Hour 1: Hosting requirements

Best configuration
Best configuration: PHP5, MySQL 5.x, Apache 2.x

Web server: Apache is recommended. PHP: Drupal requires PHP 4 (4.3.5 or greater) or PHP 5. Drupal core can work with PHP4 but most of contributed modules requires PHP5. Databases: can be either MySQL or PostgreSQL. The Apache web server and MySQL database are recommended. Other web server and database combinations: such as IIS and PostgreSQL have been tested to a lesser extent.

To avoid troubles later, we recommend using the best configuration as stated above. It is also very popular and affordable. More information can be found at: http://drupal.org/requirements

Popular issues
When troubleshooting problems for many customers, we found those issues are frequently met.

Memory limit: Drupal consumes more memory than other sources. Therefore, you need have to increase memory limit for Drupal. Clean URL: if you see your image thumbnails do not display properly, and your URLs have many parameters, it is due to Clean URL. To use "Clean URLs" feature on an Apache web server, you will need the mod_rewrite module and the access permission to local .htaccess files. PHP: in rare cases, your hosting provides PHP4. Although Drupal can still runs with PHP 4.3.5, but many contributed modules will not work properly with PHP4. So you should ensure your PHP version is 5 and above.

Drupal hosting partners

When our customers report problems with our themes, hosting issues are more than 70% of the total cases. Most of customers admit that their sites work perfectly in local machines, but when they upload to hostings, many errors show up. Therefore, adopting a good hosting provider is a very good investment and needed to be done from the beginning. We recommend CoolHandle as our hosting provider partner. For more information on CoolHandle's services, please check our Drupal hosting page.

Hour 2: Installation
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 05:50 8

In all our theme packages, we have the fullsize package file, for example, alphorn_fullsite_package.zip. This package includes Drupal core + theme + essential modules + sample content. When you install this full size package, you'll have the new site which looks exactly like our demo site. Follow the steps below to install: Step 1: We provide you three free out-of-the-box Drupal packages. You can pick one of those to download and extract fullsite_package.zip file in the package for this full site installation.

For blog or magazine style: Alphorn For organization or non-profit style: Conch For business or corporate style: Octavin

Step 2: Upload it onto public_html folder of your hosting, then extract this package. This way, after the installation is completed, the script will appear once your type something like http://yourdomainname.com in your web browser. Or you can create a subfolder under public_html and upload the fullsite_package.zip there. The Drupal installation will be available at: http://yourdomainname.com/subfolder. Step 3: Use your hosting tools to create a new MySQL database. Remember the database name and user login details. You will need them on Step 5. Select all privileges for this user. Step 4: Navigate to the URL of your Drupal site to run the installation, ie, yourdomainname.com. For the first run, it will execute the installation script. Select Symphonys profile and click Save and Continue.

Step 5: Enter the database details for the database which you have created in Step3. Click on the Save and continue. It will take 20-30 seconds, you just need to wait until it proceeds to the next screen.

Step 6:

In this section, the most important pieces of information is "Username" and Password of the administrator account. Other information can be filled arbitrarily and easily changed in the future.

Step 7: Well done! The installation is completed and you can proceed to your web site.

Note:

If you dont see any slider and article images, its due to file access permission. Please go to the .htaccess file at public_html/<installation_folder>/sites/default/files/.htaccess and remove any Options None or Options +FollowSymLinks. If you dont see images from other blocks, you can change it later on Section 3.5.

Hour 3: Basic Customization

Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 05:55

This section gives you instructions to customize the site you have built on Hour 2 Installation. You just need to replace sample content with yours, and you can officially launch your website. Now follow these guides bellow to input your own content to this site. After finishing "Hour 3: Basic customization", you will be able launch the site to public.

Introduce to layout, elements in a symphony site Change logo and Favicon Manage menu Manage content Manage Block Change Footer Site information Performance

Introduce to layout, elements in a symphony site

Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 06:00 7

This is the home page layout of the Alphorn site from Symphony Themes.

1. Logo. 2. Primary links. 3. Block slideshow. 4. Welcome to ALPHORN. 5. Block Recent news. 6. Menu Level 2. 7. Block Poll. 8. Block st ALPHORN everywhere. 9. Block Whos new. 10. Block Search.

11. Block User login. 12. Block Asd. 13. Block Index. 14. Block Whos Online 15. Block Resource. 16. Block postscript bottom 2 & 3. 17. Block Newsletter. 18. Block Logo footer. 19. Menu secondary. 20. Coppyright.

