Website using Drupal

ahll

Hi,
I plan to have a go at building a website and plan to use Drupal. I have never built one before or used Drupal.

Dural seems to need alot of things to go with it to make it work as far as I can make out like SQL etc. Does anyone have any advice on the what best to install and the best way to get everything install and any tips ?

I will need somewhere cheap to host the site as well - any recommendations ?

Is it difficult to host your own site once you have bourght the domain name ?

Thanks

samwsmith1

All you should need is a PHP and MySQL host, upload the files to your hosting then complete the installer - you will just need to create MySQL databases within the hosting for Drupal to work correctly.

I would recommend https://www.uk2.net
Although recently someone on here mentioned this host: http://www.hostfor99p.co.uk/
If you don't plan to have many files on etc then 99p a month for cPanel (Make sure you select cPanel!) should be a good choice.

wonka

samwsmith1 wrote: »

http://www.hostfor99p.co.uk/
If you don't plan to have many files on etc then 99p a month for cPanel (Make sure you select cPanel!) should be a good choice.

Why cPanel? DirectAdmin seems to have the same features.

happywarmgun

Just out of curiosity - what made you go with Drupal?

I've recently learned (and feel I've mastered) Wordpress and am happy to recommend it to anyone - but I always keep an open mind about other stuff - and having never used Drupal am curious what people see as its advantages over WordPress. Anyone any thoughts....

wonka

I'll take a stab at answering that question. I use both Wordpress and Drupal, and like both of them. Wordpress is a great blogging environment, but also good for establishing a CMS-based website quickly. My preference is always to use Wordpress, until I get to the point where I realise that the requirements are (or will be) probably beyond the capabilities of Wordpress.

Drupal is a lot more powerful, in that it has lots more features built-in to the core, whereas Wordpress requires to add plugins. There is a rich variety of content types to configure in Drupal, and it is easy to create community-based content in Drupal. For example, you can allow multi-user blogs, or secured member areas / portals in Drupal.

Horses for courses really.

samwsmith1

wonka wrote: »

Why cPanel? DirectAdmin seems to have the same features.

Because I've always preferred the layout and speed of cPanel over direct admin.
Even with root control of a server I preffered WHM to the equivalent and didn't like plesk either!

weegie.geek

Directadmin is nice, but not as nice as Cpanel. For all the time you spend in the panel after you've set things up, I'm not too sure it really matters though. One thing to note, you can only host multiple domains on one account at hf99p if you choose Directadmin.

ahll

happywarmgun wrote: »

Just out of curiosity - what made you go with Drupal?

I've recently learned (and feel I've mastered) Wordpress and am happy to recommend it to anyone - but I always keep an open mind about other stuff - and having never used Drupal am curious what people see as its advantages over WordPress. Anyone any thoughts....

I have choosen this because a friend has just had a website build and the person who did it used Drupal. I hope to learn it and then I can help maintain and improve the website and maybe build some of my own.

I really dont know much about these things I am hoping to learn all I need to as I go along.

ahll

samwsmith1 wrote: »

All you should need is a PHP and MySQL host, upload the files to your hosting then complete the installer - you will just need to create MySQL databases within the hosting for Drupal to work correctly.

I would recommend www.uk2.net
Although recently someone on here mentioned this host: http://www.hostfor99p.co.uk/
If you don't plan to have many files on etc then 99p a month for cPanel (Make sure you select cPanel!) should be a good choice.

Do I take it that a good place to get php is from the link below ?

http://www.php.net/

Can anyone tell me a good place to get the MySQL host ? Also what is the best package to create the MySQL databases ?

samwsmith1

ahll wrote: »

Do I take it that a good place to get php is from the link below ?

http://www.php.net/

Can anyone tell me a good place to get the MySQL host ? Also what is the best package to create the MySQL databases ?

It's a good place to download the PHP software from if you want to run it on your own computer with Apache and MySQL.

wonka

If you intend to eventually have a website hosted on the internet, then the webhost will provide apache/php/mysql. You could even knock up a temporary one for free from http://www.000webhost.com/

But, if you really do want to set one up locally to experiment & play with (and plenty people do), don't mess about doing this with the various individual components, just download an appliance such as:
http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html