Drupal is one of the most popular CMS solutions on the market, along with Joomla and WordPress. All CMS give you the ability to choose templates for your website, and most of them have the same features in terms of design function, however Drupal seems to simplify the process of using themes with your website, even more than the average CMS.

The beauty of Drupal is that the design of your entire site can be controlled within one central database. Although the process is fairly simple, to fully take advantage of Drupal’s design features, there are a few things you should know.

Choosing Your Theme

Obviously the first thing you’ll want to do is select several themes that would fit your website. You can find themes in many places on the internet, such as third party websites. Simply do a web search for website design templates and themes, and you will find a huge selection to choose from.  While selecting the themes it is important to note whether or not the theme is supported by the version of Drupal you’re using. If you’re having trouble finding a theme that suits your needs, then you may want to hire a web designer to assist you in creating a custom made template.

You can find web designers that are willing to work for a relatively low price on many of the freelancing sites and forums online. Make sure you only work with reputable freelancers, as this presents the least amount of risk possible. You’ll also want to hire someone that is familiar with Drupal’s compatibility, and you’ll need to make sure they are wiling to make revisions if you are not satisfied with the template. Designing a website has to be a collaborative process that involves team work and trial and error. Make sure you theme matches the goals of your website as well. For example, you wouldn’t a soccer theme on a site about American football.  Once you’ve selected your theme, it is time to install it.

Installing Your Theme

Now that you have the theme of your dreams, it’s time to get it up and running on the world wide web. The first thing you’ll need to do is go through any README files or other support documentation that was included with your theme, as they may contain important information regarding the correct installation of your theme.  Once you’ve become familiar with the installation process, you can upload the them to the correct location. Usually this location will be: /sites/all/themes/yourThemeName. (Note that your user name and hard drive precedes the previous file path.)

Now you’ll need to log into your site as an administrator to finish the process. You can access your site’s administrative interface by typing: “thenameofyoursite.com/admin”: in the URL address bar in your browser. Once you’re in the in the administrative interface, locate the Site Building area, and the click on Themes. You should see the theme you uploaded on the list. To set the theme as your default theme, simply check the appropriate boxes. You can make this theme your default theme by checking the radio box. Once you’ve finished clock on Save Configuration to finalize the process.

Having a good content management system is crucial to the success of any online business. With so many to choose from, it can be hard to decide which ones will live up to their promises. In fact, it can be difficult just to find the top three! Below we’ve given you an overview of the three best content management systems; Drupal, Joomla, and Mambo. The information below should aid you in conducting your own thorough investigation, based on your needs.

Drupal

Drupal has quickly become one of the most popular content management systems. It’s recent popularity boom is due to the fact that it is an open-source software, which means it can be improved by any developer with an interest in doing so. Drupal has been said to be a perfect solution for people who are building community-based websites such as forums. This is because one of it’s most notable features is it’s user permissions system. With it’s extensive administrative control, webmasters can control every aspect of their forum. Drupal is also preferred over Joomla in terms of development because it is easier to interact with and expand.

Joomla

Joomla has also gained popularity because of it’s powerful features and easy user interface. While Joomla also includes forum managing features, these features are not it’s strongest points. Among the more notable features of this CMS is it’s administrative functionality for image galleries, search engine optimization, shopping carts, and forum management. Some users choose Joomla over Drupal due to it’s user-friendly interface. Although there is some learning curve involved with Joomla it is often described as the easiest CMS around.

Mambo

The Mambo content management system was one of the first popular open source content managements systems. While it has been around for quite some time now, it still have a group of developers backing it that maintain it’s functionality and reliability. Even though it was one of the pioneer content management systems, it has fallen somewhat behind the newer CMS softwares available. The primary reason for it’s recently decreased popularity is it’s code incompatibility due to it’s age. For this reason many developers shy away from developing applications that can be used with Mambo. With each new advance in the consent management industry, Mambo becomes more obsolete.

