Drupal 101 - Getting Started

Drupal can be a little daunting when your first getting started. The CMS uses weird words and many operations are not intuitive and logical. Despite some of these usability issues, the potential rewards of learning how Drupal works are well worth the headaches. Half the battle is learning how to learn about Drupal. This guide will take you through some key aspects of Drupal culture that will save you hours of frustration.

Installation

This is the first hurdle for most users, but Drupal has a handy installation guide that should at least get you started.

Another thing that throws people off in the beginning is the home page. Getting a "home page" set up is a bit tricky. To set this up just click on Create Content and then Page. Create a Home Page for your site. When you start, the URL for this page will probably be node/1.

To set your home page go to Administer > Site Configuration > Site Information. At the bottom of the page is a field to set the URL for your home page. This tells Drupal to use this page as my home page. You should enter node/1 in this field if that is the URL of page you want to use for your home page.

Learning Menus

Now that you have the home page set you'll want to start creating more pages and some navigation. To create navigation click Create Content > Page. When you create a page you will see a section on the edit page called Menu Settings. You can set the specifics here. When creating primary nav elements choose Primary links. Repeat this a few times until you have the primary navigation elements you want.

To directly edit you menus and menu items go to Administer > Site Buidling > Menus in your site. For more information on setting up Menus see this page on the Drupal.org site

Learning Blocks

Blocks in Drupal control where content shows up in sidebars and other regions of the site. To learn more about blocks and how they work see this page on the Drupal.org site.

Installing Modules and Key Starting Modules

To learn how to install modules and quickly find the key modules that should go on any Drupal website see my post on Essential Modules for Drupal.

Views and CCK

CCK (Content Cunstruction Kit) and Views are the backbone of Drupal. 80 percent of the Ah Ha coolness comes from these two modules. On the module pages there are links to documentation so you can learn how they work. You need to read about these two modules to understand them. If you understand how these modules work, then you have a pretty good understanding of Drupal.

How to Get Help

Every Drupal noob gets stuck and the first thing they do is go to the main forum and post some crazy question, and nobody responds. It's not because the people at Drupal are jerks, it's because you've posted in the wrong area. If you have a question about how a module works, post in the issue que for that module. For instance, if you are having problems with image field, you need to post your issue in the issue que for image field. On every module page there is a link that says "view pending support request." That's where you go to get help. They are much more responsive, and especially so for the major modules.