Advanced Training on Drupal Content Management System

Training Objectives:

At the end of the training, participants will be able to

1. Install and administrate Drupal instances.
2. Perform advanced content management functions.
3. Configure advanced content filtering and presentation mechanisms.
4. Implement form based surveys.
5. Implement collaborative user groups capabilities.
6. Implement email lists.
7. Implement advanced content publishing workflows with moderation.
8. Implement multi-lingual web sites.
9. Implement advertising capabilities
10. Implement e-commerce capabilities
11. Implement multi-site Drupal configurations.
12. Implement simple and advanced security strategies with Drupal.
13. Describe the internal architecture of Drupal.
14. Write new Drupal modules to extend the functionality.
15. Customize and implement Drupal themes.

Target Groups:

1. Those who want to create feature rich dynamic web sites
2. Advertising professionals
3. Web site developers
4. PHP developers
5. Drupal administrators seeking advanced knowledge

Prerequisites:

1. Computer literacy.
2. Some familiarity with image editing, HTML, PHP and MySQL database will be advantages but not necessarily expected. In a very limited number of places PHP coding will be used and those who are unfamiliar with PHP will be provided with appropriate guidance to understand.

Communication Language:

English

Duration:

5 days (40 hours)

Facilitator:

Kamal Wickramanayake (Profile)

Notes:

1. This training is done with hands-on lab exercises.
2. Drupal version 6 will be used.
3. This training is not about Internet money making. Nor we will find you web site development projects. We only teach you how to develop fabulous web sites with Drupal - a great content management system.

Training Content:

1. Getting Started With Drupal Content Management System (CMS)
   • Installation of Drupal
   • Basic content creation (pages, stories)
   • Setting site information
   • Building menus
   • Working with blocks
   • Enabling search facility
   • Setting up cron service execution
   • Setting up a contact form
   • Adding forum capability
   • Adding blog capability
   • Configuring comment options
2. Working with URLs
   • Enabling clean-URL support
   • URL aliases
   • Using path auto module
   • Using global redirect module
   • Using path redirect module
3. Rich Text Editing
   • Integrating FCKEditor
   • Role based FCKEditor configurations
   • Configuring file manager
4. Working With File Uploads
   • Enabling file uploads
   • Upload directory organization
   • Upload file types and size limit configurations
   • Access configurations for uploaded files
5. Advanced Content Management
   • Content types
   • Using Content Construction Kit (CCK)
   • Taxonomy based content classification
   • Input formats
   • PHP filter
   • Triggers and Actions
6. Views
   • Overview of Views module capabilities
   • Creating views - pages, blocks, feeds, attachments
   • Content styles
   • Filtering
   • Sorting
   • Grouping
   • Arguments
   • Relationships
   • Overview of theming views
7. Calendar Module
   • Capabilities of Calendar module
   • Configuring calendars in various ways
8. Surveys With Webform Module
   • Capabilities of Webform module
   • Creating forms
   • Viewing results
   • Form processing validation
   • Custom code execution
9. Organic Groups
   • Capabilities of OG module
   • Configuration of OG module
   • Access controlling
   • Notifications
   • Views integration
10. Newsletters
    • Using Simplenews module
    • Batch email sending configuration
    • Limitations of Simplenews
    • Theming emails
    • Overview of other email sending tools
11. Revisions and Workflows
    • Maintaining revisions
    • Using workflow module
    • Advanced revisioning with pre-publish moderation
12. Multi-Lingual Configuration
    • Configuring Drupal to support multiple languages
    • Enabling Unicode support in your computer
    • Content translation
    • Block translation
    • Menu translation
    • Taxonomy translation
13. Advertising
    • Capabilities of Ad module
    • Ad channels
    • Advertisements in blocks
    • Embedding ads into content
    • Reporting
    • Ad owners
14. E-Commerce
    • Using a shopping cart
    • Integration with payment gateways
15. Multi-Site Configuration
    • Default configuration
    • File system organization
    • Web site name matching with configurations
16. Users
    • User registration modes
    • Account creating, activation, blocking/unblocking, deletion
    • User profiles
    • Invitations module
17. Security
    • Role based security model
    • Different security requirements
    • Implementing content type based security
    • Implementing per-node security
    • Implementing taxonomy based security
    • Defining a hierarchy of privileged users
    • Protecting user account modification
    • Customizing error page
    • Using Masquerade module to switch between users
18. Spam Protection
    • Enabling captchar support
    • Spam module
    • Overview of using external anti-spam services
19. Architecture
    • Expected quality attributes from Drupal
    • Module based architecture of Drupal
    • Theme architecture
    • Caching and throttling
20. Writing New Modules
    • Implementing pages
    • Implementing blocks
    • Working with hooks
    • Devel module
21. Forms API
    • Designing forms with components
    • Form submission validation
    • Error display
    • Form submission processing
22. Themes
    • Interesting themes written by others
    • Customizing existing themes
    • Writing new themes from the scratch
    • Theming already available pages (For example user registration page)
    • Adding JavaScript drop down (suckerfish) menus
23. Site Maintenance
    • Automated update notification
    • Updating modules
    • Updating Drupal core