Create Drupal Website

If we are going to create a website in drupal, the first thing to do is to download the latest version of Drupal. Drupal is available free to download, as it is an open source content management system (CMS). We will learn and use the tools available on Drupal to make an attractive and viable website. While downloading it is wise to write down your user name, password and other relevant information, so that you do not have difficulty in re-accessing the account.

What’s in a name?

The old question asked by Juliet, ‘what’s in a name?’ is faulted by the World Wide Web. A good domain name is crucial for the success of a website. Therefore the first step is to decide upon a good name for your website. Once decided you have to verify whether it is available for use as many domain names are already registered. It is always good to have a name which stirs up an image related to your product or service.

Your level of expertise

Once you have Drupal, it is wise to use all its tools and get the general feel of the CMS. If you are an expert, this should not be a problem but a beginner might feel a bit frustrated in using all the commands. Therefore be patient and create something as a way to learn before really going for your final version of your website
Product decides the style

There is a section in Drupal which shows many sites built with the Drupal development. These can be on diverse topics like sports, medicine or astronomy. You get a great idea of what kind of website is required for your particular product here. So, now one can either select a template or design a theme from scratch. For this one has to go to Drupal gardens. Here you can go through all the themes available and select the one which suits your purpose. One can actually see how the themes are composed of blocks, text and pictures. One can move these around to see how a page can be composed. There are files of pictures and images which can be used on your website.

Training while you create

Drupal is constructed with the use of PHP. The great thing about Drupal is that you do not need to do any intricate programming. All the ingredients for your website are available as easily maneuverable sections which can be moved around on web pages to make a site which satisfies your requirements. The documentation section is another tool on Drupal which is well worth getting familiar with. There is a recipe section which can be used to gain knowledge about creating any sort of website, perhaps something like YouTube or perhaps a site for posting available jobs in your city.

Basic ingredients

In the beginning it is better to keep things simple. Your website is going to consist of four or five sections. These are headers and footers, text blocks, images and sidebars.

Drupal Modules

Another fine tool available on Drupal is Modules. These will further help you fine tune your business specific website. Drupal is the perfect tool for creating a website without requiring knowledge in coding and programming.

CreatorShadow has a team of qualified drupal developers who have specialization in drupal Drupal development, drupal theme/template design & custom development, customization & installation services.

 

how to work with drupal

Are you a professional blogger? Then you must have understood the prominence of WordPress, overshadowing Drupal. Many professional bloggers are now converting their web pages from Drupal to WordPress. Reason? WordPress is easier, better, and user-friendlier. Many tech savvy people may argue that Drupal is the ideal place for technically sound ones; however, there are many, who cite for the struggle, they have faced during posting their blogs in Drupal. There are a couple of reasons, why many web users are switching from Drupal to WordPress. If you are interested to imbibe the process for a better blogging experience, here are some tips on how to migrate from Drupal to WordPress, mentioned below. Before landing on the topic, let’s take a look why you might need the switch.
Why WordPress is better than Drupal:
WordPress is quicker than Drupal. The tasks that you can perform on Drupal, can be executed much faster on WordPress.
WordPress has the autosave option, which takes care of your incomplete content, while on Drupal, there is no such option in the text editor.
WordPress offers more Plugins.
WordPress has the Thesis theme, which takes extra care to make your page rank higher in search engines.
There is WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor on WordPress, with which you don’t have to take extra burdens to add HTML links.
Moderating comments is easier on WordPress.
How to switch to WordPress from Drupal:Migrating from Drupal to WordPress is not an easy task. You first need to work on the offline copies in the archive. Dump Drupal database from your system and import it into a fresh database. You can use MySQL for this conversion.
Install WordPress into your system, using the old database server, where the Drupal database is kept. You now have Drupal and WordPress running on the same server but in separate database. Don’t forget to give unique names to the databases.
You may need some programming knowledge with MySQL and PHP to work on Drupal. You can enable PHP on Drupal following the path:
/drupal/admin/settings/filters
You need to change the location; else Google will consider it as duplicate content. With slight coding, you can inform Google that the content is being shifted from Drupal to WordPress. After the switch, whenever, you need to post something, just enable ‘Input Format’.
This is the basic procedure of migrating from Drupal to WordPress. Now log in to WordPress site and you will supposedly find all your contents and posts along with the comments on your new WordPress site. If you find all your posts and comments in the migrated database, you can dump the WordPress database and import the archive into a new database on the server. Now a new WordPress should be installed and configured on the server so that you can use the new database properly.
Do you use Drush and Drupal? Then you may want to read this:
What are your favorite/most used commands with Drush, an open source command line utility that we recommend using to build and maintain your Drupal website. Here is our top 9 most used commands on how to use Drush with Drupal, an open source Content Management System (CMS). This is too good of a list to not share with the community.
Drush is by far my favorite tool when it comes to working with Drupal. While grapical tools are often easier to use initially, command-line tools more often give you more power and control, the drush project is an active Drupal project with a major release (3.x) in the works. While it does change some of the basic command names, it organizes and restructures the design to make it easier to extend. The new release also introduces new features/commands, some of which were prior add-ons.
My Favorite/Most Used Commands
Drush provides a number of commands that permit you do perform drupal installation, maintenance, and status operations. Among my most frequently used commands/operations:
1. View the update status of modules
2. Update site modules
3. Clearing caches
4. Download drush modules
5. Enabling modules
6. Disabling modules
7. Download drush to create a new installation
8. Get the list of enabled (disabled) modules
9. Get the list of and status of a specific module
In v2.x, I would do this by:
1. drush -n update
2. drush update
3. drush clear cache
4. drush download m1 m2 m3
5. drush enable m1 m2 m3 (I often use the -y option in order to skip the confirmation)
6. drush disable m1 m2 m3 (I often use the -y option in order to skip the confirmation)
7. drush download (followed by renaming the drupal-N.nn directory to a more meaningful name)
8. drush statusmodule | grep ‘Enabled’ (or ‘Disabled’)
9. drush statusmodule | grep ‘my guess at module name’
Now, with the formal release of v3.x. The revised commands for the above are:
1. drush -n pm-update
2. drush pm-update
3. drush cache-clear all (all, theme, menu, css+js are the available options)
4. drush pm-download m1 m2 m3
5. drush pm-enable m1 m2 m3
6. drush pm-disable m1 m2 m3
7. drush pm-download –drupal-project-rename=my.sitename drupal
8. drush pm-list –type=module –status=enabled
9. drush pm-list –type=module –package=”Package Name” (if you know the exact package name) ordrush pm-list –type=module | grep ‘part of package name or module name’ (if you are not sure of a package or module name)
Your site is ready. 
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