Understanding These Instructions

Instructions on understanding the instructions. It's all easy stuff, I promise.

Alphabetizing

A small but important thing. There are many words we'll need to use in discussing your site that have normal, everyday meanings, but also have special technical meanings within Drupal. A perfect example is "page": it's impossible to discuss a web site without referring to "pages" left and right, yet Drupal also speaks of a special, specific kind of content it calls (confusingly enough) "page".

Context often makes the difference clear, but I like precision in words. It's easy to add that clarity in text: I'll write "normal" words normally, and capitalize those with special meaning in Drupal. So, words like "page", "term", and "vocabulary" have their normal, generic meanings, but "Page", "Term", and "Vocabulary" have special technical meanings.

Note that other sites, books, etc. aren't likely to capitalize like this; it's an EDAM exclusive. Even administration forms within your site, and the helpful little blurbs of instruction that appear there, don't use this capitalization. Context should make things clear in those spots. Usually. Good luck!

Referring to pages on your site

We'll often want to refer to a specific page address (URL) on your site. But that'll differ for every site, as the domain differs for every site.

I'll write it like this example:

<your site domain>/node/add

Replace <your site domain> with your actual domain, and you're in business.

For example, if your site's domain is www.drupalace.com (which it isn't, by the way), then you get to the URL

<your site domain>/node/add

by typing

www.drupalace.com/node/add 

into your browser's address field.

Referring to menu items

To send you to a specific page on your site, the manual will often ask you to click on such-and-such link in so-and-so menu. I'll write it starting with the menu's name, followed by the menu item to click, followed by additional sub-items (if any). An example:

Navigation menu » Create content » Blog entry

That tells you to go to the Navigation menu (about which much will be said later), click the item "Create content", and from the additional menu items that appear from there, click "Blog entry".