Introduction to

Drupal for LibrariesAn Webinar

Laura Solomon, MCIW, MLS

laura@designforthelittleguy.com

druplicon

Some content & graphics courtesy of Isriya Paireepairit

August 28, 200912 pm-1 pm

Infopeople webinars are supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian.

Agenda

• What is Drupal?

• What can you do with Drupal?

• Examples

• Practical realities

• Live demo

{Dutch} druppel

pronounces Drupal {English}

means drop {English}

What does “Drupal” mean?

What is Drupal?

•Content management system (CMS)•Open source (GPL)•Mostly/entirely W3C compliant•Extremely extensible

What’s behind Drupal?

Award-winning CMS

CMS vs. development framework

• Drupal is both!

• Provides the building blocks for complex web sites and dynamic web apps

System requirements

• Apache/IIS

• PHP

• MySQL/PostgreSQL

• Patience!

What can you do with it?

Drupal structure

Contributions

Modules

Core (optional)

Core (required)

Core functionality

• Block - box display

• Filter - input format

• Node - content

• System - admin, theming, ...

• User

• Watchdog - logging

Core (optional)

•Blog•Comments•Forum•Menu•Locale•Path

Contributed modules

• CCK

• Views

• Poormans’ Cron

• FCKeditor/TinyMCE

• Mollom

• Image

Modules just for libraries

• Not a ton, but some robust ones

• Some work with specific ILSs

• Most are designed to work with specific products/protocols

Contributed themes

Examples

• Non-library installations

• Library installations

(www.MichaelJackson.com)

(www.popsci.com)

(Recovery.gov)

(www.infoworld.com)

(MotherJones.com)

(www.wfp.org)

(www.oxfam.org)

(www.pearljam.com)

(www.abcfamily.com)

(www.beyonce.com)

(www.fedex.com)

(www.theonion.com)

(www.aadl.org)

(www.ahml.info)

(www.kclibrary.org)

(www.pvld.org)

(london.lib.oh.us)

(library.mcmaster.ca)

(www.techsoupforlibraries.org)

Pros of Drupal

• Free• Dynamic

• Re-theming capability

• Granular level of customization

• Huge community

Cons of Drupal

• Knowledge required, documentation iffy

• Third-party pieces can be problematic

• Upgrading is challenging

• Initial setup

• “Free as in free kittens”

The “Drupal Cliff”

Drupal

You

The Drupal Skill Scale

Migrating your current site

• Compare functionality to version

• Automated conversion is possible (sort of)

• WYSIWYG editor

Demo time!

The Drupal Songhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ-s3DRZJKY

Thank you!

Laura Solomon, MCIW, MLS

laura@designforthelittleguy.com