Working with your Drupal site
When you have completed downloading Drupal and uploading the files (for information on how to do that, see the Starting a site with Drupal page) you should 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!
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.
