Drupal tutorial for end-users

Welcome to the Drupal end-user guide.  This tutorial assumes that you are using Drupal 7 or Drupal 8, or an older version of Drupal with sufficient modules installed to mimic some of the features that more recent versions offer.

This tutorial aims to teach you the basics of how to edit your website and to answer some frequently asked questions.  It's aimed at beginners and end-users, rather than web developers.  We also provide an overview of how to write content for search engines.  The exact layout and colour of the buttons will vary from site to site.

Getting started in Drupal

Enter your web address, then go to the /user page, e.g. example.com/user.

Login using your username and password and then navigate to any page on your site.  You will notice that at the top of each page there are now 2 tabs:

To edit a page simply click the Edit tab.

If you wish to instead, create a new page, hover over 'Content' in the Administration menu (pictured below), then choose 'Add content' and the type of content you want to add (e.g. Page).  After this the process is much the same to Edit or Add a page.

You are then presented with a series of fields. The important ones are:

TITLE

By default this is the Title that appears both at the top of the page and the 'metatag' title which is used by search engines.  On this page "Drupal tutorial - Drupal end user guide" is the title.  The image below shows how this page appears in Google's search results.

This is one of the important things search engines look at when deciding where to place a site in the search results, so for example:

'Creative illustrator in South France'
Is a much better title than:
'Illustrator'

Which doesn't give either search engines or potential clients sufficient information about that page.  The Metatags are also controlled at the bottom of the page, scroll down, then click 'Meta tags' and you will see the interface below.

The Page Title is shown in the search results, by default it will be the same as the Title you enter at the top of the page, but if you want to override it, you can do so here.

The Description is shown in normal text in the search results and appears under the Title, but does not appear on the page itself.  Read more on how to write metatags.
 

MENU SETTINGS

To add a page to a menu click 'Menu settings', then tick 'Provide a menu link'.  Extra options then appear.

Menu Link Title - What do you want the links TO this page, from other pages on your site to be called?  (Fairly short Link Titles often work best, but should still be descriptive).

Description - Hover over text that appears when someone hovers over the menu.  Normally leave this blank.

Parent Item - Where does this link appear on your site?  The default is normally Primary Links, which is your main set of links, but you may have more than one set of links on your site.  If you wish this page to be linked to as a sub-menu item from another page, select the relevant page it's a sub-menu of.

Weight - Determines the order of links, ignore this for now, as there are easier ways of ordering links.

Sometimes your site will be configured to automatically show the title of the page as a link (e.g. in a list of recent blog items), therefore manually adding a link may not be necessary.
 

BODY

This determines the main content of a given page and uses the intuitive Drupal CK Editor interface, which is much like Word.

View the complete CK Editor end-user guide.

You may have multiple blocks (e.g. top, left, right and bottom) or image uploads and other options, in addition to your body field.
 

META TAGS

Meta tags provide information about each page to search engines.

Description - This is a synopsis of the page (In the example used above, it starts 'This Drupal tutorial is intended ...'

The Description has little impact on your search engine position, so use the Description to sell yourself to people looking at a list of search results.  The Description should encourage visitors to click your site, rather than someone else's, perhaps by listing unique selling points.

Do not just put a list of keywords.

Keywords - Google now ignores the Keyword metatag and has done for some time, perhaps put 3 or 4 keywords you want to appear high for, but otherwise you can ignore the Keyword metatag.  (This doesn't mean they ignore keywords as a whole, just this particular metatag).
 

 
URL PATH SETTINGS

By default the URL (Uniform Resource Locator, a fancy say of saying web address) will match the title.  The URL of this page for example is:

drupal-tutorial-for-end-users

Which forms part of the overall address of this page:

http://www.indigoextra.com/drupal-tutorial-for-end-users

To modify it, untick the 'Generate automatic URL alias' box, then change it.  You're best using hyphens (minus signs) rather than underscores or spaces.  If you change the URL, then we'll configure it so the old URL automatically redirects to the new one.
 

PUBLISHING OPTIONS

If you're working on a page, but don't finish it in one go, click to expand 'Publishing Options', then untick 'Published'.  This will mean that only site administrators will be able to see this page.

To publish the page once you have finished it, simply tick 'Published' again.
 

SAVE

This is the most important button on the Create Content page - remember to press 'Save' once you've finished creating or editing a page!

Alternatively, press 'Preview', which shows you what the page looks like, then scroll down to the bottom and press 'Save'.

If your website's in development, it's often easier to use 'Save', then check the page after it's saved.