Drupal, at its base installation, is a blank slate, a content management system that can be used to create a large variety of different websites. Thus, Drupal is preconfigured for creating a community site suitable for the online writing classroom, a highly configurable platform that better facilitiates community interaction and collaboration than is possible with proprietary course management systems. Educators will find that this distribution eliminates 95% of the work involved in setting up a Drupal site for a writing class, as well as containing some documentation materials which will reduce the learning curve for site administration.
It is not possible within the scope of this text to explain all Drupal configurations, modules, and features. Instead, the Drupal Site Configuration Guide is intended as a large FAQ that will guide you through some basic issues and answer some specific configuration questions which should get you started with your class site. As you become more comfortable with Drupal, it is certainly worthwhile to learn more -- so that you can take advantage of the flexibility and wide range of configuration options and additional features.
For much more detailed information on Drupal configuration and usage, consult the administration help section of this site and the extensive Drupal Handbook at drupal.org. Also be sure to read the help material available at the top of many of the administration pages.
Drupal provides a few themes with your site and other contributed themes are available for download from Drupal (see the toward the bottom of this page).
Under themes in the administration area, administrators can choose which themes to enable and designate the default theme for the site. The themes section also offers various configuration options which affect the display and navigation for the site. Administrators can select these globally for all themes, or customize them on a per theme basis. For example, the global settings page contains the following options:
Advanced: HTML and CSS coders can choose to create their own site skin. Consult the Theme developer's guide in the Drupal handbook for more information.
Note: Some of the themes offered on this site use a specified format for the creation of primary and secondary links. Thus, in configuring any themes, always view both the global theme settings and the one's for the individual theme you are using.
If you visit the create content link you'll see multiple content types configured for your use. In Drupal terms, each page in this guide, story or page is considered a basic content type known as a node. Thus, each of the various content types are particular types of nodes with specific functions and display characteristics:
See also the administration help for nodes, stories, books, forums, blogs and pages
Because nodes are all basically very similar, much of the input interface is the same for stories, books, or pages chosen through the create content menu. For the purpose of introducing how to post on a Drupal site, this discussion will use Submit story as the example and cover many, but not all, of the choices offered through the interface.
There is a WYSIWYG module available for creating content. See Htmlarea.
Administrators can provide additional or change existing information for content posting:
The default home page for every Drupal site is the location where Stories appear when posted. However, a site administrator can choose to make any other section or page on the site the default home page.
To change the default, go to the general configuration page. In the Default front page text field, change "node" to "blog"--for the Blogs page--or to "forum"--for the Forums. In fact, any page on the site, even a static page, can be made the home page by changing the default in this field.
Many content managementy systems and weblog application provide a means to categorize content. However, Drupal's taxonomy system allows the site administrator to create multiple sets of categories which can be applied to any, selective, or all node types.
Using terminology from information science, a category set is called a vocabulary, and an individual category within a vocabulary, a term.
For additional information about Drupal's taxonomy system, read more about it in the Drupal handbook.
Creating a vocabulary
In the categories configuration section of Drupal administration, select the add vocabulary tab. Then supply a
Creating a term
Once a vocabulary has been created, the administrator can add a nearly unlimited number of categories. Beside the vocabulary listing In the categories configuration section of Drupal administration, select the add term link. Note that the description and synonyms fields are optional.
Use the category block
Drupal provides a block in the block configuration area which will provide a listing of all categories with links to a display list of all nodes in that category.
This site configuration comes with two pre-defined forums in the Forums section: Reading Responses and Drafts. To add, delete, or modify existing forums, use the categories configuration section and modify or create new "terms":
When Drupal displays the forums, it does so in alphabetical order for terms with the same weight. To change the ordering, edit a term and use the Weight feature. Lower numbers (negative) to to the top. Higher numbers (positive) go to the bottom of the display.
For a more detailed explanation of Drupal taxonomy, see the taxonomy page in the Drupal handbook.
