Basic+Orientation

The following are a list of basic tasks you'll be undertaking on a regular basis in order to administrate sites authored in Drupals. These range from mundane to relatively important.


 * Site Information – Adjust basic information about your site (5 min)**
 * Navigation to configuration >> site information within the admin menu
 * Note the control you have over Site name, slogan, number of posts that appear on the main page, default landing page and error page addresses. Change the site name and slogan, click on 'save configuration' and take note of where (and if) these changes are visible. This information will show up in different themes in different places (or not at all)

//Now that we've looked at the most basic of site information let's turn our attention to themes for a bit...//


 * Adding some placeholder content (5-10 minutes)**
 * Click on 'Add content' (note the available options) – select 'article'
 * Give your article a title, some dummy tags and insert some filler text into the body. //Note the differences in 'text format' under the body field.//
 * Attach an image to your article.
 * Click on 'Preview' at the bottom – you'll see a mockup of the post. Click on 'Save' to finalize the post. It will now appear at the top of your landing page. (Remember 'article' is basically the same as a 'post' in WordPress

//Now we'll add another article...//


 * Once again give your dummy article a title, some tags and filler body text. Scroll down to the bottom to the tabs above the 'Save' and 'Preview' buttons. These allow you to further configure a post. With this post...
 * Give it a menu link by clicking on 'Provide a menu link' and then entering a title
 * If you click on 'URL path settings' you can give it a custom URL like 'Test' (we'll explore why custom URLs are very useful within Drupal next week)
 * Try turning off the comments for this article (select 'Closed' under the 'Comment Settings' tab)
 * Click on 'Publishing Options' – note that you could save a post but leave it unpublished (e.g. you want it to remain a draft) and you could also NOT have it appear on the landing page.
 * Click on 'Save'

//Add 4-5 more dummy posts – we'll use them once we start playing with the views module.//


 * Theme Options (5-10 minutes)**
 * Go to 'Appearance' in the main menu and click on 'Settings' for Bartik 7.10 (the default theme)
 * Try playing around with some alternate colour schemes and note the control these options afford you (this is due to the 'color' module – it works like this for several popular themes)
 * Scroll down, note how you can turn on and off things like site name and logo, try this out and click on the home icon.
 * Try plugging in an alternate site logo – you'll note that this isn't auto formatted for size affordances

//Ok, so this wasn't that exciting – let's dig a little deeper into what various themes have to offer us.//


 * Changing Themes – Moving beyond the (dull) base themes for Drupal (30 min)**

//Like WordPress, Drupal can be pretty dull if you rely on the default themes. There is a whole world of flexible, attractive themes that are designed for all purposes. Mobile viewing, e-commerce, fluid-layouts, accessibility – you name it and there are themes authored with it in mind. So to get our feet wet it would be useful to install and compare the base functionality of a few themes.//Navigate to http://drupal.org/project/themes and note the world of options available to you.
 * Set the 'filter by compatibility' to 7.x and you now have a list of D7 themes listed based off popularity.
 * Since Zen is the most popular let's look at it.
 * Read the splash page for Zen and then select 'Read documentation' (under resources) on the right sidebar – Take note of the "Why use Zen?" and "Testimonials" sections. //Not all Drupal themes are this well documented so don't get too comfortable having all this information/context at your fingertips.//
 * Jump back to the landing page for Zen (http://drupal.org/project/zen)
 * Scroll down to the 'downloads' section and right click, 'copy address' on top of the 'tar.giz' beside 7.x (the most recent Drupal 7 'Recommended release at the top of the 'downloads' section (see below image)
 * Now, within Drupal go to 'Appearance' in the admin menu and click on '+ Install new theme' at the top of the page – and paste the URL of the tar.gz of Zen into the 'Install from a URL' field – click 'install'. This will install your theme.
 * Once you are back on the theme listing page, find zen and click on 'enable and set as default' to activate the theme (this is basically the same as wordpress.

//You can also install themes through the filefield on the 'Install theme' page or just upload the them folder to sites/all/theme – in both cases you just have to enable it and set it to default after the file transfer is complete.//


 * Now click back on the home icon and you'll be bounced to the landing page of your site – it should now be quite different. Different themes have different base locations for various page elements (search box, h1/logo, slogan, custom footer messages, etc.). Given we don't have any content installed, it is hard to gauge what our options are.
 * Navigate back to 'Appearance' and click on 'Settings' for Zen
 * Note that we now have different options built into each theme – more complex themes allow more granular control over various display features. Play around with these options but note that you can do things like tweak the breadcrumbs, and set up a liquid vs. fixed width layout (if you don't know what that distinction is – change it and then go back to the home icon and see how the site behaves)
 * Additionally, try turning on the 'add wireframes around main layout elements' option and inspect the site.

Changing themes is only a fraction of what is involved in designing in Drupal, but understanding what themes offer is a huge part of working efficiently. Just to see what is out there, try installing another two D7 themes. Note the features of the various options by their theme pages on Drupal.org, compare their documentation and, on installing them, note how they can be configured differently.

//Be prepared to discuss with the group and describe what options you encountered in testing out your two alternate themes. When examining themes, see if you can note any trends in the way they are described or the design goals/functionality that they address.//


 * Installing Modules – (20 min)**

//Hunting down the right module for functionality you want to implement is a HUGE part of working with Drupal – so it is important that you become proficient in seeking out and configuring modules ASAP. We're going to install a few base modules that we'll be using in the future...//

So, dial up http://drupal.org/project/modules – you're going to be spending a lot of time here this semester.

However, if you try to enable the views module you'll see we are missing a required module. Within Drupal certain modules have dependencies and draw on functionality provided by OTHER modules. So, locate the Ctools module on drupal.org, install it and enable it and THEN you can enable views. We aren't going to use Views yet, but if there is extra time at the end of class Greg will run a brief demo of it.
 * ////Navigate to//// http://drupal.org/project/views – we'll start with Views, one of the most important and flexible tools within Drupal. //Note the 'You need Views if' list – that doesn't even begin to touch on how flexible it is for generating custom content queries.//
 * Scroll over to the right and click on the 'open issues' under 'all issues' and 'open bug reports' under 'bug reports' – FYI if you //were// to have any issues with views, this is where you'd look for help/guidance and bug fixes.
 * Scroll down to the bottom and right click on the tar.gz to the right of the 7.x-3.0 version of Views. Right click and 'copy link address'
 * Back within Drupal, go to 'Modules' and click on '+ Install new module' – plug your URL in and then hit 'Install' (and like themes, note you can upload from the desktop or you could FTP the folder to sites/all/modules). Click on 'Install'
 * After the install runs you will be bounced back to the module page. Like themes, the module will not be active until you enable it.

//Dealing with scores of modules can be a pain, so as a final task find the 'Module Filter' module and install and enable it. If you are done before your peers spend 10-15 minutes poking around the the popular modules – click through into some of the more popular modules and see if you can get a sense of the functionality they provide (many modules have 'try a demonstration' links that let you window shop functionality/interface options/etc.)//