Installing and Configuring Drupal 6.1

By Michael J. Ross
2008-03-24


Installing and Configuring Drupal 6.1

Web sites come in all shapes and sizes, but most of them share important functionality. For instance, site owners want to be able to:

• easily add custom content — such as a short article with an accompanying picture
• change the appearance of the site without modifying code
• set roles and permissions for registered users

Site visitors typically should be able to:

• register new accounts, and later change their profiles
• login to view restricted content
• post comments to existing articles, or even post original articles, depending upon their permissions

But if so many Web sites need to support an extensive amount of common capabilities, it would be terribly wasteful for business owners and their Web developers to create all of this functionality from scratch. In other words, why reinvent the Web wheel?

In response to this need, Web programmers and software organizations have developed content management systems (CMSs), which are like Web site frameworks, without the site content. To put it another way, a CMS can be thought of as an empty Web site, with everything in place for the site's administrators and perhaps visitors to fill in with content, such as blog postings. The framework usually includes a database for storing content, user sign-up and authentication capabilities, a Web feed, etc. The primary benefit of using a CMS is that the framework does not have to be created by the site administrators. This allows the administrators to focus on adding desired content and customizing its appearance, without worrying about the underlying technology.

Tutorial Pages:
» Installing and Configuring Drupal 6.1
» Drupal
» System Requirements
» Downloading Drupal
» Installing Drupal
» Configuring Drupal
» Administering Drupal
» Basic Site Customization
» More Resources

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