Drupal A User's Guide: Building and Administering a Successful Drupal-Powered Web Site

Description

The easy, practical, step-by-step guide to building great sites with Drupal 7... the perfect solution for Drupal's notorious learning curve!

* Guides content managers, small business owners, and non-profit volunteers from "I need a site!" to finished, successful web site
* Humanizes Drupal with plenty of case studies and user interviews
* Reflects Drupal 7's latest improvements
* Covers topics like search engine optimization and Section 508 accessibility that most Drupal books ignore

The free, open source Drupal content management system offers enormous flexibility, sophistication, and power - but, for most users, it also presents a steep and difficult learning curve. Most Drupal guidebooks don't help: either they're too technical, too daunting, or too narrowly targeted. This is a Drupal book for "the rest of us." Drupal User's Guide is easy to use, fun to read, and complete. Long-time Drupal site developer Emma Jane Hogbin guides readers through every step of building web sites with Drupal 7, from planning through going live and maintaining content. Hogbin covers both Drupal tasks and "web design" tasks, showing how they fit together. She also "humanizes" Drupal with plenty of interviews, case studies and real-life examples from the worldwide Drupal community. Readers will learn how to: 1. Evaluate, install, and deploy Drupal and the third-party modules they need to get the job done 2. Smoothly handle every step of the web design life cycle 3. Import and manage content of all kinds 4. Administer Drupal and implement efficient content management workflows 5. Use Drupal to build sites that are optimized for search engines 6. Meet today's accessibility standards, including Section 508 This is the Drupal book thousands of users and potential users have been searching for - everything they need to overcome Drupal's notorious learning curve, and begin taking advantage of its immense power.

CONTENTS:

Preface xxi

Acknowledgments xxv

About the Author xxvii

Part I: Quick Start 1

Chapter 1: Introduction to Drupal 3

About Drupal 3

Online Content Management 5

How Pages Are Built 5

Types of Web Sites 7

Summary 16

Chapter 2: Installing Drupal 17

Hosting Your Web Site on the Internet 17

Installing Drupal 20

Summary 32

Chapter 3: Drupal Administration 33

Overview 33

Configuration 38

Administrative Reports 43

Help 44

Summary 46

Chapter 4: Site Recipe: Micro Web Site 47

Web Site Basics 47

Basic Pages 49

Creating Front-Page Articles 52

In-Site Searching 57

RSS Settings 57

Customizing Your Site's Design 58

Summary 60

Part II: Planning 61

Chapter 5: Site Goals 63

Defining and Designing Success 64

SMART Site Goals 64

Your Competition 72

Summary 74

Chapter 6: Human-Friendly Web Sites 77

Defining Your Audience 77

User Scenarios 82

Technical Profiles and Minimum System Requirements 84

Summary 86

Chapter 7: Information Architecture 87

Information Architecture 87

Defining Content Types 88

Organizing Content 93

Conveying Content Structure 100

Testing the Organizational Structure 105

Summary 105

Chapter 8: Design for Drupal 107

Planning Your Page Layout 107

Embellishments 119

Design Resources for the Graphically Challenged 124

Test Your Design Structure 126

Summary 126

Part III: Case Studies 129

Chapter 9: Community Site 131

Site Profile 131

Basic Configuration 134

Configure Modules 137

Customizing the Display 151

Summary 166

Chapter 10: Business Directory 167

Planning the Site 167

Basic Configuration 168

Contributed Modules 174

Views for Recent Content 176

Business Directory 184

Summary 194

Part IV: Build Anything 195

Chapter 11: Core and Contributed Modules 197

Introduction to Drupal Modules 197

Summary 211

Chapter 12: Working with Content Types 213

Content Patterns 213

Default Content Types 219

Managing Content Types 226

Working with Fields 229

Summary 249

Chapter 13: Lists of Content 251

Menus 251

Breadcrumbs 256

Categories: Taxonomy, Vocabulary, and Terms 257

Views Module 262

Site Maps 274

Summary 275

Chapter 14: Recipes 277

Building Your Site 277

Extending Your Blog 288

Portals, Aggregators, and Reported News 290

Community Sites 293

Instructional Sites and Digital Collections 296

Commerce Sites 297

Summary 298

Part V: Extending Drupal 299

Chapter 15: Theming 301

Building Pages 302

Customizing Your Site Without Code 302

Contributed Themes 309

Building Your Own Theme 312

Summary 327

Chapter 16: Search Engine Optimization 329

Getting Started with SEO 329

How Search Engines Work 333

Fixing Your Site: The Factors Drupal Can't Affect 335

Best Practices for Creating SEO-Friendly Content with Drupal 338

Web Statistics: Measuring Your Work 348

Summary 354

Chapter 17: Accessibility 355

Why Bother? 356

Building an Accessible Site 360

Creating Accessible Content 366

Testing Your Site 370

Summary 375

Appendices 377

Appendix A: Sample User Survey 379

Seniors Advocacy and Awareness Network 379

Appendix B: Preparing Your Development Environment 383

Full Development Environment 384

Windows 384

Mac OS X 384

Linux, BSD, and other *nix Variants 384

Customizing Your AMP 385

Revision Control 386

Appendix C: Advanced Installation of Drupal 387

Multisite Installations 387

Appendix D: CSS Grid Frameworks 391

Appendix E: Domicile Theme Files 397

domicile.info 397

page.tpl.php 398

Appendix F: Web Accessibility Guidelines 401

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 401

Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 403

Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) 405

Section 508 405

Index 409