3 Steps to Create Drupal Sites
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sean_Raymond]Sean Raymond
Drupal is one of the most easy to use and powerful content management system in the world. It's open source and a lot of people contribute to it from application development, theme development and module development perspective. And the most important one to us is that they are all free.
Want to setup an Drupal site, below are the 3 steps you can follow.
1. Find a Reliable Affordable Web Hosting
If you have chosen Drupal CMS for your website, it is very important to find a reliable Drupal-specialized host which will tend to provide expert hosting services. Usually, as for a beginner, a charge lower than $7/month should be good enough for your hosting. You can consider to upgrade them to VPS or dedicated server once your site gains enough traffic.
2. Installation
Installing an Drupal instance is not hard. You can go to Drupal.org, download the installation scripts, and upload them to your web hosting directory. The installation process can be done via Web. So you need to type in the URL in the Browser where you upload the scripts to, and system will automatically guide you through how to create the site. One thing you need to do ahead is to create a Database instance which will be used during the installation
Right now, Drupal has become more and more popular that some web hosting service providers start to include the installation scripts in their service package, by which you can it setup by just some simple clicks.
3. Choose an Appropriate Theme
Theme is used to decide the outlook of your site, everyone want to get an attractive theme for it. If you are technical enough (some CSS and php knowledge), you can create your own theme. Or you can download the theme the other open source contributors have built. A more realistic way is that you can download a free theme and make some adjustment to theme to make it work better to you. You can go to [http://drupal.org/project/Themes/ ]drupal.org/project/Themes/ to find a list of great and free template.
Congratulations! You have owned a Drupal site now. Considering there are many other great features haven't been included in the initial scripts, in order to better leverage the functions of it, some knowledge of the modules will be needed, you can get to know more about addition modules at drupal.org/project/Modules, but for a beginner, above 3 steps will good enough for you to own a powerful CMS site.
Reference: [http://www.webhostingclue.com/best-drupal-web-hosting/]Best Drupal Web Hosting [http://www.webhostingclue.com/top-10-web-hosting/]Top 10 Web Hosting [http://www.webhostingclue.com/ ]Reliable Affordable Web Hosting Review, Guide and Awards
Sean.Raymond is an expert on online business. He has more than 10 years working experience of guiding people to create their own online business. webhostingclue.com is his web site where he shares the knowledge about how to find appropriate web hosting solution for a small online business and promote it online.
And you can contact sean.ray@webhostingclue.com if you have any question about this article.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_Raymond http://EzineArticles.com/?3-Steps-to-Create-Drupal-Sites&id=1152338
Showing posts with label drupal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label drupal. Show all posts
Saturday, May 10, 2008
CMS When Do You Really Need It
CMS - When Do You Really Need It?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bob_Rose]Bob Rose
Marketers today make a strong case for a content management system (CMS), extolling its virtues in no uncertain terms. But it probably makes sense to take a step back and think: does your organization really need an advanced CMS? If your current in-house team is effectively managing your Website, can you justify a CMS investment to your management team? But at the same time, can your existing solution scale quickly enough to handle expected and unexpected growth?
The real issue here is deciding when to stop ad-hoc manual processes and invest in a CMS. And this decision must be based on 3 things: your business goals, the capabilities of your current solution, and the ROI associated with change.
So let's look at when you should consider a CMS.
Invest in a CMS when:
Your Website looks and reads like a blast from the past
An outdated Website is clearly bad for business. Small Website teams typically comprise of a few HTML and developer experts who present and publish content in the right place with the right design. Hiring more people is not a viable option as work volumes are never consistent and additional costs are hard to justify.
Given a sudden need to scale - like a new branding campaign that mandates style, design, and content changes - delivery timelines become hard to keep. Manual processes will not deliver the desired need for business agility.
Your content information landscape looks like a jungle
Inconsistent categorizing, organizing, and publishing can frustrate business users looking for content. Webmasters may change, but nomenclatures and processes cannot. A clear strategy is thus essential to avoid knowledge silos and mixed-up information architectures.
A CMS can help you:
• Maintain consistency across Website pages
• Control design-and more importantly branding-to the level desired with style sheets, templates, and more
• Assure a consistent, professional experience for visitors, regardless of who is responsible for content
Your organization struggles to put up a simple press release
It is not uncommon to encounter inordinate delays with simple content revisions. Press releases and product updates need to be timely, precise, and deliver value. With the right CMS, your subject matter experts can actively participate in making the Website reflect organizational goals. Without dependency on personnel trained in HTML, you can accelerate Website publishing by giving subject matter experts simple, intuitive tools to easily create, edit and publish content themselves.
Your users constantly complain of missing links
Missing links and Website maintenance struggles are sure signs of the need for a CMS. The right solution can help you maintain essential link integrity, and significantly improve the experience of business users.
Your organization lacks programming and design skills and expertise
If a developer or external expertise is required to correct simple spelling errors or change Website structure, a CMS can surely help. The right solution empowers your non-technical staff to create and modify content as well as design without programming expertise.
Your organization is unable to manage the information explosion
What part of the burgeoning volume of information is actually valuable? How easily is this accessible to users? Serving and managing content served in multiple forms is another challenge--especially in dealing with blogs, Wikis, or Podcasts.
An effective CMS can:
• Manage this from a single point of control
• Quickly identify, tag, compose, and assemble content automatically
• Reduce information duplication, and encourage content reuse
Your organization struggles to ensure quality and freshness of content
Manual systems are seldom effective in ensuring content quality and freshness. A typical manual process involves:
• The marketing/communications team tracking down section owners, and requesting content updates
• Dispatched as a Word document, this content then goes through a long and tedious approval process from various stakeholders
• The content upload team, in dealing with inconsistencies, shifts the workflow back to the content department
It is easy to see how this process can be inefficient and time-consuming.
