Site administrators

Given that GATE Village is built on Drupal it seems appropriate I should speak to Drupal performance in a general sense -- it's ability to perform was actually one of it's selling points for me. On of the most significant performance impact on Drupal is, of course, at the DB ... while there is a lot of logic in the code, all of the data lives in the DB and thus DB performance and DB bloat are always front and centre to a Drupal installation.

Next to security, Performance is arguably the least understood characteristic of web applications. One old colleague put it best when he talked about there being really only two states: satisfactory and not-satisfactory ... there is really no middle ground there, things are either fast enough or they are not. Unfortunately, it is also nearly impossible to know ahead of time exactly what "fast enough" is ... with "Google-speed" setting the bar for public web sites and CMS systems using authenticated almost exclusively, there is a serious performance problem waiting in the wings at all time. This was true for Livelink and no less true for Drupal.

It should come as no surprise that a geek like myself started with Architecture -- it is a passion of mine and it is also important to start out on the right foot. I wrote many white papers on the architecture required for various solutions espousing on the importance of creating your architecture up front and so that is what I did.

Given that Drupal and, in fact, virtually all CMS systems are simply front-ends to a relational database, the first thing to look at was a DB. As a startup company I knew I didn't want to give Oracle any of my money for their database ... I could go on for a while on this topic but frankly, like many of the software giants, Oracle's DB is overpriced and overhyped ... it is a good DB, for sure, but it is expensive as hell and the support provided is minimal at best. I've often seen implementations of Livelink where the DB costs dominate the equation and wished for an alternative for (at least) the small to medium sized sites. Livelink works with MS-SQL but despite appearances, that too is an expensive decision because of licensing costs (CALs and the like) but more to the point, I don't like Microsoft software and my (technical) dislike certain extends to MS-SQL.

I have 25+ years working with computers, most of them designing, creating, and maintaining web-based applications and infrastructure. I spent nearly 11 years at Open Text Corporation where I was recognized as one of the most knowledgeable people in all Architecture, Security and Performance related topics -- often the final authority on such matters. About 1 year ago I left Open Text and formed my own business, the Global Alliance of Trusted Experts -- the vision is a set of online communities united under a common framework of the GATE Village Trust System (http://www.gatevillage.net/trust).

I have years of experience as an IT expert, including designing and managing OTs Application Service Provider division and knew without a doubt that Open Text's ECM Suite was not the right platform for my vision -- it is far too centric to a single business, and it has a difficult time hosting multiple, disparate sites on a single platform; that and the cost of the software lead me to look elsewhere. Drupal is where I landed and this book is intended to help explain the journey with a hope that it might help others attempting something similar.

The goals of the site are:

This page is a stub for Drupal 7.

It will eventually explain how to switch and configure themes in Drupal 7.

I suggest waiting until the UX freeze on December 1st before filling out this page, as Drupal 7 is still in flux at time of this writing.

Note: This guide is in progress for Drupal 7. It will eventually contain the same sections as the Drupal 6 site building guide.

The following sections explain how to work with various components, such as blocks, modules, menus and themes, in order to control the look and feel of your site. If you haven't already, read Before you Start to get a better understanding of Drupal Terminology.