Beginner

Drupal is a very powerful publishing system. In fact, it's pretty hard not to stumble across many modules which will help you create an awesomely powerful publishing platform. Drupal distribtions, such as Managing News, have already packaged a handful of modules which get you started right off the bat.

If your publishing needs are simple and straight forward, then you may just need a handful of uself modules.

When most people consider Drupal hosting, they're looking for a reliable host they hope isn't going to shut down over night. It's typically your larger run-of-the-mill hosting provider running an install script that will simply load a basic Drupal install.

For myself, I've always opted to manage my own hosting. This meant taking care of setting up, securing and optimizing either a dedicated server box or the current trend of using a VPS (virtual private server) which uses virtualization technology to fully leverage all the resources of a really beefy server.

Recenly, however, while spending a fair amount of time becoming familiar with the Varnish reverse proxy server (which is very nice by the way), I decided I was spending too much time with my own "Drupal hosting". I wanted to create more videos and more valuable content - I enjoy doing it.

Building a Drupal web site certainly can take a bit of time, especially when you've got a large number of users, roles and permissions. It's also very frustrating when users write in to say your web site is not working properly.

The Drupal Masquerade module is an excellent tool for testing all kinds of settings within your Drupal site. The module allows you to easily switch between any other user and limit this capability to a group of users covered by a certain role. The catch, however, is to be certain you know what is happening with each role and user who has access to the powerful module.

I remember when I first started with Drupal. There was just a handful of modules compared to today. I want to say something like 600 or so...

In fact, there were few enough, I had printed the whole list of all top Drupal modules and took a stack of paper home to read about each one. Fast forward to today's module count and it's coming close to 6,000!

Can you say "Holy metric ton load of Drupal modules to search through Batman!" How do you really know which are good and which are bad?

There's a mistake I've made which a few others have made too. The mistake is rushing into your new Drupal site and populating your menu right away.

While trying to think of what to write, regarding Drupal taxonomy, it was my kids’ story
last night that inspired this posting about this video covering how the taxonomy module works and what it means to your Drupal site.

Drupal 7 is bound to be one of the most anticipated releases in all of Drupal's history. Not simply because it's the next release, but rather it's "new lease on life" with regards to usability, interface and interaction.

Drupal has long had this "stigma" about it regarding its learning curve. This stigma, however, is there for good reason. Drupal is, for anyone brand new to Drupal, hard to learn because it doesn't attempt to be all things to all people. It's the starter kit to your Lego collection or the concrete foundation to your digital house.

SEO is one of the more critical aspects for any web site - at least if you want to be found in the search engines. The fact that Drupal is capable of being super SEO friendly is a great benefit. However, it doesn't do you much good to simply know that Drupal is SEO friendly. With modules like SEO Checklist from Volacci you can certainly walk through the myriad of possible SEO options.

Yep, we're living in a media rich world (just in case you didn't notice the video on this web page <wink>). In fact, what's the second most popular search engine? Is it Bing? Nope, it's YouTube of all things (last I heard).

So, all you really need to know, is how to bring your Drupal site up to the media rich standards of the new web and activate some media modules. Personally, I've used a number of them, and I'm quite comfortable digging around with Javascript and jQuery, however, there's something to be said for the easy route.

The Drupal Webform module is both a popular and useful module for collecting information from web site visitors.

For the most part, you can install, activate and start to create your own webforms right away. The module is pretty easy to use, well crafted and created by one of my most favorite Drupal developers.

Using webform is great when collecting valuable information, but what happens when you need a bit more. Is it possible to know where a site visitor was when they clicked on a response form? Can you determine what browser they are using, and if they use Macintosh or Windows? You sure can, and it's VERY helpful! Take a few minutes to watch this video and start collecting even more useful information.