Drupal® 7 Bible

Chapter 3. Taking Your First Look at Drupal

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Reviewing the front-end interface

• Reviewing the admin interface

After working through the preceding chapter, you should have a complete Drupal installation ready for exploration. This chapter goes through Drupal's front-end and back-end interfaces and explains what you see on the screen. The chapter is concerned with the big picture, and the goals are to provide a quick orientation and to give a fast start to those of you who cannot wait for the later chapters.

All the references and figures in this chapter refer to the default "Standard" installation of Drupal 7.

The Front End: Drupal's Public Interface

The front end of your Drupal site is the interface that is seen by the visitors to the site. The front end is the target for the majority of your output and the place where your visitors access the site's content and functionality. By default, access to the front end of a Drupal site is unrestricted; however, you can limit the visibility of content and functionality to only those users that are registered and logged in to the system.

Note

Controlling access to content and functionality is covered in detail in Chapter 24.

Figure 3.1 shows the default front end of Drupal 7. At this point, we have no content to display and the number of exposed modules and blocks is minimal; you need to add a content item before you see any output in the main content area of the site. The default theme is Bartik, and the only block visible is the User ...