Developed and maintained by Institute Communications, Drupal Express is intended for administrative offices, research labs, groups, special events, faculty members, and student websites. It can also be used as a base from which to build school and college websites.
Drupal Express allows you to create a website with little technical or design expertise. The ready-made site comes with built in features and tools like news and events listings, and mobile optimization.
This handbook provides everything you need to know about Drupal Express, including how to request a site, then build, launch, and maintain it.
Additional non-Drupal Express specific resources for site editors can be found in the Resources for Site Editors and Content Managers section of our Drupal Handbook.
Learn the general concepts, and find your way around your website.
General terms and concepts that will be useful as you begin to explore Drupal.
There are four standard menus that you will have access to in Drupal Express:
You can customize menus in several ways, such as reordering menu items by setting their “weight” or simply dragging them into place, renaming menu items, and changing the link title (the tooltip that appears when you mouse over a menu item).
Learn more about your website's menus.
Learn more about Content Types.
Familiarize yourself with the control panel and the icons you will see throughout your Drupal Express site.
The Administrative Toolbar is the black bar that appears at the top of your website after you've logged in. The toolbar gives you quick access to the most important administrative pages.
The following links are available once their respective module(s) are enabled.
From left to right, the icons in your toolbar that are available for editing text:
Preserve Format
Float Left
Float Left 30%
Intro Text
Cutline Text
Computer Code
Cited Work
Inline Quotation
Turns your text into an offset, highlighted quote.
First of all, using a Carousel is optional on your website. As you will see below, the images needed to make Carousel Slides are BIG. So, if you don't have regular access to large, high-resolution images, you can turn off the Carousel.
A carousel slide is a rather large picture.
Learn How to Create a GT Carousel Slide
The carousel is just a container that holds slides.
"Blocks" are a core feature of Drupal. If you are going to work on a Drupal website, you are going to work with blocks.
Blocks can be used to present anything, so just about all content on Drupal sites — other than main content, and primary/secondary menus — is usually a block.
Blocks are similar to "widgets" in other content management systems. Or, you can think of them as Post-It Notes stuck to a piece of paper. Each Post-It Note is a block. It is simple to add it, reposition it, or remove it.
Blocks can be displayed in "Regions" (such as the footer or sidebar) of your page. The Block Administration page at "Structure" > "Blocks" lists all of your website's blocks in draggable table rows, so you can just drag them between regions.
Each block can be modified to adjust its appearance, shape, size and position — or which Web pages it appears on.
Super Blocks are pretty awesome. They are a member of the "Blocks" family, but they offer more style and layout options than regular Blocks.
Also, you can easily COPY Super Blocks, which may save you a ton of work!
You can easily display a feed of your unit's news or events in special blocks called Mercury Blocks.
The Multipurpose Page layout is recommended for most Web pages throughout your site.
Multipurpose Pages come with three separate "Body" fields.
Because of the several different ways you can format blocks and bodies of text, Multipurpose Pages can really be arranged to look however you like.
You can change a Basic page layout to a different page layout. For example, if your homepage is currently using the Basic Page layout, you could convert it to a Horizontal Landing Page layout.
To access and edit your website menus, navigate to "Structure" > "Menus."
The "Primary Menu" is your site's main navigation. It is where you will add all of your navigational structure. The "Primary Menu" is displayed in the gold bar underneath your header.
The two menus that make up the primary navigation are:
Learn How to Add Links to Your Primary Menu
Social media links are displayed in the upper right corner of the page, above the header. The Social Media Menu contains icons that link to your site's social media accounts.
Learn How to Add Links to Your Social Media Menu
The Footer Menus are resource links displayed between the Georgia Tech Resources Menu and the Georgia Tech Map. These menus only appear when the "Configurable" footer menu is active. Learn how to change your footer options.
There are three footer link menus. You may add all three menus, or none at all. You may include up to 25 items in each menu.
Displayed in the bottom-most footer, just above the Emergency, Legal, and Accountability links, is "GT Footer Utility Links." Suggested items for this menu are: "Contact Us," "Site Feedback," or "Tech Lingo."
Learn How to Add Links to Your Footer Menus
Keeping your Georgia Tech modules and website up to date and secure from hackers is a crucial part of your website.
OIT does not offer site maintenance or security patching services, so you will need to handle this yourself, or with an in-house or approved freelance web developer.
Before you begin building your website, start by answering some fundamental questions.
By thinking through the details and planning a strategy, you will avoid creating a website that is confusing, cluttered, and difficult to maintain.
You can no longer request Drupal 7 Drupal Express sites from OIT. All new Drupal Express sites will be built on Drupal 8. (This handbook only applies to the older Drupal 7 version of Drupal Express.)
The following pages explain how to install and set up an instance of Drupal Express:
You can no longer request Drupal 7 Drupal Express sites from OIT. All new Drupal Express sites will be built on Drupal 8. (This handbook only applies to the older Drupal 7 version of Drupal Express.)
You can no longer request Drupal 7 Drupal Express sites from OIT. All new Drupal Express sites will be built on Drupal 8. (This handbook only applies to the older Drupal 7 version of Drupal Express.)
