Designing a site is hell of a work...specially if its of a fairly big level and more so if you are the only one maintaining the site and your php and html sucks!!!
So, from my experience I have come up with some tips that I am gonna use for myself...I will be using it for myself and then if it works then i will be sharing it with others...
well to start with, first things first....
always have the blueprint of your website with you...some call it template, some call it wireframes...its basically the same....the structure of your site designed with some graphical design software like Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator...with this in hand, you have defined your direction and ready to blast off...
then, taking your wireframe as the standard, start coding for the menu...if you don't know how to code then use the programs like dreamweaver...
then come the side bars...code for them and get them done...
then you code for the main body....generally you don't have to make any changes to them...but sometimes your wireframe requires you to mod them a little bit....
then you design your content creating application using modules like the CCK in the drupal....
I think if thing proceed in this way....that is broken into pieces and each piece completed, and then all the pieces put together the designing part will be completed leaving only the content creation part remaining...so I think that is pretty much it....
good luck with the project :)
Monday, April 4, 2011
Thursday, December 9, 2010
The must-need modules for Drupal installtion to work!!
1. the most important thing that every site needs is its content. and with the type of your site, there are different types of content that you are gonna create. drupal gives option for the creation of few contents like blog, book and simple page.
now you are gonna need your own custom content types, and this is where the module CCK comes into paly. with CCK you can create your content type with all the fields that you need. there is a huge collection of other contributed modules that are designed to extend the capability of the CCK module.
for instance, the conditional fields module allows you to expose certain field only when the parent field has certain value selected.
2. the second most important thing that a webmaster is gonna do is try to present his contents in different style, for instance, he may want a slideshow of the photos, the most popular content, recent comments, and so on. this need of the webmaster is addressed by the module "views". it too has numerous contributed modules. for eg jcarousel module allows you to have the slideshow of your photos up in the frontpage using the jQuery.
other modules are important but these are some which are sine-qua-non for a website
now you are gonna need your own custom content types, and this is where the module CCK comes into paly. with CCK you can create your content type with all the fields that you need. there is a huge collection of other contributed modules that are designed to extend the capability of the CCK module.
for instance, the conditional fields module allows you to expose certain field only when the parent field has certain value selected.
2. the second most important thing that a webmaster is gonna do is try to present his contents in different style, for instance, he may want a slideshow of the photos, the most popular content, recent comments, and so on. this need of the webmaster is addressed by the module "views". it too has numerous contributed modules. for eg jcarousel module allows you to have the slideshow of your photos up in the frontpage using the jQuery.
other modules are important but these are some which are sine-qua-non for a website
Starting the Drupal!!
while installing drupal, first thing to do is to download the latest drupal installation from its site drupal.org. then to start using drupal, there should be a server -either on your computer or on the remote server. i use wamp 2.0 as my localhost.
Now extract the drupal into a folder and then copy it into the www folder of the wamp folder. The installation sequence is as follows:
1. open the root of your web directory. for localhost it is 127.0.0.1
2. choose drupal from the wamp homepage
3. this will start the installation of drupal. choose the language
4. Now you will be asked to create a settings.php file in drupal/sites/default. there is a php file by the name of setting-sample.php in the same directory. just copy and paste that file in the same directory. then rename the copy to setting.php, then continue with the installation.
5. you will be asked to enter the details of the database file where you want to install the database of the drupal CMS.
6. Go to your wamp homepage and select myphp. once there just create a new database file. give it any name. then return to the installation page and then enter the name of the database file you just created in the field database name, enter 'root' as the value of the database user and leave the password field empty. Then continue with the installtion.
7. we are almost done, in the next page you will asked about the details of the site you are about to create. fill in all the details. dont forget to enable to clean URLs (if it says that your system doesn't support clean URL, then go to the wamp and enable rewrite module from the apache modules list accessed from the wamp icon in the taskbar.) then press install.
8. Now the installation finishes in a jiffy, and you will be taken to the default homepage of your drupal site.
COMPLETING THE INSTALLAITON
To complete the installation, we have to install the most used modules and then activate them.
For this, we create directories drupal/sites/all/modules and drupal/sites/all/themes where all the contributed modules and themes are kept.
1. then download the following modules:
this is pretty much it.
enjoy!!!
Now extract the drupal into a folder and then copy it into the www folder of the wamp folder. The installation sequence is as follows:
1. open the root of your web directory. for localhost it is 127.0.0.1
2. choose drupal from the wamp homepage
3. this will start the installation of drupal. choose the language
4. Now you will be asked to create a settings.php file in drupal/sites/default. there is a php file by the name of setting-sample.php in the same directory. just copy and paste that file in the same directory. then rename the copy to setting.php, then continue with the installation.
5. you will be asked to enter the details of the database file where you want to install the database of the drupal CMS.
6. Go to your wamp homepage and select myphp. once there just create a new database file. give it any name. then return to the installation page and then enter the name of the database file you just created in the field database name, enter 'root' as the value of the database user and leave the password field empty. Then continue with the installtion.
7. we are almost done, in the next page you will asked about the details of the site you are about to create. fill in all the details. dont forget to enable to clean URLs (if it says that your system doesn't support clean URL, then go to the wamp and enable rewrite module from the apache modules list accessed from the wamp icon in the taskbar.) then press install.
8. Now the installation finishes in a jiffy, and you will be taken to the default homepage of your drupal site.
COMPLETING THE INSTALLAITON
To complete the installation, we have to install the most used modules and then activate them.
For this, we create directories drupal/sites/all/modules and drupal/sites/all/themes where all the contributed modules and themes are kept.
1. then download the following modules:
- Admin menu
- advanced help
- backup and migrate
- cck
- css injector
- ctools
- devel
- devel themers
- panels
- pathauto
- token
- views
- views bulk operation
- conditional fields (imp)
- backup and migrate
- inherit
- webform
- book made simple
- hierarchical select
- conditional fields (imp)
this is pretty much it.
enjoy!!!
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