Drupal

It's important to understand the basics of how the directories and files are structured on your Drupal site.

When you install Drupal with the Acquia installer from Lesson 1 or using the files from Drupal.org you will have a default file structure either on your local machine or on your server. If Drupal is installed on your local machine you will find it here:
YourUser/acquia-drupal-site/acquia-drupal/...
This is the root of your website. Everything we discuss from here onward will be within this folder.

In this lesson you will learn how to set the basics up on your new Drupal site.

All settings for your Drupal site can be set within the Administer menu that can be accessed from the menu in the left. When you click Administer you will get a large menu with many options. These menu points are broken down to 5 parts:

1. Content Management - Manage your site's content.
2. User Management - Manage your site's users, groups and access to site features.
3. Reports - View reports from system logs and other status information.
4. Site building - Control how your site looks and feels.
5. Site configuration - Adjust basic site configuration options.

I'm starting a course with a lesson a week for non-programmers who wish to learn Drupal. Here is the first lesson.

Before we start with your first lesson, let me give you a very short background about running Drupal.

Drupal is a content management system designed to run on a web server which is accessible through the internet to anyone interested. To run your Drupal site you will need a hosting provider which can run your website for you. There are many to choose from. One of the biggest and cheapest ones that offer easy Drupal installation is Dreamhost.