Updating your site often sounds much scarier than the actual experience is. The most important step to remember is creating and testing backups of your site. In this lesson, we will create our backups, download a new version of Drupal core, and go through the process of updating our files and running the update.php script.
Note: Not mentioned in the video is the fact that in addition to the user 1 account, you can also log in with any account that has the "administer software updates" permission enabled to run the update.php script.
Additional resources
Drupal's contributed projects tend to move more quickly than Drupal core and there- fore require more updates within a Drupal version's life cycle. You can upgrade multiple modules at the same time, although it's best to do one at a time to reduce the chance of errors, and to allow you to isolate problems that might come up during an upgrade. In this lesson we will look at our Available Updates report, and use the Update Manager to upgrade a few of our contributed modules.
Additional resources
Drupal.org Upgrade Documentation
Drupalize.Me Guide: Using Drupal Book by O'Reilly Media
Up next: Using Drupal Appendix B: Choosing the Right Modules
Once you have met all of the requirements and gathered the information you need, you can get down to the installation. This lesson assumes that you have already downloaded Drupal, placed the extracted files on your web server, and are able to create your database.
Additional resources
It’s not enough to just get Drupal installed; you also need to make sure to keep it up-to-date. New releases of modules and Drupal core come out periodically, most of which fix problems, some of which add new whiz-bang features, and some of which address critical security problems. In this lesson we will review Drupal version numbers and what they mean, review the core Update Status module, and then discuss using maintenance mode, and the update.php script.
Note: Not mentioned in the video is the fact that in addition to the user 1 account, you can also log in with any account that has the "administer software updates" permission enabled to run the update.php script.
Additional resources
Prior to installing Drupal, it’s important to make sure that you can actually do so, and understand a bit about how Drupal is structured. The first lesson provides a checklist of Drupal’s requirements, and also highlights important things in the Drupal file structure that are worth knowing before diving into the installation process. We also explain and take a quick look at how you can use Drupal to run multiple sites from the code base, known in Drupal as a multisite installation.
Additional resources
Drupal installation requirements
Podcast Episode 22: Decoupling Drupal
Blog post
In the latest episode of the Drupalize.Me podcast, #22 Decoupling Drupal, we chat about what it looks like to separate Drupal's content management from the display of the content, by bypassing the Drupal theme system entirely.
Before we jump into building our first Drupal 7 site, we should also take a look at the great resources you have out there to help you on your journey. Being an open source project, Drupal has an amazing community of people who have paved this road before you. In this lesson we're going to look at the free community resources that you can use to not only find answers to your questions, but also connect with thousands of people around the world who are working in the same space you are. -- We are going to take a tour of the communtiy documentation, various Drupal forums, project issue queues, where you can glean a lot of useful information and help, Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, for real-time collaboration, and getting in touch with user groups of like-minded people around the world.
Additional resources
Drupal.org Troubleshooting Guide
Drupal Answers on Stack Exchange
Drupal Groups Site (groups.drupal.org)
Drupal is a great tool for working on the web, but to give it some context, in this lesson we're going to take a quick step back in time, and understand the history of working on the web and look at how the tools that Drupal provides match up with problems encountered over the years of web development.
Additional resources
In this lesson we're going to break down the "Drupal stack" to understand what pieces are working here and how they relate to each other. We'll take a tour of the major components of Drupal itself, like nodes and users, and then have a brief discussion about ways of organizing content.
Additional resources
What Is Drupal?
FreeTo learn more about how to get started with Drupal, also see our Introduction to Drupal guide.
In this lesson we take a look at Drupal, the open source Content Management System. We learn about the major components of a Drupal site and the library of constantly evolving tools available for working with Drupal. We find out how to see who uses it, by looking at DrupalShowcase.com and Drupal case studies on Drupal.org, among others. We look at Drupal's major features, such as Modules.
With this overview we have some context as we move forward into the series.
Additional resources
Drupalcamp Twin Cities
Blog postLive in the Midwest and like Drupal? So do we! Or at least some of our team. And as such we'll be attending the annual Twin Cities DrupalCamp in force this year.
Drupal 8: New Multilingual Features
Blog postLast week I was in Dublin for Drupal Dev Days. While my main activity was conducting a Community Tools workshop on the Friday of the camp, I was there the whole week, while an intrepid team of people have been meeting up at the venue in the final sprint to the Drupal code freeze, which was on Monday, July 1st! (Holy cow!) One of the groups who has been plowing ahead at full steam is the Multilingual team. I even got to help out with some wording in one of the issues someone was working on.
In this lesson, we are going to see how the book relates to each of the series we have, and how each of the individual series are organized. We will end up with thirteen series to cover the entire book. Then we will take a look at how you should use the videos with the book. If you don't have the book, not to worry, as the book would only act as supplementary material to the video lessons. You don't need the book to successfully follow these series. If you do have the book however, we want to make sure you understand how the lessons and book relate to each other.
Additional resources
Using Drupal comes with source code intended to be used throughout the lessons to make following the lessons much easier. In this lesson we're going to take a look at what that source code provides for us, where we can get a copy of, and how to use it. We'll go through the installation process, as well as see how we can switch between chapters in the source code without destroying work you've done on previous chapters. It is important to note that using the source code is very important if you want the lessons to match what is in the lessons. Drupal modules can change a lot over time, and the source code is designed to exactly match what is covered in the lessons. Once you've learned the basics of a chapter by working through the source code, you can upgrade your modules and explore the differences in newer versions, with the base understanding you've gained from the lesson.
Warning: Since this Drupal code is several years old, you must use PHP 5.3. PHP 5.4 or higher will not work. You will need to make sure your server is using PHP 5.3 in order to use this code properly. Many all-in-one servers, like WAMP, MAMP, and XAMPP provide older versions of PHP and a way to switch back and forth between versions.
Additional resources
The Using Drupal series of lessons walks through the O'Reilly book, Using Drupal, written by Angie Byron, Addison Berry, and Bruno de Bondt. We use the second edition, which covers Drupal 7. The book starts off with taking a look at Drupal Core and then works through various case studies using a wide range of contributed modules from the Drupal project.
The video series follows along with what's in the book, so if you have the book, the videos are really great supplemental material. Even without the book, you’ll get the full lessons here in the videos.
This series is intended for people who have worked with the web and understand how a website gets delivered, and in particular, how to get a website onto a web server so that people can actually see it and use it. The rest of this introductory series we have here will look at how the book relates to the video series we're going to be creating, and how you can use those 2 together.
Additional resources
Using Drupal Book in Video Lessons
Blog postMany moons ago, back in 2008, several Lullabots wrote the first edition of Using Drupal, published by O'Reilly Media. In 2012, myself and Angie Byron, with the help of Bruno DeBondt, updated Using Drupal with a second edition for Drupal 7. This year we're happy to announce the video version of Using Drupal.
In the latest podcast episode, BDD, Behat, and Drupal, the Drupalize.Me team is joined by Melissa Anderson (eliza411) to talk about Behavior-Driven Development (BDD) and using a testing tool called Behat.