Photo Credit: Two men working under car hood; young woman leaning on fender watching, 1964William Gedney Photographs and Writings Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Libraryhttp://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/gedney/

Bryan Mayjor

Technology-assisted Education DeveloperExtension & Experiment Station CommunicationsOregon State University

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/eesc/bryan.mayjor@oregonstate.edu

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Session Agenda

• What is Drupal?• Drupal Overview

• Drupal Pros and Cons

• Demonstration of Drupal Capabilities• Q & A

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What is Drupal?

Drupal is an open-source Content Management System (CMS) used to create dynamic websites

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Requirements

Drupal requires a– Web Server– Database Server– PHP

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How Drupal Works

6Credit: http://engineeredweb.com/blog/10/4/architect-using-diagrams

How Drupal Works

7Credit: http://engineeredweb.com/blog/10/4/architect-using-diagrams

How Drupal Works

Primary Components– Drupal Core – Modules– Themes– Blocks and Regions– Menus

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How Drupal Works

Drupal Core– What you get when you download Drupal

• Contains basic features such as user management, content creation, blogs, polls, RSS feeds and site administration tools

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How Drupal Works

Modules– Modules are “plugins” that extend the

core functionality• Thousands user-contributed modules are

available to download

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How Drupal Works

Themes– Themes are the templates that determine

the look and feel of the website• Hundreds of themes are available to download

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How Drupal Works

Blocks and Regions– A block is snippet of content that is

displays in a pre-defined area (region) on a webpage

– Common “regions” are headers, footers content area and sidebars

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Regions

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Regions

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Sidebar

Header

SidebarContent Area

How Drupal Works

Menus– Menus display navigational links to pages

and resources• Menus are “blocks” that are placed in

“regions”

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Drupal Pros and Cons

Pros– Easy to create basic websites– Modular– Supported– Open Source– Taxonomy system

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Drupal Pros and Cons

Pros– Standards compliant– SEO friendly– Built-in search– Fine grained roles and permissions– Scaleable

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Drupal Pros and Cons

Cons– Considerable learning curve for creating

custom themes and modules– Code base needs frequent updating– Deployment on non-Linux platforms is

complicated

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Drupal Pros and Cons

Cons– Open Source– Too many modules to choose from– Upgrading to new releases can be painful

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Online Demos

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Q & A

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