Most CMS programs are free, open source programs, meaning that they are created and maintained by a community of individuals and offered free of charge to you.  They vary a lot in their complexity, learning curve, and features they offer.  They allow you to change your site’s appearance using templates and provide, and provide search engines, news feeds, site statistics, file managers, among many others.

If you don’t need all those bells and whistles and instead just want a simple site, you should read the Free blog hosts article. 

List of free Content Management Systems (CMS)

WordPress Content Management System

One unique thing about WordPress is that you can use it as a true content management system (CMS) or as a regular blog.  As a CMS, WordPress is quickly becoming the most popular.  WordPress is easy to configure, yet has a lot of cool features and has a ton of “plugins” that make it highly customizable.  For a more detailed description, you should check out the Review of WordPress Content Management System (CMS) article.  I recently switched this website over to WordPress, so you can expect a whole bunch of tutorials on how to set it up and navigate in the near future.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source content management system (CMS) that uses PHP and MySQL. Drupal is modular, very customizable, and has many advanced features.  For a more detailed review of Drupal, you should read the article, Review of Drupal Content Management System (CMS).  Having used Drupal previously for two of my websites, I also have created a bunch of tutorials on how to set up Drupal and some of the more advanced features.  If you already decided to use Drupal, you should probably check out the Starting a site with Drupal article with pointers to get you started and a list of other related Drupal articles.  It allows an individual user or even a community of users to publish, manage and maintain your website. You can use it to create blogs, forums, picture galleries, file upload and download sites, forums, collaborative authoring environments, podcasting, peer-to-peer networking sites, etc. The system is modular and highly customizable. It is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Joomla!

Joomla! is an open source content management system (CMS) that you can use from an online interface where you can edit Joomla! using a WYSIWYG editor.  You can add features by installing their extensions that include dynamic form builders, blogging software, email newsletters, shopping carts, image galleries, and chat software, among others.  In order to run Joomla!, your web server must have Apache, PHP, and MySQL installed.

Movable Type

Movable Type is a Perl Based content management system (CMS) that you to build multiple websites and blogs.  They have both a commercial version and an open source/free version, and this article will refer to the free version.  They provide custom fields to organize data, a revision history that track changes you make, customizations using plugins, and several different themes.

eZ Publish

eZPublish is a content management system (CMS) that uses a MySQL database and allows you to publish your content form within your web browser (like almost all CMS programs).  Some of the features of eZPublish are its multimedia publishing, extensions, user management, and the ability to publish using Microsoft Word. 

TextPattern

TextPattern is an open source CMS that uses a Textile syntax to create “structurally sound and stylistically rich web content”.  It is fairly easy for anyone to modify and does offer quite a bit of flexibility. It also meshes well with CSS so that fonts, colors and sizes can be edited using CSS.

Drupal is a free and open source content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License.  You must have PHP and a database like MySQL installed in order to use Drupal. 

Some of Drupal’s features include RSS-feeds, customized page layouts, and the ability to set up forums, shopping carts, and community websites for user-generated content.  You can customize using Drupal’s core plug-in modules contributed by open source community members.  You can change the look and feel of the site using several contributed “themes.”

Here are my thoughts…

Drupal is meant for more advanced web designers.  Drupal has many advanced features like the collaborative story-writing feature I mentioned and they have support for multiple sites and multiple authors.  But it is quite complex to use.

Drupal is only meant for you if:

• You know CSS and HTML and are comfortable modifying code.  If you have just a basic understanding of code, don’t use Drupal.  Just don’t.  In order to make Drupal function properly, you need to decipher Drupal’s code.  Since you will be modifying code that someone else created it could be more complex than creating the code yourself. 
• You know how to write PHP programs.  PHP is basically a more advanced type of code.  If you don’t have experience with PHP, you will have a very difficult time using Drupal. 
• You need support for multiple sites and multiple authors.

I found out the hard way that Drupal was meant for people with advanced knowledge of code, PHP, and web design.

Beyond that, just the installation was very difficult and took MUCH longer than I expected.  I felt that their administration interface was very confusing, hard to follow, and simply not user-friendly.  They do not have a very good support forum, either.  If you need support, it seems that you need to ask 10 different people to get an answer.  Remember, most of the people that use Drupal are advanced web designers, and if you’re not one of them, you will be confused quite often.

