Drupal: Configuration and Customization

1
Drupal Configuration and Customization

• Week 2 Modules
• January 12, 2006
• Professor Paul Resnick

2
Todays Learning Objectives

• At the end of this week, students should be able
  to
• Install modules
• Configure modules
• Know what a core set of commonly used modules
  does
• Assess whether an unfamiliar module provides
  features you are looking for

3
Module

• Software code
• Provides additional features
• that integrate with core features
• but an application could run without them
• Nodes, blocks, menus are core features
• Modules for
• Events
• WYSYWIG editor
• Photo handling
• 100 others

4
Some Pre-Installed Modules

• Upload
• Search
• Path
• Poll
• Profile
• Blog
• Forum

5
Configuring an Installed Module

• administer gt modules
• Check box to enable
• administer gt settings gt module_name
• Check what options available
• Sometimes configuration options are somehwere
  else have to look, or check modules
  documentation
• administer gt access control
• Check for new section added by the module

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Upload module

• Allows file attachments
• Settings specify max file sizes and image
  resolutions
• Access control privileges
• Upload
• Viewing uploaded files
• administer gt settings gt file system settings
• Choose private
• Configure whether attachments allowed on each
  content type
• administer gt settings gt content types
• If allowed, shows on input form for that content
  type

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Path module

• Allows user-friendly URL names for nodes
• Privileges for
• Creating aliases
• Administering them
• Creating an alias
• URL path settings area in node input form
• Administering all aliases at once
• administer gt url aliases

8
Poll module

• Allows reader surveys
• Privileges for
• Creating polls
• Voting on polls
• Creates a new content type poll
• Creates new block most recent poll

9
Profile module

• Allows custom fields in user profiles
• In additional tabs when editing the user account
• Note photo field is built in
• Enable in administer gt settings gt users
• In themes, can make photos display with user
  contributed content

10
Blog module

• Gives each user own blog space
• Privilege for edit own blog
• Creates new content (node) type blog entry
• Adds my blog item to navigation menu
• Adds Recent blog posts block

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Forum module

• Allows discussion forums
• administer gt forums
• configure tab for some settings
• Containers have one or more forums
• Forums have topics (aka threads)
• Privileges for
• Administer forums
• Create topics
• Edit own topics
• New blocks
• Active forum topics
• New forum topics
• New forums menu item

12
Some Installable Modules Well Look at

• Event start and end times for conten
• CCK create new content types
• Views select subsets of nodes to display
• Organic Groups- subgroups
• TinyMCE- WYSIWYG editor

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Installation Concepts

• A module has a collection of files in a directory
• The first time its enabled, code runs to
  generate any database changes needed
• No easy way to reverse those changes
• Each module works with a specific version of
  Drupal
• Not forward or backward compatible
• If popular, a new module version will usually be
  created for new Drupal version
• We are using version 4.7 only

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Finding Modules

• Drupal.org/project/Modules
• Be sure to search for only 4.7.x modules
• 4.6 and 5.0 modules cant be installed on your
  4.7 site

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Installation via (S)FTP

• Download to your local computer
• Use Winzip or Stuffit Expander to extract the all
  the files into a folder
• Copy the folder to the modules directory
• For cms.si installations
• WINSCP or other SFTP client to login.cms.si.umich.
  edu
• Click on data
• Click on your site name
• Click on modules
• Copy the whole folder

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Installation from UNIX Command Line

• Copy the URL in a browser
• From the command line
• Cd to correct directory
• On .cms.si sites
• /data/ltsitenamegt/modules
• Wget ltURLgt
• Tar zxvf

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Event

• administer gt help gt event for how to configure
• Adds Event type with start-end times, title, and
  body
• Can add start and end times to any content types
• administer gt settings gt content types
• Two new blocks
• Calendar page
• At URL path /event

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CCK

• For creating custom content types
• Enable content module
• Then all the other modules that mention CCK
• They give you special field types
• Create new content types
• administer gt content gt content types

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Views

• For creating blocks and pages displaying sets of
  nodes
• Enable views module
• Then other views-related modules
• event_views, views_rss, etc.
• These make other content types manipulable in
  views
• administer gt views
• Note the built-in views, which are not editable

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Creating a View

• Check administer gt help gt views_ui
• administer gt views, then add
• Page section and/or Block sections
• Specify view type
• Title
• Header/footer
• Fields select for list or table view types
• Filters select which nodes to display
• Add one or more filters
• Sort criteria

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Advanced Views Arguments

• URL path provides parameters
• /foo/bar/bat
• foo, bar, and bat are parameters
• Each argument that you add
• Specifies a filtering condition
• A field that is compared to a parameter
• May specify a view title that depends on the
  parameter
• Argument handling code
• For parameter types that dont have built-in
  handlers
• For filtering on CCK Node References, see
  http//drupal.org/node/70145comment-187328

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Organic Groups

• Subgroups, each with own page
• administer gt settings gt og
• Enable access control to make posts only visible
  to specified groups
• Group details
• Visibility, joinability
• group email notification default
• Node authoring
• What node visibility controls will appear on
  input forms
• Email settings content of email notifications
• create content gt group to make a new group

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TinyMCE

• WYSIWYG Editor
• Read the INSTALL.txt file
• Download TinyMCE 2.0 from http//tinymce.moxiecode
  .com/
• Install as subfolder of modules/tinymce
• Set Access TinyMCE privilege in access controls
• administer gt settings gt tinymce to create a
  profile

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TinyMCE Profile

• Who can use it
• Which pages
• Which buttons
• Other configuration options

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TinyMCE Input Filter

• administer gt input formats
• Add input format
• Say which roles can use it
• Check HTML filter and line break filter
• After saving, click on the configure tab
• Click HTML Filter
• Specify which tags to allow
• Anything your tinyMCE buttons will create!

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Updating Modules

• If you download a newer version of an already
  installed module (perhaps because of bug fixes)
• Visit the URL ltyoursitegt/update.php
• Follow any other directions

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Some Other Modules to Check Out

• Gallery2 photos
• Audio
• Feedback let users contact the site admins
• Print Friendly Pages
• Webform collect data from users into a database
• Tagadelic tag clouds
• LoginToboggan better login features
• Weight for ordering nodes non-chronologically
• URL Filter turn plain text URLs into links
• AKismet spam control if you allow anoymous
  comments
• Search
• Cron for running batch jobs, like indexing to
  make search work
• (Next week, once we understand themes, well also
  look at some modules related to look and feel)

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Assignments for this week

• Configure these modules
• Search
• CCK
• Views
• TinyMCE
• Configure at least 2 of these modules
• Profile
• Forum
• Organic Groups
• Gallery2