Drupal Content Management System Mallikarjuna Pinjala CIS 764

Drupal Content Management System Mallikarjuna Pinjala CIS 764, Nov. 2008 - 1 -

CMS? • • • Application to manage public content. Identify users and roles. Manage multiple versions of content Capture content Constituent Interaction

History • Creators: Dries Buytaert and Hans Snijder • Small news site, builtin web board, drop. org. • In 2001, software behind drop. org released as “Drupal” (droo-puhl).

Features • • Open Source Friendly URLs Personalization Modules Search Solid CMF Database Independent

Setup Download Drupal Rename the /drupal/sites/default folder Edit htaccess file. Create Database My. SQL mysqladmin -u username -p create databasename createuser --pwprompt --encrypted --no-adduser --nocreatedb username createdb --encoding=UNICODE --owner=username databasename Run automated Install Script

Installation

Basic CM • • • Page and Story Content Types Content Addition Edit/ Disable primary links Menus Alias Set up category

Components of Drupal Module system Based on the concept of “Hooks” Foo_bar (), Foo module name, bar hook name Database Abstraction Layer Inherits PHP’s PDO Performs queries by db_query () or db_query_range () Menu System Follows hierarchy defined by paths. Page request is registered as a menu item with a callback. Searches for the most complete match with a callback it can find

• Other Components… • Form Generation • File System • Search Interface

Takeaways • Open-Source Software – Buggy – Frequent updates – Support Community • Simplicity – Minimize reliance on modules – Steer away from excessive and focus on the essential • Tracking System – Document versioning & modules (sources & versions) – Helps tie-in with overall web strate

Sample Drupal Site

References • Dries Buytaert, “Drupal” ( Open Source Content Management System), www. drupal. org, visited 11/04/2008 • “Drupal” ( Content Management System) , Wikipedia, 9 pp. , http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Drupal, visited 11/04/2008