Making the Decision

The first thing you’ll want to do when investigating your options, is go to the main site of each of the content management systems above. Make sure you review all of their features and ensure you’re going to be able to fulfill all of your needs by using the software. Even though one of the softwares may be more suitable for you it is still likely that you will need to install additional applications. It is very unlikely that you will find all of the desired features within one CMS, therefor you’ll want to do some research and find out which CMS has the compatible applications you need. Once you’ve made your decision, you can install the CMS of your choice simply with the Fantastico program.

Open source content management systems are beginning to gather quite a reputation and customer base lately thanks to the recent announcement by the White House of its move from proprietary solutions to open source CMS heavyweight, Drupal.  Full service hosting provider NeoSpire has been a long time advocate of open source software and specializes in solutions incorporating Drupal.

Do It With Drupal Seminar

From December 9^th to 11^th, 2009 in New Orleans, the Do It With Drupal Seminar will take place and NeoSpire is not only one of its top sponsors but will be exhibiting as well.  The seminar promises to have some of Drupal’s top developers on tap to teach more about the program as well as information from community building experts.

Patrons of the event can expect to see successful Drupal sites and meet with like-minded professionals, developers, designers and more all intertwined within the Drupal community.  The event will allow interested participants the chance to see the actual workings behind the architect and building of a Drupal web site.  Topics such as building and growing successful web sites with Drupal will be covered.

The cost of this three-day event is $1195 until December 8^th.  Thereafter, walkup registration is $1295.

NeoSpire

NeoSpire managed hosting provides a number of hosting solutions designed to meet the demands of organizations needing a 100% guaranteed up-time.  NeoSpire has been in the web hosting business since 1999 and continues to provide extremely secure and reliable solutions for their hosting customers.  The hosting provider offers several managed hosting options, co-location services, application hosting and more.

One of the more interesting offers by this company is its Drupal CMS Hosting.  NeoSpire offers fully managed Drupal hosting that covers everything from simple web sites to load balanced and redundant set-ups.  The company even has a specially dedicated Drupal support team that are considered the best server admin and tech support people in their field.  Not many web hosting companies available on the Internet sport the same offering or specialized support team.  It is a testament to the security and reliability of both NeoSpire and Drupal.

Drupal

Drupal is an open source CMS program that was initially created in 2000 by an enterprising man, Dries Buytaert.  What initially began as a small news site allowing friends to leave notes to each other gradually grew into the full-blown content management system available today.

The Drupal CMS is extremely extendable with several hundreds of modules to add onto the main program and hundreds of themes to change the overall look.  As an open source project, many third party programmers are heavily involved with the project creating new and innovative modules almost every day.  Drupal users can expect to be able to find just about anything they require within the Drupal module download area.  Administration, e-commerce, file management, statistics, and spam prevention are just a small percentage of what can be found.

Conclusion

A world-class open source CMS program coupled with a world-class hosting solution provider is a dream combination.  NeoSpire and Drupal are, indeed, doing it.

Sometimes Google makes changes that are announced and other times they make remarkably silent changes.  In the case of Google Webmaster Tools, both types of changes have occurred – outdated software alerts and PageRank.  The recent changes are a reflection on how the company is constantly striving to keep up with its customers’ needs and desires.

Update alerts

In the case of the former, Google is going to incorporate a service that alerts webmasters of web site software updates and releases when these programs become outdated.  The reasoning behind this new service is that many web site owners are unaware of new updates.  Not applying them in a timely manner can lead to a hacked web site.  In fact, the company started out with merely sending alerts to web site owners of potential security issues and when this was well-received, Google decided to take it a step further.

The alerts are not limited to just software updates.  Google has set it so that web site owners will be notified of new modules or plugins belonging to existing programs (such as new Drupal modules or Joomla extensions).

How is Google managing to identify which web sites and programs need to be targeted?  The company parses the source code of each and every web page it crawls.  Normally, within the source code of these pages one will find software generated meta tags that indicate the program version number.  When a version number is lower than the currently updated program version, an alert is sent out to the web site owner. For the moment, update alerts depend upon software creators ensuring their version numbers are listed within the meta tags.