If you'd like to use Drupal Express, but are not on OIT's web hosting, here are some tips. However, be aware that these resources only apply to the Drupal 7 version of Drupal Express, which should not be used for new website. Look to the general Drupal Handbook for information about current versions of Drupal (8 and 9).
Drupal Express is designed to work on OIT's webhosting environment, and so no officially-supported method exists for installing it elsewhere.
However, out of the kindness of their hearts, Institute Communications has provided an outline of the shell script used to install Drupal Express. It receives no official support, but you are free to alter it for your own use, with a few helpful hints in the README file.
If you do change the script and get it to work for your set up, please consider submitting your improvements to the repository, so others in the community can benefit, too. Thanks!
If you are a site Editor, you can skip this section. Only your technical lead (Site Administrator) has permission to configure website settings.
When you are initially setting up your Drupal Express website, complete these items first:
To make changes to your website's theme, go to "Appearance" > "Settings" > "GT Sub-Theme."
Your Drupal Express website header comes with the primary Georgia Tech logo. You may add a unit identifier like this to create a combination logo:
The footer of your Drupal Express website is set to "Minimum" and contains a map of Georgia Tech and a default street address.
Your Drupal Express website comes with the "Minimum" super footer. This option gives you only the menu from the left column in the super footer of the homepage at www.gatech.edu.
To change this setting, select from one of the following in the "Super Footer Settings" box:
Always be sure to click the "Save Configuration" button at the bottom of the page after making any changes.
GT Drupal Express allows for a variety of roles and permissions for your website's content creators.
Next, you will customize each member's permissions.
There are times you will need to remove a user because they no longer need access to your site.
Think about a filing cabinet. Paperwork is much easier to find when it is assigned to a clearly labeled folder. The same rule applies to organizing the Web pages within a website. Humans prefer simple, logical organization, and so do search engines.
To add a link to a menu on your website, follow the directions listed below.
Breadcrumb Trails (menus) appear just below the Primary Menu bar.
Breadcrumb Menus help website visitors find their place in the site, no matter how deep into it they go. Even if you do not want a page to show up in your Primary or Footer Menus, it is important for the page to be listed in the Breadcrumb Menu.
Once your page has been added to a menu within your site, it is automatically added to the Breadcrumb Menu. To keep your page IN the breadcrumb menu but OUT of the Primary or Footer Menus, follow these instructions:
Suggested items for this menu are: "Contact Us," "Site Feedback" and "Tech Lingo;" however, you are not required to add these links to this menu.
To add links to the Footer Links menus, please follow the Add a Link to a Menu instructions. You may include up to 25 items in each menu.
Every time you create a new page, your Drupal website automatically assigns it a URL alias (web address). Ideally, you should change the alias to match your website organization. Read on to find out how.
It is a URL that can be read and understood by humans and search engine robots alike.
Tutorials on how to add content to your Drupal Express website.
Any new page you add or revision you make to an existing page must be published before it shows up on your website.
Your website keeps track of every revision you make to a Web page. This makes it easy to compare versions, or revert to an earlier one.
WARNING: This will NOT create new copies of any blocks on the page, you will need to copy them individually. And, if you edit the blocks on your new page copy, it will change the original blocks: which you may not want to happen.
Click on the "Revisions" tab at the top of the page.
If you are migrating an existing website over to Drupal, one consideration is how you redirect the old Web page addresses (URLs) to the appropriate pages on the Drupal version of the site.
"301 redirects" are considered the best way to handle redirected pages, because they tell search engines to update their databases with the new paths. This way, you won't lose your search engine pagerank or lose site visitors with 404 "not found" errors.
If, for some reason, you need to add another redirect that points to this same page, you can just repeat the process. This might be the case if you cut pages from your old site when migrating to the new site. Rather than risk having visitors get error messages when they try to visit a page that no longer exists, redirect the old page URL to a page on your new site, even if it's your homepage.
Navigate to: "Content" > "Add content" > "Super Block."
When you are all finished, click the "Save" button.
Examples of Super Block styles
As you are creating or editing a page, you can add blocks directly to the page.
There is a special kind of Block called a "Menu Block." It can be added to any page.
A menu block looks like this:
Adding a Mercury Block to a page is different than adding a block directly to a page.
When you go back to your page, your Mercury Block will be there!
Editing the content of a Super Block is different from editing a regular block.
After you have added a Block or Super Block to a page, you can resize it.
Note: The default size setting is "None." What this means is that your block will be resize itself however it needs to be sized when placed next to other blocks. When you choose a size from the "Layout" menu, you are forcing the block to remain a specific size, no matter what.
You can make an exact copy of a Super Block by cloning it.
Note: The size of the Super Block will default back to "None," so you may have to resize the Super Block clone once you've placed it on a page.
Note: This action cannot be undone.
Resize your image before you upload it so that people on slow data plans don't have to download any larger of an image than necessary. Also, choose a good name for your image (all lower case, use hyphens instead of spaces, avoid punctuation, short but descriptive).
Embedded videos look nice on a Web page.
