Building a Programmers Blog In Drupal

Building a Programmers Blog In Drupal

Drupal is a mature, extensible, actively supported and secure content management system for the web, and an excellent base for publishing a technical blog.

In this series of articles, I'll guide you through setting up a programming blog through Drupal.

Update 3/2013: The current production release of Drupal is now v7, rendering some of the detail in this series obsolete. The core content is still relevant, however please keep this in mind as you read.

Installing Drupal

Submitted by Bevan on Fri, 02/07/2010 - 08:00

Having decided to use Drupal for our Programmers Blog, our first task is to get Drupal itself installed - after all, without it up and running, nothing else can happen.

Why Drupal?

Submitted by Bevan on Fri, 25/06/2010 - 08:56

Drupal is a mature, extensible, actively supported and secure content management system for the web, and an excellent base for publishing a technical blog.

In this series of articles, I'll guide you through setting up a programming blog through Drupal.

Markdown

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 31/07/2010 - 08:00

Out of the box, Drupal supports both partial and full HTML as input formats. Writing HTML markup for your blog isn't that difficult - but it does take both care and time.

Markdown, as popularized by the StackOverflow family of websites, is a simple text based way of writing for the web.

Enabling Blog Posts

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 17/07/2010 - 08:00

By default, Drupal comes with just two different node types - pages and stories. These two node types are useful in most cases - but not sufficient for all. In this post we'll look at how to use these two types, and how to activate the Blog module is supplied with Drupal core.

Theming

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 21/08/2010 - 08:00

If you're like most developers, you're pretty fussy about the way that things look, but you're probably not the hottest designer around. Fortunately, there are plenty of themes available for Drupal that give you a great look and feel with just a little work.

Syntax Highlighted Code

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 16/10/2010 - 08:00

Source code will eventually make an appearance on any programmers blog. Presenting the code well, including niceties like syntax highlighting, is relatively easy with Drupal.

Blocks

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 14/08/2010 - 08:00

Blocks are a fundamental part of the way that Drupal structures your site. Blocks are placed into regions around your main content to provide additional information and navigation.

Poor Mans Cron

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 07/08/2010 - 08:00

Regular maintenance of your Drupal installation is important - without it, the website may become sluggish and you'll start having some odd issues. Fortunately, Drupal includes functionality to do this automatically.

Friendly URLs

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 24/07/2010 - 08:00

According to the experts in search engine optimization (SEO), it is quite important that your site URLs are informative and well structured. The Drupal defaults leave something to be desired in this area. Fortunately, Drupal provides easy support for improving your URL structure.

Printable Pages

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 09/10/2010 - 08:00

Depending on your chosen theme, pages on your site may not print very well. The built in Garland theme prints relatively well, with the sidebar blocks suppressed, but other themes are not so well behaved.

Scheduled Posts

Submitted by Bevan on Sat, 04/09/2010 - 08:00

Sometimes you don't want all of your content to post at one time. Instead of a flurry of posts at the weekend, when you have time to write them, it's better for your site (and your readers) if new posts appear at regular and consistent intervals. Scheduling posts in advance can help you do this.

install in the usual way%

Submitted by Bevan on Fri, 09/07/2010 - 08:00

Expansion of Drupal - adding new features and capabilities - is primarily done by adding new modules. Installing a Drupal module is a relatively simple procedure, but there are a few issues of which you should be aware.

This post is less of a tutorial and more of a reference that you'll find useful as you read future posts.