Setting Drupal as blogging platform


ivan.jovanovic - 25 March 2008

After downloading Drupal installation and installing it on server I did several things to make the environment more confortable.

First, I crated new user role named administrator that will be my blogging role. This is because I needed to set privileges to that user that will be able to manipulate with everything on the system and not to mess with default roles that are created into Drupal. Once, if I need to expand my platform with user registration or so I won't need to change my role and create new and then transfer access restrictions and similar.

Second, I selected a theme that is more like blog oriented. Since this is different for every person, it is probably the best to select one that looks best for you. You can find Drupal themes on their official download site.

Third, I started finding modules that will improve usability of the administration area and enable some cool features that Wordpress is known for, and, as I found out, are very well supported in Drupal. I will list them and give some comments where appropriate

  • Drupal Administration Menu - renders dynamic multilevel menu at the top of the site and provide easy access to all site functions
  • Pathatuto - enables automatic creating of SEF URL-s in Drupal with very flexibile settings.
  • Google Analytics, XML Sitemap
  • JSTools, TinyMCE - WYSIWYG editor for Drupal
  • Captcha
  • And at the end I have found one great module that helped me to sistematically download, configure and integrate lot of other modules that enable lot of cool SEO features for Drupal.
    That is SEO Checklist module created by SpryDev SEO this must have module for every Drupal blogger.

After couple of hours playing with my new modules and their settings I have realised that it was not one click setup, but from the point of scalability, evolution and development of the blog Drupal gives you lot more than other blogging platforms. It is surely not for total begginers but it is not rocket science to make it run.

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