Tutorials

Have a Need for Speed?

Drupal Boost Review

I returned from a long vacation over the holidays to discover that one of the sites that I manage had developed some serious performance issues. Page load times had gone from 1 or 2 seconds to more than 8 seconds on some of the slowest loading pages.

After messing around with a few of the usual suspects, I decided to give the Drupal Boost module a try in hopes that it would speed up the site while I worked on tracking down the underlying issue.

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Introduction to Content Types

Drupal content types

In order to get the most out of Drupal, you need to understand content types. A CMS can (and in most cases, should) have different content types defined to assist in classifying and displaying site content in a flexible and efficient way. Examples of content types include news articles, blog posts and basic pages. But with Drupal, the types are only limited by your imagination.

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Installing & Configuring A Drupal Theme

Installng a Drupal theme

This screencast steps through the process of installing and configuring a Drupal theme. I've selected Pixture Reloaded for this exercise, which is a great theme for anyone that wants to do as little coding as possible. Based on AdaptiveTheme, it features HTML5 and some easy to configure CSS3 effects like rounded corners and drop shadows. 

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This Drupal Module Could Save Your Job

Drupal Backup and Migrate Module

The Backup and Migrate module not only makes moving your Drupal database a snap, it could also save your job one day. We've all heard stories about the guy that didn't backup his database. When the day came that the server finally crashed, it was disaster. This module can help ensure you aren't that guy!

But for this excellent module, simple backups are just the beginning. This video tutorial will introduce you to all the useful features it has to offer.

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Installing a Drupal WYSIWYG Editor

Drupal WYSIWYG Tutorial

Installing a Drupal WYSIWYG editor is usually one of the first things an administrator will want to do. After all, not many content contributors will want to code HTML by hand, right? This video tutorial continues the Ascend Project series by demonstrating how to install and configure three modules that will enable us to provide users with an easy to use rich text editor.

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Ascend Project - Drupal 7 Video Tutorial

Drupal Video Tutorial

This Drupal 7 video tutorial introduces the Ascend Project. The Ascend tutorials will walk through the process of creating a full-featured community website using Drupal 7 starting from the ground up. We'll be covering every aspect of creating a production website including: installing modules, themes, using views, groups, blogs, forums, managing content types, users and much more, all without writing a single line of code.

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Drupal 7 Organic Groups Video Tutorial

Drupal 7 Organic Groups Tutorial

This video tutorial demonstrates using the Drupal 7 Organic Groups module and is intended for those who have experience with Drupal administration. Organic Groups (OG) is a module that provides powerful community building features for your Drupal website. We'll first step through OG content types, including modifying content types for inclusion in OG. We'll then enable a groups menu item through a view and finally use Panels to change the layout of the group.

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