However, if you have a good understanding of web design and code, you might be very pleased with Drupal.  If you want to give Drupal a shot, you can find all the information you need and instructions to get you going in the Starting a site with Drupal article.

RegNow
RegNow is a typical affiliate program that lets affiliates (you) to place ads for their products on your website. You will make money in the form of a commission for products or services bought through the links. The rates vary according to the vendor and are displayed on their site.

ClixGalore
ClixGalore is similar to RegNow where you will make commission from purchases made and the rates vary.

LinkShare Corporation
LinkShare is a network of affiliate programs where you can work with a bunch of advertisers. As with the previous two, you receive commission for sales and the rates vary.

Amazon
Amazon is an affiliate of sorts, but the difference here is that you are advertising through Amazon and not directly with the companies themselves. They offer rotating ads and also let you choose specific products.

Google AdSense
Look around on sites, and you will see that Google AdSense is very popular. Google will display targeted advertisements based on the content of your page. These ads rotate and you are paid by the number of clicks the ads (PPC – pay per click). I also have a beginner’s tutorial on how to join this program: How to add Google AdSense to your website.

PHP

PHP, short for PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is known as a server side language that is used to perform more complex functions with a web page. Examples include create a contact form, feedback form, or setting up a search box.

Uploading

Uploading is essentially the opposite of downloading. It means to copy a file from your own computer to another computer. This is one way for webmasters to publish their web pages on
the Internet – they transfer a web pages from their computer to their
web server.  FTP, or File Transfer Protocol, is one method used to upload files.  Internet.

Web Host

A web host is a company that has a computer permanently connected
to the Internet that houses documents (or web pages) so that people can view them on the internet.

Web Server

The main defintion of a web server is a computer permanently connected to the Internet that houses documents (or web pages) so that people can view them on the internet.  When you sign up with a web host, they provide you access to their web server.  It is also used to describe a computer program like Apache that allows people using a browser to read the web pages located
there.

WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get)

A WYSIWYG editor is a design program (similar to a word processor like Microsoft Word) that displays a web page almost exactly as it will appear when you publish the web page.  Dreamweaver is the most popular of thes programs. 

NoteTab

Arachnophilia

NotePad++

Basic Administration Settings

In step #1 on the page, click the administration section link, which will take you to the Administration page. You should have a message at the top of the screen saying something like “Cron has not run. Please visit the status report for more information.” Click the status report link in that phrase. Cron is something that you will want to set up to run automatically. Drupal.org explains what this is and how to set it up, but it is a bit confusing. I will add a section soon on how to do that, but for now we will run it manually. Until you configure cron to run automatically, you should go back to this page at least once per day and run it manually. The Status Report page shows some of the installation information with your site. All of the fields should be shaded in green except the Cron maintenance tasks section. In that section, click run cron manually, and when you do, you should be taken back to the same screen with a notification up top that cron has run successfully and all fields should now be shaded in green.

Now, click the Administration link on the left side of the page. You will be visiting this section quite a bit, especially in the beginning, to set up your site. You can access any of these sections either by using the dropdown menu items on the left or by using the links on this page. You can also choose to view the items on the Administration page by clicking the By task or By module links at the top of the page. All of the items will be the same, but they will just be organized in a different way. Once you play around with your site you will figure out which structure works better for you. Just because I am used to it, I use the By task view, and that is the format I will use for these descriptions. I will create a separate page on what everything means at a later time. For now, I will take you through the basic steps of getting your site set up.

First, underneath the Administration link on the left side, click the Site Configuration link. The first thing you should do is make sure that clean urls are enabled, so click on the Clean URLs link. If you are able to, click the Enable button. If you have problems, it can be a bit of a hassle to say the least. See the Clean URLs section of Drupal download for more information.

Now, click the Date and Time link. In the Default time zone section, make sure it is set to whatever time zone you want. In the User-configurable time zones section, I usually set it to Disabled, but that is your choice. You can set the rest of the sections to whatever you want, as well.

Go to the Site Information link and your site name and email address should have already been populated. If it has not or you want to make any changes, go ahead and do that. If you are interested in having a slogan, mission, or footer message, you can also enter that here. You can leave the Anonymous user and Default front page sections the way they are.

