Website Creation with Drupal 7 - Content, Layout, Administration By German Karl and Kaspar Schweiger Synopsis The content management system Drupal is in terms of power the better-known CMS in comparison with Joomla and TYPO3. The big advantage of Drupal is that it is extremely flexible, both in the page layout as well as its configuration. This book shows you how to keep the numerous settings and options of Drupal always at a glance and optimally configured. Through practical examples, you will learn how to install Drupal 7, create articles and blogs, manage users and customize the layout of your page to your liking. Drupal is properly installed quickly and you will soon build your first test site. This book will familiarize you with the Drupal philosophy, namely to give the user the greatest possible flexibility. You will learn how to build a website with Drupal 7 and administer and configure Drupal with external tools such as the WYSIWYG editor CKEditor. You will learn how to use the Media Manager and the Developer module, howto create users for your page, and how to assign them administration rights. The authors show you how to use blocks to position content correctly, how to create multilingual pages and how to keep your Drupal installation up-to-date. On content and content types, Drupal 7 has four types of content: articles, sites, blogs and books. If that's not enough, then simply create a new content type, such as a date, an event, a customer survey or a message. Attach user rights to the new type and assign a block to enable the user to place a page layout. You'll also learn how to create menus and buttons, define access rules and publish your content. In addition, the book discusses the structuring of content through taxonomies and explains how to improve the search engine ranking of your site. On themes, you can create your own web pages and page layouts in an incredibly flexible fashion with Drupal 7. This book demonstrates the different ways of creating themes. First, almost arbitrary blocks can drag and drop the different regions of a site layout map. Secondly, Drupal gives you the ability to define the layout of a page without using panels. On the other hand, Mini-Panels allow you to design the layout of individual blocks. And last but not least, the authors show you how to create custom Drupal themes by customizing themes based on your needs.
Review 1 Not yet finished this book as it’s been in my hands only recently, but going back on previous comments I must say I’m quite impressed with the general layout and content. If you don’t know Drupal this is a good point of entry, and if you’re a newcomer to CMS and trying to find a clear path through the mysterious terrain of open source, this book may well convince you that Drupal is the most flexible as well as being the most user friendly. And if you’re involved in web development and are interested in creating your own open source CMS, you may find a few useful tips in this book. (Posted by Web Design Shrewsbury)
Review 2 Web people these days want everything handed to them on a plate. You will only learn rigor by doing it all in Notepad. Spoon feeding by WYSIWYG you will never learn anything useful, except how not to be rigorous. (Posted by Glottal Stop)