A CMS can provide complete system auditing and reporting, giving you the ability to manage and track the history of all work done. Every file can be given a full document lifecycle, including check-in, check-out, versioning, rollback, approvals, and scheduling. Intelligent workflow automation ensures that content passes through the appropriate quality gates before publishing.
You can also use the CMS's configurable workflows to assign tasks to any person, and that escalate in case defined thresholds are crossed. For example, e-mail alerts can be sent to content owners of specific sections on a Website, to ensure timely section updates. Once these rules are established, you can make sure that section owners are more responsive in assuring content quality and freshness.
Conclusion
If your Web presence is experiencing any of the above difficulties, it is safe to say that a CMS solution is a necessity. As with any technology purchase it is important to factor in the total-cost-of-ownership before investing. But like we've all heard many times before, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
This article is contributed by Rob Rose - Vice President of Crownpeak. If your Web presence is experiencing any of the above difficulties, it is safe to say that a [http://www.crownpeak.com/]CMS solution is a necessity. As with any technology purchase it is important to factor in the total-cost-of-ownership before investing. But like we've all heard many times before, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Rose http://EzineArticles.com/?CMS---When-Do-You-Really-Need-It?&id=1154131
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bob_Rose]Bob Rose
Marketers today make a strong case for a content management system (CMS), extolling its virtues in no uncertain terms. But it probably makes sense to take a step back and think: does your organization really need an advanced CMS? If your current in-house team is effectively managing your Website, can you justify a CMS investment to your management team? But at the same time, can your existing solution scale quickly enough to handle expected and unexpected growth?
The real issue here is deciding when to stop ad-hoc manual processes and invest in a CMS. And this decision must be based on 3 things: your business goals, the capabilities of your current solution, and the ROI associated with change.
So let's look at when you should consider a CMS.
Invest in a CMS when:
Your Website looks and reads like a blast from the past
An outdated Website is clearly bad for business. Small Website teams typically comprise of a few HTML and developer experts who present and publish content in the right place with the right design. Hiring more people is not a viable option as work volumes are never consistent and additional costs are hard to justify.
Given a sudden need to scale - like a new branding campaign that mandates style, design, and content changes - delivery timelines become hard to keep. Manual processes will not deliver the desired need for business agility.
Your content information landscape looks like a jungle
Inconsistent categorizing, organizing, and publishing can frustrate business users looking for content. Webmasters may change, but nomenclatures and processes cannot. A clear strategy is thus essential to avoid knowledge silos and mixed-up information architectures.
A CMS can help you:
• Maintain consistency across Website pages
• Control design-and more importantly branding-to the level desired with style sheets, templates, and more
• Assure a consistent, professional experience for visitors, regardless of who is responsible for content
Your organization struggles to put up a simple press release
It is not uncommon to encounter inordinate delays with simple content revisions. Press releases and product updates need to be timely, precise, and deliver value. With the right CMS, your subject matter experts can actively participate in making the Website reflect organizational goals. Without dependency on personnel trained in HTML, you can accelerate Website publishing by giving subject matter experts simple, intuitive tools to easily create, edit and publish content themselves.
Your users constantly complain of missing links
Missing links and Website maintenance struggles are sure signs of the need for a CMS. The right solution can help you maintain essential link integrity, and significantly improve the experience of business users.
Your organization lacks programming and design skills and expertise
If a developer or external expertise is required to correct simple spelling errors or change Website structure, a CMS can surely help. The right solution empowers your non-technical staff to create and modify content as well as design without programming expertise.
Your organization is unable to manage the information explosion
What part of the burgeoning volume of information is actually valuable? How easily is this accessible to users? Serving and managing content served in multiple forms is another challenge--especially in dealing with blogs, Wikis, or Podcasts.
An effective CMS can:
• Manage this from a single point of control
• Quickly identify, tag, compose, and assemble content automatically
• Reduce information duplication, and encourage content reuse
Your organization struggles to ensure quality and freshness of content
Manual systems are seldom effective in ensuring content quality and freshness. A typical manual process involves:
• The marketing/communications team tracking down section owners, and requesting content updates
• Dispatched as a Word document, this content then goes through a long and tedious approval process from various stakeholders
• The content upload team, in dealing with inconsistencies, shifts the workflow back to the content department
It is easy to see how this process can be inefficient and time-consuming.
A CMS can provide complete system auditing and reporting, giving you the ability to manage and track the history of all work done. Every file can be given a full document lifecycle, including check-in, check-out, versioning, rollback, approvals, and scheduling. Intelligent workflow automation ensures that content passes through the appropriate quality gates before publishing.
You can also use the CMS's configurable workflows to assign tasks to any person, and that escalate in case defined thresholds are crossed. For example, e-mail alerts can be sent to content owners of specific sections on a Website, to ensure timely section updates. Once these rules are established, you can make sure that section owners are more responsive in assuring content quality and freshness.
Conclusion
If your Web presence is experiencing any of the above difficulties, it is safe to say that a CMS solution is a necessity. As with any technology purchase it is important to factor in the total-cost-of-ownership before investing. But like we've all heard many times before, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
This article is contributed by Rob Rose - Vice President of Crownpeak. If your Web presence is experiencing any of the above difficulties, it is safe to say that a [http://www.crownpeak.com/]CMS solution is a necessity. As with any technology purchase it is important to factor in the total-cost-of-ownership before investing. But like we've all heard many times before, the first step is admitting you have a problem.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bob_Rose http://EzineArticles.com/?CMS---When-Do-You-Really-Need-It?&id=1154131
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