Enabling Modules

Now, let’s go to the Modules section. On the Administration page, find the Site building section and click Modules. This section is what makes Drupal so great, because you can create with just a click something that may take you hours, days, or even weeks and months if you were to create it yourself. Basically, when you downloaded Drupal, it came loaded with several modules like contact forms and search boxes and this is your chance to decide which ones you want to use.

Some of the modules are turned on by default and some are not. I leave most of the modules the way they are, but here are some of the changes I make.

I uncheck the Color Module because I don’t really feel the need for it.

I check the Contact Module. This is a typical contact form in which people can contact you with questions or comments. In my mind, every good site should have one of these.

I check the Path Module. This is something we will get into later, but it is probably one you want to have enabled.

I check the Ping Module. If you want to get more traffic to your site, ping is a great way to do it by notifying other sites when your site has been updated.

I check the Search Module. This is a neat function that I think makes your site look more professional, but certain sites may not feel the need for it.

I also check the Statistics and Syslog Modules. These give you the ability to track the visitors of your site a little better.

When you are finished, click the Save Configuration button at the bottom of the screen. Once you do that, one thing you will notice is that a search box now appears in the top left corner of your site. You literally created a search box with one single click. Some of it is just that easy. And if you decide you don’t want it….just go back and uncheck it and it will be gone just like that.

These are not by any means the only modules you can use. Drupal has many other different modules you can download. If there is something you want on your site, Drupal probably has a module for it. For example, you can download a Module that allows you to use Google Adsense, which is a way for you to put ads on your site and make some money. I will add a page for this soon.

Now that you have turned on all of the main modules you want, you need to set them up to work properly. Most of the modules don’t require any changes, but I will describe what you need to do for the rest of them.

Creating Contact Form

First, the contact form. Click the Site Building link and you will see that the Contact Form has been added as one of the items, so click the Contact form link. In the Contact form page, click Add category at the top of the page. In the Category field, enter a name for your Contact Form. Something like Website feedback should do. In the Recipients field, enter the email address(es) you want to receive the comments, you can use your site email address, personal email address or both (by adding a comma between them). In the auto-reply box, you can enter what you would like to say after someone has submitted the form. Something like “We appreciate your feedback, and will be in touch if necessary” should do just fine. Leave the other items blank and click the Save button. Now that we have created the form, we need to enable it. Go to Administer – Site Building – Menus – Navigation. I believe this is where any new modules go by default. Look for the Contact link and check the box under the Enabled column. Then click the edit link under the Operations column. In this page we will decide what the actual link will be called and where we want it. There are three basic places in which you put links. The three types of menus are Navigation, Primary Link, and Secondary link. Generally speaking, Navigation items will be on the side of your page, Primary links go at the top of the page, and Secondary links go beneath the Primary links. Depending on the themes you choose (I will add this page soon, as well), each of these menus might be in different places, but it works as far as the generic theme we are using at the moment is concerned. Anyhow, when you click the edit link you will be taken to an Edit menu item screen. In the Menu link title field, enter what you want your actual link to be called. In the Description field, if you want to display a message when someone hovers their mouse over the link, enter it here. Again, up to you. Next, check the Enabled button. I’m not sure why you need to do this again since you just enabled it on another screen, but just click again. The dropdown items beneath Parent item is where you decide where to put it. I want mine at the top of the page, so I chose Primary Links. Like I said before, you basically have three options (Navigation, Primary link, Secondary link) unless you have a specific place you want it to go. In fact, with some of the options, you won’t even see your link if you choose it. Even if you don’t want to put your link in the Primary links section, try it for now just see and you can always change it later. Click the Save button and you will see your link at the very top of the screen. If you don’t like it there, just hit the edit button and change it.

Create a Page

Now your site is pretty well configured to put up on the web for now. But, before moving on, you need to create some sort of content for your home page. Click the Create Content link. You will have two options: a Page and a Story. They are almost identical to each other, with the only difference being that a Story goes straight to the home page. You can still put a “Page” on your homepage, and “Stories” can cause complications, I suggest you choose “Pages” for everything. Therefore, click on Page. Since it is your homepage, you can do what you want. Enter something as a title and enter some content in the Body section. When you are satisfied (at least for the moment), you can leave the other fields blank and hit the Save button. Congratulations, you have now created your first page.

