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Drupal User GuideDrupal User Guide for Canadian Forces Clubs
If you've made it this far then you are probably responsible for content on a Drupal website. Please take the time to read through this document. You can refer to it whenever you require assistance or guidance.  About DrupalQuoted from http://drupal.org/about "Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website. Tens of thousands of people and organizations have used Drupal to set up scores of different kinds of web sites, including
Drupal includes features to enable
and much more. Drupal is open source software licensed under the GPL, and is maintained and developed by a community of thousands of users and developers. Drupal is free to download and use. If you like what Drupal can do for you, please work with us to expand and refine Drupal to suit your needs." About your websiteYour website is installed on a server that shares the Drupal software with other similar websites. You own your own domain name, I just provide the space to store your content, install and maintain the software. If there are any modules or themes that you would like to use, please contact me and I will make them available. Getting helpIt can be very frustrating when things don't work out the way they should or when you can't accomplish what you've set out to do. Although I'm not sitting in front of my email every minute of every day, I do check this email frequently, and so does someone else in my absense. Also note that I don't have physical access to the webserver. I rent space on a server that is used by several hundred other people, that's the only way I can keep my costs to a reasonable level. This means that at times, the server can be slower than others. All low-cost (sub $100 / month) web hosts have this problem. If you need help, please contact me as soon as you think you have a problem or you think there may be a problem with the website. Security updates are frequent and it is possible that they "break" existing features. But usually they are transparent.
The ressource I use the most when I run into difficulties is the Drupal forums. From the www.drupal.org website, simply enter your issue in the search box. Alternatively, type the word Drupal and a brief description of you problem in Google. Page overviewMost pages are composed of the following sections: Banner: the top of the page, which may or may not contain links Left block: the default location for the navigation menu Right block: optional Center block: this is where your content is displayed Header and footer blocks: these are optional blocks which appear at the top of the page (below the banner) or at the bottom of the page)
BlocksBlocks are sections of data that can be placed in several locations on the page: left column, right column, header, footer or as content (center). Blocks can be made visisble only on certain pages, not on certain pages or on all pages. User Login is an example of a block. There are about a dozen pre-defined blocks, such as login, menu, recent popular content, search, etc... Blocks can be created using simple html or with php code to display data based on database queries.
Navigation MenuMost of the content (pages) created will be either containers (such as amateur radio, cook book, web stuff for this website) or categories (like this page). Using this type of page, the menu structure is created automatically and is easily managed. There may be items that you wish to add to the menu that are not containers or categories. For this, you will login as an administrator, go to "administer", then menus. By default you will have 2 menus: Navigation and Primary Links. Primary links are usually displayed horizontally in the top or bottom banners of your site. To add a menu item, click on the "add menu item" tab. The path is the path to the desired content. It can be using either the actual page id (node/145) or it's clean url (drupal_user_guide). Then select where the menu item belongs in the "Parent item" drop-down box. Basic setupYou website name, logo, email, slogan are all configured from the settings page. From the adminster menu, click settings. On the center of the page, click "General Settings". Look and feelOne thing I love about Drupal is the ease with which you can revamp the look and feel of your website. There are hundreds of "themes" which can be installed and configured. Note that not all may be plug and play, but many are. http://drupal.org/project/Themes To modify the behavior of the existing theme or to change themes, use the "themes" option under the administer menu. Creating contentThe basic content type you will use most of the time is called a "category" (it gets its name from the "category module" that generates the pages and menu structure). 1. Log-in 2. From the navigation menu, select a "container" 3. At the bottom of the page, click on the "add child category" link. This will create your new page under the existing page. 4. Enter a title and body. Do not worry about the other options for the time being. 5. In the "Category information" section, select the "Parent" of the page you are creating. If your page falls directly under the container, then the container and parent will be the same. A category can fall under another category. The top level member MUST be a container. 6. At the bottom of the page click "submit" or "preview". ContainersContainers are top level members of a "tree" of pages. They appear in the navigation block.
CategoriesCategories are the child elements of containers. There can be multiple categories in a single container. Categories can also be child members of another category.
ModulesThe basic Drupal installation contains necessary modules such as for creating users, creating basic pages, managing the menu structure, etc... New functionality is introduced by installing new modules. There are several hundred available. Look here for the current list of modules.
Marc Archambault
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