Drupal project Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Click on a question to drop down to the answer.

About Drupal

What is Drupal?

Is Drupal the right CMS for my choice?

What is the Drupal Association?

What is the Board of Directors, and who holds these positions?

I would like to help the Drupal project. How do I donate money?

I am not in a position to donate money. Can I help in any other way?

Why does Drupal need a database? What databases are supported?

When will the next version of Drupal be released?

Using Drupal

Drupal is really interesting! How do I get started? Where do I find some tutorials to get me off the ground?

What are the system requirements for my Drupal server?

Where can I download Drupal?

Why are so many Drupal versions available - 4.x, 5.x ...? Which one should I use?

Why should I use Drupal, and not any other CMS? How does Drupal compare to Joomla, ...

Where is the Drupal API located?

How do I make an offline copy of the Drupal API for my reference?

Where can I get support related to Drupal?

What should I keep in mind while creating a Drupal site?

I encountered a bug in Drupal! How do I inform the developers?

OK, so Drupal is great. What all sites use it?

Where can I watch some videocasts demonstrating the use of Drupal?

Wow Drupal is great! Can I migrate my Wordpress site to Drupal?

I would like to buy a book on Drupal. Where can I find a list?

Can I use Drupal on the command line?

What is a sandbox? How do I set up one for my Drupal site?

What are module weights? What difference would it make to my site?

Are backups essential in Drupal? How do I backup my site?

Configuring Drupal

What are Drupal modules?

What are .info files, and how do I write them?

What are .install files, and how do I write them?

What are Acidfree Albums?

What is the akismet module?

What is the Autopilot project?

Can Drupal act as a feed aggregator?

What is this CCK thing I keep hearing about?

How do I use JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX in my Drupal site?

How do I span one Drupal site across multiple domains?

Can I use the reCAPTCHA program in my Drupal site?

What is the views module?

How do I set up a wiki with Drupal?

How do I set up a FAQ section like this?

Troubleshooting - See the Troubleshooting FAQ

IRC

Can I use IRC for support? Which is the right channel to ask for support?

Help! No one answers me in #drupal or #drupal-support!

I need to show my code to others. Can I paste it directly into the channel?

Theme Development

I want to make my own theme for Drupal. How do I get started? Is there a theme I could base on?

I want to modify something on my site. Can I just make the changes I need to the core files / module files?

Developing for Drupal

How do I get the latest bleeding-edge code of Drupal?

Is there any code convention or coding style that Drupal suggests?

Does Drupal support the Doxygen documentation system?

Why is Drupal code not Object Oriented?

Licensing and Trademark

What license does Drupal use for its code?

Why is Drupal a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert? Does that mean it is not free?

Drupal.org

I like the theme that the drupal.org site uses. Where can I get it?

Where can I get the bluebeach theme?

Who maintains the drupal.org website?

What hardware does drupal.org server run on?

Answers:

About Drupal

What is Drupal?

Drupal is an open-source platform and content management system for building dynamic web sites offering a broad range of features and services including user administration, publishing workflow, discussion capabilities, news aggregation, metadata functionalities using controlled vocabularies and XML publishing for content sharing purposes. Equipped with a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal can support a diverse range of web projects ranging from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.
You can read more on the About Drupal page.

Is Drupal the right CMS for my choice?

We've set up a page to specifically answer this question.

What is the Drupal Association?

The Drupal Association is an organization dedicated to helping the open-source Drupal CMS project flourish. It helps the Drupal community with funding, infrastructure, events, promotion and distribution.
To learn more about the Association, navigate to Drupal Association website.

What is the Board of Directors, and who holds these positions?

The Drupal Association Board of Directors handles the day-to-day affairs of the organization, and include the persons holding permanent Association positions of President, Treasurer, and Secretary, as well as the additional positions of Event Manager, Technical Project Manager, Fundraiser, Communications and PR Officer, Association Infrastructure Manager, and Community Infrastructure Manager. Terms for Board of Directors members are fixed at two years for President, Treasurer, and Secretary, and one year for all other positions. The Staff Page of the Drupal Association's official site contains a list of members currently holding these positions.

I would like to help the Drupal project. How do I donate money?

Thank you so much! Donations are accepted at the Drupal Association donation page. Donations are used for things like improving architecture, helping to organize Drupal-related events, marketing efforts, and so on. Please read the Donation FAQ too.

I am not in a position to donate money. Can I help in any other way?

We understand that not everyone can donate money. However, you can still help is many other ways - coding, writing documentation, testing patches etc. Please read the Contribution Page to find something that interests you.

Why does Drupal need a database? What databases are supported?

