First Steps to Building Your Own Website with Drupal

Posted November 5, 2010 — admin | Tags: drupal, beginner, tutorial, getting started

Getting started with Drupal can feel overwhelming at first, but the path from installation to a working website is well-documented and supported by one of the best communities in open source.

Step 1: Download and Install
Head to drupal.org and download the latest stable release. Drupal requires PHP and a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. Most shared hosting providers support these requirements.

Step 2: Configure Your Site
After installation, visit the admin dashboard to configure site name, timezone, and default theme. The Seven admin theme provides a clean interface for content management.

Step 3: Enable Key Modules
Start with modules like Views (for displaying content lists), CCK (for custom fields), and Pathauto (for clean URLs). The Drupal community has modules for almost every need.

Step 4: Create Content Types
Define the types of content your site needs — articles, pages, events, products — and configure the fields for each.

Step 5: Build Your Theme
Either download a contributed theme or build your own using Drupal's PHPTemplate theming engine. The Zen starter theme is popular for custom theme development.