There has not been a specific time set for this newest feature to be rolled out, though Google indicates it will be soon.

PageRank

The other change that Google has made recently to its Webmaster Tool area is that of PageRank.  The removal of this particular feature was not announced – just silently passed off.  In the past, Google consistently informed web site owners that too much focus was being placed on PageRank when, in reality, it was not considered to be a tremendously valuable metric to follow.

The odd thing is, though PageRank has been removed from the Google Webmaster Tool area, it remains within the Google Toolbar.  Apparently it is considered to be too solid of a piece of the branding for Google to have it removed.

Though removed from the tools and left in the toolbar, Google has indicated the PageRank can still be considered useful.  It can indicate to the user how the web site is behaving within Google’s index.  If “green,” all is well.  If any other color, an investigation is warranted.

Google does wish to point its users to an FAQ page dedicated to Google and SEO – this area covers crawling, ranking, and indexing.  The fact is, PageRank is one of a couple hundred signals that can affect a web site’s ranking.

Whether silently removed or publicly preannounced, it seems Google is keeping up with its customers’ ongoing web site needs.

Being hacked is one of the unfortunate facts of life for a web site.  Of the most heavily attacked, open source and commercial CMS (Content Management Systems) programs are at the top of the list.  Secure information such as credit card numbers, banking information and other confidential items could be leaking from ones own web site and often one wouldn’t even be aware of it.  How can web site owners combat this constant barrage of attacks and security leaks?  Simply by utilizing security software that incorporates itself into an existing CMS setup.

CMS programs covered

SecureLive is a CMS security tool that easily incorporates into many major CMS programs – WordPress, Joomla, Magento and more.  The products offered by SecureLive seem to be more heavily geared toward Joomla but it appears as though the company is striving to ensure as many different CMS and PHP programs normally used are included.  One CMS program that it does not work with just yet is Drupal.  However, support for Drupal is pending and should be released soon.

Live monitoring

This program works in real-time and is a live monitoring service that increases the security for web sites containing secure information.  As soon as a web site has been attacked, SecureLive immediately sends a notification of the attack to the server administrator.  Information regarding the attacker is captured and saved.  A notification is also sent to the SecureLive staff enabling them to file a report with the appropriate entities so that immediate action can be taken against the attackers.  All alerts and notifications can be sent either by text messages or emails.

Products offered

SecureLive offers ten different products to suit specific needs.  There are products specific to online blogs, shopping carts, forms, forums and analytics.  All separate software programs run $197 each.  If needing a complete system encompassing all different aspects of an online web site, SecureLive offers SecureLiveMax.  At $497, this software is a combination of other products offered – SecureBLOG, SecureCART, SecureFORM, SecureFORUM and SecureANALYTICS.

Add-on services

Beyond the actual programs offered, SecureLive also offers add-on products.  SecureLive PLUS is an add-on that places a dedicated admin within one’s system to allow for system adjustments and quick follow ups on site security violations.  For a complete server security optimization, the company offers SecureRX as another product add-on.  For those who have had the misfortune of already being the victim of an attack, SecureLive also offers SecureRESCUE – a de-hacking service that repairs a hacked server and gets it back online as soon as possible.

Support

The SecureLive web site has a few areas one can utilize for support should it be needed.  The support forum area and Q&A area seem to be rather sparse but the company does offer a toll free support number to call.  Perhaps as the product grows and becomes more well-known, the support sections for the company’s web site will be expanded.

Conclusion

As threats and attacks to web sites increase on a daily basis, growing not only in number but sophistication, the need for employing good security measures is paramount.  One of a business’ most important assets can be their online web site – ensuring good customer relations, gather new customers and getting their product or service out there for the general surfing public.  Putting into place a good, solid security program to safeguard not only the web site but the secure information that is entailed with customer relations is just good business sense.

