Last issue, we showed how to build a photography website from scratch using the Drupal content management system (CMS). This approach is an alternative to enlisting the services of a dedicated website-builder platform like SmugMug, Squarespace or Wix (see issue 231).
To recap, websites built using a CMS are more sophisticated than ones consisting of fixed or ‘static’ pages of text, and are essential for displaying images. These are stored in a database and served to users as required; the website’s host CMS accepts requests from a remote computer and instructs the server to send the data.
While using the WordPress CMS will get the job done perfectly well, developing a site in Drupal will appeal to computer-literate folk who have the time - and the inclination - to go behind the curtain of a website’s front-end.
Drupal is an open-source general-purpose CMS, with a large community of contributing developers. It’s popular with governments, non-profit firms and educational institutions. Security is one of its USPs - vital for anyone looking to use their photography website to sell images or prints - and its relative lack of penetration compared with the ubiquitous WordPress makes Drupal less vulnerabe to hackers, who tend to target larger platforms.
Once Drupal’s ‘Core’ code has been installed, it is highly customisable via the addition of modules (features that offer functionality) and themes (how the site looks). Last issue, we showed how to install Drupal’s ‘Umami’ demo site in a local environment (on a computer). Now let’s start building our live site, before developing and testing it ahead of uploading it to a web hosting platform (a process known as ‘deployment’).
WHAT YOU’LL NEED
• Computer
• Internet access