Drupal® For Dummies®, 2nd Edition

Chapter 12

Creating a Robust Website

In This Chapter

• Determining the purpose of your site
• Adding modules to enhance your site
• Enabling visitors to contact you
• Enhancing user profiles

To create something more than a generic website, you must take a close look at what you want to accomplish and discover which specific modules and techniques suit your needs. This chapter will help you figure out the purpose of your site — and show you some steps you can take to ensure that your site is effective and your message is getting across to your audience.

Planning Your Drupal Site

To figure out which Drupal modules features to add to your site, you need to have a clear idea of its purpose. Knowing this will help you pick the right features for your site.

Getting a clear picture of your site

Understanding the purpose of your site is the first step in creating it. Your site probably falls under one or more of these categories:

• Blog: Blogs allow you to share your view of the world on some particular topic. They're also good advertising tools for getting news out about a company. They're often one part of a larger site.
• Brochure: These sites are largely static advertisements or information about a business or service.

  An example of a brochure site is www.thealamo.org. While this site does have a calendar and gift shop, its main purpose is to serve as a brochure with rarely modified information (see Figure 12-1).

  Figure 12-1: The Alamo website is primarily a brochure site.

• Community: These ...