I set up a Drupal site before I converted this to WordPress. I will outline what was used for the setup of the Drupal 6 site (Ubuntu).
- To start, unpack the Drupal files to your web directory.
- You should create your Apache site configuration, setup your MySQL database and setup a local email MTA to relay email locally.
- You will be able to run the Drupal configuration/setup tool at: http://localhost/install.php (or wherever you placed the Drupal files).
- Setup or make sure you have a Drupal cron job (on Linux, other environments may use a different scheduler) that is running successfully to index the site and perform other tasks.
- Make some directories (you may need to run as sudo) to store themes and modules (contrib is other’s code, custom is your own):
user@computer:$ mkdir -p /usr/share/drupal6/sites/all/modules/user@computer:$ mkdir -p /usr/share/drupal6/sites/all/themes/contrib/user@computer:$ mkdir -p /usr/share/drupal6/sites/all/themes/custom/
- Find a nice theme and unpack it in the sites/all/themes/contrib directory. The theme should be available immediately.
- Download and install modules by unpacking to the site/all/modules/ directory. Once installed they will show up immediately in the site administration tool and you will need to enable them. Below are the following modules that I’ve currently enabled and found to be helpful in getting this site set up:
- Blog
- Menu
- OpenID
- Ping
- Search
- Tracker
- Blog reactions
- Pathauto
- Service links
- Watcher
- Tagadelic
- Views
- Once all of the modules are configured, add a Tags taxonomy and configure your site settings as desired. You should have a fully-functioning site setup in just a short amount of time.
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