Change logo and Favicon

Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 06:02 9

Its easy to change the graphics in a SymphonyThemes theme. There are two specific graphics that are especially easy to change:

Logo: the clickable site logo in the upper-left corner. Favicon: and the 16-by-16-pixel shortcut icon next to the URL in your browsers address bar.

For these changes, you dont even need access to the server, just a few clicks in Drupals web-based interface.

Change logo
1. Go to the theme administration page at Admin > Configure > Themes or /admin/build/themes, then click the Configure link next to your theme (in this case Alphorn). 2. In the Toggle display section, make sure the "Logo" checkbox is checked. 3. In the Logo image settings section, uncheck the Use the default logo checkbox. 4. If youve already uploaded the graphic to your server, you can type in its path directly in the Path to custom logo box. Otherwise, click the Browse button, find the graphic you want to use on your computer, then scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Save configuration. Drupal uploads that graphic to your default file location usually /sites/default/files/ , unless youve changed it on the File system administration screen at /admin/settings/file-system. 5. Dont immediately see a change? Try doing a power refresh (holding down shift or command) in your browser to throw away the old version in your browsers cache.

Note that Drupal will display the logo exactly as it is uploaded, at full size. Its a good idea to keep logo graphics fairly short, i.e. under 120 pixels high.

Change favicon
You can create the favicon from you logo by using this service http://www.favicongenerator.com/. Then follow these steps:
1. In the Shortcut icon settings section, uncheck the Use the default shortcut icon checkbox. 2. If youve already uploaded the graphic to your server, you can type in its path directly in the Path to custom icon box. Otherwise, click the Browse button, find the graphic you want to use on your computer, then scroll to the bottom of the screen and click Save configuration. (PNG and GIF graphics are best, as some versions of Internet Explorer dont recognize JPG shortcut icons.) 3. Dont immediately see a change? Try doing a power refresh in your browser to throw away the old version in your browsers cache.

Manage menu
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 06:12 5

After uploading your logo and favicon, we can move forward to the menu management. Please go to Admin > Structure > Menu (admin/build/menu).

Create menu
Step1: Go to admin > build > menu, select the menu which you want to add items such as Primay links, and then click to Add item tab.

Primary links: are menu links in the horizontal navigation bar of the website. Secondary links: are menu links in the footer.

Step2: Please declare all the necessary information for your menu. Finally click on Save.

Path: the path this menu item links to. It can be an internal Drupal path such as node/82 or an external URL such as http://drupal.org. Enter <front> to link to the front page. Menu link title: the link text corresponding to this item that should appear in the menu. Enabled : enable or disable this menu item Expanded : if this option is selected and the menu item has children, it will always appear as expanded. Parent item and weight : choose parent item for current item, and weight is the order of appearance.

Edit menu
Step1: In the menu page, click to Edit link to edit a menu item.

Step2: Edit the information then click on save.

Delete menu
Step1: In the menu page, click to Delete link to delete a menu item.

Step2: Click to Confirm button.

Unlike the logo, visitors will see the favicon in its proper size in the address bar. Drupal does not actually shrink the graphic itself, it is stored at full size. So it is s a good idea to shrink the logo manually to 16 pixels square using a graphic software or the Favicon Generator.

Manage content
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 06:33 4

"Content is king!". If you do not have valuable content, you can not attract readers. In our install profile, we create sample content with dummy text. This is for demonstration only. You have to publish your own content. This section shows how to manage content in Drupal.

Create content
Step1: Go to Admin > Content > Add (node/add) . Step2: Choose a content type that you need. There are three common content types:

Story: when you create some new information such as press releases, site announcements and blog entries, you can chose "Story" content type. Page: is similar to story, but it is used for information that rarely changes, such as "About us". Newsletter: is the newsletter issue to be sent to your subscribing readers.

Step3: Input all the necessary information for your article and click Save.

Edit content
Step1: Go to Admin > Content > Editt (admin/content/node). Step2: Select the Articles that you want to edit, then click to Edit link.

Step3: Edit the information such as Intro text, Body, Image and so on, then click on Save.

Delete content
Step1: Go to Admin > Content > Editt (admin/content/node). Step2: Select the Articles that you want to delete and check the box next to.

Step3 : In the "Update options" drop down box select Delete, then click on Update button.

Step4: Give notice that you want to delete certain.

