Drupal: Tutorial & Best Practices

A flexible and powerful CMS for building websites

Drupal is a powerful and flexible content management system (CMS) that allows you to build and manage websites with ease. It's particularly popular for its scalability and strong community support. Whether you're building a small blog or a large enterprise site, Drupal has the tools you need.

Why Use Drupal?

Drupal stands out for several reasons:

• Flexibility: Drupal offers a vast array of modules and themes to customize your site.
• Scalability: From small personal blogs to large corporate websites, Drupal can handle it all.
• Community Support: With thousands of developers and users, finding help and resources is easy.

Installing Drupal on a Linux Server

First, you need to ensure your server meets the basic requirements: a LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

1. Install Apache:

   To install Apache, use the following command:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install apache2
   

2. Install MySQL:

   To install MySQL, use the following command:

   sudo apt install mysql-server
   

   Secure your MySQL installation:

   sudo mysql_secure_installation
   

3. Install PHP:

   To install PHP, use the following command:

   sudo apt install php libapache2-mod-php php-mysql php-gd php-xml php-mbstring php-curl
   

4. Download and Install Drupal:

   Navigate to your web root directory and download the latest version of Drupal:

   cd /var/www/html
   wget https://www.drupal.org/download-latest/tar.gz
   tar -xzvf tar.gz
   mv drupal-x.y /var/www/html/drupal
   

   Change ownership of the Drupal directory to the Apache user:

   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/drupal
   

Configuring Drupal

1. Create a MySQL Database:

   Log in to MySQL and create a database for Drupal:

   sudo mysql -u root -p
   CREATE DATABASE drupal;
   CREATE USER 'drupaluser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'password';
   GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON drupal.* TO 'drupaluser'@'localhost';
   FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
   EXIT;
   

2. Configure Apache for Drupal:

   Create a new Apache configuration file for Drupal:

   sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/drupal.conf
   

   Add the following configuration:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
       ServerAdmin admin@example.com
       DocumentRoot /var/www/html/drupal
       ServerName example.com
       <Directory /var/www/html/drupal/>
           Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
           AllowOverride All
           Require all granted
       </Directory>
       ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
       CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
   </VirtualHost>
   

   Enable the new site and rewrite module:

   sudo a2ensite drupal.conf
   sudo a2enmod rewrite
   sudo systemctl restart apache2
   

3. Complete Drupal Installation via Web Browser:

   Open your web browser and navigate to http://your_server_ip/ and follow the on-screen instructions to complete the installation.

Common Issues and Troubleshooting

• Database Connection Error: Double-check your database credentials in the settings file.
• File Permissions: Ensure that the Drupal directory is owned by the Apache user.
• Memory Limits: Increase PHP memory limits in the php.ini file if you encounter memory issues.

Best Practices

• Regular Updates: Always keep your Drupal core and modules updated to the latest versions to avoid security vulnerabilities.

• Backup: Regularly backup your database and files.

• Use Drush: Drush is a command-line shell for managing Drupal. It can help automate tasks and make your life easier.

  To install Drush, use Composer:

  composer require drush/drush