Pro-Developer: April 2008

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

How to install Drupal 6.2

Installing Drupal is very easy. But if you can't understand how to install it then let me show you. In this tutorial I am using Drupal 6.2 version. Before installation make sure your have all recommended system requirements.

System Requirements are:

Web Server: Apache or Microsoft IIS
PHP 5.2 or Higher
MySQL 4.1 or PostgreSQL 7.4 or Higher
For other system requirements visit this link: http://drupal.org/requirements

Now follow these steps:

First of all download latest copy of Drupal from this link: http://drupal.org/download
Uncompress & put the it into your server's root directory. In my case I put it into /htdocs/ directory and renamed it as 'mydrupal'.
Now visit it from your browser: http://localhost/mydrupal
Choose your desire language, I chose: Install Drupal in English
In this step Drupal will verify your system requirement. If your system requirements are correct then you have nothing to do, just move next.
Now setup database: go to http://localhost/phpmyadmin & create a database something like 'mydrupal_db'
Back to Drupal & enter database information. In my case I entered following:

Database type: mysqli
Database name: mydrupal_db
Database username: root
Database passowrd: [password of my database server]

Now configure your site:

Enter site name: 'My Drupal'
Site email address: 'admin@localhost.com'
Administrator Username: 'admin'
Administrator Email: 'admin@localhost.com'
Administrator Password: '123456'
Save & Continue

That's it, now visit this url to see your new Drupal site: http://localhost/mydrupal

As you are the administrator of your site, do the following tasks to enjoy full control of it:

Create Administrator Role:

Go to: Administer > User Management > Roles
Add Role with a name something like 'Administrator'
Go to: Administer > User Management > Users
Here you will find a user with name 'admin'. Now click "Edit" link.
In the next page check on "Administrator" role & Save

Assign Administrator Permissions:

Go to: Administer > User Management > Permissions
Check on all checkboxes found under 'Administrator' column. This will allow 'admin' user to access all functions of all installed modules.

Congratulations, you have successfully installed Drupal. For more information about how to administer Drupal read this article: http://drupal.org/getting-started/6/admin

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Friday, April 11, 2008

Drupal - Best CMS I have ever seen

Drupal is an open source Content Management System (CMS). Few weeks ago I discovered Drupal and have started loving it. Most of the time I use my own framework to develop sites. I made that framework with Smarty Template and ADODB library. But this does not satisfy my all needs as I have to develop a site from the scratch with it. I was looking for a better framework or CMS. I tried Joomla, it is also a very good CMS. But I have found that I need to do lots of work to customize it. I think Joomla is very good if you want it only for CMS solution. But I need a system to use it both as CMS & a framework.

In this case I have found, Drupal is the best. At the first sight I love it for it's simplicity but powerful environment. Another great thing I like about Drupal is it's community support, which is very large and strong. Thousands of Module are available in Drupal site contributed by the community. Most of the time you do not need to develop a functionality by yourself, just download a module from Drupal website, uncompress it and put it in your Drupal's module directory. You will find lots of tutorial & help about creating modules & theme in Drupal.org.

Here are few links & resources of Drupal:

Lots of great sites have developed using Drupal. One of them is Ubuntu.com. It is also used by new Sun HPC portal. Watch the following interview of Scott Mattoon, Chief Architect, US Western Region, Sun Microsystem, INC about their experience of using Drupal.