154
Usage scenario for this document (farmers market), xi View mode
User definition, 218
administrative, 110 overview, 96
configuring account setting, 45 Views module
creating account, 113 adding to a view, 143
definition, 218 creating a view, 133
overview, 109 duplicating a view, 138
root, 110 overview, 3, 14, 131
user one, 110 Views UI module
User account menu overview, 3
overview, 57 Vocabulary
User group creating, 83
finding, 209 definition, 218
User interface overview, 12, 80
translating, 17
User Interface (UI) W
definition, 218 Web installer
User module running, 28
entity type, 12 Web server
overview, 3 installation requirements, 19
User one What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)
definition, 218 configuring editor, 106
User profile entity type definition, 219
overview, 12 Widget
User reference field definition, 216, 219
adding, 89 overview, 92
overview, 80 Wizard
User role definition, 219
changing, 119 Workflow
creating, 111 definition, 219
overview, 109 WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)
User-entered content configuring editor, 106
filtering, 106 definition, 219

V X
VCS (Version Control System) XSS (Cross Site Scripting)
definition, 218 definition, 219
Version Control System (VCS) XSS (Cross-site scripting)
definition, 218 preventing, 106
View
adding block display to, 143
and modular content, 14
contextual filters part, 132
creating, 133

231