Getting Started With Drupal
If you are are new to Drupal and want to get started learning right away then this video series is just for you.
The 15 lessons linked below provide a step-by-step guide to installing, configuring and creating content with the Drupal platform.
Click a lesson title below to find out more information and view the video.
Lesson One of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video shows how to install Drupal to a localhost on a Windows based computer. Wampserver is used to create the proper environment.
UPDATE: Be aware that if you install the latest version of Wampserver and combine it with Drupal 6.13 or above you will likely get the following error. Deprecated: Function ereg() is deprecated in C:\wamp\www\drupal\includes\file.inc on line 902
The error is caused by the fact that the newer version of Wampserver utilizes version 5.3 of PHP and the latest version of Drupal does not support PHP 5.3. You can remedy the issue by installing an earlier version of Wampserver that has the 5.2 branch of PHP. Wampserver 2.0h (found at this link) includes PHP 5.2.9-2. Another option is to use another stack installer such as the Acquia Drupal Stack Installer.
Lesson Two of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video explores the basic configuration options to consider once you have successfully installed Drupal.
Lesson Three of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video shows the user how to replace the core Drupal theme (known as Garland) with a contributed theme (in this case Acquia Marina) downloaded from Drupal.org.
Lesson Four of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video provides guidance on downloading, installing and configuring several contributed modules from Drupal.org. These key modules are some of the most important ones to add no matter what type of site you want to build with Drupal.
- Mollom for spam protection
- PathAuto for configurable automated URLs
- FCKEditor for WYSIWYG post editing
- IMCE for uploading images to insert into posts
- Poor Mans Cron for easy execution of the Drupal cron file
Lesson Five of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video provides detailed instruction on adding blog posts and pages to your Drupal site. This version is a preview that focuses on the settings that need to be reviewed and possibly adjusted prior to publishing content. The premium version contains additional content as indicated below.
Lesson Six of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This video tutorial provides instruction on categorizing blog content using the core taxonomy module. This preview version focuses on adding categories that you select from a drop down list. The premium version contains additional content as indicated below.
Lesson Seven of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of videos.
This video tutorial shows you very basic methods for adding embedded video, photos and audio to posts on your Drupal site. FCKeditor and IMCE (which we installed in a previous lessons) are two contributed modules involved in the process.
The Yahoo! Easy Listener music player is used to embed the audio that we upload to the site. You'll also see how the file upload and local php.ini settings are adjusted to support uploading mp3 files up to 10MB in size.
Note: Since the production of this video the Yahoo! Easy Listener music player has been discontinued so you will need to utilize another flash player to successfully embed audio using this method.
Lesson Eight of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of videos.
In this tutorial I show you some simple ways of creating a more custom look on the front page of your site. All blog posts are demoted from the front page. Blocks are moved into different regions allowed by the theme. A node is created specifically for the front page. Finally, I show you how to make some basic changes to the tpl.php template file so that you can have a front page that doesn't require any nodes to be published on it.
Lesson Nine of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of videos.
This lesson provides instruction on how to move a localhost Drupal site to a web server. Steps shown in the video include creating a domain, creating a web database, exporting the local drupal database and importing the exported database to the web database.
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Lesson Ten of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson focuses on the basics of administering your Drupal site. Topics covered include the site Status Report, module and core update status settings. Includes step-by-step instruction on how to update contributed modules and the core Drupal release.
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Lesson Eleven of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson focuses on the configuration of blog comments and setting up a site wide contact form. The preview includes instruction on how to protect both comments and the contact form using the Mollom module.
In addition to basic configuration of comments and the contact form the preview also shows how to add a menu item for the site wide contact form and a sidebar block that displays recent comments.
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Lesson Twelve of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson focuses on socializing your content by allowing your site visitors to easily share and rate site content. Automatic sharing links for sites like Facebook, Delicious, Digg and others are generated by the Service Links module. A star based rating system for nodes is powered by the Fivestar module which also requires the Voting API module.
Lesson Thirteen of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson provides instruction on the configuration of user profiles, including enabling profiles for public viewing and adding custom fields by using the core profile module.
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Lesson Fourteen of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson provides instruction on setting up Drupal to support blogging by multiple users. The lesson covers the addition of new users to the site, configuring permissions to allow new users to blog, creating an author list block and a biography block for each author. The lesson also covers the creation of a special "editor" role that will allow designated users limited administration rights for the management of comments and blog posts.
The premium version is encoded at the full 1024x768 resolution as originally recorded.
Lesson Fifteen of my special Getting Started With Drupal series of instructional videos.
This lesson provides guidance on how to get a community started by configuring the core forum module , the core tracker module and allowing users to be able to set up their own account. Includes a look at the changes required to the Mollom (spam prevention) and Comment Notify (subscribe to comments) modules that were initially added in Lesson Eleven.
The premium version of this lesson is encoded at the full 1024x768 resolution as originally recorded.
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