Besides working with sections, zones, regions, and responzive settings, Omega provides lots of other features that make using it a good choice for your theme. Omega also offers:
- Ability to enable/disable script libraries
- Ability to enable/disable theme style sheets
- Ability to enable/disable core/contrib stylesheets
- Typical theme settings
Getting to know these settings certianly helps set the look and fell as well as the capabilties of your theme. With the ability to do things like adding the Equal heights library and enabling it across your zones is just a handy feature and it's free with Omega.
In this lesson we're going to get started with Omega by getting the base theme and creating our new sub-theme. We're going to be doing the following tasks:
- Enable Omega and Omega Tools
- Use Omega Tools to create our sub-theme
- Enable the new theme
- Review the files of the new theme
Omega offers a simple, yet nice set, of debugging tools that assist you when it comes to laying your site out in a 960 grid. Grid layous consist of columns that your content can span accross and part of these debuggung tools is the ability to turn on and off a visual indication of the particular column layout you are using. Omega also gives you the ability to toggle on and off a visual indication of all the regions availabile in your theme. Inside the theme settings you also have the ability to turn these features on or off all together or by role. So in this lesson we will cover:
- Omega debugging tools
- Grid and region visual indicators
- Omega debugging settings
We will also show you how these tools can cause some frustration when it comes to testing the layout of your site espcially in areas that don't have content yet available.
Before we can really dive in to learning Omega we need to do a couple of basic setup tasks. Mostly, we need a Drupal 7 site that has some content for us to look at while we are theming. In this lesson we're going to:
- Generate some content with devel generate module
- Install the 960 Robots theme from drupal.org
- Place some blocks in to the regions provided by the 960 Robots theme and talk a bit about what it gives us so that we can begin to understand how we might convert it to an Omega sub-theme
Under the Downloads tab, there is a copy of the final database and the files directory for this Demo site.
Additional resources
In this lesson we're going to take a look at the Omega theme, cover some basic terminology around it, and discuss the advantages and challenges of using it. Specifically this lesson will cover:
- Omega features
- Helper modules
- Where to find documentation
- Omega terminology
Additional resources
- Omega theme
- Omega Tools module
- Delta module
- Omega Handbook
Drupal site builders have long wanted to rearrange the display of each piece of content. The page manager module provides us with a default node view context we can use to accomplish just this. In this lesson you will learn how to break an article into two columns.
In this introductory series you will learn how use the Domain Access project to let you manage multiple "sites" with different domain names from just one Drupal installation. Domain Access "multisite" works differently from the core multisite feature in that you truly only have one site to manage. There is just one code base and one database. Domain Access takes advantage of Drupal's node access system to give the illusion of multiple sites. In this series we start off by getting some context through several presentations that explain what Domain Access offers, and why you might use it, how DNS and Apache web servers work, and what you need to understand about the node access system. Once we dive into the hands-on work, you will configure Apache to work with multiple domain names, and get Domain Access installed on your site. Then you will configure a very basic Domain Access site, learning how to share and restrict content, change themes, and set up permissions for fine-grained access control.
Additional resources
Domain Access project (drupal.org)
This series will implement the same example as the Multisite series did, but with Domain Access instead. You can see and compare the two methods. First, let's look at some other examples using Domain Access and see what we get when we download the package from Drupal.org. We'll also talk about the features provided, along with some things to be aware of and consider when choosing Domain Access.
Additional resources
Domain Access project (drupal.org)
Domain Access can do its magic because of the Drupal node access system. In this tutorial we'll walk through the basics of how this system works, highlighting the two main methods, and then explain why this may be important information for you. We won't be diving into the code side of things, but instead outline the basic concepts for anyone who needs to interact with this system. When using a module like Domain Access, you should be aware of the Drupal context in which you are working, even if you hopefully never have to dive into the details.
Additional resources
Controlling Access to Content Overview (drupal.org handbook)
Node access developer documentation (api.drupal.org)
In this tutorial we will get hands-on with Domain Access by getting the module installed. This is a more involved process than a regular module installation, but we just need to make sure we have a few things in place first. We're going to need to make sure we have our domains functioning correctly through Apache, and then add the Domain Access include file to our settings.php. With the configuration and module in place, we'll also verify that it is working properly and take a look at our domain list.
After watching this tutorial you will be able to properly install the Domain Access module, with its additional steps, and then verify that the installation was correct.
