Drupal – Page 4 – The Coding Pad

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 5: Playing with Modules

Welcome to part 5 of our tutorial on building a website with Drupal 6. Previously we covered:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Installing Drupal 6
Part 3: Configuring your Site
Part 4: Playing with Blocks

As we go through this tutorials I am building a Drupal resource site called Learn Drupal. In the last tutorial we played with blocks and planned and started implementing the layout of our website. So our website so far looks like this:

(You can click on the images for larger views)

In this post we are going to continue working on our site, building it and adding functionality to it. We know what we want our site to look like, and now we want to decide what functionality we want to have, and how to achieve our goals with modules.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 5: Playing with Modules”

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 4: Playing with Blocks

Welcome to part 4 of our tutorial on building a website with Drupal 6. Previously we covered:

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Installing Drupal 6
Part 3: Configuring your Site

As we go through this tutorials I am building a Drupal resource site called Learn Drupal. So our website so far looks like this:

(You can click on the images for larger views)

In the last post we did some site configuration, modified our footer, added a slogan and more.

In today’s post and over the next few posts we’re going to start build out site out, by looking through the options in the admin section of Site Building and laying out our site, adding sections, and adding functionality.

Today we get to play with blocks!

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 4: Playing with Blocks”

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 3: Configuring your Site

Welcome to part 3 of our tutorial on building a website with Drupal 6. In part 1 we did a brief introduction, and in part 2 we installed Drupal. As we go through this tutorials I am building a Drupal resource site called Learn Drupal. So our website so far looks like this:

(You can click on the images for larger views)

In this installment, we’re going to further configure our website and learn more about the administrative back end of a Drupal website. So log in to the website with your admin username and password. On the left side is a navigation bar, and we’re going to click on “Administer” and look at the admin back end.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 3: Configuring your Site”

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 2: Installing Drupal 6

In the first part of this tutorial we introduced Drupal 6. As part of your homework I asked that you install a webserver and get an FTP program so that you can install and run Drupal. In this tutorial we’re going to go ahead and start the process of installing and configuring our Drupal install.

The website that I am building and showing you screenshots of is Learn Drupal, the Drupal resource site that I mentioned in the last post. I am building it online so that you can follow along or visit later and see how different things that we mention here were implemented.

1. Create your settings.php file.

You can do this step before or after you upload the Drupal install files onto your server. Go into the sites/default folder. Here you will find the file default.settings.php. Copy and paste this file and rename the copy to settings.php. So you should now have two files in the sites/default folder – settings.php and default.settings.php. Drupal needs both of these files to exist for the install to be successful.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 2: Installing Drupal 6”

Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 1: Introduction

As promised, we are going to be moving on to Drupal 6, which is the current version of Drupal. Instead of converting the Drupal Pad to version 6 as I had planned, I have decided to keep that website in Drupal 5 and create a whole new website in Drupal 6 for these series of tutorials because there is still sufficient interest in using Drupal 5. I will tag the tutorials “Drupal 6” and “Drupal 5” so that you can choose which ones you’re interested in.

So let’s get right into it. We are going to be working with Drupal 6.10, the current version as of this writing. There are many ways to write a tutorial. I could introduce you to ALL the elements of a Drupal site and explain them all in theory, but then you’d probably get bored and maybe feel overwhelmed. Instead, I will introduce them as we need them so that you can know what they are as well as see them in action. For example I will introduce the concept of modules when we start enabling modules, themes when we start enabling themes, blocks as we use them, and so on.

What are we going to build?

Through this series of tutorials we will be creating a Drupal Resource Site. We’re going to create a place on the web where we can add tutorials, news about Drupal, articles, and so on. We may at a future date include other features such as a user forum and more.

Continue reading “Building a Website with Drupal 6 – Part 1: Introduction”