A Drupal overview, originally presented to the Rockville web group at ICF International.

1. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Content Management System
Drupal

2. Introduction to Drupal
Section One

3. ICF International
July 23, 2012
What is Drupal?
“Drupal is a completely free, open source content management system
that many intelligent companies are using today to provide for their
needs. Drupal's many features and add-ons allow it to be used for a
variety of website needs; perhaps for marketing, internal
communications, informational websites, or for social networking
purposes.”
Drupal is a CMS for Building Dynamic Websites
Similar to other CMS solutions, Drupal allows you to easily setup and
deploy a dynamic website solution out of the box.
Drupal is an Application Framework
Extensive API and Hook system allows for rapid development of custom
modules, themes and add-on APIs for developers. Drupal is a PHP based
CMS/Framework.
Drupal is a Social and Semantic Web Platform
Tools have been built into Drupal including support for Resource
Description Framework (RDF) to enable sharing of data with different web
sources.
Drupal is a Community
The Drupal Community is extremely active, especially in the Washington
DC Metro area with conferences, frequent meetups and local user groups.
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/node/add
Content type choices and descriptions
are presented when the editor selects
to add new content to the site.

4. ICF International
July 23, 2012
How Drupal Manages Content
Drupal provides a number of different content types out of the box. These are templates that enable an end user to
create a piece of content that will be published on the site. Content types are managed and published through the
administration area of Drupal and are displayed through a Node.
Node
An individual piece of content: news item, event listing, simple page, blog entry. Nodes can also have custom fields.
Field
Fields can be used to attach images or files to content, create extra descriptors, or reference other nodes.
Block
A standalone piece of reusable content that can be configured to display based on any criteria that you set.
Users, Roles and Permissions
Drupal allows you to create unique roles for anything that might need to happen on your site and set permissions for
each role depending on what that role might need to do.
Module
A plug-in that adds functionality to your site. Out of the box, Drupal provides a strong framework, but the point of
the framework is to add functionality to it using modules.
View
An organized list of individual pieces of content
that you create within the site, using the Views
module.

5. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Drupal and other CMS platforms are constantly in a state of change. Based on past experience with WordPress,
Joomla and custom developed systems, a few comparison notes are provided.
How Drupal Compares to other CMS’s
More information:
http://www.chapterthree.com/blog/jennifer-lampton/wordpress-vs-drupal-saga-continues
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/02/02/joomla-1-6-vs-drupal-7-0/
WordPress
• WordPress was primarily built as a blogging engine and later developed into a CMS. It
is great for developing small to medium sized websites, however it was never built to
scale as an enterprise level CMS.
• Drupal assumes at its core there will be many kinds of users with many requirements.
At its core, WordPress on the other hand was developed only for one type of user in
mind and later adapted accordingly.
• Drupal provides more extensive development framework for many different types of
websites: blogs, forums, e-commerce, CRM, intranets, social networks, news
aggregators, wikis, photo galleries, restaurant review sites.
Joomla
• Joomla is arguably a better product ‘out-of-the-box’ as it provides much of the
expected advanced features of a CMS already built-in.
• Drupal on the other hand is limited out-of-the-box, however it provides a more
extensive framework for developing a more advanced site. “On the same grounds, if
you can master it, Drupal 7.0 is the best CMS”

6. Federal Government, Acquia & Drupal @ ICF
Section Two

7. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Open Government and Drupal
Drupal first gained national attention when the White House announced its move to the open source platform — followed
rapidly by Open Government initiatives driven by Drupal web sites.
On his first day in Office, President Obama signed the Memorandum on Transparency and Open Government, ushering in a
new era of open and accountable government meant to bridge the gap between the American people and their government.
The Administration is tracking how government uses the money with which the people have entrusted it with easy-to-
understand websites based on the Drupal CMS.
Recovery (Recovery.gov) Launched Feb 17th, 2009
• Drupal portal created under the Recovery Act
• Tracks Recovery funds spent by recipients of contracts, grants,
and loans, and the distribution of Recovery entitlements and
tax benefits.
USA Spending (usaspending.gov) June 30th 2009
• Provides information on how US Tax Payers money is spent
• Summaries, trends and data feeds are accessible
IT Dashboard (itdashboard.gov) Launched June 1st 2009
• Federal agencies and the public have the ability to view
details of Federal information technology (IT) investments
online and to track their progress over time
Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/open/about

8. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Government-Aimed Drupal Events
Drupal Government Days – May 18th, 2012
“Across the government, agencies large and small have reaped the benefits of open source web technology and
community collaboration. Now you can learn the best practices for implementing Drupal within you agency by
registering for Drupal Government Days to be held for the first time in Washington, DC.”
Source: http://www.acquia.com/resources/events/drupal-government-days
Sessions
• A Beginner’s guide to using Views
• Open Source Mapping Tools
• Workbench: Managing Content
• Designing for Accessibility
• Collaboration and Open Atrium
• Responsive Design with Drupal

9. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Government-Aimed Drupal Events
Capital Camp 2012 – July 27th, 2012
CapitalCamp is the DrupalCamp for Washington, DC bringing together developers, designers, open government
advocates, IT managers and anyone else that wants to find out more about Drupal.
DrupalCamp an unconference-style Drupal training, founded in the style of BarCamp. While there are some
differences (DrupalCamp does more pre-planning on the sessions), they have the common goal of bringing smart
people together in an environment that is accessible to everyone.
Training Programs
• Beginner & Intermediate Training
• Drupal Theme Development
• Custom Module Development
• Best Practices
In addition to the training programs, a number
of conference sessions will be available on the
27th-28th July.

10. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Acquia
About Acquia
Acquia was founded by Dries Buytaert, the original creator and
project lead of the Drupal project, and Jay Batson, previously founder
and CEO of Pingtel. They offer the following types of services:
Development
Acquia offer different Drupal based distributions including dev
desktop for developers, Acquia Drupal with useful modules,
Conference Organizing Distribution, Drupal Commons and Open
Scholar.
Hosting
Drupal Gardens is a free hosted Drupal distribution. Also provide dev
and managed cloud hosting options.
Management
Acquia Network, Drupal Support, Remote Administration and
Professional Services.
Training
Acquia Library, Drupal Training and Free Webinars.
http://www.acquia.com

11. ICF International
July 23, 2012
ICF Drupal Projects: Koshland Science Museum
Informational Site for Museum Visitors
Provides up-to-date information on museum
exhibits, tour information for groups and latest
news and events.
Interactive Showcases
Provides online interactive multi-media
exhibits for user’s to explore and interact with
the science.
Challenges
Custom developed Challenges system allows
for scientific challenge competitions
submitted, voted on and administered through
the site.
Convio API Integration
Provides event and ticketing information via a
custom developed Convio API module.
Community
Online Forum integrated directly into the site
for visitors to discuss the issues.
User Roles
Custom defined user roles available for staff,
volunteers and advisory personnel along with
custom permissions, avatars and
administration.

12. ICF International
July 23, 2012
ICF Drupal Projects: Better Buildings Challenge
Informational Site
Containing directories of organizations
partnering for more energy efficient buildings.
Searchable Content
All participating organizations are searchable
via the Drupal search interface and contain
partner pages, showcases and implementation
models.
Rich Content
The site incorporates latest standards for
embedded content, light box popup
information and JavaScript carousel sliders.
Media
Houses embedded video and content from
YouTube.
Interactivity
A partner map provides an interactive way to
view information using the Google Map API.
Quick Updates
A vital part of the site is the ease of updating
information which changes on a regular basis.

13. Drupal Development
Section Three

14. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Developing in Drupal
Local Development Environment
Drupal uses the same typical Apache, MySQL and PHP (AMP) stack as
many other popular open source applications use.
On Windows, either WAMP or XAMP environment can be used.
On Mac, MAMP can be used.
Drupal requires one MySQL database.
Acquia Dev Desktop
An installable version of Drupal for Mac, Windows and Linux that comes
prepackaged with the AMP stack.
https://www.acquia.com/products-services/dev-desktop
Drupal Gardens
A service of Acquia called Drupal Gardens offers free hosted Drupal sites.
Highly convenient for those who do not have the means to install locally.
http://www.acquia.com/drupal-gardens
Development Stack Downloads
WAMP: http://www.wampserver.com/en/
XAMPP: http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html
MAMP: http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html

15. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Common Drupal development involves the following different phases, not necessarily in any specific order. Existing
contributed modules are widely available within the Drupal community, however most are open-source contributions
so care should be taken before implementation into a production environment.
Use Existing Modules
Drupal has an extensive library of ‘contrib’ modules which are readily available for download and
customization into any Drupal installation via drupal.org. Select modules for ‘some’ functionality.
Write Custom Modules
Next you will want to develop your own custom modules to fill in spaces of missing functionality or
improve upon existing contrib modules.
Configure the Site
Site configuration can be an ongoing process which will increase with complexity dependent on
the amount of modules, size of site, user role, permissions, content types, etc.
Theme it
Theming can occur in parallel to other development activities. Drupal’s theming engine also
provides extensions to the modules.
“There’s a Module for That!”

16. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Creating Custom Modules
Module
.info file
.module file
Associated
inc or tpl files
Drupal's module system is based on the concept of "hooks". A hook is a
PHP function that is named based on the module it is a part of.
Hooks
Hooks let any module, including your module, appear in another part of
Drupal and do something.
When Drupal takes an action it considers important (loading content,
saving a user account, displaying a comment, etc.), it takes a moment to
invite any installed module to observe or intervene.
Every hook is an opportunity for your module to take action in response
to something Drupal is doing.
There are over 251 hooks in Drupal core, full documentation is available
at: http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal.
Module Structure
Every module is stored in the /sites/all/modules folder
All modules contain a .info file and a .module file
To implement a hook, take the “hook” part off the front of the hook name and replace it
with your module’s short (machine) name. For example hook_username_alter() is
implemented in a module called the displayroles as displayroles_username_alter().

17. Drupal and Responsive Design
Section Four

18. ICF International
July 23, 2012
What is Responsive Design?
Years ago we only needed to concern ourselves with the standard
monitor resolution of laptops and PCs and cross-browser compatibility.
Today we have smartphones, tablets, netbooks, laptops, PCs, all with
different screen sizes - we still need to develop our site to respond to all
of these devices. Responsive Design incorporates a flexible CSS
framework that will adapt automatically to different device / resolution
screen sizes.
Create a single site and design a framework that adapts to any screen size
Tweak the design at different screen sizes to improve the overall user
experience
The advantage of this approach is that it is usually much easier than
building out separate experiences for different devices.
Content type choices and descriptions
are presented when the editor selects
to add new content to the site.
Koshland Science Museum
was developed using a
Responsive Framework.
<link rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css”
media=“screen and (min-width: 960px)” href=“/style.css />
@media screen and (min-width: 960px) {
left-column {
float: left;
width: 60%;
}
}

19. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Using Responsive Design with Drupal
All modules above can be found at http://www.drupal.org and more information about Omega can be found at
http://omega.developmentgeeks.com
There are several responsive add-ons available for Drupal. Omega is Responsive and Mobile First Drupal Base Theme
based on the 960 grid system. Other add-ons listed below can be used in conjunction with a responsive base theme.
Responsive Base Themes
Modules
3rd Party Adapted Libraries
Drupal 7
Omega Tools Touch Icons Adaptive
Images
Maximenu Mobile Tools*
Omega
Theme
Adaptive
Theme
jQuery Mobile Flex Slider

20. The Drupal Community
Section Five

21. ICF International
July 23, 2012
The Drupal Ladder Initiative
drupalladder.org contains lessons and materials to help people learn
about and contribute to Drupal. The site was created by the Boston
Initiative to help Drupal user groups develop and share and develop
materials for learn sprints and issue sprints.
The ladder teaches essential skills
for contributing to Drupal 8 Core.
Start on the bottom rung if you are a
beginner, and climb as you acquire
the skills and knowledge described
in each lesson.

22. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Local User Groups: Washington DC Druplers
“This group has a great meetup every month where we get together to
connect in person. The target audience is Drupal developers, users, and
people who want to learn more about Drupal. We start the meetups with
a round of very focused lightning talks that discuss real world solutions to
existing problems, new work people have done, and Drupal news.”
http://groups.drupal.org/washington-dc-drupalers
- Learn about latest Drupal events in the area
- Training resources, support, freelance opportunities
2 Meetings per month (Baltimore and Columbia MD)

23. ICF International
July 23, 2012
Drupal Resources
Training Resources:
http://www.buildamodule.com (subscription)
http://drupalize.me (subscription)
http://nodeone.se/learning-library (free)
http://www.lynda.com/Drupal-training-tutorials/186-0.html (subscription)
Books:
Doyle, M. (2009). Beginning PHP 5.3. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley Publishing
Melancon, B. (2011). The Definitive Guide to Drupal 7. New York, NY: Apress
Butcher, M. (2011). Drupal 7 Module Development. Birmingham, UK. Packt Publishing.

24. Questions
Thank You!