Drupal Terms
Your first step is to learn some of the language of Drupal. Some of these terms will be foreign to you and others will mean something completely different than what you are used to. If you are already familiar with the inner workings of Drupal and you are simply reading this to pick up some planning tips, skip this section.
There are many Drupal terms that are handy to know. The list of terms below is those used in this book.
| Term | Description and Insight |
Drupal core | What you download from Drupal.org and install. |
Modules | Prepackaged bundle of code that adds functionality to Drupal’s core. |
Core modules | Modules that come with Drupal’s core download. |
Contributed modules | Modules contributed by members of the community. |
Node | Commonly referred to as a “page” of content on a site. It is made up of data stored in fields and is associated with other descriptive data such as author, data published, and taxonomy terms. |
Page | Note: this can be confusing. A page in a Drupal site includes more than the node. It is made up many components such as header, footer, blocks, menus, and so on. “Page” represents the entire interface shown in the browser. Knowing the difference between page and node will be particularly important when communicating with themers because you can theme a page and theme a node separately. |
Fields | Spaces in a web form used to capture data. Fields are found in node forms as well as block forms and administrative forms. In Drupal, they are provided by core and by other modules. It is important to note that in Drupal 6, fields can also be created using the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module. The fields can be used to capture text, images, links, video, dates, and more. |
Block | You can think of blocks as PostIt notes. Each representing something you want to appear in a page. You can move them around and display them in different places in the page. Blocks are created from menu lists, manually, by modules, and by the Views module. |
Views | A module used to create database queries. Views can create blocks, pages (which act like nodes), RSS feeds, and more depending on what modules you have installed and whether they integrate with Views. The Views module is the most common tool used to pull nodes and related data to the page. If you ask anyone who builds Drupal 6 sites what modules to add, they would say Views and CCK. |
Taxonomy | By definition, taxonomy is “the general principles of scientific classification.” Taxonomy in Drupal is the feature that allows you to create a schema for organizing and describing your nodes. |
Vocabulary | The “containers” in taxonomy used to collect terms that will be assigned to nodes as a way to organize, categorize, and describe the node. |
Term | The words or phrases contained with a taxonomy vocabulary. They get assigned to nodes via the taxonomy feature or through a taxonomy CCK field. |
Tag | Another way of saying “term” |
Theme | The feature in Drupal used to display a page and all its components. The theme is how you create the look and feel of the site. It defines the regions in which you can place blocks, a place where the node appears, and other components such as Drupal’s primary and secondary menus. You can’t interact with Drupal unless you have a theme enabled. Garland is Drupal 6 default theme. |
Regions | Spaces in the page defined by the theme that can hold blocks. Not all themes have the same number of regions or region layout. Regions are planned during the design phase. |
User | A term used to represent a person who “uses” the site. |
Audience | Another word for user. |
Roles | A bundle of permission settings that define what a user can do on the site. Drupal comes with three default roles: anonymous, authenticated, and user 1. |
Database | Series of tables and fields used to hold data. |
The remainder of the book walks you through the phases of a traditional life-cycle process from a Drupal perspective, providing another way to start thinking in Drupal.