Additional resources
Domain Access project (drupal.org)
Domain Access Configuring settings.php (drupal.org handbook)
Installing the Domain Access module (Drush instructions) (drupal.org handbook)
With the main Domain Access site installed, we now need to get our other domain names added to the site and working. In this tutorial we'll review the settings for domains, add the Alumni and News domain names, and then test that all three domains are working properly.
Additional resources
Basic Domain Access module configuration (drupal.org handbook)
One of the biggest reasons to use Domain Access is to control the content for multiple domain names. In this tutorial we'll dive into content on our three sites. We'll start by sharing content across all the domains, and then create domain-specific content. To make managing the content across our domains easier, we'll then enable the included Domain Content module. This will provide us with some nice administrative tools to keep track of things.
In addition to different content, you may also want to differentiate your domains in how they look and change some of the basic site settings to make them appear more as separate sites. In this tutorial we'll use the Domain Config and Domain Theme modules (included in the Domain Access package) to let us do just this. We'll change our settings on one of the sites to set the homepage node to the About page we created earlier. Then we'll make the Alumni site look quite different by giving it a new theme. Through this process you will understand things you need to watch out for when configuring Domain Access sites, and how to be appropriately cautious with your settings.
To really make Domain Access work the way you need it, you need to make sure you set up your roles, users, and permissions correctly. We've been setting things up on our site as the administrator, but so far our site is not configured for other people to be involved. In this tutorial we're going to configure the permissions so that we have authenticated users who can create and edit content on particular domains. We'll also have several editors. Two of the editors can only manage content on their particular domains, while one editor will have access to all content across all three domains.
In the process of setting this up we'll review the Domain Access permissions documentation, then dive into configuring them. We will also look at how we can set a default domain for a role, even though we won't need that for this use case. To test things out, we'll create some content as different users and see how the editors can or can not interact with that content.
To get things moving in this lesson, we are starting off having already created a number of users, and adding an editor role to the site. We don't walk through this process in the lesson, so if you need a refresher for creating roles and users, you can watch Hands-On: Creating Roles and Users from the Using Drupal series.
Additional resources
Domain Access Permissions (drupal.org handbook)
With the basics of our three domains set up, you're ready to build out your sites. We've covered the main steps to get you started, but you'll find that there are a lot more options available to you as you build. Which additional modules you use will depend heavily on your particular needs. In this tutorial we'll talk about the other modules that are included in the Domain Access package, which we haven't used in this series. We'll also look at a list of other contributed modules that work with Domain Access to extend its feature set even further.
Additional resources
Domain Access modules (drupal.org handbook)
Domain Access related contributed modules (drupal.org handbook)
Before we set up a multisite we need to understand how Apache and Drupal work together to deliver the site we intend. In this lesson we'll look at the documentation for Drupal multisites, and then discuss the way you need to set up your Drupal directories. We'll also review the workflow that Apache and Drupal go through to get the correct site displaying in the browser.
Additional resources
Multi-site - Sharing the same code base (drupal.org)
In this lesson we'll be building a simple university site, udrupal.com, with different areas, each with their own website: the main site, a news site, and an alumni site. The news site is simply a subdomain of the main domain name, news.udrupal.com, and the alumni site actually has its own separate domain name, udrupalalumni.com. To get this done, you're going to learn how to confirm the DNS is working for the domain names. That is, that they are currently pointing to the right server. Then we're going to configure an Apache vhost on our server so that Apache knows where to find our Drupal code base. We'll finish things up by installing our main Drupal site, udrupal.com.
Additional resources
With our domains and Apache configuration in place, we need to make sure all three sites can be installed at the different domains by creating our multisite directories in the sites folder. In this tutorial, we'll create the necessary Drupal site directories and settings files for the three sites so they are all running smoothly, check the domains and install the other two sites, and wrap up by changing the theme on the alumni site.
Before we get started, you should make sure you have two empty databases created for the two new sites we'll be installing.
In this tutorial we're going to be working directly on a server using the command line. You can feel free to use a GUI interface for your site, like an SFTP app or just your local machine file browser and editor apps. If you want to brush up on using the command line, you can check out our free Command Line Basics series.
If we want to do development work on the university multisite, we need to do a few things to have this run smoothly in a local development environment with all of those URLs. The sites.php file is going to let us define aliases for the site configuration folders in /sites. In this tutorial we'll explain why local development with multisite is tricky, and how to get it set up properly.
Additional resources
example.sites.php (api.drupal.org)