Drupal stores its information - the individual pages, the registered users, and so on - in the database. The database forms the back-end for your Drupal site. At this time, Drupal supports only MySQL and PostgreSQL.

When will the next version of Drupal be released?

Like many other open source projects, Drupal uses the It will be released when it is ready philosophy.

Using Drupal

Drupal is really interesting! How do I get started? Where do I find some tutorials to get me off the ground?

Welcome to the Drupal community! The best starting point for new users is the Drupal Handbook.

What are the system requirements for my Drupal server?

Drupal is pretty light on system resources, being based on PHP. The only restriction currently is on the database - you must use either one from MySQL or PosgreSQL. You can check the detailed system requirements here.

Where can I download Drupal?

All supported releases are available on the Download page. In general, however, you should download the latest version. Read the next question if you need help in figuring out which version to download.

Why are so many Drupal versions available - 4.x, 5.x ...? Which one should I use?

It is recommended that you run the most current stable release. This can always be found at the Drupal Project page. However, if there are no compelling features in the latest version, a contrib module that is important to you isn't ready or you don't have time, there is no need to rush your upgrade as long as security updates are available for the version you are running. For more information, refer to the Version info page.

Why should I use Drupal, and not any other CMS? How does Drupal compare to Joomla, ...

It is hard for us to give an unbiased reply to that :)
However, recently a lot of articles have been written for comparing CMS'. Use your favorite search engine. You can also try CMSMatrix.
Also, here is an article comparing Drupal specifically with Joomla.

Where is the Drupal API located?

You can read the API online at the API Reference page.

How do I make an offline copy of the Drupal API for my reference?

There is a guide for this purpose.

Where can I get support related to Drupal?

Various options are available - read the Drupal Support page to find out more.

What should I keep in mind while creating a Drupal site?

There is a Best Practices guide which you should follow.

I encountered a bug in Drupal! How do I inform the developers?

You can use the issue tracking system of Drupal. To file new issues, go here.

OK, so Drupal is great. What all sites use it?

It is impossible to single out each site that uses Drupal.. However, you can find a partial list here.

Where can I watch some videocasts demonstrating the use of Drupal?

Many can be found at the Drupal Videocasts page. Thank you to all the contributors who created the videos!

Wow Drupal is great! Can I migrate my Wordpress site to Drupal?

There are some unofficial scripts which are available for this task. However, please note that we cannot provide support if something messes up.
The script is located here.

I would like to buy a book on Drupal. Where can I find a list?

Lately, many books on Drupal are being published. You can find an incomplete list here.
Also try searching in your favorite online bookstore.

Can I use Drupal on the command line?

Yes, you can use drush -

drush is a command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal

Read more about drush at its project page.

What is a sandbox? How do I set up one for my Drupal site?

From wikipedia - Sandbox is an online environment in which code or content changes can be tested without affecting the original system.
New features and modules are demonstrated best in a sandbox. You may use demo module to setup a demonstration site.

What are module weights? What difference would it make to my site?

In Drupal 4.7 and 5.x the order in which a module's hooks get called is dependent on the weight of your module in the system table. You can set a low weight (negative number) to get your module to execute before others. Or, you can set a high weight to execute after other modules.
Read more about weights here.

Are backups essential in Drupal? How do I backup my site?

Like any other media, backups are essential. From the Drupal site -
If a site's data does not exist in three places, it doesn't exist at all.
Read more about backing up your Drupal site here.

Configuring Drupal

What are Drupal modules?

A module is a collection of functions that link into Drupal, providing additional functionality to your Drupal installation.
There is a tutorial available, on the topic Creating Modules.
After reading this tutorial, you will be able to create a basic block module and use it as a template for more advanced modules and node modules.

What are .info files, and how do I write them?

.info files used primarily by the modules administration system for display purposes as well as providing criteria to control activation and deactivation. This file is required for Drupal 5 to recognize the presence of a module.
For more information, read the .info page.

What are .install files, and how do I write them?

.install files used to do module setup work. A .install file is run the first time a module is enabled, and is used to do setup required by the module.
The most common task is creating database tables and fields (which prior to version 4.7 was done manually). .install files are also used to perform updates when a new version of a module needs it.
We have set up a page specifically for this file.

What are Acidfree Albums?

Acidfree Albums is a full-featured media management system for Drupal. You can use it to easily manage your photos and videos with Drupal.
For more information on this module, visit the Acidfree Albums project page.

What is the akismet module?

The akismet module allows you to use the Akismet web service to protect your site from being spammed.
For more information on this module, read the project page of akismet.

What is the Autopilot project?

AutoPilot is a deployment platform for Drupal, designed specifically to take the work out of day-to-day build management for the Drupal CMS.
To read more about the Autopilot project, refer to the Autopilot Project Page.

