Drupal User's Guide Site Recipe: Micro Web Site
Now that Drupal is installed, it's time to get the party started! For this site recipe, you will learn how to build a personal Web site featuring a single-user blog. The site features the capabilities of Drupal's core modules. You will learn how to create content, create a navigation system for your Web site, and configure relevant site settings. You will also become familiar with Drupal's administrative interface.
Web Site Basics
From the moment you install Drupal, you are invited to add content to your new Web site. Drupal provides you with two types of content by default: Article and Basic page. The first, Article, is appropriate for bloglike entries on your site. The second, Basic page, is appropriate for pages that are not time-sensitive and that are more "persistent." An example of a Basic page is an About page.
Your new site will have the following custom features (Figure 4.1).
- Blog-style front page news
- Site logo
- Categories
- About page
Figure 4.1 The front page of the site you will build in this chapter includes many features that can be built using Drupal's core modules.
In this chapter, you will learn the basics of following key concepts as you build each feature.
- Creating new nodes using two different content types
- Categorizing your articles with the taxonomy system
- Creating sidebar content with blocks and regions
- Adding links to key pages with menus
Each time you create new content in Drupal, you are creating a new node. A node can be a simple page with text and images on it, but it could also be a completely customized content type that you have created to store your entomological collection of bug photographs. Node refers to a single instance of content, whereas a content type (sometimes called a node type) refers to the specific data structure that is used to create lots of nodes.
These concepts will be expanded on in future chapters as you learn how to build more sophisticated Web sites.