Leveraging Drupal: Getting Your Site Done Right

Leveraging Drupal®

As an open source, community-based content management system and web site application development framework, Drupal allows you to create interactive, media-based, database-driven web sites that become a part of everyday activities and communications. This unique book is the first of its kind to tackle the challenging task of leveraging Drupal to get a site done right and make that site work for you, based on industry-wide software development best practices.

Within these pages, you will gain insight into how to work with any release of Drupal, approach your project, establish a development environment, plan for deployment, and avoid pitfalls along the way. A real-world example of a web site application based on Drupal—an online Literary Workshop—is used throughout the book, and it walks you through the entire development lifecycle. You'll learn how to bring your web site into the exciting Drupal mainstream, customize Drupal for your specific needs, and even make "non-Drupal" looking sites. With this hands-on guide, you'll discover how to use Drupal to efficiently publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on your web site.

What you will learn from this book

• Best practices to optimize the way you approach development projects

• Methods for setting up a development environment using version control and issue tracking tools

• How the Drupal theming system works and how it separates content from presentation and style

• Techniques for upgrading and deploying the online Literary Workshop

• The future of Drupal and how it might be developed and used

Who this book is for

This book is for Drupal users of all levels of expertise who are looking to put together a sophisticated web application.

Wrox guides are crafted to make learning programming languages and technologies easier than you think. Written by programmers for programmers, they provide a structured, tutorial format that will guide you through all the techniques involved.

This book is a step-by-step guide and a hands-on co-piloted experience for those trying to make Drupal powered websites work for them, and for their clients. Much more than a "tutorial", what is needed is a nuts-and-bolts living mentor and guide which really shows the reader how to do the things really required for bringing it all together in a site which works. This will be the only book covering all the difficult components of Drupal: views, panels, themes, content creation, etc. The book will cover:

* How to upgrade your hopelessly outdated and obsolete-software dependent site and bring it into the Drupal mainstream and future

* How to become a great Drupal themer and make "non-Drupal" looking sites

* How to really customize Drupal for your real needs

* How to start using best practices in Drupal web application development

* How to work like the pro Drupal shops and be ready for big projects - and small ones

* Learn by example (code samples, theme samples, videos) at every step

1. Keeping it Simple.

2. Taking Baby Steps.

3. Getting Organized.

4. Getting up to Speed..x Site Fully Up-to-Date

5. Finishing Up the Elaboration Phase.

6. Pushing the Envelope.

7. Becoming an Expert Drupal Themer. Site

8. Upgrading to Drupal 6.

9. Upgrading to Drupal Revisited..

10. Installing and Using Drupal 6 Fresh Out of the Box.

11. Full Swing Agile Approach to Drupal Development.

12. The jQuery Chapter.

13. From Drupal 6 to Drupal 7 and Beyond.

14. Deploying Your Application as a Drupal Installation Profile.

15. Acquia Drupal as an Enterprise Ready Alternative.

Index.