Professional Mobile Web Development with WordPress®, Joomla!®, and Drupal®

Chapter 13. Basic Drupal Mobilization

WHAT'S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• A brief discussion on the basics of Drupal, a powerful Content Management System

• Learning about the Mobile Plugin module, and how it can be used to switch between different Drupal themes and templates

• Installing and using Mobile Tools, another Drupal module that provides powerful mobile functionality

• Reviewing some of the options for off-the-shelf mobile themes for Drupal

In this chapter, you will look at Drupal, another major Content Management System. In particular, you will review some of the themes and modules available to make the platform suitable for being accessed by mobile devices.

AN INTRODUCTION TO DRUPAL

Drupal is a well-known and popular open source CMS, written in PHP. Originally written as message board software in the early 2000s, the software rapidly evolved to develop standard content management capabilities. Where WordPress is a natural choice for simple blogs and personal sites, arguably Drupal is more suited for larger and more complex websites. It is used by such sites as the White House (http://whitehouse.gov) and The Economist (http://economist.com), for example.

Drupal is said to have quite a steep learning curve, and certainly, in comparison to the simple deployment of a WordPress blog, say, the setup and configuration of a Drupal site can be relatively daunting. The administration settings of such a powerful platform can be challenging for inexperienced users, although, of course, after they are familiar ...