Now we need to tell Drupal that we want it to be used as our home page. Before we do that, let me show you how to find the pages you have created to edit them. Go back to your home page by clicking your site name in the top left corner. You will probably notice that the page you created is not showing on your homepage, but we will change that. Go to Administer-Content Management-Content, which will list all of the pages you have created, which in your case is only one page. Click on the link for your title to bring up the page and write down the path that follows your site name, which should be the word “node,” followed by a slash and a number (i.e. http://buildyourownstory.com/node/21). Now go to Administer-Site Configuration-Site Information, go to the bottom of the page, and in the field beneath Default front page, enter the information you just wrote down (i.e. node/21). This tells Drupal to use the page you just created as the home page. That’s all there is to it for now. You will have plenty of tweaking to do but you now have a fully functioning site all of your own.

Themes

Finally, take a look at the other themes you can use to change the look of your site. Go to Administer – Site Building – Themes. The theme you are using is called Garland, but if you want to try out the other themes, just check the enabled box and click the Default button.

I mentioned before that there are tons of different modules you can download. The same is true about themes. A bunch of different themes are available at http://drupal.org/project/themes and http://themegarden.org/drupal6/ if you want to take a look at them. I will provide instructions on how to download them as soon as I can.

The disadvantage of Drupal is that it can be difficult to download and it is tough to find quality answers to your questions. Hopefully the following tutorial will help you start your Drupal site easily.

Download Drupal

You can download Drupal from their site at http://drupal.org/. The first article on the page should include the newest release versions with links for you to download. If it is not there for whatever reason or you cannot find it, you can click on the Download tab at the top of the page, click the Drupal project link, and then click the Download link next to the newest release version. When downloading from this screen, you most likely just want to choose the most recent version available that is stable (if the status column has a green check mark, you know it is stable). The only reason not to choose the most recent version is if you have an older version of PHP. You should be able to find information on the correct Drupal version to use with your version of PHP by looking at some of the articles on the Drupal—Download—Drupal project page.

Extract Drupal

Drupal does not have its own installer file, so you need to install it yourself. This is one of the drawbacks of Drupal compared to a program like Joomla!, because Joomla! has an installer file which makes it much simpler to begin. Once you decide on the appropriate version and you click on the download button, a File Download page will appear asking, “Do you want to open or save this file?” Note: If your PC doesn’t recognize .gz files, then download a zip program like WinZip, 7Zip, or another zip program (most programs are free). Once you are able, choose Save and you can save it to your C:\Temp folder or wherever you want. All you are saving at this point is basically a compressed file that you need to decompress/unzip later, so it doesn’t matter where you put it. After saving the file, double click on it (should be named something like drupal-6.9.tar.gz and look like a stack of books) and your zip program should open up automatically. If it doesn’t, that probably indicates a problem with your zip program. I use a program called WinRAR and the following instructions are based on that program, but zip programs are all basically the same, so it should not be difficult to follow the instructions if you have another program. In WinRAR, select the folder named “..” or the folder with the correct title (in this case something similar to drupal-6.9) and click the Extract to icon at the top of the screen. That will open a new Extraction path and options screen. Make sure you are on the General tab and in the box underneath Destination path, choose the C:\htdocs folder. Once you have successfully extracted the file, you might want to change the name of the folder to drupal rather than drupal-6.9 or whatever yours is named. First phase is now complete!

Create settings.php File

In the drupal package you just installed, a file named “default.settings.php” exists (in my case it is at the following path: C:\htdocs\drupal\sites\default. You now need to create another file named “settings.php” in the same folder. I’m not sure why exactly this file is not part of the download, but Drupal’s installer will update the settings.php file automatically with the details you provide during the installation process. To create this file, you will need to make a copy of the default.settings.php file. DO NOT just rename the default.settings.php file, because you still need that file. Make a copy by doing either of the following:

1. Right click on default.settings.php and choose Copy from the dropdown menu. Then, go to an open area of the same folder and click Paste. This will create a file named “Copy of settings.php.” Rename this file “settings.php.”

2. Open default.settings.php, go to File – Save-As, and in the screen that appears, enter settings.php in the File Name box and click Save.

