General information

This section contain very general non-topical information on Drupal.
Start with this section for a broad overview of features.

Drupal for Administrators

Some tips from Drupal Administrator's Guide

General terms

Module

A module is a piece of code which extends Drupal to provide a specific piece of functionality. Some modules are part of the core Drupal system (eg. the taxonomy and blog modules) and some others (eg. the weblinks and image modules). Core modules are those included with the main download of Drupal. Contributed (or "contrib") modules are available for separate download from the modules section of downloads. Be sure that the version of the contrib module you wish to use matches your version of Drupal. The releases section lists modules by Drupal version.

Node

Nodes are probably the hardest Drupal concept to grasp but they are really quite simple. Almost all content in Drupal is stored as a node. When people refer to "a node" all they mean is a piece of content within Drupal, it could be a poll, a story, a book page an image etc.

Permissions

Permissions control access to content creation, modification and site administration. Administrators assign permissions to roles, then assign roles to users.

Roles

Roles are groups with certain permissions that can be applied to individual users. Users can belong to more than one role. Two roles, authenticated user (those users that sign up for an account) and anonymous users (those either without an account or not logged in) are the default roles of Drupal installations, but they can be configured and the first user can create additional roles.

Blog

Blogs, or weblogs, are another term for an online journal or diary. They are a place where members of the community can write their own thoughts and not have to worry about being ontopic for the site.

Best practices guidelines : Accounts and roles

  • Do not use the admin account for day to day stuff on your site. This account should be used for the site setup, major configuration changes and upgrades only.
  • Set up some appropriate roles (do not forget to update these roles as you add new modules). Some role suggestions are 'site admin', 'user admin', 'site contributor'. What roles you need to create will depend on the type of site you have designed. Note that anyone who can administer users can grant themselves additional permissions.

Drupal for Users

General information about Drupal

A dynamic web site platform which allows an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a variety of content, Drupal integrates many popular features of content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.

As an open source software project maintained and developed by a community, Drupal is free to download and use.

Note: YOU MUST ENABLE cookies for this site to be able to log as an authenticated user. Visiting public pages never requires an account.

Main user-focused features we have are :

  • Easy content creation and maintenance : visual editor
  • Comments. Every site page could be commented by site visitors
  • Subscriptions to page updates
  • Version control for site content : no pages lost forever
  • Events and Conferences calendar support and maintenance
  • Easy Polls and Surveys creation and maintenance
  • BNL news syndication via RSS. STAR-online news XML export
  • Integrated Bug-Tracking engine
  • Powerful integrated site search
  • Blogging!

You can find comprehensive User guide here : http://drupal.org/node/6261

Tips and Tricks

Please use 'add child page' for adding new pages to the site. It is located just below a site page

You can set various site settings and change your password under 'my account => edit' tab (personal menu to the left) after you log in.

You can post to your personal blog following 'create content => personal blog entry' path from personal menu.

Due to a vulnerability in xmlrpc, the below is no longer true and this feature will NOT be re-enabled until upgrade
Also, you can use external blogging tool with the following settings : 'MetaWeblog API', path = 'http://drupal.star.bnl.gov/xmlrpc.php' and your site login/password combo.