Drupal ± Content Management System a non technical introduction

BarCamp Kathmandu 2010 28 August 2010

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What am I going to tell?
‡ I am going to boast about Drupal. ‡ How good it is, who uses it, why use it? ‡ How to really start clicking and building your Drupal website. ‡ What I am not going to do or talk about?
± Install Drupal ± Tell about Drupal jargon (may be some) ± Show you the system inside out ± Why not use Drupal? (Ask me later)
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What is a CMS?
‡ A content management system (CMS) is the collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. ‡ Simple: Lets users mange content ± store, archive, retrieve and show content in some logical manner.

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What is a web CMS?
‡ A web content management system (WCMS) is a software system. ‡ Provides website authoring and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages. ‡ Helps to create and manage the site's content with relative ease. ‡ Usually has a template/presentation layer.
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Web CMS in simple terms
‡ A web content management system is a system that makes content adding, moderating, updating, deleting, archiving and retrieving easy. ‡ It allows non technical users to build and use a website with little or no training. ‡ It is a web application that manages various forms of content from text, images to video. ‡ Also helps to manage users and other things like comments. 

What is Drupal?
‡ 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-end system for at least 1% of all websites worldwide ranging from personal blogs to larger corporate and political sites including whitehouse.gov and data.gov.uk. ‡ It is also used for knowledge management and business collaboration.
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What is Drupal?
‡ A great free web application that helps you to build dynamic feature rich and maintainable websites in very less time. ‡ It is a system that lets you create content with just clicks and not coding a website. ‡ The content you created can be retrieved and shown in a way you desire. ‡ With just clicks and not a single line of code you can run your website be it a blog or even larger websites. 7 ‡ Built on PHP and primarily runs on MYSQL. 

Drupal Components
‡ The basic system you use to build your website is called the Drupal Core. ‡ The more features you want the more modules you add. ‡ You want to make your website look different choose a theme (thousands available for free) ‡ You can even buy one or pay someone to custom design one for you.
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Where and When did it all start?
‡ Dries Buyteart from Antwrep, Belgium started it in 2000 in his college dorm. ‡ Derived from ³Druppel,´ the Dutch word for ³Drop´ which also means village in Dutch. ‡ Drop.org to now http://drupal.org ‡ Just celebrated its 10th Birthday.

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Why Use Drupal
‡ Because it is:
± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± ± Flexible Modular Robust Scalable Secure Feature rich (5800 Free modules) Themable (1000+ Themes) Huge community to support Etc etc
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Who uses Drupal?

‡ www.whitehouse.gov

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www.data.gov.uk

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http://research.yahoo.com

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http://about.digg.com

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www.sa2010.gov.za

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http://research.nokia.com

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http://www.symantec.com/community

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http://buytaert.net/tag/drupal-sites

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Who uses Drupal in Nepal?

‡ www.ncell.com.np

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www.Cellroti.com

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www.mapmandu.com

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www.barcamp.org.np

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www.yipl.com.np

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www.dishnepal.com.np

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www.unicef.org.np/voy

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Drupal Versions
‡ Drupal 5 Branch ± Drupal 5.23 ‡ Drupal 6 Branch ± Drupal 6.19 (released 11 August 2010) ‡ Drupal 7 Branch ± Drupal 7.0-alpha 6 (released 9 July 2010) ± Official stable release being awaited. ‡ Drupal 8 Branch ± May be in the offering
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When to use Drupal?
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ For A blog For a company website For a robust application For any website that is running in your mind right now even a social networking site.

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How to start your Drupal website?
‡ Go to www.drupalgardens.com and start a website for free. ‡ Design to online in 15 minutes. ± it claims. ‡ You will get a sub-domain like: http://yourname.drupalgardens.com ‡ For more see: http://sampler.drupalgardens.com for what is possible.
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Register free at Drupalgardens.com

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DrupalGardens Registration 

Create a Drupal powered sub domain 1 

Choose a template 

And your site is live. 

Change the theme/look 

A good Drupal Gardens site

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More clicks to explore

‡ You can even try buzzr at http://buzzr.com for a free 7 day trial. ‡ If you are adventurous enough try installing it in local computer with local server setup like XAMPP or try Acquia Drupal stack installer.
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Learn more about Drupal
‡ http://drupal.org ‡ Starter¶s guide: http://geshan.blogspot.com/2007/11/drupal -how-to-for-beginners-and-all.html ‡ Try http://drupal.org/handbooks ‡ Google for Drupal or search for Drupal in youtube. ‡ Have fun Drupalling.
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And after that
‡ More research more tutorial hunting. ‡ If you are comfortable with the things you have done migrate to a live server. ‡ Or hire someone who can do that or initial setup for you. ‡ Drupal may be just like your OS, someone needs to install the OS and some needed software then you can easily use it.
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Thank you ± no conclusions
‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ Geshan Manandhar @geshan http://geshan.blogspot.com http://www.geshanmanandhar.com http://www.yipl.com.np http://www.google.com/profiles/geshan

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