Make settings.php Writable

After downloading Drupal, you must make sure that the settings.php file is writable, which means you need to give Drupal the permission to make updates to the file. If you have a Unix-like system, which includes Linux-based systems and all Mac OS X versions, follow the steps below. If you have Windows, you can skip to the next step.

Write permissions with Unix-like systems

With Unix-like systems, you can assign write permissions to it with the following command from the installation directory:

chmod a+w sites/default/settings.php

or

chmod 777 sites/default/settings.php

Drupal should set the file permissions back to read-only once the installation is done. You should make sure this is the case and manually change it yourself if it didn’t happen. You can use the same command, slightly modified, to remove write permission:

chmod a-w sites/default/settings.php

or

chmod 555 sites/default/settings.php

I am not too familiar with these systems, so if you need help you can look in the Drupal forums or do a search on the internet.

Make settings.php read-only for Windows

For Windows, all you need to do is make sure the file is not labeled as Read-only. You can do that by following these steps:

2. Right-click the settings.php file, and then click Properties.

3. Click the General tab, clear the Read-only check box, and then click OK.

Now you basically have Drupal itself configured, but we can’t install it just yet. What you do now depends on where you will be testing your pages. See the DECIDE WHERE TO TEST YOUR SITE section of the How to Start Your Own Website Guide for help on how to decide.

As I mentioned previously, I think it is MUCH simpler to test Drupal through your webhost. However, you can learn a lot from setting up locally, so you could try to set up locally and switch to using your webhost if you run into any problems later.

See the appropriate article below for complete instructions.

Setting up Drupal locally

Setting up Drupal through webhost

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Drupal works through the use of a database, so before you can set up your site you must have a database for your site to function. Most web hosts have some sort of “control panel” in which they have databases for you to set up. If that is the case, you do not need to set up a MySQL and PhpMyAdmin account yourself and instead you can do it directly through the host. Both hosts that I used provided database setups like that. Note that your local MySQL and PhpMyAdmin accounts have nothing to do with the databases on your host’s server. If you already have MySQL and PhpMyAdmin set up on your local computer, you will need to set up a separate account with your host. Each host is different in this regard, so you must check with your hosts for instructions on how to set up your database. You must have a database set up before proceeding.

Download ftp software

Now that you downloaded and extracted Drupal, as well as set up your database, you need to transfer the Drupal files over to your host. Some hosts have programs set up to do this, but I suggest that you download ftp (file transfer protocol) software yourself. The software is free and easy to set up. I chose to use a program named FileZilla and you can find the instructions on how to install it in the “FileZilla Instructions” section.

Transfer the files

At this point, you should have a domain name and a webhost, downloaded Drupal and an ftp program, and set up a database. Now you are ready to transfer the files, also known as uploading the files. The following instructions are how to transfer files using FileZilla, but it should be a very similar process with any other ftp programs. Follow these instructions carefully. It is a pretty easy process and not a total disaster if you don’t do it correctly, but believe me you want to get it right the first time.

Open FileZilla if you have not done so already. Now you need to connect to your host. If you have not entered your host information yet, see the Plug in host information section of FileZilla Instructions. Go to the File menu and select “Site Manager…” In the menu that appears, click “Connect.” If all goes well, in the large text area beneath the Host, Username, Password, and Port fields, the final line of words should say something like “Status: Directory listing successful.”

If you don’t see something like that, it most likely means that some of the information you entered was incorrect. If you confirm that you entered the correct information, try changing the Port number to 22, 21, or leaving it blank. If that still doesn’t work, you can ask your webhost to provide you with the IP address of your webhost. If your host asks you to provide the IP address of your personal computer, you can find it by going to http://whatsmyip.org/.

In the middle section of the screen you will notice that it is split into two sections. The left side of the screen displays the contents of your local computer and the right side displays the contents of your host server account. Each side is also split into a top and bottom section. Both sections display the same contents in different ways and are set up very similarly to the way your computer displays files. In the bottom section, you will notice the top folder is labeled “..” Clicking on this folder will bring you up a level.

There are a couple of ways you can transfer/upload files. You can click the server folder in which you want to transfer the files and right click on the folder/file from your computer and select Upload, or you can simply drag the folder from the left side over to the folder you choose on the right side. Either way is fine.

