Drupal 7 Cookbook

324 Pages·2012·4.571 MB·English

by  Dylan Spencer James

Drupal 7 Cookbook
Over 70 recipes that will advance your Drupal skills from
novice to pro
Dylan James
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
Drupal 7 Cookbook
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: July 2012
Production Reference: 1050712
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK..
ISBN 978-1-84951-796-6
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Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Dylan James Michelle Quadros
Proofreader
Reviewers
Aaron Nash
Jacques R. Blier
Anand Narayanaswamy
Indexer
Veturi JV Subramanyeswari
Hemangini Bairi
Acquisition Editor
Graphics
Sarah Cullington
Manu Joseph
Lead Technical Editor Production Coordinator
Shreerang Deshpande Nilesh R. Mohite
Technical Editor
Cover Work
Madhuri Das
Nilesh R. Mohite
About the Author
Dylan James is an open source developer from and based in South Wales. After gaining
a Computer Science degree from Cardiff University, Dylan got experience as a database
developer for Walkers snack foods before going on to work at the Welsh media company,
Tinopolis Interactive, where he worked as a Lead Flash developer on some large projects for
clients such as the BBC, LearnDirect, the MoD, and The Cambridge University Press. It was at
Tinopolis that Dylan got his first taste of developing using open source platforms, delivering
sites for clients using Joomla and Moodle.
After leaving Tinopolis in 2010, Dylan began working at a web agency in Swansea, creating
Drupal websites for some high profile clients.
For updates and errata, please visit www.dylanspencerjames.com
If I would like to thank my parents, Janice and Julian, my sister Lauren, her
husband Kristian, and all of my friends, for all of their encouragement and
support, and the occasional sanity check!
About the Reviewers
Jacques R. Blier, with his background in typography and communications, got quickly
interested in Internet technologies. Since 1994, he has participated in the creation and
implementation of Internet websites, and also provided training on new technologies. In
2004 he created his own computer services and communications business, xMac info.
With extensive experience in sales, technical support, training, networking, and user interface
design for software used by cellular operators, Jacques became interested in Drupal, since
2005. Since then, he has been using this development platform for creating and developing
all types of websites. He specializes in CSS and prefers to create the Drupal themes that
people ask him, from scratch.
Anand Narayanaswamy is an ASPInsider who works as a freelance technical writer
based in Trivandrum, India. He had worked as a technical editor/reviewer for various
publishers such as Sams, Addison-Wesley, Mc Graw Hill, Packt, and ASPAlliance.com. Anand
has expertise in the installation, management, and usage of popular ASP.NET and PHP based
blogs/Content Management Systems (CMS). He is the author of Community Server Quickly
(www.packtpub.com/community-server/book) published by Packt Publishing and runs
www.learnxpress.com.
First, I would like to thank the almighty for giving me the strength and
energy to work every day. I specially thank my father, mother, and brother
for providing valuable help, support, and encouragement. I also thank
Michelle Quadros, Project Coordinator, Packt Publishing for her assistance,
cooperation, and understanding throughout the review process of this book.
Sree (also known as Veturi JV Subramanyeswari) is currently working as Drupal
Architect at a well known software consulting MNC in India. Post joining this company
she served a few Indian MNCs, many start ups, and R&D sectors in various roles such as
programmer, tech lead, and research assistant. She has around 8 years of work experience
in web technologies covering media and entertainment, publishing, healthcare, enterprise
architecture, manufacturing, public sector, defense communication, gaming, and so on.
She is also a well known speaker who delivers talks on Drupal, Open Source, PHP, Women
in Technology, and so on.
She reviewed other tech books such as the following :
f Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration
f Building Powerful and Robust Websites with Drupal 6
f Drupal 6 Module development
f PHP Team Development
f Drupal-6-site-blueprints
f Drupal 6 Attachment Views
f Drupal E-Commerce with Ubercart 2.x
f Drupal 7: First Look
I would like to thank my family and friends, who supported me in completing
my reviews on time to a high quality.
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: Installing and Configuring Drupal 7
Introduction 7
Installing Drupal 8
Installing Drupal distributions 13
Installing modules and themes 14
Setting up site search 16
Creating a multi-site Drupal installation 18
Chapter 2: Creating and Publishing Content 21
Introduction 21
Creating a basic page and adding it to the main menu 22
Installing and configuring a WYSIWYG editor 26
Editing existing content and adding an image 29
Adjusting the tabbed settings for content nodes 33
Configuring comments 36
Publishing an RSS feed of basic pages 39
Chapter 3: Working with Blocks 41
Introduction 41
Adding a new block 42
Creating a submenu block 45
Creating a Superfish menu block 49
Creating a block with Views 52
Adding a new block region to a theme 55
Creating a mega-footer menu 59
Conditional display of a block 64