Manage Block
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 10:50

As you have seen in the "Introduce to layout, element in a Symphony site" page, there is a home page layout, which has many blocks like Recent news, Polls, User login, Who's new etc ... Blocks are the boxes of content that can be displayed in regions (such as footer or sidebar) on your page. Blocks are made available to your site most commonly by enabling modules. Once created, a Block can be modified to adjust its appearance, shape, size and position - or which pages it appears on. For example, enabling the core Poll module makes the "Most Recent Polls" block available for you to place in a region. Also note that some modules provide multiple blocks when enabled, others may not define new blocks. Go to Admin > Structure > Block (admin/build/block).

This section shows you how to create/edit/delete a block with your own content and change its position.

Create Block Edit Block Detele Block Change position

Create Block
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 10:58 5

Step1: Go to Admin > Structure > Block (admin/build/block), click the Add Block tab.

Step2: Please declare all the necessary information for your block.

Insert a Block description, which will be displayed on the block overview page. Insert a Title for the block. Insert the body content for the block. Be sure to confirm you are using the correct input format for your block. Set User, Role, and Page specific visibility settings. When you click save, the block is created but not placed in a region by default. You will need to drag and drop it into a region in order for it to show up on the site.

Edit Block
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:04 1

Step1: Go to the Blocks overview page (Admin > Structure > Block) to configure the blocks on your site. This page allows you to drag-and-drop blocks into different regions as well as reorder the blocks within a region. Step2: Next to each block you can click "Configure" to change the specific block settings

Block title: Allows you to override the default title for the block User, Role, and Page specific visibility: Adjust visibility for block based on user, role or page. Additional settings may also be available, depending on the particular block.

Note that blocks are configured per theme. If you change the theme or enable multiple themes, you will need to configure blocks per theme.

Detele Block
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:07 1

You can only delete a custom content block created by you using the following method above. Blocks created by modules can not be deleted using this method. On the Block overview page (Admin > Structure > Block), blocks that can be deleted will have a "delete" link beside them. Clicking this link will present a confirmation page, and clicking the Delete button will remove the block.

Change position
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:10 4

Step1: Go to Admin > Structure > Block. Step2: Select a block that you want to change position then click on the select box to select position for its new.

Change Footer
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 10:18 2

Footer section is where you can add your logo, footer links (like Terms and conditions, Sitemap and so on) and the copyright. The footer, in this theme, is built as a block. You can find it by going to Structure > Block > Configure.

Change footer logo

Go to structure > Block > Configure.

Read Edit block for more information.

Change footer links

If you want to add/edit/delete any menu item, go to admin/built/menu and select Secondary links. See Manage menu.

Change copyright
Note: If you purchase the theme, pleas make sure you have permision to remove the copyright. If you are using our free themes, keeping the copyright is a great help for us to produce more free themes for the Drupal community. You can change our copyright at page.tpl.php file in <theme_folder>/sttheme/<theme_name>/templates/ folder (such as /sites/all/themes/sttheme/alphorn/template/page.tpl.php).

Site information
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 10:40 2

Site information
Go to Admin > Configuration > Site Information In addition to Site name, which was set during install, you can also add a slogan, mission, and footer. Other options include setting a name for anonymous users and changing the default front page setting.

Contact email
You can change the email of the contact form by: Step1 : Go to Admin >Structure >Contact email (admin/build/contact). Step2 : Click to edit links.

Step3 : Please change the information you need, then click on save.

Performance
Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:14 2

When you are ready to launch the site, you can turn on the caching. Go to Site Configuration at Administer > Configuration > Performance (admin/settings/performance). Cache: Caches are used to improve the performance of your Drupal site. Rather than extracting the same data over and over again every time a page is loaded, caching stores frequently accessed and relatively static data in a convenient place and format.

During development, caching should be disabled (default). Once the site is ready for production you should set caching to normal. Experiment with these settings to find what works best for your site. In my experience, the most important setting is Page cache. You can set it to Normal mode and the performance is much improved.

Note: Caching has a drawback in that it can lead to "stale" data. This means that the website outputs old data or content from the cache even though newer stuff exists somewhere else. This problem can be particularly troublesome for developers who can get confused as to why changes they expect to see happen aren't

Hour 4: Advanced Customization

Submitted by quynhvt on Tue, 12/14/2010 - 11:17 1

After finishing Hour 3: Basic customization, your site is good enough to be launched to public. This section presents more advanced customization options. It is not necessary, but if you want to play around with the web looking a little bit, these are some techniques you can use:

Create category for Blog (Taxonomy) Enable search Change theme Change layout