Drupal, a free open-source content management tool (CMS) that provides individuals and organizations a way to publish to the web and interact with their communities. In November 2006, CTN hosted a Drupal training-extreme makeover where several organizations were selected for a hands-on training with the outcome of a new website. We wanted to make the training something where participants walked away with something new which could propel their organizations.
From the Drupal website: "Drupal is software that allows an individual or a community of users to easily publish, manage and organize a great variety of content on a website." In fact this website, ctnbayarea.org, is Drupal-powered along with many of the sites you see linked in here such as NetSquared.org, cctpg.org, sdctc.org. Drupal functionality can be enhanced to manage constituents (CRM), provide e-commerce functionality, run grassroots campaigns, and more .
Where do you get it? Download it free at Drupal.org.
By using Drupal to build a website, content can be created, edited, and managed from anywhere in the world simply using a standard web browser (Internet Explorer, FireFox) on a Windows, Macintosh, or Linux computer. In fact, Drupal, coupled with the online image manipulation tools listed below, allows website creation to be done without expensive and complicated image editing tools which creates capacity without requiring capital.
While the open-source content management market is crowded, few projects have emerged as winners, one of which is Drupal. Drupal is so flexible and capable that it has been employed by even the largest companies (MTV, Yahoo) to implement websites along with tens of thousands of community and non-profit organizations. For examples of Drupal-based sites, see: DrupalSites
During the training, each organization was paired up with a "mentor." Mentors were chosen based upon their willingness to work with a non-profit or community organization both during the training and afterward and trainee organizations were chosen based upon their readiness, capacity, and availability. The training consisted of approximately 3 hours of overview and presentation, followed by hands-on site building. Trainees were instructed on how to perform basic content management and navigational tasks and mentored by their Drupal expert. The second day of the training consisted of adopting organizational branding and a review of questions and next steps.
Use the following training material and references to produce your own Drupal training/extreme-make over or use these resources for your purposes.
Drupal HandBooks - The official Drupal.org site contains a plethora of helpful information to get you started.
Drupal User Groups - A variety of user groups have been formed around Drupal. For San Francisco Bay Area residents, there is specifically, the Bay Area User Group.
Drupal PodCasts and ScreenCasts from Lullabot - These PodCasts and ScreenCasts can be helpful when understanding how accomplish certain Drupal goals.
Drupal FastTrack Training Materials from OpenAdvantage - See this article for a review of a training that OpenAdvantage gave. See the bottom of the article for a .zip file of presentations used for teaching Drupal.
John Kenyon Drupal Presentation - Download and View (2MB) this overview of what is available to non-profits and community organizations for open-source content management solutions. Requires Microsoft PowerPoint or OpenOffice 2.x
Greg Beuthin's Drupal User Guide - Download and View (1.2MB) this presentation that doubles as a handbook. This is the content of the Drupal Extreme Makeover training, and a lot of the presentation content can be read on its own as a basic guide.
Drupal 5 Tour Video - See this great overview video by Awakened Voice Learning Center on Drupal 5 to better understand how Drupal can be leveraged.
Creating a Website Using Drupal Screencasts - This helpful set of instructions guides users from beginning to end of the basics of settting up a Drupal website.
How to Make a Drupal Theme - This helpful page is a step-by-step guide for understanding theme elements and helps you create your own theme
By using the following online tools in conjunction with Drupal, you can build websites without any desktop software other than a web-browser on any operating system (Windows, Macintosh, Linux)
Flickr - Flickr is a popular photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo. While you can host your images directly on your Drupal-based site, you can also use Flickr to host, resize, and format your images. By using Firefox, you can drag and drop Flickr images into a TinyMCE-enabled Drupal site. This technique was presented during the training as an alternative to uploading images directly to the Drupal site.
pxn8.com - Can't afford PhotoShop? don't have time to learn it? Not at your computer but want to edit images? Use this free online image editing application to size, crop, and retouch your images all within any standard web-browser.
For video and audio blogging tools that you can use while building your Drupal site, see the Web 2.0 Toolkit
If you prefer to leave the hosting and software configuring to someone else, try the following turn-key hosting providers: