HowTo: Create a personal site
To set up a personal site with Drupal, you have to download Drupal, install it, and then add these modules:
This article is intended for readers who know how to:
- Install Drupal
- Install and activate modules
- Access the administration pages of a site
If you aren't comfortable doing the above tasks, you can find more information in the handbook. If the administration panel is too confusing, you might find the Drupal Administration Menu module helpful.
1. The Foundation
After you have created an admin account. Start change the basic information of your site destination (Administer > Site Information)
Activate all the third party modules mentioned in the start and core modules include Blog, Blog API, Path, Ping, Profile, Contact and Upload. destination (Administer > Site building > Modules)
Create a free tagging vocabulary that work on each one of the the contents
destination (Administer > Content management > Categories > Add vocabulary)
2. The about page
Almost every site in the world have an about page. For a personal site, maybe write something about who you are (Facebook widgets), your interests (Twitter and Delicious) and your debts (NetworthIQ stats).
Drupal came with the content type "Page". destination (Create content > Page)
It's like writing a post for all kind of Drupal pages, it's best to select it as Full HTML.
3. The blog
Drupal have a built in module for blogging. destination (Create content > Blog).
Nice paths
The blog module is simple, it don't even have a neat a URL like http://example.com/2007/12/08/blog-entry-title. The path module is required for nice URLs.
By activating the path module, a new field gets activated, the URL path settings.
If you are a casual blogger, writing it yourself isn't a big deal. But if you are lazy or blogging intensively, the pathauto module you activated can do the dirty work for you.
Go to the main configuration to pathauto. destination (Administer > Site configuration > Pathauto)
Nothing much need to be changed, except the Node Path Settings. For blogs, it's best to have url in the yyyy/mm/dd/title format. For pages, just a title is enough.
Submit and it's done. After that, any post created will automatically follows the convention setting in the pathauto module.
Smileys please
You have already activated the smileys module, why isn't there any smiley selection box when you are writing a post? To show smileys box, you have to set it manually.
destination (Administer > Site configuration > Smileys > Settings)
Enable showing smileys box on both nodes and comments.
3. Reviews on books/CDs/sites
There are two options to do reviews. Using the book review module, or CCK + Views. Using the previous one can not show the real power of Drupal + CCK + Views. Using CCK + Views can do more than just reviews, other contents are possible.
Create a new content, reviews
First, create a new content type, "reviews". destination (Administer>Content management>Content types>Add content type)
Then, edit the reviews content type, one of the new options from CCK will come up, add field.
Chose add field. Add a new field called ratings, then chose it as text/selected list and create field.
After that, go to the bottom of the page and find allowed text, add some possible values for ratings and submit.
Now, a new field will appear in the review content type, and will allow selection of the rating.
View all the reviews
How can reviews get presented? Like all the reviews posted on the website.
Views module is exactly the one to use. destination (Site Building > Views > Add)
Give the view a name.
Provide a page view and set the url to access the view. view type is a full node, set the title to anything you want.
Go to filters and set which node will be filtered out and presented to the reader. In this case select Node: Published, Node: Distinct and Node Type as reviews.
Create a sorting criteria, sorting by time posted is reasonable.
Save and create a link to the reviews in the menu. destination (Site Building -> Menus -> Add Menu item)
The reviews are successfully integrated into the site! It can be accessed directly though the menu.
4. Gallery
A personal gallery that show your looks, can be created with CCK and views. But this section will introduce the alternative, the Gallery module, it acts as a bridge, connect Drupal with Gallery, a professional PHP gallery system. For the CCK version, please read the how to page in the handbook.
First of all, install Gallery according to the steps on its wiki. Install it in a new directory, call it"gallery2" and put it in the Drupal root directory. Remember to activate the image block module for Gallery.
destination (Administer > Site configuration > Gallery settings)
Usually, gallery can configure it self, but in case it doesn't, it will show you all the errors and ways to fix it.
The really nice thing about gallery module is that most configuration are already done, include the menu, navigation and such. Only the blocks need to be considered now.
Go to the block configuration page, activate. Gallery Image Block, and Gallery Navigation.
Time to add some photos into the gallery. A link to gallery suppose to be in the menu. When there is no photos, there is a huge link saying "add photos".
Adding photos is easy, just go with the instructions
After uploading it, a page will show up with the link to the new photos
The result looks nice :)
5. Contact form
You might have(or more likely haven't) left your contact information in the about page, but there are lazy people who doesn't want to touch the email clients. Built a contact form saves some potential friends :)
destination (Administer > Site building > Contact form > Add category)
Follow the instructions, image below shows a good example
Go to the list of the menus and activate the contact form
The contact form now can be accessed in the menu.