How Does This website Work?
Your new website has been built with a rich set of features and ease of maintenance in mind. It is actually more than a simple website. It is a full-blown Content Management System, or CMS. A CMS allows you to manage your site's content and features within the website itself and requires no other software. Once you are logged in to your site, you will have the ability to add or edit any page you see when you are on the page itself. Depending on the options you chose, you may add events to your calendar, add a photo to your gallery, add a new web page or write a new blog post quickly and simply. Just log in, surf to the page you would like to edit, and make your changes.
Your website has also been built to maximize search engine visibility, accessibility to visitors with disabilities and ready for the next generation of web browsers. Print-ready pages are built in, as are advanced features like RSS feeds, user comments and content tagging. It is more than a simple website; it is a full-featured center for your online community.
About Your CMS
Your CMS is powered by version 5.1 of Drupal, the award-winning open source CMS package. Open source software is owned by no one, written by anyone willing to put the work into it, and is tested and reviewed by professionals worldwide. It is free to use, and many options for adding functionality to the base Drupal package. For example, add-on modules allowing you to manage a newsletter, build custom forms, eliminate spam, create and manage trackable banner ads and much more are available.
The open nature of Drupal means that you get an incredibly flexible website, configured for you at a reasonable price. If you want to dig in and learn more about Drupal, visit the website, located at drupal.org. Online manuals a list of modules and helpful tips will make you an expert in no time. You may also be interested in the following books, which walk you through the setup and maintenance of your site.
- Drupal: Creating Blogs, Forums, Portals, And Community Websites by David Mercer. ISBN 1904811809
- Building Online Communities With Drupal, phpBB, and WordPress by Robert T. Douglass, Mike Little and Jared W. Smith. ISBN 1590595629
They are both excellent books (I own them both) and both walk you through setting up a site from scratch. If you really want to get deep into things, you will want to learn about PHP and MySQL, the scripting language and database (respectively) that power your website.
Tutorials
If you are logged in to your site with the proper level of permission (see User Control below) you will see a section in the menu labeled Tutorials. This will provide step-by-step instructions on how to create a new page, calendar item or blog post, as well as edit existing ones.
User Control
One of the features of your site is the ability to assign multiple levels of access to users. This allows you to assign certain users as authors on your site, others as trusted blog posters, and others as visitors with read-only access. Usually, the following levels of access (or roles) are set up.
- Anonymous
Anyone who might visit your website - Authenticated
If you have a site that requires users to register to access certain content, this will be their role. In the case of the CPGR site, everyone who is a member will fit into this category.
- content author
Anyone designated to write content for your site - site admin
The person responsible for running your site. - site admin visible - A role specificacreated for Tina, so that her contact info is visible in the membership directory
Other access levels can be added as you need them.
Drupal Basics
Here are some Drupal basics, pulled from the online Drupal Handbook. More specific instructions can be found in the Tutorials section of your website.
Registering As a User
To add or edit content on a Drupal site, usually you have to first be registered as a user. (Sometimes the site administrator has chosen to enable "anonymous" posts of things like comments, in which case you can post them without registering.)
In some cases, a site administrator will add you as a user. If so, they will send you a user name and password that you can use to log on.
Otherwise, look for a small form called “User login" on the main page of the site you want to register with (usually on the right or the left of the page). Click the link that says "Create new account".
The next page that comes up will generally have some information on the site's policies for registration. After reading them, to register, enter a user name of your choice and an email address to which you have access and hit "submit". Then check your email account. Within a few minutes, you should get an automatically-generated email confirming your registration and giving you an initial password to use. Now you're ready to log in.
Logging In
Before you can add or edit content, you usually need to log in. If you haven't already done so, register as a user, see above (or, if applicable, request that your site administrator register you). Then hit the main page of the site you're wishing to use and look for a "User login" form. This will typically be on the left or right side of the page (it is a "block" in Drupal talk). Enter your user name and password and hit "submit".
Assuming everything's working as planned, when the new page loads it will include a new block with your user name at the top. This is the menu you use to start entering and editing content.
Changing Your Account Settings
Once you have registered with a Drupal-based site, you can change settings to control information about yourself and also your use and experience of a Drupal site. To see what tweaks you can make to your account, log in and then click on my account in the navigation block (that's the one titled with your user name). Click on the edit tab.
Account Settings. You may see a different collection of settings than is presented here, depending on what features have been enabled on your site.
Password. Enter in a new password in both fields to set it. Drupal sends you a default password that is often hard to remember, so it is recommended that you change your password to something you can easily remember.
Block Configuration. The site administrator may make some blocks (chunks of content that are usually displayed in a left and/or right column) optional. You can enable and disable the display of these blocks by checking and unchecking the boxes next to them.
Signature. If comments are enabled, you will be able to set a default signature. This will be copied into new comments for you automatically, but may still be edited.
Time Zone. Your site administrator may allow users to set their time zone. This will cause all dated content on the site to display in local time, according to the offset you enter here.
As mentioned earlier, different site-settings will cause different fields to be displayed on your user account page. See the documentation for individual modules for instructions on how to use these additional options.
Additional Information. Aside from the account settings tab, you may also see additional tabs, titled according to the information they contain. Some examples might include "Personal Information", "Workplace", etc. These are controlled by the profile module, and allows you to enter more information about yourself. Please see the profile module for more information on this.
Editing and Deleting Content
To edit or delete existing content, log in and then bring up the page you wish to edit. Look on the page for an "edit" tab. Depending on your user permissions, you might see this on all pages or only on certain ones. For example, on Drupal.org, you should see the edit tab for those pages that you submitted.
Clicking the edit tab will bring up a page with a form for changing the page. Here you can change the text and settings. Once you have the text and settings in a suitable form, click on the "Submit" button on the bottom of the form. Note that certain sites may be set up to require you to "Preview" the page before you can submit your changes.
If you wish to delete the page (and you have appropriate permissions), click on the "delete" button near the bottom of the form. You'll get a second chance to confirm that you wish to delete the page, or to change your mind!
Note: Because Drupal is very configurable, there may be additional ways of editing and managing content. Please check the documentation for your installation, ask the Drupal administrator, or consult with another user for details.