Beginner

Drupal 8 for Absolute Beginners is your definitive guide to starting from scratch with Drupal even if you have little web knowledge. This book teaches you the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP in relation to Drupal, so that you can begin to use this popular CMS with all of its features.
You will first learn how to set up and customize a basic blog using Drupal, one of the most powerful and popular content management systems available today. From there you will learn the basics of HTML, CSS, JavaScript and PHP, and apply this knowledge to create your own custom Drupal module. You will learn how to build, style, and add functionality to your own Drupal module from scratch. You will then use Drush to apply a theme to Drupal, customizing everything to your liking, before publishing your work to the world. The book also covers some more advanced topics that beginners often ask about, such as getting set up with Git and using source control, using MySQL to interact with a database, and a guide to getting up and running with Linux.
Rarely has all the knowledge required to start with Drupal been collated in one place as it is in Drupal 8 for Absolute Beginners. You need no prior knowledge of the web, only a desire to learn. The book is fully supported by video material on the author's website. Start your Drupal journey with this book today!

Beginning Drupal 8 teaches you how to build, maintain, and manage Drupal 8-based web sites. The book covers using Drupal when building a new web site, what Drupal is, installing and configuring Drupal, creating and managing content, managing users, adding functionality to your web site through Drupal modules, and more advanced topics on using themes, panels, and views. The book also builds practical examples of common Drupal sites, such as a company website, a community website, and a commerce website, that you can take and expand on to create your own Drupal 8 sites.

By reading this book, you will understand the power of the Drupal platform, and why you should be using Drupal if you're not already. Through following the samples in the book, you will quickly build your confidence and your ability to use Drupal. Beginning Drupal 8 gives you the knowledge necessary to build, deploy, and manage web sites of moderate complexity on Drupal 8.

What you’ll learn

• What Drupal is and why you should use it
• How to install a basic Drupal web site from scratch
• How to create content in your new Drupal web site
• How to manage users on your new Drupal web site
• How to change the look and feel of your new Drupal web site through themes
• How to install and configure modules

Who this book is for

This book is for nontechnical users who need to use Drupal 8 to manage content, as well as developers who are new to Drupal 8.

Table of Contents:

1. Introduction to Drupal
2. Creating and Managing Content
3. Creating and Managing Users
4. Creating and Using Taxonomy
5. Creating Content Types
6. Creating and Using Views
7. Creating and Using Page Payouts
8. Creating and Using Menus
9. Creating and Using Blocks
10. Theming Your Site
11. Making Your Site Responsive
12. Extending Your Site Through Contributed Modules
13. The Anatomy of a Module
14. Using Multilingual
15. Administering Your Drupal Site
16. Using Drush
17. Using Git
18. Putting It All Together
19. Building a Blog Site
20. Building a Company Website
21. Building a Community Website
22. Building a Commerce Website

App A: Modules
App B: Learn More

Beginner level is aimed at those people with or without technical training, who want to start creating Websites. It is also very useful for companies or professionals who wish to create their professional or personal Website without depending on external assistance. At this level, the aim is for the student to acquire sound basic knowledge in order to tackle the following educational levels with guarantees.

Contents:

• 1. Introduction to Drupal
• 2. Drupal installation
• 3. Administration area
• 4. Content management
• 5. Content types
• 6. Menu management
• 7. Blocks management
• 8. Themes
• 9. Extending functionality with modules
• 10. Management of users, roles and permissions
• 11. Taxonomy
• 12. Text formats and WYSIWYG editors
• 13. Blogs
• 14. Forums
• 15. Structured documents: Books
• 16. Media Galleries
• 17. Searches
• 18. Languages and translation
• 19. Access statistics
• 20. Website management, maintenance and updating
• Annex A. Configuration of the hosting and necessary tools
• Annex B. Links and resources of interest

If you’re a web programmer, your experiences have taught you certain lessons—and only some of them apply well to Drupal. Drupal has its own set of programming principles that require a different approach, and many programmers make mistakes when relying on skills they’ve used for other projects. This book will show you which programming techniques you can use—and which you should avoid—when building web applications with this popular content management framework.

Updated to cover both Drupal 7 and Drupal 8, the guidelines in this book demonstrate which programming practices conform to the "Drupal way" and which don’t. The book also serves as an excellent guide for Drupal 7 programmers looking to make the transition to Drupal 8.

