Terminology

This glossary describes the vocabulary used by Drupal and the Drupal community.

Click one of the letters below to be taken to the list of all terms beginning with that letter. If you have some "english expression" and or acronyms, you are not clear with, you can also see here

Alphabet

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M|N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

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A

anonymous#

An anonymous user is a visitor to a Drupal website who is not currently logged in. Drupal considers any such visitor as being the anonymous user, with the user ID 0, and belonging to the anonymous user role.

argument #

A section of the URL for a page on a Drupal website. For example, in the URL for this page (http://drupal.org/node/937), the first argument is "node", and the second is "937". Some modules, most notably Views, allow the use of "wildcard" arguments that allow a particular page to vary depending on context.

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B

block #

Blocks are a method for positioning data within a page. They often contain lists of nodes or other navigational content and are frequently placed in the left or right regions of a page. Assignment to a region is specified through the admin settings. Blocks themselves are not nodes. You can specify that a block only appears on certain pages or in certain contexts. The appearance of a block is controlled in a theme by the (code: block($subject, $content, $region = "main") method.
Configuring and Managing Blocks

book #

A book is a set of book pages tied together in a hierarchical sequence, perhaps with chapters, sections, subsections, and so on. You can use books for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), or whatever you'd like. To use books, enable the core Book module.

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C

CCK (Content Construction Kit) #

A contributed module which permits site developers to define custom fields and content types. A variety of extension modules to CCK exist permitting specialized field definitions such as images, dates, and computed values.

child #

Used to describe objects that can have hierarchical relationships, such as menu items, book pages, taxonomy terms and so on. A "child" menu item, for example, is nested under another menu item, which is referred to as the "parent" menu item. See also: parent

code freeze #

Refers to a date at which no new features can go in the next version of Drupal, unless specific dispensations have been made by the core committers (even then, only when the impact on other systems is minimal). At code freeze, the focus in Drupal core shifts to bug fixing and usability improvements. It is the time when contributed module developers can begin working on updating their code to work with the next version of Drupal.

content #

Often erroneously used in Drupal documentation as a synonym for node, content refers generically to the text, images, and other information on a web site. Some content on a typical Drupal site is not actually nodes, such as comments that are attached to nodes, and file attachments.

content type #

Every node belongs to a single 'node type' or 'content type', which defines various default settings for nodes of that type, such as whether the node is published automatically and whether comments are permitted. Modules can define their own content types; the core Drupal Book and Poll modules are two examples of modules that define content types. You can find out more about content types on the content types handbook page.

core or Drupal core #

Refers to the Drupal files and modules included with the Drupal project download.

core committers #

A team of Drupal developers that review proposed changes to the Drupal core and maintain code. They are the only ones who have write access to the core CVS repository.

core contributor #

Core contributors are software developers who contribute code patches or documentation for the Drupal core. Contributions are peer reviewed and then evaluated by the core committers.

cron #

Cron (short for chronograph) is a command scheduler that executes commands or scripts (groups of commands) automatically at specified time/date intervals. Drupal uses a 'cron job' to perform periodic tasks that help Drupal to run smoothly and efficiently.

CVS (Concurrent Versions System) #

CVS is a version control system used by Drupal code contributors to coordinate their individual code changes. CVS records everyone's changes to a given project in a directory tree called a CVS repository .

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F

filter #

Filters are used to strip out HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and other undesirable elements from content before pages are displayed. It is possible to create custom filters that allow or forbid only those tags you wish.

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L

log #

A log is a list of recorded events. A log may contain usage data, performance data, errors, warnings and operational information. Watchdog is Drupal's primary event log.

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M

menu #

In Drupal, the term menu refers both to the clickable navigational elements on a page, and to Drupal's internal system for handling requests. When a request is sent to Drupal, the menu system uses the provided URL to determine what functions to call.

module #

A module is software (code) that extends Drupal features and/or functionality. Core modules are those included with the main download of Drupal. Contributed (or "contrib") modules are available for separate download from the modules section of downloads. Note: Be sure that the version of the contributed module you wish to use matches your version of Drupal -- when you are viewing the list of modules, you can filter for compatibility to a particular version of Drupal by clicking on links in the sidebar.

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N

node #

A node is a piece of content in Drupal, typically corresponding to a single page on the site, that has a Title an optional Body, and perhaps additional fields. Every node also belongs to a particular content type, and can additionally be classified using the taxonomy system. Examples of nodes are polls, stories, book pages, images, etc.

node type #

See content type.

