Course Description

Drupal is a free and open source Content Management System written in PHP. With Drupal you can create a simple personal homepage, a company website, a blog, an ecommerce site, etc. Hundreds of modules are available for use with Drupal. You can create events calendars, a contact form, product catalogs, polls or surveys, guestbook, a forum, or newsletter signup. The possibilities are endless. Basically, there are no limits with Drupal, you really can make any type of website you want. In this class we will plan and design our own blog in Drupal. No knowledge of XHTML, CSS, or PHP is necessary. I will give you written and visual instructions that will take you step by step through the lessons. We will select a theme, enable modules, create content, add and manage users, and other exciting things. The main intent for this class is to learn the basics of Drupal. When we finish you will have a completed weblog that you can continue using. We will be doing a blog on whatever "G" rated subject that you choose or you can use the material provided to make a Garden Club weblog. What is a weblog? A weblog, or "blog", is a personal journal on the Web. Weblogs cover many different topics. Your blog can be used to share information with relatives and friends. It can include recipes, graduation announcements, birthdays, or club news. Basically anything that you are interested in can be shared with others on your blog. You can allow others to post comments on your blog. The sky's the limit!! This class is for anyone that is interested in creating a personal, club, or group weblog using Drupal. This class will teach you the basics of the Drupal Content Management System. This is a 5 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area. LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details. LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details. Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration. Show off your LVS Online spirit with an item from the LVS Store If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Students should be able to work through the lessons step-by-step, accurately, with the course materials provided. Each lesson builds on the previous one so each should be completed sequentially. Students are required to use web space and a database from LVS Hosting. The login details will be emailed after check-in on the Class Message Board. Students can later transfer to an LVS paid hosting account to continue developing their site. Students should have working knowledge of their operating system and must understand directories and paths: Free Windows Class Here Directory Structure Tutorial Here Zip files may be necessary to complete the exercises provided each week. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or similar program is required to unzip these files. Winzip Tutorial Here Windows Compression All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons. Plan to devote 3 - 5 hours per week on the lesson and assignment; on this class that may vary according to how much experimenting you choose to do with actions and the other subjects of the class.

Course Prerequisites

This class is suitable for all levels. The only real prerequisite is to be able to work through the lessons step-by-step using the course materials provided. Each lesson builds on the previous one so each should be completed sequentially.

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 What is a Content Management System? About Drupal Drupal Administration area Site Configuration Themes, Styles, and Colors Lesson 2 Blogging with Drupal Planning your Site Taxonomy Content and Content Types Creating and Editing Content Organizing your content with taxonomy Lesson 3 Tag Clouds Drupal paths Menus, Links, and Blocks Lesson 4 Managing Users User Roles and Permissions Access Rules User settings User Profiles Comments Lesson 5 Enabling and Using Core Modules Error Reporting Reports Lesson 6 Using the Views Contributed Module

Course Excerpt

What is a Content Management System? This section is just to give you an idea of what goes on behind the scenes. The idea of powering websites with Content Management Systems has been around for some time, but it is only recently with the introduction of high quality open source scripts, like Drupal, that these tools can be used by almost anyone. A traditional web site is made up of static web pages where the content and presentation are in the same file. A web page is made up of a set of instructions called eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language (XHTML) that tells your browser how to present the contents of a web page. These pages have large file sizes, updating them is a lot of work, and they take longer to load. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) take the presentation out of the web page and put them in a separate file. A CSS file adds style to your web pages. Since one CSS file can be used for a large number of web pages, this can reduce the file sizes of the web pages, reduce the time they take to load, and updating them is a lot quicker. A Content Management System creates dynamic web pages. The page has placeholders and the content is separate from the page. The content is actually held in a database. The advantage of a CMS is that it separates the responsibilities of developing a website. The web designer can concern himself with the presentation, design, and the "placeholders". Non-technical people can be responsible for the content (words and pictures). The page can be updated or customized based on the viewer's interactions with the page. CSS files are also used for styling the pages. A CMS makes the pages dynamic meaning they don't really exist until someone follows a link to view them. For this reason they can be customized or updated based on the user's interactions with the page. Blogs and shopping carts are good examples of this. CMSs are usually defined by their capability to manage and publish content. They have the capability to add on a wide range of extensions or add-ons to give the site more functionality. LAMP is a very important part of a CMS. LAMP includes Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. Linux is an operating system. Apache is software that runs on the web server. MySQL is a powerful database. PHP is a programming language that is used to write complex scripts that create interactive functionality with databases. What is Drupal? Drupal is a free, open source Content Management System (CMS) written in the general purpose programming language PHP. A very popular and user friendly CMS, Drupal utilizes a modular framework and is used as a back end system for many different types of websites. It is particularly popular among Web 2.0 websites because of its flexible and customizable framework. Drupal is highly adaptable and can be used to create everything from personal blogs to user generated content sites, and large corporate or political sites. Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of web sites, including: Community web portals Discussion sites Corporate web sites Intranet applications Personal web sites or blogs E-commerce applications Resource directories Social Networking sites The built-in functionality, combined with thousands of freely available add-on modules, enables features such as: Electronic commerce Blogs Collaborative authoring environments Forums Peer-to-peer networking Newsletters Podcasting File uploads and downloads and much more. The Biggest Drupal Sites: http://www.backendbattles.com/backend/Drupal Continued... Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed screen captures.

Course Goals

The goals of this course are to get you comfortable and familiar with using the Drupal administration area to design and create your web blog. When you finish this course you will have a blog you can use on your own site.

Course Reviews

Pauline: "Very well written lessons. Covered all the basics, with understandable explanations. Drupal has enormous capabilities, and this was a great introduction." More...