Instructors in the CWRL can administer their own Drupal-powered site run from central "hubs" at instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu (for class sites) and locus.cwrl.utexas.edu (for personal and professional uses). Drupal, like other content management systems, are useful for maintaining larger sites. They provide forms for entering content, thus eliminating the need for an html editor and a ftp program. They also allow administrators to sort content in multiple ways and maintain internal links. Drupal also includes numerous plug-ins called modules which allow you to maintain message forums, host blogs, and pursue other useful features described in this document.

Administering your own Drupal site has a steep learning curve, but a few hours of practice will pay off by simplifying the posting and organizing web content. This document takes you through some of the most important administrative functions which apply equally to class or personal sites. It ends with brief descriptions of Drupal-run course sites.

Drupal is extremely customizable -- something that is an advantage to experienced users but can be a disadvantage to new users. It has so many features and settings that administering it can be daunting. In addition, its community features can present challenges to course focus: student blogs, for instance, can be used to start flame wars just as easily as they can support focused discussion. But despite these caveats, staffers should be able to create and administer their own sites with enough scaffolding and preparation.

Getting Your Own Drupal site

The CWRL is offering two types of individual Drupal installations: one for courses (at instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu), and one for personal uses such as blogs (at locus.cwrl.utexas.edu). To get your own installation, simply e-mail support@support.cwrl.utexas.edu and specify whether you would like a personal or instructor installation (or both--these are separate accounts). You'll be issued a user name (most likely your last name) and a password which will allow you to log-in at instructors.cwrl.utexas.edu/yourusername or locus.cwrl.utexas.edu/yourusername. After you log in, make sure that an administration menu appears as in the image below. If not, you will need to send a follow up message to support@support.cwrl.utexas.edu requesting administration privileges for your Drupal installation.

Getting Started

When you log in, you will see a side menu that resembles the following:

The content and account settings sections of this menu are covered in the users' documentation. Here we will consider the most important administration settings. Drupal is very flexible, but you have to configure its settings.

Permissions

An exciting possibility for use in courses is to allow students to post and access specific content. This section will focus on two parts of the admin menu: Users and Access Control. Note that default Drupal settings severely restrict permissions, so refer to access control if you are having trouble publishing viewable content.

Access control. This admin page contains three tabs: permissions, roles, and account rules.

Permissions will be selected by default, but if you want to add more user types than the default Administrator, Anonymous User (a non-logged in visitor), and Authenticated Users (a logged in user), choose the "roles" tab. This allows you to create new roles, like "student" or "friend," etc. The edit function on this page only allows you change the name of the role, so once you have created the roles you want, go back to the permissions tab.

Under the permissions tab, you will see a list of installed modules and a table of check boxes under the user roles. Make sure that you, the Administrator, have all powers available. Use your own judgment for other users, but bear in mind that unless "access content" under "node module" is checked for anonymous users, no pages will be viewable by users who are not logged in.

Users. Here you can manage the users of your site. Under the configure tab, the Public registrations status should be "Visitors can create accounts and no administrator approval is required." This means that users can become authenticated users by registering themselves. If you prefer, you can add users by hand, under the add users tab. Under the list tab, you can edit individual permissions (upgrade from authenticated user to student, for example.) Users can be given multiple roles: in this case they would have the combined permissions of all the various roles.

Roles

Roles allow you to determine who will have what permissions on your site. By default, anyone can create an account. But you probably don't want just anyone to wander onto your site, log in, and start posting their blog or comments!

For a course, we suggest that at the minimum you create a role called "Enrolled."

1. Click on "Administer->Access control."
2. Click on the "Roles" tab.
3. In the text field, type the name of the new role ("Enrolled") and click the "Add Role" button.
4. Click on the "Permissions" tab. You'll see a grid of checkboxes, where rows represent site features and columns represent rows. For each, click the checkboxes to turn on or off each feature for each role.

For a course, we suggest turning the following features on for Administrator and Enrolled, and off for all other roles:

• blog module->edit own blog
• comment module->post comments
• comment module->post comments without approval
• forum module->create forum topics
• forum module->edit own forum topics
• upload module->upload files
• upload module->view uploaded files

We suggest turning on the following features for all roles:

• comment module->access comments
• node module->access content
• search module->search content

This will ensure that content is viewable by default.