Unless you've got experience and confidence with content management systems like this, I strongly recommend that you proceed immediately to the next page, and go through the manual from its proper start. Thank you, and enjoy the ride.

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Still here? Then you must be experienced and confident. If that's the case, then here's a very quick guide to editing and creating content, for those who just want a pointer in the right direction and can fill in the blanks on their own.

Logging in

If there's no login block on the page you see, head to

<your site domain>/user

or, if that doesn't work,

<your site domain>/?q=user

Provide your user ID and password. The remainder of this document assumes that your account has the permissions required to perform the administration activities described.

Content basics

There are several types of content, all of which can be configured separately and used as you like. Whatever the content type, Drupal calls the content items "nodes".

Three main types of node are Blog entry, Page, and Story. A good way to use these is as follows:

Blog entry: Use for regular news, announcements, updates, or other diary-like communication.

Page: Use for static information pages: company info, product info, etc. On a business site, this will be a common type of node.

Story: There's little difference between Page and Story. Ignore this option, or use the Story and Page formats to create two separate types of page with different properties. Or this common distinction: use Page for static information, and Story for news or other articles where author and publication date are important.

How to Create a Page or Blog Entry

Once logged in, a Navigation menu will appear (with your user name as its heading), full of options for creating content and administering the site. Click "Create content", and then the "page" or "blog entry" links that appear.

From there, follow these instructions.