A series of screencasts (videos) on creating a web site using Drupal CMS right from installation to configuration to administration including notes jotted down during the process.

At the end of this tutorial series, you will be able to create and run a site like this (site look might be changing as I add features and extend this series).

Background

I’ve a simple web site over at scriptinstall4free. It runs on a lightweight CMS called sNews. While sNews is okay, there were few times when I write an entry and it would just disappear. Also it was very limited in what it can do. So I started looking for a CMS and Joomla was what first came to my mind. I’ve used it in the past and it’s a decent system - not too basic like sNews, not too complex like Typo3. I also checked out Drupal and saw some of the sites that were built using it. Drupal appears to be a top class CMS: code-wise, documentation-wise, community-wise. Drupal’s power comes at a cost though: It isn’t as easy as Joomla to figure out initially. But once you do, the possibilities are endless.

So, join me as I install Drupal, learn how to use it and collect useful Drupal resources on my way to create a simple new site at
http://www.scriptinstall4free.com/drupal. Once the site is reasonably okay, I shall replace the current one at
http://www.scriptinstall4free.com/ with it.

Let’s get started. Shall we?

FETCHING DRUPAL

Let’s grab the latest release 5.1 from here. I connected to my web space (hosted at DreamHost) via SSH, used wget followed by tar -xzvf at /drupal. If your host doesn’t provide shell access (bad host), use FTP. Video: (opens in a new window/tab)

INSTALLING DRUPAL

Visit the installation URL, http://www.scriptinstall4free.com/drupal in this case. I provided my database info, created admin account and changed the admin password. Video:

In the next part I shall write about some more initial configuration, setting up cron tasks, and begin w/ the administration of the site.

Continue to the second part of Creating a Web Site Using Drupal series.