Drupal Tutorial

Getting oriented

At first glance, the site contains many things, so don't try to understand everything at once, or you'll get overwhelmed.

1. At the top, you should see a site logo, a search box, and a row of quick links to major components of the site (e.g., home, archives, blogs, books, files...); I'll explain these as necessary.
2. At the left are navigation links, consisting of three to four blocks (separated by a faint line and title, may evolve):
   • If you're not logged in, you see four blocks: [Navigation], [Content], [Top nodes], and [User login].
   • If you're logged in, you see three blocks: [<username>], [Content], and [Top nodes].
3. At the bottom may be a number of things, in the following order:
   1. If you're looking at a book page, you may see [previous], [up], and [next] links.
   2. Usually, you'll also find links such as [edit this page], [printer-friendly version], [add new comment].
   3. If there are comments posted for a page, you might also see the collection of comments, arranged depending on your settings for comment viewing.
   4. Finally, you might see a copyright notice.

Site organization

The organization of this site is really quite simple, with content organized as site nodes.

• There is a main page, Home, which is a static page.
• There is a book, titled Main that contains a hierarchical collection of the primary content. The intuition is that we're collectively writing a book, and this book follows some sort of a topical outline.
• User content, accessible from my account
  • Every user has a user information page on which you keep personal information.
  • Each user may maintain his/her own blog, which is intuitively an electronic journal.
  • Each user has a collection of recent posts.
• Other stuff
  • The [Content] block is an explicitly maintained set of navigation links into the various parts of the Main Book.
  • Forums: any number of discussion forums may be created for targeted, on-going discussion.
  • Files: any number of files may be uploaded for sharing purposes.
  • Comments: any number of comments may be posted to a particular node. Comments replying to comments are possible as well.

WikiText

WikiText is a form of structured text that uses a simple convention to allow you to format text without using HTML. It's meant to be intuitive: consider how you would emphasize words, write a bulleted list of items, make table, etc., with just plain text.

Currently, you can use WikiText in static pages, book pages, and blocks.

Let's learn one of the important conventions of WikiText--links. Links in WikiText are enclosed in brakets [ ]. A link may refer to a page on this site, or an external link. If a link to a page on this site does not exist, you will see a question mark (?) next to it, which you can click on to create the page (e.g., Empty [please don't create this page and mess up the example]). This is a convenient feature. There are two forms of Wiki links:

1. Unlabeled: [Link]
2. Labeled: [Label | Link]

The best way to learn WikiText is (1) by example and (2) to just do it... This Tutorial page is written completely in WikiText, so click on the [edit this page] link below to see the page "source," taking care not to actually change the text, of course.

To play with WikiText, you're encouraged to go to the Sand Box page, edit it at will, and exercise your WikiText muscles. A reference to the full WikiText syntax supported by this site is linked from the bottom of the Content navigation block (Wiki Help), or click here.

Contributing content

As suggested by the site organization, you can contribute to any of the contents listed above. Let's start small. Let's first add a comment to this Tutorial page. First open this site in a separate browser window so the instructions remain visible.

1. Click on the [add new comment] link near the bottom of this page (before all the comments).
2. Type a Subject, say, Test comment.
3. Type a Comment, say Hello World, my first comment! (If there's a signature, put your text before the signature.)
4. Click [Preview comment]. In general, it is a good idea to preview your work before posting or submitting it.
5. Click [Post comment] if you're happy.
6. You may have noticed a box titled [Comment viewing options]. Set the option to your preference and click [Save settings]. User mosquito usually sets the option to:

That was simple, was it not? Comments are precisely the mechansim to contribute to forum discussions. So there's nothing more to learn. If you find a forum you want to contribute content to, just add a comment.

Now let's try something a bit more involved. To familiarize you with editing book pages and using WikiText, let's create a book page about yourself. If you haven't done so already, open this site in a separate browser window so the instructions remain visible.

1. Find, at the top-left hand corner under the user navigation block, the link [create content]. Click it.
2. Choices will expand under the [create content] link. Click on [book page].
3. A page showing a blank form appears.
   1. For Title, type your username, e.g., Owen.
   2. For Parent, pull down and choose User Pages, which will categorize your page under the user pages book node.
   3. Ignore Topic.
   4. Inside Body, type a few lines describing yourself, using WikiText as needed.
   5. For Log message, type a brief description of your changes here, e.g., Created page. In general, adding a brief Log message with your changes is a good idea.
   6. Spellcheck if necessary.
   7. Click [Preview].
   8. When you're happy with the content, click [Submit].
4. Click the [view] link to view your new page... Voila!

Ok, your crash course is complete. Now have fun!

Sand Box

Play around with WikiText on this page!

I'm bold.

I'm italicized.

I'm bold AND italicized.

Me too.

User Pages

This page serves as a "parent node" to all the user pages.

Owen

My name is Owen.
I'm from the Sun-belt
But I was born in Taiwan.
I like to eat sushi.