• Get an overview of Drupal, including Drupal core and add-on modules and themes
• Learn Drupal’s basic programming principles, such as the ability to customize behavior and output with hooks
• Compare Drupal 7 and Drupal 8 programming methods, APIs, and concepts
• Discover common Drupal programming mistakes—and why hacking is one of them
• Explore specific areas where you can put your programming skills to work
• Learn about the new object-oriented Drupal 8 API, including plugins and services

What you will learn from this book

• Understand Drupal theme structure and terminology
• Configure raw HTML in a Drupal environment
• Populate Drupal themes with dynamic content
• Learn how to customize the search result page and how to add regions to your home page
• Discover the best practices and conventions of using Drupal to speed up your development

In Detail

Drupal’s theme layer, and the themes that use it, are responsible for the look and feel of a Drupal web site. Themes have the final say and ultimate control over almost every aspect of each page. Good themes consist of all the same elements that you would find on any reputable web site, including standards-compliant XHTML markup, CSS, and JavaScript. How it all comes together is what is so special and what makes Drupal themes so flexible and powerful.

Premium Drupal Themes is a practical, hands-on guide filled with clear, step-by-step examples which shows you how to create Drupal themes using HTML. This book will show you the best practices and conventions that you should adopt and utilize so you can change the way Drupal looks using HTML without wasting energy digging through Drupal’s code.

Starting with the essentials including Drupal terminology and Drupal theme structures, this book will show you how to configure raw HTML in a Drupal environment. You will learn about the Drupal template variables and also how to populate a Drupal theme with dynamic content. You will also discover how to customize the search result page and how to add regions to your home page. This book will help you familiarize yourself with the theme engines and will help you learn about the core of Drupal’s theme rendering system. Finally, you will learn how to create your very own Drupal theme that will take people’s breath away!

Approach

Filled with practical, step-by-step instructions and clear explanations for the most important and useful tasks. A step-by-step guide filled with recipes that will show you how to create your very own Drupal themes using HTML.

Who this book is for

This book is great for developers who are new to Drupal. It is assumed that you have some experience in HTML, PHP, and CSS. You’ll need a PHP (LAMP/WAMP) environment to install Drupal. It is also assumed that you know how to install Drupal. Some familiarity with CMS will be useful but is not essential.

What you will learn from this book

• Set up a custom WYSIWYG profile and text format
• Learn to manage and embed images in content, and create image galleries and albums
• Manage and embed videos and audio playlists
• Set up HTML5-based video and audio players and integrate with JavaScript libraries for native browser support
• Enhance images with visual effects, and media content with multiple upload widgets, social ratings, watermark effects, and other community-contributed modules
• Create an HTML5-based canvas drawing application
• Build a responsive web design layout and semantic website with HTML5 and modern themes

In Detail

Integrating images, video, and audio content on a Drupal site requires knowledge of appropriate community modules, and an understanding of how to configure and connect them properly. With the power of up-to-date technologies such as HTML5, responsive web design, and the best modules available in Drupal's eco-system, we can create the best Drupal 7 media website.

Drupal 7 Media is a practical, hands-on guide that will introduce you to the basic structure of a Drupal site and guide you through the integration of images, videos, and audio content. Learn to leverage the most suitable community modules and up-to-date technology such as HTML5 to offer a great user experience through rich media content.

The book begins with a practical introduction to the basic Drupal building blocks. It then breaks down each media resource, and explores them in detail.

You will learn how to leverage Drupal’s community modules to implement support for images, videos, and audio content, along with the best practices for implementation. We will be mentioning ideas throughout the book, which you can extend upon and use to build your own web applications. We will explore HTML5 support for media resources, the semantic web, and responsive web design, which are key topics in modern web application development. We will then build upon this knowledge and add more functionality to our sample website, such as support for analytic charts and customizing images, all of which we will implement using our own custom modules.

You will learn everything you need to know about building, extending, and configuring a Drupal 7 media web application.

Approach

This is a practical, hands-on guide packed with examples that will help you build rich Drupal 7 media web applications.

Who this book is for

If you are a Drupal site builder and you wish to spice up your web applications with rich media content, then this book is for you. A basic understanding of HTML, JavaScript, and basic PHP module development in Drupal would be helpful, but is not necessary.