Now you are ready to transfer your Drupal files. In the host server section on the right side, select the folder at the highest level. You will probably want to ask your host which folder they use for files that the public can view. This is normally a folder named “public_html” or “www,” or in my case both of the folders are exactly the same. In your local computer section on the left side, find your drupal folder (in my case it is in the C:\htdocs\ folder) but DO NOT TRANSFER/UPLOAD IT. If you transfer the entire drupal folder, your site will end up having “/drupal” at the end of it, and instead of entering buildyourownstory.com, people would need to enter buildyourownstory.com/drupal. What you need to do is transfer all of the folders and files separately. First, click the little plus sign next to the drupal folder to open its contents. Then, click on the first folder within the drupal folder (probably titled “includes”) and transfer/upload it to the appropriate folder from your host server mentioned above. When you do this, the tabs at the bottom will indicate how many files you are transferring and the section above will show the files being transferred. Then, do the same with every other folder within the drupal folder. Now, make sure you also transfer the files within the drupal folder. This is an easy step to skip if you aren’t careful (as I was the first time I tried). To do that, in the top section click on the drupal folder you just opened. It doesn’t matter if it has the plus sign or the minus sign next to it. Just make sure that drupal is highlighted. Then, in the bottom section, scroll down to the end of the list of folders and then click on the first individual file you see (probably .htaccess). We can actually transfer all of the files together, which you can do by holding down the Shift key, scroll down to the very bottom, then click the last file, which will highlight all of the files. Then transfer all of the files just as you did before. Make doubly sure that you transfer the .htaccess file because it is a necessary file.

The next step is to go to the Drupal installation page.

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As I mentioned in the Decide Where to Test Your Site section of How to Start Your Own Website, when you test locally you are basically creating a server on your own computer, which means you need to install a web server, MySQL, PHPMyAdmin, and PHP. If you test through your webhost, you will not need to set up these programs. Below are the 4 items you need to install. I know, it seems like a lot, but they are actually fairly easy setups that should not take too long.

1. Install a web server. The two main web servers are Apache and Microsoft IIS. I will be providing instructions for Installing Apache.

2. Install PHP. As a very basic definition, PHP is a server side language that is used to make sites “dynamic,” and it is necessary in order for Drupal to work. Click here for instructions for Installing PHP.

3. Install MySQL. Now, you need to install a database, and although you can use any database (Microsoft Access, for example), MySQL works the best with PHP. Click here for instructions for Installing MySQL.

4. Install PHPMyAdmin. PHP MyAdmin is a much more user friendly interface to use with MySQL. Although this is technically an optional step, you must be crazy if you don’t use it. Click here for instructions for Installing PHPMyAdmin.

Have any luck? Hopefully that wasn’t too bad. Now, you need to create a database table within MySQL for Drupal to install its information.

Create database table

If it’s not already open, launch phpMyAdmin in your browser. It should be located at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin/. The following instructions are based on phpMyAdmin version 3.1.1. Although your pages may look different if you have a different version, the steps should be basically the same. Since the database does not exist yet, we will need to create it. Under the MySQL localhost heading on the main page in the center of the screen, enter the title of your database. The name should be the name of your site or something very similar (i.e. buildyourownstory). Click the Create button and you will be taken to a new screen with comments at the top next to a checkmark indicating that the new database has been created. Drupal will create all of the tables and information for this database for you, so you don’t need to worry about that.

If this is the first database you set up, the only registered user for your MySQL account is the superuser account named “root,” which has complete control of everything. It’s generally a good idea to not use the superuser to access the database for security reasons, but we can take care of that later and it is fine for now to use the root user.

