One of the requirements for my MLS degree from SCSU is that I have to build a present a “capstone portfolio” that demonstrates that during the earning of my degree I have gained an understanding on several foundations of librarianship. While not a particularly onerous task, I’ve decided to start building my portfolio during the time between sessions, so that when I’m wrapping up my degree I do not feel too pressured. Simultaneously, I believe this is will provide a good base for me to build a website that I can use to represent myself professionally on the internet. I am quickly approaching the time when I’m going to begin my job searching in earnest, so it would be nice to have something that is easy to present to people and displays some of the skills I have developed. With that in mind, I decided that this would also be an opportune time to explore the capabilities of Drupal. With all those considerations in mind, frankskornia.com was born!
First thing I needed to do was figure out my hosting solution. After a little digging around, I decided to go with Dreamhost for a few reasons.
- Their prices were competitive.
- They were actually below a lot of the competitors, including LISHost
- They offered a good range of features and capabilities.
- They easily met the requirements for Drupal, as well as some other web software I want to play around with, like Omeka
- They offered unlimited space and bandwidth – while I am not intending to be a bandwidth or space hog, it is nice to know that I won’t be concerned by issues like these.
- They also included free domain registration with their standard practice.
- Domain registration is not a lot of money ($9.95 a year) but it is nice to get something like for free.
After filling out the pretty standard form and submitting my credit card number, everything was launched and I found myself in possession of the frankskornia.com domain name and the myriad of options and features that awaited me as a new host subscriber. Now it was time to roll up my sleeves and install Drupal onto my appointed server space.
Right off the bat, Drupal demonstrates its easy power as they have extremely clear and detailed instructions for installation. In fact, I found I did not need much of the instructions (aside from the steps for creating a MySQL database and noting down the information) as Drupal comes included with an installation script that really makes it easy. Once the files were decompressed and uploaded to the server space, it was simply a matter of browsing to my address and then clicking a few buttons. The only stumbling block I encountered was when I tried to associate the database. I kept getting an error about the database not being found, and could not find any step that I had missed in the installation instructions. Finally I took a closer look at the error message, and realized that I needed to distinctly enter the database’s url. Once I did that, everything went through very smoothly.
At the end of the installation process, I found myself with a very generic looking Drupal website, but there was something very important to note: it was ready for content to be added to it, with no further customizations! I was floored by the fact that in a few minutes I had a generic, but still nice looking, website that I could start typing stuff into, and this was all done with a very minimal use of my technical knowledge. I could see then why Drupal is so praised – because it is extremely easy and as I was to start finding out later, incredibly versatile.
So, my first introduction to working with Drupal was a very positive experience. I am planning to continue to write about my experiences in working with Drupal as I build my personal site. Next in the series will be about my spending way too much time figuring out what stuff can do and then my upgrade to Drupal 7 and my impressions on that.
