Drupal - Blocks & Regions

In this chapter, we will study about Drupal Blocks & Regions. Blocks are container objects that are used to organize your content of your website. It can be displayed in the regions on your page.

Following are the simple steps for creating Drupal Blocks.

Step 1 − Click Structure in Drupal as shown in the following screen.

Step 2 − Then, click Blocks.

Step 3 − Blocks page gets displayed. Click Add block.

Step 4 − A block page will gets displayed to create a new custom block as shown in the following screen.

The following fields appear on the Blocks page.

• Block Settings

• Block title − Enter the title for your block.
• Block description − Enter the description about block.
• Block body − Enter the content of the block.
• Text format − Select the format for your text i.e. Filtered HTML, Full HTML, and Plain text.

• Region Settings

• Bartik (default theme) − Select the region to display block in the theme.
• Seven (administration theme) − Select the region to display block in the administration theme.

• Visibility Setting

• Page − Allows displaying blocks on all or specific pages.
• Content Types − Allows to display the blocks in specific content, i.e. Article or Basic Page.
• Roles − Allows displaying the blocks for specific types of users, i.e. anonymous user, authenticated user, or administrator user.
• Users − Allows each user to customize the visibility of block in their settings.

Now, click the Save block after filling all the fields.

Step 5 − You can view the created block as shown in the following screen.

Drupal - Main Menu

In this chapter, we will study how to Create Menus in Drupal. Menus are very important to easily navigate in your website. Menus offer a set of links that helps you navigate. The Drupal menu allows you to add, remove and rename the menus and menu items.

Following are the simple steps to create menus in Drupal.

Step 1 − Click Structure → Menus as shown in the following screen.

Step 2 − Click on Add menu option to add menu.

Step 3 − Fill in the required details as shown in the following screen.

• Title − It displays title in the Administrator Menu bar.
• Description − Enter a brief description about the menu. The description field will display only in the admin dashboard under the menu list, but it does not display any information to site visitors.

After filling all the information about the menu, click on Save button to save your created menu bar.

Step 4 − Once you save the menu bar, the following screen will get displayed. Here you have to define the path link to your created menu page. Click Add link as shown in the following screen.

Step 5 − The created Menu 1 page gets displayed as shown in the following screen.

It contains below fields −

• Menu link title− Specify the name of the menu item.
• Path − Specify the URL path of the page which you want to display.
• Description − Description about the menu link.
• Enabled − It enables the item to display on menu.
• Show as expanded − If it consists of sub menus, then it will be displayed under the parent menu item.
• Parent Link − It sets the main structure of menu.
• Weight − Sets the order of menu items.

After filling all the information about the menu link, click the Save button, this will save your Menu link.

Step 6− Now the following screen pops up.

Step 7 − Click Structure → Menus to get the following screen.

Here, you will see the created Menu 1 name in the list of Menus.

Drupal - Architecture

Drupal is a platform for web content management which is a powerful tool for building simple and complex sites. In this chapter, we are going to discuss the architectural style of Drupal for implementing user interfaces. The following diagram shows the architecture of Drupal −

The architecture of Drupal contains the following layers &miuns;

• Users
• Administrator
• Drupal
• PHP
• Web Server
• Database

Users − These are the users on the Drupal community. The user sends a request to a server using Drupal CMS and web browsers, search engines, etc. acts like clients.

Administrator − Administrator can provide access permission to authorized users and will be able to block unauthorized access. Administrative account will be having all privileges for managing content and administering the site.

Drupal − Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) that allows organizing, managing and publishing your content and is built on PHP based environments. Drupal CMS is very flexible and powerful and can be used for building large, complex sites. It is very easy to interact with other sites and technologies using Drupal CMS. Further, you will be able to handle complex forms and workflows.

PHP − Drupal uses PHP in order to work with an application which is created by a user. It takes the help of web server to fetch data from the database. PHP memory requirements depend on the modules which are used in your site. Drupal 6 requires at least 16MB, Drupal 7 requires 32MB and Drupal 8 requires 64MB.

Web Server − Web server is a server where the user interacts and processes requests via HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) and serves files that form web pages to web users. The communication between the user and the server takes place using HTTP. You can use different types of web servers such as Apache, IIS, Nginx, Lighttpd, etc.

Database − Database stores the user information, content and other required data of the site. It is used to store the administrative information to manage the Drupal site. Drupal uses the database to extract the data and enables to store, modify and update the database.

Drupal - Installation

This chapter provides step-by-step procedure for Drupal installation. Before installing Drupal, the following system requirements are necessary.

System Requirements for Drupal

• Database − MySQL 5.1 +
• Web Server −
  • WAMP (Windows)
  • LAMP (Linux)
  • XAMP (Multi-platform)
  • MAMP (Macintosh)
  • Nginx
  • Microsoft IIS
• Operating System − Cross-platform
• Browser Support − IE (Internet Explorer 8+), Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera
• SSL (Secure Socket Layer) − A valid security certificate is required for HTTPS
• PHP Compatibility − PHP 5.2+

Download Drupal

Step 1 − Download the Drupal and copy to your web server from this link − https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal

Step 2 − Select the latest version of zip file which you want to download as shown in the following screen. The Recommended releases are the latest stable releases of either version.

