Chapter 1, Installing and Configuring Drupal, begins with the Drupal fundamentals seeing how to install and configure a standard Drupal installation.

Chapter 2, Creating and Publishing Content, introduces the principles and methods of creating content, in addition to exploring the attributes and features common to Drupal content nodes, such as comments.

Chapter 3, Working with Blocks, explains how to create a range of blocks, from the basic content block, to the more advanced blocks used in menus and blocks created from views.

Chapter 4, Custom Content Types, explains how to create and configure simple and advanced custom content types.

Chapter 5, Using Views to Create Custom Lists, Grids, and Tables, explains how to create a wide range of views for uses such as news listings and image galleries.

Chapter 6, Creating Flexible Pages using Panels, explores the various ways to make use of panels. We see how to add content to panels, and how we can customize their layout for any situation.

Chapter 7, Working with Media, explains how to manipulate and utilize media files within your custom content types.

Chapter 8, Integrating Web APIs, explains how we can integrate with many of the social sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, and also how to integrate with Google maps, and the Add This bookmarking service.

Chapter 9, Creating Regular, Mobile, and Tablet Themes, explains how to build a new theme using a base theme, and then how to optimize and customize a theme.

Chapter 10, Working with Other Languages, explains how to use the third-party language modules that provide localization for all content within the system. Additionally, we explore how to manage languages, and how to switch between languages.

Chapter 11, Managing Users, explores the main tasks involved with user management, from creating and editing user accounts, to managing roles and permissions.

Chapter 12, Running Drupal, explores the issues relating to the day-to-day administration, including, updating modules, security, and backup.

To run the examples in the book following software will be required:

Web Server:

Apache recommended (The Drupal installation recipe is specific to an Apache installation).

Database:

Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle are supported by an additional module

PHP:

FTP client:

There are a number of free FTP clients; this is the recommended, cross-platform client:

Text editor:

For editing local PHP, HTML, and CSS files, it's useful, but not essential, to use a tool such as Dreamweaver or Notepad++. Of course, you can always use a native text editor such as Notepad, if you would prefer.

This book is for people who are familiar with the concepts of web development and CMS. If you have previous experience of working with Drupal, then this book will further your knowledge and give you ideas for fun new things to do with Drupal.

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: "Ensure that register globals is set to off in the PHP.ini file."

A block of code is set as follows:

name = Bartik extra
base theme=bartik
description=A Bartik sub-theme which provides a navigation region
core = 7.x

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

<?php
// We hide the comments and links now so that we can render them later.
hide($content['comments']);
hide($content['links']);
?><div class="recipe-instructions"><?php print render($content['body']);?></div><?php
?><div class="recipe-ingredients"><?php print render($content['field_recipe_ingredients']);?></div><?php
print render($content);
?>

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: "Select Standard option and then select Save and continue."

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