Wednesday, November 01, 2006
What Have I Learned About Drupal So Far?
Drupal is an open-source Content Management System that is intensely customizable and scalable. You need to have a server that runs MySQL to run it, but once it is installed it is quite easy to use. There are some elements that are more complicated than others, but if you want all you want to use it for is as an easy blogging, wiki, site builder, and forum space then you won't have too much trouble.
Without any customization, the basic install of Drupal includes:
Blog
Wiki
Static Page Builder
Forums
What else can Drupal Do? Check it out, what can't it do?
There are two main ways of publishing on Drupal. The first is to customize the sides, top, and bottom with links, widgets, etc. You use blocks for this. Blocks will take text, php code, html--pretty much any kind of Web publishing. Then you publish content through modules. The basic install comes with quite a few great modules, but you can extend the functionality by installing additional modules or writing your own.
How do I embed content from one Web 2.0 application to another?
Most Web 2.0 systems are open to third party developers. These developers have created little chunks of code called widgets. These widgets can be quickly pasted into pages on blogs, wikis, Web sites, and forums. You can also use APIs to pull content into Drupal. This is where things get a little more complex. When you publish this way it is called a Mashup. A Mashup is the practice of using multiple Web 2.0 systems and embedding content from them into one another. This gives us extremely rich content without having to build the framework ourselves.
You can change the look and feel in Drupal by using Themes and there are literally hundreds of them.
To watch the progression of my Mashup being created as a method to learn all this stuff, point your browser to Dogstar.org.
Without any customization, the basic install of Drupal includes:
Blog
Wiki
Static Page Builder
Forums
What else can Drupal Do? Check it out, what can't it do?
There are two main ways of publishing on Drupal. The first is to customize the sides, top, and bottom with links, widgets, etc. You use blocks for this. Blocks will take text, php code, html--pretty much any kind of Web publishing. Then you publish content through modules. The basic install comes with quite a few great modules, but you can extend the functionality by installing additional modules or writing your own.
How do I embed content from one Web 2.0 application to another?
Most Web 2.0 systems are open to third party developers. These developers have created little chunks of code called widgets. These widgets can be quickly pasted into pages on blogs, wikis, Web sites, and forums. You can also use APIs to pull content into Drupal. This is where things get a little more complex. When you publish this way it is called a Mashup. A Mashup is the practice of using multiple Web 2.0 systems and embedding content from them into one another. This gives us extremely rich content without having to build the framework ourselves.
You can change the look and feel in Drupal by using Themes and there are literally hundreds of them.
To watch the progression of my Mashup being created as a method to learn all this stuff, point your browser to Dogstar.org.
