How to Use Drupal: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Building a Website

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how to use drupal

Do you need a quick rundown on how to use Drupal to build your website from scratch?

While WordPress dominates the content management system (CMS) market, Drupal is quietly behind the scenes on some of the top websites such as Entertainment Weekly, NCAA, The Economist, and Sevilla Futbol Club.

It’s widely used for security, and it’s easy to use for content managers, too. You can customize it and build your site any way you want.

Drupal is still widely used to build websites, and if you’ve decided it’s time to build your new site in Drupal, you made a good choice.

Here’s everything you need to know about building your site in Drupal.

Why Use Drupal?

It’s true that WordPress is more widely used. Since so many people are more familiar with WordPress, Drupal is often overlooked as a CMS.

Why should you build your website in Drupal over WordPress?

It’s more powerful and customizable than WordPress. It’s the perfect solution for large websites. That’s why government libraries and large retailers with a lot of products turn to Drupal.

Since it’s more powerful, there’s a greater learning curve. That can discourage beginners early on, but once you get into Drupal, you’ll quickly realize how easy it is to use.

There are more options to customize your site, so if you have a specific vision as to what you want your site to be, you can create it in Drupal.

Finally, the security in Drupal is top-notch. It has corporate-level security without the need for modules or other customizations.

Research Comes First

Before we get to the technical part about building your website in Drupal, you want to have an idea as to what your website should look like. You also want to be clear about how you want people to move through your site once they get there.

Brainstorm and write down everything that you need from your website. If you plan to sell products, do you need a shopping cart? Do you have a large database of information that needs to be indexed and searchable?

What about other integrations like social media integrations? Are there certain colors that you have to have on your site that match your branding?

Once you know what you need, you can map out how it will look. You can also decide the journey that your site’s visitors will take when they come to your site. Are they going to look at your blog posts? Will they make a purchase? That will influence the design of your site.

Take your ideas on paper an look at other sites to find inspiration for your website. By seeing what others have done, you’ll see what’s possible and you’ll see how sites are customized.

Website Hosting

The first thing you’ll need to build your site in Drupal is a web host. Your site has to live on a computer somewhere, so your site’s visitors can access it.

There are many quality web hosts out there, Blue Host being one of them. You want a web host that supports Drupal (not all do), that has a fast page load speed (about 850 ms or faster).

Other must-haves for your hosting company are excellent customer service, within your budget, and an average of 99.9% uptime.

Installing Drupal

When your hosting is set up, you can install Drupal. Some hosting companies offer one-click or auto install of Drupal.

If your hosting company doesn’t offer this, you’ll have to install Drupal manually. Fortunately, Drupal has easy to follow step-by-step instructions here.

Basic Configurations

Once Drupal is installed, you can set up the basic configurations of your site. At the top of your main screen click on “Configurations.”

From there, go to “Text Formats and Editors.” Here’s where you control who has access and control over your site. If you have a team of editors and designers, you’ll give them access on this page.

If you’re the only one learning how to build a Drupal website from scratch, then you’ll want to give yourself Full HTML Control.

Choose Your Theme and Layout

This step should be fairly simple. You already did the hard work when you were looking at website designs and mapping out your site. You should know exactly what you want.

Check Drupal’s site to find themes that match what you need. When you find a theme that works for you, you can download it.

GO to the “Appearance” tab on the top toolbar in Drupal. “Click on Install a New Theme” and upload your theme.

Build Your Pages

Building your pages is pretty simple. In the top toolbar, go to “Content.” Then click on “+ Add Content.” You can create a standard page with this option.

You’ll fill in the title, and text. If you want to use this page as your home page, you can then check the box labeled “Promoted to Front Page.” Save it and publish it.

Add Modules

In WordPress, you’d use plugins to customize your site. In Drupal, you use modules.

One of the first modules you’ll need to install is the blog module. Older versions of Drupal had the blog integrated with the core website. That’s no longer the case.

To install the Blog Module, go to “Extend” and then “Install New Module.” You’ll need to download the Blog Module first, then install it.

Other popular modules include Pathauto, Paragraph, LinkIt, MetaTag, and Google Analytics.

How to Use Drupal to Build Your Website From Scratch

When it comes to building a website, the tool you use to build it matters. Webmasters turn to Drupal for its simplicity, its high level of security and for its ease of use.

Even with little coding experience, you can learn how to use Drupal to build your website from scratch. The same design principles for building a great website apply, you have a wonderful tool in Drupal to build it.

Would you like more about what to do with your website once it’s built? Check out these article about monetizing your site and getting started with SEO.