Drupal CMS Content Management System

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Drupal CMSContent Management System

• Dave Waetjen
• Geography Graduate Group
• Information Center for the Environment
• dwaetjen_at_ucdavis.edu

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Outline

• Drupal CMS Overview
• Case Studies / Examples
• Demonstration / QA

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Why Open Source Software?

• Free
• Community Based Support (although there are
  consulting companies specializing in Drupal)?
• help find and fix bugs
• answer questions on forums / blogs
• provide documentation
• code extension modules
• GPL grants permission to view and modify to the
  source code (to fulfill a particular need).
• Promotes open standards
• Its adoption provides models for organizations /
  institutions to mimic.

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General System Info

• Current Version Drupal 5.1 (Drupal 6 to be
  released soon, and Drupal 7 will only support PHP
  5)?
• Programing Language PHP 4 and 5
• Data Storage MySQL or PostgresSQL (support for
  other databases, Oracle, MSSQL, DB2, etc. but not
  as well tested, and user base much smaller).
• Operating System Linux, FreeBSD, MS Windows
• Webserver Apache, IIS
• Recommendation LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL,
  PHP/Python) for security purposes, ease of
  installation, and robustness.

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Drupal Installation / Site Setup

• Setup a database container to hold the tables
• Create the necessary user credentials in database
• Run the setup program (run database script which
  create the necessary tables in DB)?
• Apache (setup domain, root)?
• In Drupal config file (which matches domain name
  path), point to database instance
• Setup working directory (webserver permissions)?
• Setup CRON job (periodic script), which performs
  various actions, like indexing for search. I run
  most of mine daily.

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Drupal Basics Users and Roles

• First user created is the website administrator,
  and this user has complete control over the
  system.
• Other users can be created by administrator or by
  online registration (with or without admin
  approval)?
• Roles anonymous, authenticated, and custom
• Users can belong to one or more roles
• Permissions within system are role based
• Therefore, once users are created in the system
  and assigned a role, they have permission to
  various parts of the framework, including content
  creation.

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Content Construction Kit (CCK)?

• Nodes all main content created is a node
• Build your own content types (e.g. job, report,
  news)?
• Add custom fields to content types with different
  associated data types
• standard text (first name, last name, title)\
• number (integer, decimal)?
• web address, URL
• email address (validation)?
• node reference
• widgets (check boxes, single select options)?
• Links to permission system
• Links to Views (method for displaying lists of
  nodes)?

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Views

• Provides ability to list nodes (views of the
  content)?
• Full Node
• Teaser List
• Title Only
• Table - you choose the fields you want displayed
• Calendar
• Sorting / Filtering capability
• Main Content Area or Block
• All lists can have an associated RSS feed link
• RSS RDF Site Summary / Really Simple
  Syndication
• Provides a standard way to tell the world about
  your site
• Google and other major sites index these feeds
  for searching and news aggregation

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Input Filters

• Filter content from the database prior to being
  displayed in the browser
• Drupal Standard Filters
• Filtered HTML
• PHP code
• Full HTML
• Admin can create custom filters
• Permission based

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Security and User Authentication

• Supports CAS - Central Authentication Services
• UC Davis, Username and Password
• Custom modules linking Drupal with other web
  applications (single signon). This includes
  Gallery2, KnowledgeTree, Jabber (other IM), LDAP,
  OpenID, phpbb, others.
• Custom Module provide Secure SSL based login.
• Spam Relief CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, Spam Module
  (Bayesian filter), Akismet, others.
• Good web practices

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Drupal Features Quicklist

• Content Management System
• Content Publishing / Threaded Commenting
• Blogging Platform
• Forums
• Version Control (Diff module shows revision in
  friendly format)?
• Polls
• News aggregation / RSS
• Blocks / Navigation
• Modules / Themes

• Other Web Features
• Friendly URL and Permalinks (node/nid)?
• Page caching
• Integrated search functionality
• Page Hits / Statistics
• Prominent Drupal Sites
• http//www.mtv.co.uk/
• http//www.theonion.com/
• http//appel.nasa.gov/
• See also
• http//drupal.org/features

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Current Drupal Websites

• http//ice.ucdavis.edu - Information Center for
  the Environment
• http//butterfly.ucdavis.edu - Art Shapiro's
  Butterfly Website
• http//castlelake.ucdavis.edu - Castle Lake
  Limnological Research Station
• http//ggg.ucdavis.edu - Geography Graduate Group
• http//baydelta.ucdavis.edu - Cosumnes Research
  Group
• http//trig.ucdavis.edu - Truckee River Info
  Gateway
• http//vinecology.ucdavis.edu - Vinecology
  Website
• http//ice.ucdavis.edu/education/esp179/ - ESP179
  Environmental Impact Analysis
• http//soda.ucdavis.edu - Semantic Online Data
  Access
• http//wwcn.ucdavis.edu - World Water and Climate
  Network
• http//ice.ucdavis.edu/seed/ - Students for
  Environmental Education at Davis
• http//fwwg.ucdavis.edu - Freshwater Working
  Group Portal
• http//wildlifecrossing.ucdavis.edu - Wildlife
  Crossing Manual
• http//elkhornslough.ucdavis.edu - Elkhorn Slough
  Early Mitigation Project

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Case Studies / Examples

• Art Shapiro's Butterfly Website
• Information Center for the Environment
• Geography Graduate Group

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Drupal Database
Butterfly Data
Gallery2 Repository
MySQL
MySQL
MySQL
Custom PHP Code
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- output records into other bibliographic
software (tagged, XML, Bibtex)? -
implementsOAI-PMH - Open Archives Initiative
Protocol for Metadata Harvesting
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