The Drupal Site Configuration Guide has been created using the Drupal collaborative book. The collaborative book feature is well suited for creating multi-page hypertexts such as a site resource guide for a few reasons:
To control the ordering of book pages in the table of contents structure, visit the book configuration section. For example, look at the Drupal Site Configuration Guide configuration page. There you can easily view all the pages in this text, as well as order them. Notice the weight menu beside each page listing. Drupal normally orders pages on the same "level" within the text alphabetically. You can override that ordering by giving pages which should be higher up lighter weights--negative numbers--or lower down heavier weights--positive numbers.
To create a new book, simply make the Parent "root."
Last, a blog post, forum post, story, or static page can also be added into a book. Choose the administer link for a given post or page, then use the Edit book outline button available at the bottom of the page to add it into an existing book.
Drupal has a permission system which places users into roles/groups of users. A visitor who is not logged in is an anonymous user and a newly registered user is an authenticated user. An additional role has been added to this installation, an administrator which is given full access on the site. In the original account setup, the root super user account which was created first is not affected by the Drupal permission system.
Some configuration tips:
Note: The default registration permission settings on this site allows anyone to register. Before sharing this site publicly with others and immediately after having students register for the site in class, you should change this setting to at least require administrator moderation of new accounts.
Drupal page layout is very similar to many other websites: a header, a footer, a main content column down the center, and block columns down the side with links and other information. Blocks, then, are the small boxes of links, etc., you see in the left and/or right hand columns.
As an administrator, you can choose which blocks appear in the left or right and in what order (using weights) in the blocks configuration section. You can create and edit custom blocks such as the Sample Block which uses HTML. There are also some other blocks included with the distribution which have not been enabled. Try them.
For a more in depth explanation of blocks, see blocks in the administration help page.
Note: Do not turn off the Navigation Block or the User Login Block. Without these, you'll have great difficulty logging on the site and administering it.
Drupal provides a number of ways to find out who has been visiting the site and who has been posting content:
There are a few other modules listed on the module configuration included with this distribution which have not so far been mentioned. Some are running; others are turned off. You can also load other contributed modules by downloading them from drupal.org and installing them yourself. Make sure that they are for 4.4 or they may not work.
Always remember that whenever you enable a module that has been turned off, you must reset any permissions the module might have associated with it in order for users to have access to the module. Also, after enabling a module, reclick the top administer link and go back to the modules configuration section to refresh those modules which have individual configuration options in that area.
Once you've created a new module, to access it follow your site name with a slash and the name of the module listed in the module configuration area. For examples, look at the URL's present in the navigation header.
The News Aggregator is a powerful onsite RSS syndicator/news reader which can gather fresh content from news sites and weblogs around the web. The Berkman Center at Harvard Law maintains a list of RSS news feeds for popular sources such as the New York Times, The Boston Globe, CNET, ESPN, etc.
The administrator help on the aggregator provides additional documentation.
The Chatbox is a javascript-based chatroom which is currently enabled for this configuration and is accessible via the link in the header. The permission settings are currently set to allow only logged in users access to the chatroom. Logs of the chatroom are currently only visible to an administrator.
The javascript-based module which provides an HTML WYSIWYG used in creating content such as blogs or comments. This module can be turned on in the module configuration section (close your browser and reopen before creating content for the first time).
The locale module is used to substitute text which is hard-coded within Drupal to create alternative language sets for a site. Site designers can also use it to replace Drupal terminology with more site contexualized text.
Notify will send out periodic emails with information about new content. Even if not enabled for students, this can be a useful module for teachers.
The Private Messaging system is an onsite service which allows users to send messages to each other. When this is enabled, an inbox link will appear in the navigation block in the column on the top left. Users can also select whether to receive email notices of new messages.
Configure profile.module to change the fields offered to students when they register that are then displayed with their user information.
Trackback is currently enabled. Using the trackback URL accompanying each post, another weblog can send a ping. Once received, the trackback will show up as a comment underneath the post. To send a ping to another site, edit your post and use the Trackback URL field at the bottom of the edit page. Once you enter submit, Drupal will ping the other site. Note: You should check to make sure that your trackback was received. If the ping was not picked up by the other server, you may need to complete this procedure again.
The text of this guide is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License (2.0).