Though best known for its extensive suite of proprietary commercial products, as of late, Microsoft has been dabbling a lot more in the field of open-source development.  Many suspect that this is due to rising competition from major open-source players such as Red Hat, Adobe and Google.  It has just been revealed that Microsoft is working on a new content management software application along with a set of reusable compatible components.  Going by the codename of Orchard, the software details will be shared at the TechEd Europe event.  Perhaps the most surprising part about all of this is that Orchard is said to be a free open-source web CMS set to rival with popular systems such as Joomla, Mambo and Drupal.

While Microsoft is being tight-lipped and secretive about the project, we were able to gather some details on what is currently known about the Orchard CMS.

Orchard Overview

Orchard is Microsoft’s latest effort to distribute free open-source software with reusable components and a fully featured application capable of creating a wide variety of types of websites.  The company’s core team of expert ASP.NET developers is actively seeking contributions and guidance from the community of .NET programmers to help get the project off on the right in the early goings.  According to a representative from Microsoft, Bradley Millington, who has been anointed as Engineering Lead for the Orchid project, will be spearheading interactive discussions to invite the community to get actively involved on the ground floor.  Millington will be accepting input to get better understanding of what developers would like to see in the project, the components they envision for their own applications, and how to encourage the community to contribute to make the project a success.  Microsoft remarked that is open to discussing strategy, logistics, functionality and whatever else developers bring to the table.

Apparently, Orchard is not Microsoft’s first attempt in the open-source content management space.  A while back, it was reported that the company was working on a CMS project called Oxite.  In December of 2008, Microsoft made an alpha version of the Oxite source code available under the MS-P1 (Microsoft Public License).  Mary Joe Foley of ZDNet hinted that Orchard could be right on time and become one of the first projects announced for the CodePlex Foundation.  Created to allow for the exchange of code and collaboration among software vendors and the open-source developer community, the Foundation recently released the first working draft of its Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines.  When Foley asked if Orchard was simply a revamped version Oxite under a different name, Microsoft did not respond.

We all know that Microsoft is very skilled at keeping secrets and rolling out big surprises.  Therefore, we just might have to wait until the TechEd Europe Session takes place on November 11 to get more comprehensive details on the Orchard project.  As soon we get something more concrete, we will surely try to pass along the news.

Open source technology has been around for quite some time and has struggled over the years to place itself in the higher echelons of business and government.  The United States’ current President, Barack Obama, has been a vocal proponent of an open and transparent administration.  To further emphasize this, the President recently approved the use of the open source CMS (content management system) Drupal for the WhiteHouse.gov web site.

About Drupal

Drupal is a free open source CMS that allows easy publishing and managing of web sites.  There are tens of thousands of web sites online now that utilize the program and include site types such as community web portals, corporate web sites, resource directories and even social networking sites.

The program is designed to allow quick additions of modules that enable a web site to expand its functionality.  Some of these modules allow for newsletter publication, picture galleries, e-commerce and much more.

As Drupal is open source software, it is constantly being checked, debugged and new updates are constantly being released.  The advantage of this is ensuring that the safest and most secure edition is available to its users.

The word from Dries Buytaert

According to Dries Buytaert, creator and founder of Drupal, his software is well matched and up to the task of helping further the platform of an open and transparent government.  He goes on further to state “Drupal’s flexibility and modularity enables organizations to build sites quickly at lower cost than most other systems.”  Dries feels this move to use open source technology and software indicates that governments are realizing that open source does not present any added risks when compared to propriety software.

One important point Dries brings up is the ability for the Drupal-run WhiteHouse.gov web site to allow for open communication and participation.  This, by itself, is worth seeing the new site and checking out what one can accomplish with respect to open participation.

Not the only government site

Surprisingly, the WhiteHouse.gov is just the pinnacle of government offices using Drupal to publish their web sites.  The Department of Defense, the Department of Commerce, the General Service Administration and the Department of Education have all been using the Drupal CMS for some time.

