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Manuals on this site

  • Easy Drupal Admin Manual (EDAM)
    • Welcome to Your Site
    • First Steps: Please Read!
      • Understanding These Instructions
      • Important Terminology!
      • Best Practices for Site Admins
    • Super Quick Guide (for the experienced and the brave)
    • Logging In
    • Your Administrator Tools
    • Setting Site Basics
      • Setting Site Information
      • Configuring Your Theme
    • Creating Content
      • Node Types
      • Create a Page Node
      • Create a Story Node
      • Create a Blog Entry Node
      • Making Images and Other Files Available
      • Using Text and Image Editors
    • Organizing Your Content
      • Terms, Vocabularies, and Taxonomy: "Tagging" Your Content
        • Taxonomy Suggestions
      • Menus, Links, and Paths: Navigating the Site
        • Content Paths and URLs
        • Creating Links
        • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 6)
        • Working with Menus: Administration Form (Drupal 5)
        • Creating Menu Items on the Fly
        • Placing Menus on Your Pages
      • Placing Content on pages
        • Creating a page from a Single Node
        • Creating a page from a List of Nodes
        • Setting the Front Page
      • Working with Blocks
    • Maintenance Stuff
      • Maintenance and Construction Notices
    • Other Fun Things
      • Changing Color of Garland Theme
      • Free Aliases!
  • SEO, Traffic and Revenue: Drupalace's Online Manual (STARDOM)
    • Set a Clear Goal
    • Make a Good Site
      • Put out the Welcome Mat
      • Make Great Content
      • Build a Great Brand
      • Make Navigation Easy
      • Tune Site Performance
    • Drive Traffic
      • Promote your Site
      • Get Found with SEO
    • Build a Community
      • Build an Offsite Community
    • Monitor and Improve
    • One-Page Checklist
    • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 1
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 2
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 3
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 4
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 5
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 6
      • Drupal and the Blogging Starter Checklist, Part 7

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  • Tough one to Inves...

    I have heard and read stories such as this one before, and their common denominator is Drupal...

  • exclude

    excellent tip - can highly recommend the module - installed and working perfectly in drupal 7

  • Great CMS

    This book seems very interesting as I am currently starting a project to build a community site...

  • Thanks!

    Thank you very much !

  • Thank you very muc...

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Drupal New Site Setup Checklist

  • resource
  • checklist
  • Drupal 6
  • installation
Checklist

Here's a checklist I used when quickly setting up a new sites in Drupal 6. It's appeared on this site earlier, but buried away in an obscure older page (Checking out Drupal 6: Dipping into new site creation); I'm moving it here so it'll have its own page that I'll remember (?) to update more frequently.

I hope this'll be helpful to Drupal beginners who are unsure what key tasks they should consider after installing Drupal. Bt don't dive into the list just yet! Some pretty important disclaimers come first:

Read these first!

  1. My checklist is for sites built upon a copy of my existing Drupal "sandbox" installation. That's covered in the first few items of the list; Drupal installation from scratch isn't covered. Chances are you might need to replace items 1-4 with the standard procedure for setting up a new site.
  2. My sandbox database already includes lots of things set up that I almost always want for a new site: can't-do-without-'em modules already enabled, input formats created, key content types configured, and so on. To better aid readers, I'll add those into the list over time.
  3. The checklist represents just the basics to build the framework for a "generic" new site (to the extent that such a thing exists). After that comes the real work of web site creation: customizing and building all the features specific to the new site! That, of course, can't be covered here.
  4. The list makes sense for the sites I typically make; it may be all wrong for you. Treat as reference and entertainment. (And parts may be all wrong for me; let me know if I'm doing something dumb and need to stop!)

The checklist

Here we go:

  1. Create directory for the new site within Drupal installation (per general Drupal installation procedures)
  2. Create empty database for the new site (via my ISP's online tools)
  3. Import a copy of my sandbox site's database into the new database (via phpMyAdmin)
  4. Make sure new site directory's settings.php file uses correct domain and database info
  5. Log in to new site (Unasked-for tangent, and admonishment to writers everywhere: Note that that's "log in to site", not "login to site". Major pet peeve. Grrr.) 
  6. Change ID 1 user info (which is still the same as sandbox site) to new info appropriate for new site
  7. Put site in maintenance mode at admin/settings/site-maintenance
  8. Enable or disable key modules at admin/build/modules
  9. Handle any pressing warnings/notices tossed up by Drupal
  10. Change site info at admin/settings/site-information
  11. Enable and select theme. If an existing theme will be modified into a new unique theme, first create and rename a copy of the theme within the new site's themes directory. 
  12. Make sure file system at admin/settings/file-system is set to sites/<domain>/files
  13. Set site's meta tags at admin/content/nodewords, including Description under Front Page tab (requires Meta Tags module)
  14. Set site's contact info at /admin/build/contact
  15. Change sandbox site info at admin/settings/forward (requires Forward module)
  16. Get Google Analytics ID via Analytics account, add at admin/settings/googleanalytics (requires Google Analytics module)
  17. Set XML Sitemap, submit to Google (requires XML Sitemaps module)
  18. Remove unneeded menu items (left over from sandbox setup) at admin/build/menu
  19. Make sure email for site works
  20. Once all is working, turn of error logging to screen at admin/settings/error-reporting

Steps after that start getting pretty site-specific, so the list ends there. The important thing is that the above takes me to a functioning beginning, without my having to think hard.

What's your (probably better) site setup checklist?

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Anca's picture

Drigg is my favorite CMS....I

Submitted by Anca (not verified) on Thu, 2011-04-21 16:28.

Drigg is my favorite CMS....I think drigg is also based on drupal..but it has no support like wordpress :(

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brake repair mesa az's picture

I really loved reading your

Submitted by brake repair mesa az (not verified) on Thu, 2011-04-14 16:52.

I really loved reading your blog. It’s well authored and easy to understand. Unlike additional blogs I have read which are really not that good. I also found your posts very interesting. In fact after reading, I had to show it to my friend and he enjoyed it as well!

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drupco's picture

sandbox

Submitted by drupco (not verified) on Mon, 2010-11-15 08:43.

i crate many drupal sites in month.

and always i start from the beginning.

usually I'll do the installation using cpanel...

could you write more about that your sandbox installation?

thanks

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Christopher Dunn's picture

Oh and one I ran into the

Submitted by Christopher Dunn (not verified) on Wed, 2010-10-06 01:42.

Oh and one I ran into the other day when testing my site in other browsers.

Make sure CSS Optimization is enabled in admin>site configuration>performance as without this you will probably find internet explorer will not read your CSS files. Has something to do with the number of CSS files that IE can handle or something.

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Drupalace's picture

CSS Optimization and IE

Submitted by Drupalace on Thu, 2010-10-07 15:35.

Thanks much for the tip; I haven't verified it myself, but it sounds like a good thing to check for those experiencing IE troubles. 

I'll note in passing that your tip came at the same time as news reports that IE's worldwide market share dropped below 50%. We're halfway to having all IE-related troubles solved for good! 

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Drupal mini tip

As noted in Forum Finds: Node deletion is forever, when you tell Drupal to delete a node it gives you one "Are you sure...?" chance to recapitulate, but that's it. Confirm the deletion, and that node is gone; there's no Trash Can or Undo to get it back.

To prevent mishaps, be careful in giving users permission to delete nodes. Also, make it a rule to unpublish, not delete, nodes when you want to take them off the site. The node will disappear from view just as if it had been deleted, but will remain in the database should you ever want to republish, reedit, or otherwise revisit it.

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