Meet Drupal

20060424 [PC Pro]
The future of web publishing is CMS and the future of CMS is Drupal, argues Tom Arah

Last month, I looked at the real-world problems of maintaining a traditional static HTML website and decided that the best solution for most users is to turn to a scalable CMS (content management system). So, this month, I'm going to look at how to implement Drupal (http://drupal.org), generally recognised as the most powerful open-source CMS. Get ready for a bumpy ride.

The first hurdle is the name Drupal; pronounced 'droo-puhl', it's as bad a brand name as you could devise, suggestive of gentle decline at best, while its slogan 'community plumbing' just makes things worse. The origin of the name is hardly confidence-inspiring either. Drupal was created in 2000 by Dries Buytaert as a small news site with a built-in web-board so a group of University of Antwerp students could discuss which pub to go to. After graduating, they decided to put the site online and Dries registered the domain drop.org after mistyping his intended choice of dorp.org, Dutch for 'village'. The Dutch for drop is 'druppel', which Anglicised becomes drupal.

A more serious hurdle is installation. Drupal, like all CMS solutions, is dynamically data driven, which needs dedicated server-side support and a reasonably advanced database setup - in stark contrast to the simplicity of posting static HTML pages. Ideally, you'll need an Apache server supporting PHP 4 or 5, with MySQL, ModRewrite and local HTACCESS files (IIS and PostgreSQL are also supported to a lesser extent). You'll need to be able to set up your own database, load the Drupal database schema and edit the settings.php file to connect to the new database (full details and links to OS specific guidelines at drupal.org).

If your eyes have already glazed over, don't be embarrassed and don't stop reading. If there was no way to get Drupal running without becoming a MySQL guru, it would be doomed to niche status, but there are alternatives. For dedicated Drupal hosting, turn to Bryght.com, which will set up everything for you and offers expert support. Or you can now do it yourself using any server provider that offers Fantastico support. This third-party script installer works with the popular cPanel site administration system and lets you install Drupal with a couple of clicks.

A host such as Bluehost offers Fantastico support along with 10GB of storage, 250GB of transfer and up to 50 MySQL databases for $8 a month, so there's nothing to stop you. And if you prefer to dip your toe in the water first, visit opensourcecms.com, which lets you explore a clean installation that's refreshed every two hours.

High on success with Drupal up and running, what to do next? With commercial software, the answer would be to read the manual or online help, but for constantly changing open-source software you visit the website - and prepare to crash back down to earth. It isn't that the necessary information is missing or inaccessible; quite the reverse. Drupal's various hypertext 'handbooks' cover everything you could possibly want to know (and PDF versions are available at www.puregin.org). But Drupal is a complex system with its own jargon - 'blocks', 'nodes', 'modules', 'taxonomies', 'vocabularies', 'terms', 'snippets' and more - and the handbooks have been written in ad hoc fashion by multiple authors who are mainly addressing expert users. The first-timer is in danger of drowning in a sea of information, but the following basic steps should get you started.