An Introduction to Drupal 6
An Overview
Drupal is an Open-Source Content Management System. There are three different aspects of Drupal we need to consider when looking at whether it is a good technology to use in general. Will it be:
Any enterprise that requires a fair amount of working with content is a likely candidate for Drupal, but, because of its extensibility and flexibility, you are really not very limited in any sense. The following list shows the most common uses at present and comes from the case studies page (http://drupal.org/cases) on the Drupal site:
Community Portal Sites: If you want a news website where the stories are provided by the audience, Drupal suits your needs well. Incoming stories are automatically voted upon by the audience and the best stories bubble up to the homepage. Bad stories and comments are automatically hidden after enough negative votes.
News Publishing: Drupal is great for newspapers and other news organizations.
Aficionado Sites: Drupal flourishes when it powers a portal website where one person shares their expertise and enthusiasm for a topic.
Intranet/Corporate Web Sites: Companies maintain their internal and external web sites in Drupal. Drupal works well for these uses because of its flexible permissionsm system, and its easy web-based publishing. No longer do you have to wait for a webmaster to get the word out about your latest project.
Resource Directories: If you want a central directory for a given topic, Drupal suits your needs well. Users can register and suggest new resources, while editors can screen their submissions.
International Sites: When you begin using Drupal, you join a large international community of users and developers. Thanks to the localization features within Drupal, there are many Drupal sites implemented in a wide range of languages.
Education: Drupal can be used for creating dynamic learning communities to supplement the face-to-face classroom or as a platform for distance education classes. Academic professional organizations benefit from its interactive features, and the ability to provide public content, member-only resources, and member subscription management.
Art, Music, Multimedia: When it comes to community art sites, Drupal is a great match. No other platform provides the rock solid foundation that is needed to make multimedia-rich websites that allow users to share, distribute, and discuss their work with others. As time goes on, Drupal will only develop stronger support for audio, video, images, and playlist content for use in multimedia applications.
Social networking sites: Drupal has many of common the features used in social networking sites. You can build a collection of social networking applications for your site or use Drupal as a white label social networking service.
The Drupal Community
Drupal has coherent and in-depth support structures that are fairly easy to learn your way around. There are a host of categories ranging from information, polls, forums, and news to support, which can be found at the home page: http://drupal.org.
Folow the instruction video how to install Drupal 6 in simplicity: http://drupal.org/videocast/installing-6
With the introductory material out of the way, it is time to get down to business,
and the next chapter will see us setting up the development environment as well as
obtaining and installing the latest version of Drupal.
Drupal is an Open-Source Content Management System. There are three different aspects of Drupal we need to consider when looking at whether it is a good technology to use in general. Will it be:
- Reliable and robust: Are there a lot of bugs in the code? Will it affect my site if I have to forever add patches or obtain updates for faulty code?
- Efficient: Does the code use my server's resources wisely? Am I likely to run into concurrency problems, or speed issues early on?
- Flexible: If I change my mind about what I want from my site, will I be able to implement those changes without redoing everything from scratch?
Any enterprise that requires a fair amount of working with content is a likely candidate for Drupal, but, because of its extensibility and flexibility, you are really not very limited in any sense. The following list shows the most common uses at present and comes from the case studies page (http://drupal.org/cases) on the Drupal site:
Community Portal Sites: If you want a news website where the stories are provided by the audience, Drupal suits your needs well. Incoming stories are automatically voted upon by the audience and the best stories bubble up to the homepage. Bad stories and comments are automatically hidden after enough negative votes.
News Publishing: Drupal is great for newspapers and other news organizations.
Aficionado Sites: Drupal flourishes when it powers a portal website where one person shares their expertise and enthusiasm for a topic.
Intranet/Corporate Web Sites: Companies maintain their internal and external web sites in Drupal. Drupal works well for these uses because of its flexible permissionsm system, and its easy web-based publishing. No longer do you have to wait for a webmaster to get the word out about your latest project.
Resource Directories: If you want a central directory for a given topic, Drupal suits your needs well. Users can register and suggest new resources, while editors can screen their submissions.
International Sites: When you begin using Drupal, you join a large international community of users and developers. Thanks to the localization features within Drupal, there are many Drupal sites implemented in a wide range of languages.
Education: Drupal can be used for creating dynamic learning communities to supplement the face-to-face classroom or as a platform for distance education classes. Academic professional organizations benefit from its interactive features, and the ability to provide public content, member-only resources, and member subscription management.
Art, Music, Multimedia: When it comes to community art sites, Drupal is a great match. No other platform provides the rock solid foundation that is needed to make multimedia-rich websites that allow users to share, distribute, and discuss their work with others. As time goes on, Drupal will only develop stronger support for audio, video, images, and playlist content for use in multimedia applications.
Social networking sites: Drupal has many of common the features used in social networking sites. You can build a collection of social networking applications for your site or use Drupal as a white label social networking service.
The Drupal Community
Drupal has coherent and in-depth support structures that are fairly easy to learn your way around. There are a host of categories ranging from information, polls, forums, and news to support, which can be found at the home page: http://drupal.org.
Folow the instruction video how to install Drupal 6 in simplicity: http://drupal.org/videocast/installing-6With the introductory material out of the way, it is time to get down to business,
and the next chapter will see us setting up the development environment as well as
obtaining and installing the latest version of Drupal.
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