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P

parent #

Used to describe objects that can have hierarchical relationships, such as menu items, book pages, taxonomy terms and so on. A "parent" menu item, for example, contains other menu items, which are referred to as "children" menu items. See also: child

path #

In Drupal terms, path is the unique, last part of the URL for a specific function or piece of content. For instance, for a page whose full URL is http://example.com/?q=node/7, the path is node/7. Drupal can use "clean URLs" if the Path module is enabled, which would change the full URL in this example to http://example.com/node/7; the path would still be node/7.

permission #

1) Drupal - Permissions control access to content creation, modification and site administration at the application level. Administrators assign permissions to roles, then assign roles to users. The first user ID (uid) of a Drupal site (uid=1) automatically receives all permissions, no matter what role that user belongs to. Any anonymous user has uid=0 (see also anonymous).

2) UNIX/Linux/Windows - Permissions are security settings restricting or allowing users to access information of perform certain functions at the operating system level. In the case of files on UNIX or Linux systems, there are three types of permissions: read, write, and execute.

project #

An open-source collaborative effort; there are several types of projects in the Drupal community, including contributed modules, contributed themes, handbook documentation on the drupal.org web site, and the core Drupal software itself.

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R

role #

Roles are sets of permissions that can be applied to individual users. Users can belong to more than one role. Two roles, authenticated users (those users that sign up for an account) and anonymous users (those either without an account or not logged in), are supplied by default with Drupal installations. Users with sufficient permission can create additional roles, and the permissions granted to the two default roles can also be configured.

RSS #

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document (which is called a feed or web feed or channel) contains either a summary of content (teaser) from an associated web site or the full text.

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S

story #

A type of node that is defined in a default Drupal installation, typically used for content that has a date associated with it, such as a news item.

style #

A CSS file (or files) replacing the default CSS of a theme or engine. Appears in the theme selection list with the same precedence as themes and templates.

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T

tarball #

In computing, tar ("short for tape archive") is both a file format and the name of the program used to handle such files. The jargon term tarball is used to describe an archive that has been created with the tar command. A .tar file is commonly referred to as a tarball. Tarballs are used within the developer community to collate collections of files into one larger file, for distribution or archiving, while preserving file system information such as user and group permissions, dates, and directory structures.

taxonomy #

Taxonomy is literally "the science of classification". The Drupal taxonomy system enables authorized users to categorize content using both tags and administrator-defined terms. It is a flexible tool for classifying content with many advanced features. Further information can be found within the taxonomy system documentation.

• term # - a category or tag or keyword ie what gets assigned to nodes. Terms can be structured as children and parents to create hierarchies.
• vocabulary # - a collection of terms that share some sort of relationship with each other. The vocabulary isn't part of any hierarchy as such.
• Taxonomy - the name of the whole system and the name of the module that implements it. In some versions of Drupal, that is also the name of the menu item in the admin menu.
• category # - A synonym for taxonomy, and the name of the menu item in some versions of Drupal.

teaser #

The first few words or sentences of a piece of content, usually with a link to the complete node.

template #

A file that is mostly HTML with some special PHP code to substitute in values provided by an engine.

theme #

A theme is a file or collection of files (PHP, INFO, CSS, JPG, GIF, PNG), which together determine the look and feel of a site. Drupal modules define themeable functions which can be overridden by the theme file. There are additional themes available in the themes section of downloads.

theme engine #

A theme engine is a set of scripts that interprets code and makes theming a site easier. This takes the dynamically generated content and outputs it to HTML. Drupal has three theme engines in addition to being able to write a theme that bypasses the theme engine. The default theme engine is phpTemplate. See the theme engines section of downloads for contributed engines.

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U

URL (uniform resource locator) #

A URL is the address that defines the route to locate an object on an Internet server. Generally, the syntax for a URL contains the scheme, host-name, port, path and filename, for example; http://www.drupal.org/node/937

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V

Views #

A contributed module which allows site developers a simple graphical interface for modifying the presentation of content. Views permits selection of specific fields to display, filtration against various node attributes, choice of basic layout options (ie. list, full nodes, teasers, etc.), and other more advanced features. Many Drupal sites use Views extensively.

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W

weight #

Weight is a term used by Drupal to define the priority or order in which an function is processed or a block / node is displayed. From Drupal 6, the weight field is adjusted dynamically using a drag-and-drop interface. Note: A lower weight value (-10) will float to the top of lists, while heavier (+10) weights will appear lower in lists.

WYSIWYG #

WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, used in computing to describe a method in which content is edited and formatted by interacting with an interface that closely resembles the final product.

Other resources

For alternative explanations of Drupal terms, these external sites may be useful:

• "Getting started with Drupal" page by the IBM Internet Technology Group