Begin Installation

You are now very close to having your Drupal site up and running and now you can finally go to the installation page (which Drupal calls running the install script). Believe it or not, this is one of the easier steps to follow. Open a browser and type http://localhost/drupal (if you did not use “drupal” as the name of your folder in the last step, replacing “drupal” with whatever you named your folder). If all goes well, you should be presented with a Drupal installation page and you have made it over the first hurdle. As you can see on the left side of the screen, Drupal will take you through several steps. First, choose Language should appear on the main screen. Beneath it, click Install Drupal in English. For the second step, Verify Requirements, Drupal will automatically check to make sure everything is OK, and if you followed the steps above, you should be taken to the Database configuration screen and the Set up database step should be highlighted on the left side of the screen (not sure why the screen titles don’t match the names on the left). Since we already set up the database, on this page you just need to provide Drupal with the information from the database you set up earlier so that it can add tables, etc. to the database. In the Database name field, enter the title of the database you just created in phpMyAdmin (i.e. buildyourownstory). In the Database username field, enter “root” if you followed my directions and in the Database password field, enter the password you set up for MySQL. It’s worthwhile to point out that with the all the accounts you need for your site you will have a lot of log-in account names and passwords, so you may want to write them down and keep them in a safe place. Just a thought.

Since we are using our own computer for testing and development, we can ignore the Advanced options at the bottom of the page because the default settings are fine. If you are using a database server that is not on your own computer, you can use these settings to enter this information. Once you are finished, click the Save and continue button at the bottom of the page.

Almost there! You are now ready to go to the Drupal Installation Page.

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We can ignore the Advanced options at the bottom of the page because the default settings are fine. Once you are finished, cross your fingers and click the Save and continue button at the bottom of the page.

Configure site page

The next page is the Configure site page. You should see something similar to All necessary changes to ./sites/default and ./sites/default/settings.php have been made. They have been set to read-only for security. Basically, what this message means is that drupal entered your database settings in the settings.php file. If you open settings.php, you will see that the following line $db_url = ‘mysql://username:password@localhost/databasename’; has been updated with your information. One trick to finding information in files like these is to type Ctrl+F, which brings up the Find command and it will search for whatever you type in the Find what field. The direction buttons tell it what direction to search. If you just opened the document, you can leave the Direction button as Down and it will begin looking from the beginning of the document down to the bottom. In this case you can type $db_url, which will bring up the first of several lines beginning with $db_url and you can look for the line with your information. If you did not create the settings.php file, deleted default.settings.php by accident, or did not make settings.php writable, you will receive a message indicating a problem. Go back to the Create settings.php File and Make settings.php Writable sections.

In the Site name field, the name of your site should appear automatically, but if not, enter it yourself. You can enter the full name of your site with the .com part or just enter the regular name. I suggest leaving out the .com part, but it is up to you. In my example I used Buildyourownstory. In the Site email address field, enter the email address for outgoing emails you want to use for notification to the users of your site. Most hosts give you several email accounts and you can use one of those here if you already set it up through your host. You would have to check with your host on information about your email accounts. If you don’t have that set up yet, you can enter any old email address you want. I don’t think using your personal email will work, but at least you can use it as a placeholder.

In the Administrator account section, in the Username field, enter whatever username you would like. In the E-mail address field, enter whatever email you would like. You can enter your personal email or your site email. This is what you will use to access your Drupal site as the administrator. Make sure you don’t forget this information because I’m not sure how you can get back in as the administrator if you forget it. The administrator account has complete control over everything in Drupal. Don’t use this account for everyday use of the site. Create certain users with different access to perform the everyday tasks. More info on this later.

In the Server settings section, in the Default time zone field, choose whatever time zone you want (set in army time obviously).

Clean URLs

The Clean URLs section could be problematic for many of you as it was (and still is) for me. If you can, choose the Enabled button. Clean URLs basically make your site easier for search engines to find. If they are not enabled, people will need to type ?q= to access your site from a browser, so obviously it is important. If you don’t have the option to choose and it is set at Disabled you can still move forward but you definitely want to get it fixed at some point. If anyone can explain to me how to do this please let me know, because I can’t for the life of me figure it out.

Finally, in the Update notifications section, make sure the Check for updates automatically box is checked, which gives Drupal the ability to sent you any updates and notifications. This is important with all the upgrades and new versions with Drupal. Click the Save and continue button and…

….hopefully you will be taken to a page that says Drupal installation complete. You may also see some error messages, which we will look at in the next section: Troubleshooting Common Problems. Normally these issues are not that big of a deal. Be aware: this does not mean your site is ready to go! I didn’t have too much of a problem getting to this point. My problems started at this very point because I could not connect my site with my host.

You should also see a message saying something like You may now visit your new site. Click the link and you will be taken to a page titled Welcome to your new Drupal website! To learn how to get started, go to the Working with your Drupal site page.

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