Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. It is used as a back-endsystem for over 1% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to corporate, political, and government sites including whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk. It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.
To create a Drupal site, you need a Linux server with Apache, MySQL, and PHP.This would, of course, be the classic LAMP server. Drupal itself is available from the Drupal website [1]. Get the latest bundle and extract it into your server document hierarchy and rename the resulting directory to something that makes sense in your environment:
tar -xzvf drupal-6.17.tar.gz
mv drupal-6.17 mysite
Of course, you will also need to set up an appropriate Apache configuration for that host so that you can point to it (e.g., mysite.mydomain.dom). When you point your browser to that address, installation can begin. Even if you have never done a Drupal installation, it’s all pretty simple stuff. The first screen is basically a welcome screen and, unless you have downloaded a special Drupal bundle with a custom installation profile, you can just click the Install link and move on.
The second screen merely asks for your language of choice. The default is English, but you have many choices here. The third screen (Verify Requirements) reminds you that if you haven’t already done so, you should copy the default.settings.php file, to be found under sites/default in the install directory, to settings.php. Also, be sure the file is writable by the web server user (usually www-data or apache, depending on your server). Once the configuration is complete, the installer will rename these files and change their permissions to read-only for security reasons. Step four invo
lves creating and configuring your database.
In the form, you are asked to enter a database name, a database user, and a password for that
user, all of which must already exist. To create these things, you’ll have to use a web tool like
phpMyAdmin or Webmin. Alternatively, you could just use the command line and work with the MySQL interpreter manually. The steps are as follows:
Create the database and assign a privileged username and password to access and update the database. Type help or \h for help, and \c clears the current input statement. The dialog
looks similar to the following:
$ mysql -u root -p
Enter password:
Welcome to the MySQL monitor. Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 684004
Server version: 5.0.90-community MySQL Community Edition (GPL)
mysql> create database drupal;
mysql> grant all privileges on atrium.* to U
‘someuser’@'localhost’ identified by ‘somepassword’;
mysql> flush privileges;
mysql> \q
The rest of the web-based installation involves the final steps in configuring the site before launching your new site. The Configure step asks for your site name, your email address, and
what will become the administrator account and password. Choose your default time zone (it might well be selected by default) and whether you want to run clean URLs (server-side
configuration). Checked by default is a box labeled Check for updates automatically. This is very handy, and I highly recommend that you leave it as is. The final screen is a congratulatory
one, telling you how clever you’ve been and providing you a link to the first page.
Well done!
Above picture is the Drupal Installation and the main page of Drupal.
Extending Drupal with Modules
After you’ve installed a fresh copy of Drupal, some modules are enabled by default; I’ll show you where this is defined shortly. To enable additional modules, log in with the administrator
account, click Administer | Site building | Modules. A list of all the current modules and their states (enabled or not) are displayed . Only a handful of modules are enabled by
default.
With Drupal, as with any software, you need to keep everything up to date and running smoothly, especially when it comes to security updates. To make sure you stay on top of security-related updates, sign up for an account on the Drupal website [2]. By clicking Administer | Reports | Available updates, you can check the status of your site. A list of all your
current modules and themes and their update status will be displayed . Although you should be backing up your system and your databases regularly, it’s particularly important to back them up before you run an update – major or otherwise. Upgrading Drupal involves backing up, putting your site in maintenance mode, removing (or moving to a new name) the old install directory, extracting the latest Drupal, and copying or restoring modified .htaccess and settings.php files, custom modules and scripts, images, and so on. The final step is to run yoursite.dom/ update.php to migrate whatever database changes are required.
Drush, The Drupal Shell
Drush gives me a rush. Seriously. Any long-time systems administrator will tell you that there is a time and a place for the GUI, but for sheer speed and efficiency (and the ability to automate
tasks), nothing beats the command line. So it is with Drupal, and that’s why Drush makes me happy. With a single Drush command, you can download one or more modules, enable
or disable modules, upgrade your Drupal installation, perform a database backup, check out the availability and status of a module (installed or not), run cron hooks for the site, perform
an update, and a whole lot more.
Granted, Drush does require that you have shell access to your site, so that’s a priority, but if you are the systems administrator, that’s probably a given. It’s frightfully easy to install
Drush [3]. Just download it and extract the package somewhere outside of your web server’s root (I put mine in /usr/local). In the drush folder (created when you extract the bundle),
you’ll find an executable shell script called drush. To make your life easy, create a symbolic link in /usr/local/bin to this executable.
Example: Website design using Drupal (picture below):-
Well, that’s all for today post guys…I hope you enjoyed my tutorial about how to install and setup Drupal , and explain to you some of it features. Drupal is an awesome Content Management System (CMS) in order to build websites. There are thousands of websites nowadays that use Drupal or use the Drupal Theme…If you want to test drive it , here is the download link:-
http://ftp.drupal.org/files/projects/drupal-6.20.tar.gz
For your info , Drupal is designed to be install in IIS , Apache , PHP and MySQL server. You need to have a webserver that provide these services…
That’s all folks…Have a Happy New Year 2011….See you next year…bye…