Can Drupal act as a feed aggregator?

Yes! The news aggregator is a powerful on-site RSS news reader that can gather fresh content from news sites and weblogs around the web and make it available from your site.
You can read more about it at home page of aggregator module..

What is this CCK thing I keep hearing about?

CCK stands for Content Construction Kit. As the community says, CCK is the best thing to come along since the doughnut.
It allows you to create custom content types for a site without having to code them yourself, and it has a plethora of add-on modules to handle different types of fields.
You can find more information at the CCK project page.

How do I use JavaScript, jQuery, and AJAX in my Drupal site?

Drupal includes built-in methods for implementing JavaScript. You can read more about it here.

How do I span one Drupal site across multiple domains?

Multiple Domains is a module which allows you to span one site across multiple domains.
You can read more about it at its project page.

Can I use the reCAPTCHA program in my Drupal site?

Yes, there is a module specifically for that.

What is the views module?

The views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists of content (nodes) are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.
You can read more about it at its project page.
A tutorial is available here.

How do I set up a wiki with Drupal?

There is a fantastic guide here.

Troubleshooting

See the Troubleshooting FAQ.

IRC

Can I use IRC for support? Which is the right channel to ask for support?

Of course, you are welcome to join us on IRC. You will find here a list of Drupal IRC Channels where we hang out on #drupal at freenode.
#drupal is for all questions about code and also about everything pertaining to drupal.org and the Drupal community at large (advocacy, marketing, infrastructure etc.)

Help! No one answers me in #drupal or #drupal-support!

If someone doesn't answer in #drupal-support, your next avenue for support is the Drupal forums.

I need to show my code to others. Can I paste it directly into the channel?

Please do not paste lots of code directly into the channel - it disrupts the flow of conversation. Please use one of the many pastebin services - a nice one to use would be DrupalBin.

Theme Development

I want to make my own theme for Drupal. How do I get started? Is there a theme I could base on?

Zen is the ultimate starting theme for Drupal 5. If you are building your own standards-compliant theme, you will find it much easier to start with Zen than to start with Garland or Bluemarine. This theme has lots of documentation in the form of code comments for both the PHP (template.php) and HTML (page.tpl.php, node.tpl.php).
You can read more about Zen at its project page.

I want to modify something on my site. Can I just make the changes I need to the core files / module files?

Please DO NOT do that. Hacking core means that you won't be able to upgrade your site without losing your changes. You will probably develop strange bugs that we can't fix. You're better off using the hooks system and theme overrides.

Developing for Drupal

How do I get the latest bleeding-edge code of Drupal?

You can checkout the code from Drupal CVS repository. Read the CVS Handbook for more info.
A quickie to check out the head -
cvs -z6 -d:pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs.Drupal.org:/cvs/Drupal checkout Drupal

Is there any code convention or coding style that Drupal suggests?

Yes - The Drupal Coding Standards. Please follow them carefully when submitting any code for inclusion in Drupal project.

Does Drupal support the Doxygen documentation system?

Sure! You can read about it at the the doxygen coding guidelines page.

Why is Drupal code not Object Oriented?

Drupal often gets criticized by newcomers who believe that object-oriented programming (OOP) is always the best way to design software architecture, and since they do not see the word "class" in the Drupal code, it must be inferior to other solutions. However, the design decision was made for a number of reasons, you can read more about this issue.

Licensing and Trademark

What license does Drupal use for its code?

We use the GNU GPL license, version 2.
It is the license that applies to Drupal, as well as any modules and theme engines.

Why is Drupal a registered trademark of Dries Buytaert? Does that mean it is not free?

The software itself is completely free, under the terms of GPL. However, the name Drupal is a registered trademark.
From Dries' own site -

Rest assured that this change is intended only to prevent the 'Drupal' name from being used out of context by overly aggressive entities. Most of you who use Drupal, commercially or otherwise, need not worry. This change will only help ensure that the effort of all the hard working Drupal contributors isn't misappropriated.

You can read more about it at Dries' blog.

Drupal.org

I like the theme that the Drupal.org site uses. Where can I get it?

or

Where can I get the bluebeach theme?

The bluebeach theme will not be released. Please understand that it is done so only to protect the Drupal brand identity! You can read more about this issue.

Who maintains the Drupal.org website?

Site Maintainers page is an alphabetical list of users who have additional permissions to help maintain the Drupal.org website. However, please do not contact them individually, use the issue tracker instead, if you want to file bugs.
There is also a Drupal.org Membership types Table of the different Drupal.org voluntary Teams contributing on this Site.

What hardware does Drupal.org server run on?

You can check out the server specs (Hardware Info-page have to be updated)