Drupal Online Tutorial
A Product of an ENGL 421
class at Purdue University
Page 1
What is Drupal?

Drupal is an open-source platform and
content management system for building
dynamic web sites offering a broad range
of features and services including user
administration, publishing workflow,
discussion capabilities, news aggregation,
metadata functionalities using controlled
vocabularies and XML publishing for
content sharing purposes.
Page 2
What is Drupal?

What is Open-Source?
• Open Source means that whoever writes
a piece of computer code makes it
available for anybody else to see it,
modify it, or use it.
• GPL (GNU [GNU Not Unix] Public
License) is the most common opensource license standard.
Page 2
What is Drupal?

What is Content Management?
• Web pages are often easily created with
static (non-changing) content, but it is
usually very difficult to make regular
changes to a page. Content
Management is the process of easily
changing what a user sees at a web
page.
Page 2
What is needed to run Drupal?

A web server capable of executing
PHP scripts
• recommended: Apache

PHP
• Recommend using the latest stable
release

A PHP supported database server
• recommended: mySQL
Page 3
Bugs, Bugs, Bugs
If you find a bug in Drupals’ open source
software the solution to your problem can
be solved by using the Bug Tracker
system.
The Bug Tracker was set up so that if a
bug is found in the code it can be reported
on the Drupal website. The reports that
are submitted are a huge factor in making
Drupal a reliable software. It will also save
you a lot of time.
Page 4
I found a Bug, How can I report it?


First of all if you have found a bug in
the software make sure that the you
are using the newest version of
Drupal (currently 4.2.0). Some of the
bugs found may be corrected when
you change versions,
If you do find a bug and are running
the newest version then bugs can be
reported to Drupal.org Bug Tracker
Page 4
Submit New Bug



To report a bug just scroll down to the
bottom of Drupal’s page and click on the
button labeled “Submit new bug.”
From there you will need to fill out a few
fields of information such as the title and
version of Drupal that you are currently
using as well as a description of the bug.
You do not have to be a member of
Drupal.org or even logged in to submit
bug information.
Page 4
How else can I report Bugs

There is another way to report bugs.
• If you are a member of Drupal.org you
can also send in bug reports by using a
development list at Drupaldevel@drupal.org.
Page 4
How do I Develop and Use a
Module?



Modules are used to add menus to
Drupal
Examples of available modules are:
stories, blogs, polls, images, etc
Creating modules in Drupal is
simple:
• It is simply a text file, including PHP
code, in the directory that ends in
.module
• Allows the use of any text editor
Page 5
How to Use a Node Module.



Nodes are the individual pieces of content which
make up the entire Drupal community—like
individual page in website
Node Modules differ from regular modules in that
they contain a _node hook.
What is a _node hook?:
• A Special PHP function that is defined in a module

What the _node hook does for the module:
• Tells Drupal what type node the module defines.
Page 5
How do I change a theme

The desired theme must be downloaded to
the server
• Existing documentation explaining this step in
detail

Administration > Site Configuration >
Themes
• Select desired theme in default theme
dropdown box

Sets the default theme seen by most users, although
users can change the theme to what they want by
editing their accounts
Page 6
How Do I Add a Poll?

The Poll module must be installed
• Instructions Here.




To create a poll a user needs the "create
polls" permission.
To vote on a poll question a user must
have the "vote on polls" permission.
To view the results one needs the "access
content" permission.
To administer polls you need the
"administer nodes" permission.
Page 7