[VIDEO::http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98nNpzE6gIs]
OR [ VIDEO::http://www.youtube.com/embed/98nNpzE6gIs?rel=0"&autohide=1 ]
Please Note: The instructions below are for the GT Carousel module, which is no longer centrally-supported or -maintained. These instructions are provided to help users who still have this module on an older website. For further discussion, please see the community discussion on Drupal carousels.
If you can convince your stakeholder(s) to forgo a carousel, that is always the best option, as a static hero image is much easier to implement on the front page of a Drupal site and can be just as effective (if not more). If freshness of the front page is a concern, the hero image can always be swapped out manually on a regular basis.
If you need good reasoning for yourself or your stakeholder(s), "Should I Use a Carousel?" is a really helpful site for explaining both the marketing and technical downsides to carousels.
The reality is that most of the common carousel systems for Drupal have some accessibility issues, which is something that has legal ramifications on-campus and for higher education.
If you are more technically-minded and do not mind writing your own code for Drupal, there are some useful Web Accessibility Initiative Guidelines for Accessible Carousels that will give you much of the framework needed to create an accessible carousel system from scratch.
For more information on carousels and slide shows and the latest campus developments, please see the Slide Shows and Carousels page of the Georgia Tech Drupal Editor's Handbook.
Please Note: The instructions below are for the GT Carousel module, which is no longer centrally-supported or -maintained. These instructions are provided to help users who still have this module on an older website. For further discussion, please see the community discussion on Drupal carousels.
Please Note: The instructions below are for the GT Carousel module, which is no longer centrally-supported or -maintained. These instructions are provided to help users who still have this module on an older website. For further discussion, please see the community discussion on Drupal carousels.
Using a Carousel on your website is optional. The images needed to make Slides are BIG. So if you don't have regular access to large, high-resolution images, you can turn off the Carousel.
Launching your website is the final step in development: it completes the development and testing phases and initiates the public release.
_____ Decide who will be the site's owner (this must be a faculty or staff member.)
_____ Decide who will be the site's technical lead (administrator), and who will be in charge of updating the site's content on an on-going basis (editor).
_____ Determine whether a workflow (approval process) is needed for content production if there are multiple site editors.
_____ The technical lead(s) should add and manage users, and give them appropriate permissions to contribute, edit, or publish content.
_____ Review Georgia Tech's Web Security Standards and policies.
_____ Determine who will update your website modules and apply security updates on a continual basis. Keeping your Georgia Tech modules and website up to date and secure from hackers is a crucial part of your website. OIT does not offer site maintenance or security patching services, so you will need to handle this yourself, or with an in-house or approved freelance web developer.
_____ Decide who will get security update emails (We recommend using a group email account, in addition to the technical lead's email address.)
_____ Decide on the "FROM" address when the site sends notification emails such as password resets (We recommend using a group email account instead of individual address.)
_____ Insert your department name in the site header, and make sure your footer contains your division's address.
_____ Upload your logo (if using) into the site header. If you need a custom logo, request one from Institute Communications.
_____ Familiarize yourself with the available Drupal Express training, support, and resources.
_____ Read the Drupal Express Editor Handbook to get an understanding of basic concepts and editing functions.
_____ Read and understand Georgia Tech's Accessibility Requirements.
_____ Sign up for Georgia Tech's Drupal listserv and learn how to use the community to get help and post questions.
_____ Schedule a Visual Identity Standards training for all editors through your Institute Communications client manager.
_____ Scan your website for broken links.
_____ Compare your old site to your new site. Did you cut any pages or change any web addresses (URLs)? If so, you'll need to set up redirects from the old URLs to your new site so that site visitors don't get error messages.
_____ Check that all files such as .pdfs have human-readable file names.
_____ Test that any embedded videos play correctly.
_____ Test all Web forms and ensure they work correctly.
_____ View the website on all the most common browsers (IE Firefox, Chrome, Safari).
Navigation and Site Structure
_____ Make sure your site structure is simple and makes sense.
_____ Check that all Web page have been added to a menu.
_____ Check that every Web page URL (web address) is user-friendly and follows your site structure.
Pages
_____ Make sure the title of each Web page is brief and clear.
_____ Unpublish any test pages or unnecessary pages.
_____ Be sure that all landing pages contain content.
_____ Check all pages for consistent layout.
Content quality
_____ Review your text content to see if it follows the Writing for the Web Guide and is easy for web visitors to skim.
_____ Ensure that all content is up-to-date and accurate.
_____ Check that any subheadings used within a page are styled as a "Heading" or "Subheading."
_____ Scan your website for accessibility compliance
Proofreading
_____ Review content and fix any spelling and grammatical errors.
_____ Ensure your writing style is consistent across the site and follows the Institute Editorial Style Guide.
_____ Check that capitalization (especially for pages, headings, and menus) is consistent across the site.
Images
_____ Review the guidelines for Selecting and Formatting Images for the Web.
_____ Check that all images have alt-text.
_____ If using the GT Carousel, make sure any people that appear on a carousel slide are not covered by the text box.
The following instructions are for pushing your Drupal Express site live on OIT's webhosting.
Please note: When migrating an existing website over to Drupal Express, the steps below will only apply if both the old and new websites are on the same server.