Drupal is today one of the most used CMSs (Content Management System) that is used around the world. Whitehouse.gov relaunched their web site in October 2009 using Drupal as the basis for their web site. One of the reasons for the popularity is that it can handle a lot of simultanous users, it is secure and you can change it to your liking. You can add and remove modules as you need. Creating a site with blogs, forums, online store, organic groups and other features.
Automated installation
There are several options for installing Drupal on a web site. The easiest is if your hosting company has a control panel that has Simple scripts or Fantastico. Then you push the button for installing Drupal, tell it where to install and the site is ready to work on. Remember that if you install to the root folder of the site, it might remove your front page so be aware of what you want to do.
Manual installation
The manual installation of the core is simple if you know how to use an ftp-client, a browser and know how to create a database on your domain. The following is a brief walk through on how to do it. There are other guides on the internet as well that are more thorough and cover the specifics for each hosting company.
Go to drupal.org and download verson 6.xx. Version 5 is still maintained, but I recommend that you go for the latest version.
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Once you have that downloaded, unpack it and upload it to your web site using an ftp-client. Filezilla is one that is very popular, but there are many others.
While the ftp-client is uploading the files you can create the database that is needed for the installation. For most web sites a database based on MySQL is sufficient, but if you are going for a bigger site with thousands of users and a lot of content, look into using PostgreSQL. The information that is important is servername, database name, username and password. The username and password should NOT be the same as your normal login, and they should contain letters, numbers and other characters.
When all the files are uploaded, use your ftp-client and go to the following directory on the server: sites/default and copy the file default.settings.php to settings.php. Make sure the file is readable by changing the security to 777 (or read, write and execute for everyone).
Use your internet browser (Internet explorer, Firefox, Opera or Safari) and type in the url to your web site. You will now see the screen below. Click on Install Drupal in English.
You should now see the following screen if everything is working the way it should:
I have highlighted the options that is necessary. Most times the Advanced options is not necessary to look at as Drupal will figure out the database server/host. For some databases it might be necessary to add a table prefix in case you have other data in there. I use drup_ on some of my installations.
The next screen will be for you to add the name of the site (normally your business name), a system administrator username and password and you are ready to go. Have your site use clean urls if possible. It gives you an option to use friendly names on the information you are posting.
Important last step:
Use your ftp-client and change the security of settings.php to 444 (on some servers it will be 644) and you are ready to explore what Drupal can offer you. Most likely you will like to add modules and change the theme/template of the site.
