Drupal: Introduction/Overview

[last updated: 2023-12-30]

Drupal home page
(link to:) Drupal.org
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Disclaimer: Anybody who knows what they're doing will see that I don't.
Regardless my intention is to give enough info for a new-to-Drupal, non-IT-person, to navigate the system.

• Drupal is a content management system used to build webpages.
• It is open-source, and utilizes a mySQL backend. There are hundreds if not thousands of templates and modules available to create whatever content and display desired.

• Drupal Version:
  As of 2019-12-08, current version is 8.8.0
  The Drupal version installed on your site can be seen by opening a browser to your site, log in with admin privileges, then
  from the top menu bar: Reports -> Status report.

  Or: check in [root]/includes/bootstrap.inc for a line at the top like:

  define('VERSION', '7.16');

  
  This site, arduinoetal.net, hosted on BlueHost, was updated from Drupal 7.4 to 7.73 in Oct-2020

• Drupal requires PHP: (link to:) this link says Drupal 7 requires either PHP 7.2 or 7.3
• Drupal is installed on your host account in a root directory that may be different on different installations.
  Find your root directory:
  • log in to your website host (bluehost.com in my case)
  • Open File Manager to examine the files in your Drupal installation
  • My account directory is:
          /home2/arduinoe
  • Browse through your site until you find the folder that contains, among other files and folders:
    files: .htaccess, robots.txt, update.php, and others
    folders: modules, includes, profiles, and others
  • This is your root directory.
    Files here are your core files.
    Unless you really know what you're doing, you should never change any of these files
        other than when doing an update or upgrade.
    • the exception:
      [root]/sites
    • This directory does contain custom (ie. user-modified) files and configurations for your site(s).
    • In particular: sites/all/modules should contain any modules you've added
      ie. contributed modules that are not part of your core installation,
      (core modules are located in: [root]/modules)
    • In addition, sites/default/files should contain files and images used by your site.
  • For my site, the drupal installation root directory is:
          public_html