Setting Up Drupal
This tutorial presupposes only that you have an installed Drupal website somewhere. If you're working with a design and programming team, keep the Drupal administrator's email address handy for the first few steps of this process. To configure Drupal yourself, you'll need administrator-level login permission.
You can install Drupal out of the box on your own website, or on a server on your own computer. A discussion of Drupal installation is beyond the scope of this article, but Drupal.com provides carefully documented step-by-step installation instructions. In only an hour, I was able to install a working version of Drupal at my website (hosted by Bluehost), using the SimpleScripts installation package—and I'm far from a server configuration guru.
If you install Drupal on your own computer, keep track of these basic settings:
- Path to the server (the document root).
- Type of database query script that you're using (such as PHP).
- Parameters for your server and MySQL ports. For example, if you install an Apache server, the default port is 80, and the default MySQL port is 3306.
You'll be prompted to accept these values as you install a server. In addition, you'll need the same basic FTP login information you would need when you set up any Dreamweaver remote site.
Summary: In order to use Dreamweaver CS5 to edit styles in Drupal, you need to do the following:
- Set up a Drupal website.
- Use the Site Definition dialog in Dreamweaver to connect your local site with the remote web server that's hosting your Drupal site.
If you have these pieces in place, you're ready to start customizing the formatting that comes with Drupal, using the powerful CSS styling tools in Dreamweaver CS5.