Setup Wizard

It's very easy to setup Drupal on your system. The following steps describe how to setup Drupal locally on your system.

Step 1 − Download the zip file and extract it to your local computer. Rename the folder from its current name to any name of your choice to refer to your site.

Step 2 − Drupal requires MySQL database. Create a new empty database with user/password for Drupal to use. (For e.g., user as "root" and password as "root" or else you can set as per your choice).

Step 3 − Open your browser and navigate to your Drupal file path, you will see the first Drupal installer screen as shown in the following image. In our case the path is localhost/< Your_drupal_folder >. Select the Standardoption and click Save and continue.

Step 4 − Select the default language for Drupal website.

After selecting the language, click Save and continue.

Step 5 − Go to Database configuration page. You need to enter the type of database you will be using, and other details as follows.

• Database Type − Select the database type. By default, it will be MySQL.
• Database name − Enter the database name for Drupal.
• Database username − Enter the user name of your MySQL database.
• Database password − Enter the password which you had set for MySQL Database.

When you click the ADVANCED OPTIONS, you will see the following screen −

You can fill the advanced options for the database −

• Database Host − Enter the host name where your database is located.
• Database port − Enter the database port.
• Table Prefix − It is used to add prefix in the database tables, which helps to run multiple sites on the same database.

After filling all the information, click the Save and continue button.

Step 6 − The installation process starts on your machine.

Step 7 − The Configure site page appears on the screen −

It contains the following fields −

• Site name − The name that you want to give to your site.
• Site e-mail address − The e-mail address to which automated e-mails will be sent.
• Username, Email-address and Password − These are all administrative details used for the maintenance account.

You need to enter all these fields and click Save and continue.

Step 8 − The following page indicating that your Drupal installation is successful will appear on your screen.

Step 9 − Click the Visit your new site link as shown in this image.

Step 10 − Finally, the newly installed Drupal homepage appears on your screen as seen in the preceding image.

Drupal - Overview

Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) that allows organizing, managing and publishing your content. It is built on PHP based environments. This is carried out under GNU i.e. General Public License, which means everyone has the freedom of downloading and sharing it with others. Drupal is used on million sites such as WhiteHouse.gov, World Economic Forum, Stanford University, Examiner.com and many more.

What is Content Management System?

The Content Management System (CMS) is a software which stores all the data of your content (such as text, photos, music, documents, etc.) and is made available on your website. A CMS helps in editing, publishing and modifying the content of the website.

History

The standard release of Drupal known as Drupal core was developed by Dries Buytaerti in January 2001. It is considered as a leading CMS in variety of industries.

Why to use Drupal?

If you are developing a website with content management system, Drupal CMS is very flexible than any other CMS. Drupal is very powerful and can be used for building large, complex sites. It is PHP based template and allows non-technical users to add and edit the content without any HTML or Web design knowledge. Using Drupal CMS, it is easy to interact with other sites or technologies as Drupal can handle complex forms and workflows. It is available with more than 16000 modules which can be addressed with Drupal core and add-on modules.

Features

• Drupal makes it easy to create and manage your site.
• Drupal translates anything in the system with built-in user interfaces.
• Drupal connects your website to other sites and services using feeds, search engine connection capabilities, etc.
• Drupal is an open source software hence requires no licensing costs.
• Drupal designs highly flexible and creative website with effective display quality thus increasing the visitors to the site.
• Drupal can publish your content on social media such as Twitter, Facebook and other social mediums.
• Drupal provides more number of customizable themes, including several base themes which are used to design your own themes for developing web applications.
• Drupal manages content on informational sites, social media sites, member sites, intranets and web applications.

Advantages

• Drupal is a flexible CMS that allows handling content types including video, text, blog, menu handling, real-time statistics, etc.
• Drupal provides a number of templates for developing web applications. There is no need to start from scratch if you are building simple or complicated web applications.
• Drupal is easy to manage or create blog or website. It helps to organize, structure, find and reuse content.
• Drupal provides some interesting themes and templates which gives your website an attractive look.
• Drupal has over 7000 plug-ins to boost your website. Since Drupal is an open source, you can create your own plug-ins.

Disadvantages

• Drupal is not a user-friendly interface. It requires advanced knowledge and few basic things about the platform to install and modify.
• Drupal is a new content management system. It is not compatible with other software.
• Performance is low compared to other CMS. The website which is built using Drupal will generate big server loads and will never open with a slow internet connection.

Drupal Tutorial

Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) that allows organizing, managing and publishing your content. This reliable and secure CMS is built on PHP based environment and powers millions of applications and websites. This tutorial will teach you the basics of Drupal using which you can create a blog or a website with ease.

Audience

This tutorial has been prepared for anyone who has a basic knowledge of HTML and CSS and has an urge to develop websites. After completing this tutorial, you will find yourself at a moderate level of expertise in developing websites using Drupal.

Prerequisites

Before you start proceeding with this tutorial, we are assuming that you are already aware of the basics of HTML and CSS. If you are not aware of these concepts, then we suggest you to go through our short tutorials on HTML and CSS.