Drupal Installation Tutorial – How to Install Drupal

Posted on April 28th, 2016

Drupal-Installation-Tutorial-How-to-Install-Drupal

Drupal is a PHP based open-source platform and web content management system for building dynamic websites. Featuring a powerful blend of features and configurability, Drupal is an ideal platform for all kinds of websites from personal weblogs to large community-driven sites.

Powering over 1,000,000 websites and a community boasting of 39000 active members, Drupal is a great choice as a CMS, to say the least. If you are enamoured with Drupal, check out the post below to understand how you can install Drupal on your account.

Get started with Drupal site

With a little bit of computer knowledge, you can easily install Drupal yourself. Check out the steps below to help you get started with Drupal website.

 Prerequisites

 AMP stack, which implies a computer, laptop or server with a stable operating system like Windows, Mac OS, UNIX or any Linux based OS like Ubuntu, Fedora, RedHat is required. Drupal has been written in PHP, hence PHP 5.4 or higher is recommended. Usually MySQL is the database used. But, PostgresSQL, SQLite, MS SQL server or Oracle can also be chosen. Apache webserver is usually a good choice but other webservers like Nginx or Microsoft IIS could also be used.

Choose pre-configured server packages like WAMPServer, MAMP, XAMPP, or a LAMP on Linux based OS or Acquia’s Dev Desktop for a quick start.

Download Drupal

You can download drupal from https://www.drupal.org/project/drupal, it will be in the form of a .tar.gz or a .zip file. Extract and place downloaded file into your Web server docroot. Create a virtual host pointing to your docroot and assign a dev domain to the virtual host. To point this dev domain to your local host, update your IP tables. Make sure you copy the .htaccess file and .gitignore file with the Drupal files.

Create a datatbase for the Drupal site in your MySQL administration.
Creating settings.php and the files directory

There will be a sample settings file default.settings.php which we use to create settings.php. Make sure that you copy default.settings.php to same location as settings.php and the file permissions are such that the Apache Web server can write into this file for now. And default.settings.php and the newly created settings.php both files should be in the directory. Now create another directory in directory name it as files.

This new directory should be able to written by the Web server too.

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Fig 1: Virtual host Conf

Running the installation script

Go to browser and click on this Base URL or the domain set on your virtual host. You will get the page as shown in Fig2. Select Standard profile and click on Save & Continue. Next page will display a list of languages available to install Drupal in, as we haven’t added support for additional languages it will just display English. Click on Save & Continue. Next, it will check for prerequisites for the Webserver, PHP version, PHP settings, permission to write into the settings.php file and the files directory.

If you, in case done something not correctly, an appropriate message will be displayed. As suggested by the message take necessary actions and retry the same step.

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Fig 2: Drupal installation page

 Database configuration
Next step is to fill the details in previously created database such as database’s name, username and password as shown in below image. Update the database server details according to your database, if it is on a non-standard port or on a different machine. If all the steps till now are carried in a correct way then you will now see a screen which displays Drupal modules and components being installed and database setup and necessary setting being installed and saved.

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Fig 3: Database configuration

 Site information

Fill your site’s name, slogan and create administrative user number 1. Set the country, time zone and enable “Check for updates automatically”.

Front page

As shown in below image, home page shows your site’s name at the top, user menu on right side, navigation menu and blocks on left side and admin menu on top.

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Fig 4: Front page

 Admin dashboard

As you have logged in as an administrator, administration section will be visible. On the top look for a black coloured menu, which presents a list of links for all administrative tasks. Notice a black coloured menu on top that presents a list of links for all administrative tasks.

 Create the About Me page

Click on the Dashboard –> Add Content–>Basic Page. It will take to a form to add content. Add the page title as “About Me” and add any HTML that you are intending to be part of your content in the Body field as shown in below code.

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Fig 5: Content type list

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Fig 6: ‘About me’ page that has been created

 Now, add a menu link to access this page. Scroll down and click on the checkbox “Provide a menu link” in the Menu settings section. It will prompt a screen to add the Menu link title, add details and save them as shown in below figure. It displays the page content which gets saved.

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Fig 7: Home page

Now let’s create a few articles. Go to Add content link and choose the content type as Article. You will notice an extra field to upload image and to categorise article using tags. You can now add few articles with images with tag information.

Well, you are done! Try it and let us know if it works in the comments section below. If you are on a lookout for a Drupal Hosting provider, your search ends here! Give your Drupal site a boost with premium Drupal hosting with Interserver. Benefit from unlimited storage, unlimited transfer and unlimited email with a daily backup of accounts for added security.

Source : OpenSource

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