Other large business, company and entity web sites currently running on Drupal include the New York Observer, Yahoo! Research, Christian Assemblies International and Sony Music.  The list of Drupal-run web sites continues to grow at a rapid pace.

Future looking open

Going on into the future, the hope is that with Drupal’s latest coup of the White House web site, other government agencies, big businesses and even government entities world-wide will see the awesome potential of open source software and technology.  Further, this may also show the world that open source technology is a huge step in the right direction – especially in the area of cutting costs.  Perhaps this recent Presidential approval will start a web site trend and we’ll begin to see more and more “big guys” realize the advantages of open source.

100% green web hosting, eco-friendly servers, solar and wind powered services – the list of environmentally friendly products is growing every day.  One of the newest hot phrases flung around lately is “organic software.”  Exactly what is organic software and how is it implemented into hosted web sites?

The actual meaning

The term “organic software” is simply a rephrasing of open source software that is available to download off of the internet.  The software is designed, developed and distributed freely all the while offering complete accessibility to its source code.  Because it is available for free download, there is no manufacturing process put into the creation of software disks.  You are left with software that makes no carbon footprint or impact on the environment.  When we think of the word “organic” we are left with the impressions of something home-grown, without the use of chemicals.  In a bit of a leap, the word organic in this case is used to convey simply “home-grown”.  So, instead of the mouthful of “free to download open source software,” we can use the term “organic software.”

Software that is organic

Armed with our new, shorter and more eco-friendly phrase, we can now go on the hunt for software that fits this bill.  In the realm of web hosting, there are literally thousands of programs out there that could be classified as organic software.  Drupal is one such program – a content management system that is developed and designed by a community of developers and is available to freely download.  vTiger is an organic customer relationship management piece of software.  Some examples of organic design programs are Gimp, Picasa2 and Nvu.  A fantastic web server program that definitely can be categorized as organic software is WAMP – Windows Apache MySQL PHP combined into an easy and simple to use server program.  All of these programs are open source and are all free to download.

Firefox is the newest to proclaim

Mozilla Firefox has recently put out to the public that it is a 100% piece of organic software.  The company states that it can claim this due to Firefox having been created by thousands spanning the globe, the company itself is non-profit and it completely exposes the internal workings (code) of its product.  Mozilla firmly believes that by ensuring that the developing community has access to Firefox’s coding, it can only continue to become a better and better product and this benefits all Firefox browser users.

Same song, different dance

It certainly seems like organic software really isn’t something new.  Open source technology and programs have been available for many years.  However, the reasoning behind the new phraseology lays within the push to be greener, more ecologically friendly.  Businesses, software creators, software programmers and even web hosting companies are quickly realizing this is a hot issue and are doing their level best to jump on the bandwagon.  What it all comes down to is organic software is just the newest spin on an already eco-friendly system called open source programming.

Securing your web site may be one of the most important things you can do to ensure your data is safe from hackers.  Any hole left open is an invitation to nefarious attacks and these attacks can lead to not only leaking or usage of your private information but information that belongs to your customers.  Proper security measures effectively put into place can deter attacks and give you and your customers peace of mind.

How hackers work

First, exactly how do hackers get into your site and gather information?  Above all else, hackers are patient as much of their work involves guessing.  After carefully watching your web site for a time, the hacker will peruse cookies that are created and see if changes to the cookies garners success, explore the source code of each of your site’s pages and often will create an account to view the authorization process.  Hackers spend a great deal of time processing the information they gather to enable them to see where the holes are and how they can exploit these areas.

Update your CMS

One of the very first and simplest things to help secure your web site is to ensure you have the most current update of your CMS (content management system).  Software such as Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and many other mainstream CMS programs are constantly tested and updated to close up any unsecured areas.  Each day you let an update slide is another day a hacker has to get to your secure information.

Change the defaults

CMS programs often are automatically setup with default information.  After installing your CMS program, ensure you are not using the default administrator user name (often simply admin) and you have changed any default passwords.  You can be sure a hacker will know all the default information with regard to the particular CMS software your site is running on.

