DRUPAL

Something Special about Drupal

Drupal core
Drupal core is the stock installation of Drupal, which can be optionally extended by third party contributions. In Drupal's default configuration, website content can be contributed by either registered or anonymous users (at the discretion of the administrator) and made accessible to web visitors by a variety of selectable criteria including by date, category, searches, etc. Drupal core also includes a hierarchical taxonomy system, which allows content to be categorized or tagged with key words for easier access.

Drupal maintains a detailed change log of core feature updates by version.

Auto-update notification
Drupal can automatically notify the administrator when a new version of any module, theme, or the Drupal core itself, becomes available. This feature can help keep a Drupal installation up-to-date with the latest features and security fixes.

An auto-update module for the older version 5.x provides identical functionality, but it is not included in the core release.

Extending Drupal core
Drupal core is designed to be modular with a system of hooks and callbacks, which are accessed internally via an API. This design allows third-party contributed (often abbreviated to "contrib") modules and themes to extend or override Drupal's default behaviors without changing Drupal core's code.
Drupal's modular design, which isolates Drupal core's files from contributed module and themes, increases flexibility and security and allows Drupal administrators to cleanly upgrade to new releases of Drupal core without potentially overwriting their site's customizations. To maintain this separation, Drupal administrators are instructed to avoid altering Drupal core's software.

What is Content Management System

CMS (Content management system) is a group of procedures usually done to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can either be done manually or computer based. This group of procedures is designed to
1. To share and store data by large number of people.
2. Based on the role of users, the access to the data should be given
3. The storage & retrieval of data should be easy
4. The inputs should be unique, i.e., there should be no duplication
5. Report writing should be easy
6. There should be an effective communication between users
In terms of CMS data can be anything for e.g. Document, Movies, pictures, phone numbers, scientific data, etc.

USES OF CMS
1. Storing
2. Controlling
3. Revising
4. Semantically enriching
5. Publishing documentation

Types of CMS
1. Enterprise Content management: It is based on the technology, strategic, methods and tools used to capture, manage, store, preserve and deliver content and document related to an organization and its processes.
2. Web CMS: It is software that is implemented as a Web application, for creating and managing HTML content. It is used to manage and control a large, dynamic collection of Web material.
3. Document management system: This type of CMS is used to track and store documents and/or images of paper documents. The term has some overlap with the concepts of content management systems. It is often considered by many experts that DMS is a component of EMS.
4. Mobile content management system: It is a type of content management system (CMS) capable of storing and delivering content and services to mobile devices, such as mobile phones, smart phones, and PDAs.
5. Component content management system: It is a content management system that manages content at a granular level (component) rather than at the document level. Each component represents a single topic, concept or asset (e.g., image, table, product description). Components can be as large as a chapter or as small as a definition or even a word.
6. Learning content management system: It is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content.

WORDPRESS

WordPress probably has the largest number of great-looking themes to use. Still, there are hundreds of free and even open source web templates not yet converted to work with WordPress. Knowing how to make this themes work with WordPress broadens your choice of design to use for your blog.

Converting a web template is fairly easy if you take the time to learn how to do it.
The Tools that are been used.

In converting web templates into WordPress themes, using Aptana and Cream. Aptana is used to visually edit the template and incorporate the changes that have to be done.

Where to download templates
The best place is the web templates released under an open source license, where you usually get templates at Open Source Web Design and Open Web Design.

The advantage of using open source templates is that you are allowed to change and redistribute it, but if you only plan to create a custom WordPress theme for your site and not redistribute it, you can browse through the hundreds of websites offering free web templates.

Tips on choosing a template
For PSD to Wordpress conversion you must choose designs done in CSS and XHTML. Most of the free and open source web templates offered for download is now done in CSS and XHTML and authors usually highlight this fact either on the web template itself or in the readme file that comes with it.
Validate the design using website validation service. You can use validator.W3.org. Again, most templates contain a link within the page that would take you to the result of W3’s validation of the page.
Choose designs not using HTML tables to render the page’s columns. Tables are great for presenting tabular data such as statistics but not for page layout. Most competent web designers will tell you never to use tables for laying out your web page.

Finalize design
For finalizing your design you have to open the XHTML files in Aptana and finalize changes you want to do on the design. You might want to play around with the type of font used or its sizes or the dimensions of the web templates’ columns. If you want to completely change the template’s layout, you have to spend time editing various components of the template, including the images that come with it.
It is important, however, that you finalize the design at this stage since it will be cumbersome if you do design changes when the files have been cut up into different WordPress theme .php files.
Most free web templates typically contain several sample posts to show how articles, headlines and author links are formatted. Leave only one article in the template. You will be inserting the WordPress Loop in this part of the template later. Mark this part with