Last updated by videohead on Mon, 2008-11-03 15:36
This document intends to provide a step-by-step cookbook for PEG stations to deploy Drupal and other Open Source applications.
Keep in mind that this document is deliberately SIMPLIFIED for PEG. It will not discuss every nuance of Drupal.
Initially, this document is targeted towards PEG stations who are interested in deploying Drupal as a replacement website/media streaming location (simple portal).
Ongoing, this may evolve to become a cookbook for the Open Media project for PEG stations.
This document will be updated frequently.
What Is Drupal?
Drupal is a dynamic website engine. Unlike traditional websites, Drupal pages are created from the database backend, and the content is published into your site’s template. You add content by modifying the database, using web forms which are built into Drupal.
This style of site is called a content management system, or CMS.
Fortunately, you don’t need to know much of anything about websites, databases, or the underlying technologies in order to use Drupal. If you know your content, and know how to complete a web form, you are almost ready to use Drupal.
The advantages of Drupal are many. First and foremost, Drupal separates the information of your website from the look of this information. This allows the content to be easily modified, updated, changed, and even to be easily published on other sites. This means your content is instantly accessible to search engines. Drupal offers a huge array of features, which are available as separate download packages called modules.
To add content to Drupal, a user must be registered. Users can self-register through a web form, and be assigned specific permissions by a manager or systems administrator. A user maintains his/her own password which can be reset on user action, or by the administrator.
To create a whole Drupal site, a manager or systems administrator needs to be able to lay out the site intelligently with easy to understand content types, and the navigation elements which point to these content types. However, users can participate easily in the process of adding and editing content.
You will also need to design or choose an available template for the site. This controls how the website “looks”, including the colors, graphics, fonts, etc.
Drupal sites can also contain an exciting array of interactive features. These include polls, content syndication and syndicated content publishing, threaded discussions (forums), calendar events, user avatars (pictures), and blogs.
Drupal is free to install and use under the Gnu Public License. There are no user licensing fees or other costs associated. Drupal can be hosted easily on any LAMP, WAMP, or MacOSX web environment.
Drupal has a huge community of developers and users, and new components and items are available everyday. To find out more, go to http://www.Drupal.org or search the web for Drupal.
What Drupal is NOT
Drupal is NOT an ERP or document management solution. It does not integrate automatically with existing workflows, and has its own repository for files outside of existing file systems. It does not integrate automatically with a company’s existing username/password environment (LDAP or OpenID). Content cannot be published into Drupal without specific user action in Drupal’s interface. This means that you must specifically go into Drupal in order to publish content. It is NOT a Microsoft product, and does not integrate automatically with Microsoft Office.
Technology Requirements:
LAMP or WAMP (Linux/Windows, Apache, MySQL, PHP) host
SSH access to your host
FTP access to your host
Ability to chmod and/or chown files and a few *Nix commands
Ability to find and edit the config files for their particular application (and how not to over-tweak)
Ability tweak the php.ini and their .htaccess files – (and how not to over-tweak)
Some basic MySQL skills and phpMyAdmin (see http://www.w3schools.org for great SQL tutorials)
An IDE (such as Eclipse, Dreamweaver, Notepad2, Smultron for Mac)
For first time users, I strongly recommend a host with Cpanel, or Plesk and an automated installation system such as Fantastico. Nearly all hosting providers who meet the above requirements will also have Cpanel or Plesk. You can get a commercially hosted Cpanel or Plesk environment which meets the above requirements for about $10 per month.
I usually recommend buying a second domain name for your Drupal installation, so you can keep your existing site up while launching and configuring your new Drupal CMS. When you are done with your new Drupal site, you can combine the two domains on the new host, or leave them as is.
Get Started:
You will actually start outside of the Drupal framework, by prepping your host. You need to have a MySQL database (or Postgres, although this is not covered here).
Connect to your host's Cpanel or Plesk.
You can use your automated installer to install Drupal.
In cPanel, click Fantastco deluxe.
Click the Drupal link at the side.
Click the new installation link.
Locate Drupal in a directory or place Drupal in the root of the host, so Drupal will be the first thing domain visitors see.
Input the name of the database instance (I usually use drupal as my database name)
Type in a username and password. Write this down!!
Complete the automated installation wizard.
It may take a few minutes to complete the wizard, but you will have a working instance of Drupal. Congratulations!
To add functionality to your Drupal site, you will need to add some modules. (I'll try to keep this sync'ed with the Drupal OM dependencies)
Modules to download:
CCK
Views
DateAPI