Ready to make your own full featured community site? This ebook will show you how to use the Drupal 6 (or 5) open source framework to build a social networking site. Whether you are a novice, or you already have some experience with Drupal, this will save you a lot of time. The strategy of the author is to use only out-of-the-box modules and combine them in a unique way. With literally thousands of add-on modules available, building a community site can be challenging. The Ultimate Community Site Guide follows a coherent approach, carefully selecting the modules to complement each other.

Out of the hundreds of tutorials available on the internet, this book aims at combining it all to an integrated approach. The author guides you through the entire process of setting up a site. Drupalfun.com is used throughout the book as an example case study. Step by step instructions allow you to set up a site, exactly like Drupalfun.

In the first chapter, the author thouroughly explains the goal of the book. The necessary modules for Drupal 6 are finally mature enough to be used for such a big endeavour as setting up a social networking site. The case study website Drupalfun is also introduced.

Chapter 2 focusses on installing Drupal. What are the requirements, how does this work,...? In the next chapter, modules are introduced. The author dives into some invaluable basic modules, which help protect the site (such as Captcha) and help us work faster (such as DHTML menu). The process of installing and updating modules and themes are looked at in detail.

Things get really interesting in chapter 4, where the focus shifts to user profiles. The profiles form the basis of the site and are central in the author's approach. Every user will have a profile page, where all of his or her information is centralised. The Content Profile module, together with Views and Panels will empower the reader to do all of this.

Chapter 5 expands the basic profiles by adding photo galleries, video galleries and Google location pinpointing. All of these features will be added to the main profile, without any programming knowledge necessary. A few small code snippets, filled in inside the site's interface, are present throughout the book, to glue everything together. The latter part of the chapter will focus on adding user search mechanisms to the site, such as an advanced search page, user tag clouds, featuring members, new members,...

The next chapter will focus on content presentation. The Panels and Views modules are discussed in more detail. This is then put into practice by making searchable content lists, such as a showcase list. The frontpage is also completely altered to feature some of the latest activity, members and posts.

Chapter 7 focusses on bringing out some real community features. The author shows you how to implement a friends feature, community groups, messaging, shoutbox, activity lists, newsletter digests, a user point system, online status reports...

Many people will be interested in chapter 8, as it focusses on how to make some return money from the site. Existing modules to make an income from advertisement, affiliate programs and donation are discussed.

Finally, the author gives some tips on how to keep your site clean, safe, secure and how to monitor your traffic.

In conclusion, Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide offers the reader a real, practical manual. All aspects of community sites are discussed and a practical solution is offered to implement them with either Drupal 5 or 6.

From the backflap:

More than 100 screenshots will guide the reader through the process of setting up a community site with the Drupal 5 or 6 framework. A number of popular topics, such as profiles, picture and video galleries, maps, messaging, groups, friends etc will be discussed.

Drupal is one of the best content management systems (CMS) around. In fact, it has just won (for the second time) the Best Overall 2008 Open Source CMS Award and Best PHP Open Source CMS Award. For about 8 years now, Drupal has been providing users with one of the best and most versatile frameworks around. In this book, I will guide the reader through the different modules needed to build a solid community site. And I go even further, by looking at how to structure content and making a few $,... from your site. It is going to be an exploration of modules and their features.

The main strategy of this book it to use only out-of-the-box, user contributed modules. So anybody can make a great site. This well thought strategy offers us the following advantages:

• Easy to update.

• Anyone can do it.

• Expansive: at any time, you can install a module safely, to allow additional functionality.

Every function will be explained using the fully integrated case study Drupalfun.

Anyone can build a community site with Drupal after reading this book.

About the author

Dorien Herremans is a MSc Commercial Engineer in Management Information Systems, from the University of Antwerp, Belgium. She currently lives in the Swiss Alps where she lectured IT and 3D Computer Animation at Les Roches University of Applied Science and has her own company. Among others, she loves life and Drupal, and has set up a multitude of sites, using creative techniques to get the maximum out of this great framework.

Drupal 6: Ultimate Community Site Guide.

With notes for Drupal 5

Now everyone can set up a community.

ISBN 978-2-8399-0490-2

Author: Dorien Herremans MSc MIS

Available at book.drupalfun.com