Guide to Drupal Administration

...for the beginning or even completely non-technical administrator of a Drupal site.

This manual is widely incomplete, and is very much a work in progress. It'll keep changing as we find better ways to do things; as viewers report problems, solutions, and discoveries; and as Drupal itself keeps improving. Please let us know if you find errors.

Welcome to Your Site

This guide assumes that a Yooweb Project manager has provided you with a username and password to your own Drupal site. This also assumes that all the Yooweb standard modules have been installed on your site (don't worry, as long as your site was built with us you shouldn't have to understand what this means).

First things first: Welcome to Drupal!

 What's Drupal?

Your site is built on Drupal, an open-source content management system. What that means is:

Open source:

The software behind the site is built by a global network of volunteers. Their goal is first to create the ideal software that they themselves want to use, and second to share that with anyone who wants to make use of it. The "source" – the programming code that makes up the software – is open for anyone to view and modify.

That's different from traditional proprietary software owned and sold by the developer: you can only use proprietary software under the specific terms allowed by the developer, and generally can not see or modify the source code at all.

With open source, you don't get a developer or vendor ready to lead you by the hand, but you don't get the handcuff treatment either. With assistance from the friendly folks at Yooweb and in the open source developer and user community, and a little self-learning on your own, you'll benefit from the freedom.

Content management system:

To learn more about what a content management system is check out the wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system. You really don't need to know what one is, just realize that it's something really cool that allows you to have control over your website without the need to have a webmaster make every little change on your site. Just keep reading, you'll see.

 You're in charge

As administrator, you are in control of your own site: you add and modify content, set the site's basic rules, control its functionality, and so on. Drupal makes that task far, far easier than it would be for an old-fashioned static web site, letting you wield great features that would have taken a small army of webmasters not long ago.

As with all powerful things, though, there's some learning to do, and there will be questions. This manual is one of many resources to help you out. Read it and try things out as you go.