PHP error reporting

PHP is a very handy bit of web site programming but unfortunately can tell a hacker a lot about your system and your site if the error reporting level is set to show too much information in error messages.  You can greatly reduce this risk by completely turning off PHP error reporting and setting your configuration to not display errors should one occur.  If you are unable to do this yourself, request it of your system administrator or from support at your web hosting company.

The htaccess file

By properly setting up your htaccess file, you can also keep hackers out of secure files.  First, you should ensure no one can access the actual htaccess file itself accidentally by including the following within the htaccess file:

<files .htaccess>

order allow, deny

deny from all

</files>

If there are any other files you wish to keep private, you can use the same coding and replace .htaccess with the name of your secure file.

Secure passwords

Lastly, it almost goes without saying but always use very strong and secure passwords.  It is very unwise to use your birth date or passwords that are very easy to remember.  If you can remember it easily, it’s a safe bet that a hacker will figure it out in a matter of seconds.  There are many sites online that can help you create a good, solid and secure password.

Conclusion

Being diligent with the security of your web site will not only benefit you but will also benefit your customers.  Take a few moments to go over the tips listed above and don’t give a hacker a chance.

Whether your web site is a personal blog or a large business site, Drupal (http://www.drupal.org) is one content management system that can cover your needs.  Written in PHP and open source, the software is designed to allow for a dizzying array of add-ons (called modules) and themes to be added to its core.  New themes and modules are added constantly by third parties extending the program to allow for new and updated technologies.  The end result is a program that allows for easy creation and simple on-going management of your web site.

Drupal’s Beginnings

Dries Buytaert originally created the program as a message board and it was released as an open source project in 2001.  The name Drupal comes from the Dutch word “druppel” which translates to “drop”.  Apparently, Buytaert had originally created a web site (no longer utilized) called drop.org.  The intent had been to create the domain dorp.org (“dorp” translates to “village”) but a mix-up garnered drop.org instead.  Drop = druppel = Drupal.  Drupal has become one of the most widely downloaded CMS programs around – 1.4 million times from May 2007 to April 2008 and it shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.

The Core

Packaged within the basic Drupal program are core modules that an administrator may enable or disable, depending on the needs of the web site.  The administrator may also configure which users are able to add, modify or delete content, as well as which areas of the web site are accessible by members or anonymous users.  Taxonomy is the key to allowing categorization of content or “tagging” with keywords to enable easier search of the web site.  Some of basic core modules you’ll find include blogging capabilities, forums, polls, RSS feed capability and a feed aggregator.  Also, Drupal includes several basic themes and a color module allowing the web site owner the ability to change the look and color scheme of their site right after installing Drupal.

Modules and Themes

At last count, there are over 4,800 different modules and over 550 themes available to add onto Drupal.  This huge assortment allows you to modify your web site to do exactly what you need.  From image galleries, content type customization, WYSIWYG editors, social media plug-ins, and much more, Drupal third party add-ons will allow you to create the perfect site.  With the available themes, a “plain jane” web site can be transformed into a work of art.  Most themes created for Drupal are written in the PHPTemplate or Xtemplate engines.  A few templates are all plain PHP hard-coded and do not require either engine.  It’s preferable to use one of the engine-based themes as these are designed to separate HTML and CSS from the PHP coding.

Security

As of its 6.x version, Drupal can be enabled to automatically inform the administrator of all new versions of the core, add-on modules or included themes.  This core modules is called the Update Status module.  This by itself is a very handy tool as Drupal is constantly on top of any security issues that arise and will update the core as soon as the security fixes are implemented.  For older versions of Drupal (5.x and lower), and auto-update modules is available for download as add-on module (not part of the core).  Drupal.org also has a mailing list available to alert subscribers of any security concerns and updates as they occur.

Conclusion

With so many CMS programs out there to choose from, the best bets are those that are continuously monitored for security and have a lot to offer in as far as add-ons.  Drupal is one such program and is highly recommended.