Looking to create a website? We have a few different tools for you to build a website - anything from a basic blog for a class assignment to a sophisticated department portal.
Resources
Comparisons
Good Practices
As a rule, do not share downloaded materials with others via peer-to-peer software like BitTorrent or other torrent applications.
When developing a website using the University's Drupal Enterprise service, there are many best practices you should follow. Here are a few of them.
Downloading or sharing software, entertainment, or images may violate United States copyright law. Many torrent applications default to continue sharing your downloads with other users.
How-Tos
This article describes a known issue in Drupal Enterprise and Drupal Lite.
Vocabularies include terms. Terms add organizational data to pages and uploaded files, often referred to as metadata.
Drupal website roles and permissions can be set when first creating a user's account. Or, adjusted on an existing user's account at a later date.
As a developer for a Drupal Enterprise website with a custom theme, you can add a link to your site's footer for users to report a website accessibility concern
This article applies to websites built using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise configuration.
Folwell is an evolving design system made up of modular components that can be combined in numerous ways to make creative and consistent University websites.
The University's standard Drupal installation includes a number of modules that you can enable and disable in the Drupal interface.
This article applies to all Drupal sites with a development environment preparing to launch a production environment and go live.
Your Drupal site will consist of three environments:
University of Minnesota site owners who want to move their sites to the University of Minnesota Drupal service need to complete some tasks before the move can occur.
The second step in planning to move a website to the University's Drupal service is to perform a content audit.
The third step in planning to move a website to the University's Drupal service is to review your site's design.
The first step in planning your site to the University's Enterprise Drupal service is to document your requirements.
The final step in planning to move a website to the University's Drupal service is to schedule the content migration. Steps for scheduling a move from external content management systems to Drupal are below.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise configuration .Your role in Drupal may not have the proper permissions to complete the task.
View displays have three categories of criteria for generating an automated list: Filter criteria, Sort criteria, and Display criteria.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise or Drupal Lite configuration.
For some Drupal developers at UMN, no local development environment is necessary to work on their site. For others, it is crucial to their efficiency in development and maintenance of Drupal sites.
Speed up your testing process and catch more bugs by using automation.
The information below applies to all websites hosted on the OIT Drupal platform.
In this article:
Drupal.org site's Drupal Overview page explains the basics of how Drupal works.
The instructions in this article pertain to Drupal Enterprise. Your role in Drupal may not have the proper permissions to complete the task. Contact your site administrator for additional information.
Do you want to integrate UMN data with your Drupal Enterprise site?
This article applies to websites built using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise configuration.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise configuration.
Use automated visual regression testing to run a pixel-by-pixel comparison between two different versions of your site.
If you are a developer with junior level (or above) javascript experience, you can use automated functional testing to simulate user interaction with your test site.
A Google Slide can be embedded in a page. The Slides need to be published to the web so that visitors can view the presentation on the page.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
A small Google Map can be added to a page using a Custom Block.
You must have the Contributor role to add custom blocks to a page.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
Vocabularies include terms. Terms add organizational data to pages and uploaded files, often referred to as metadata.
This article applies to Drupal Lite and Drupal Enterprise.
Layout Builder is a tool that is used to change the layout of a page and / or rearrange the default content blocks.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
There are three content types in Drupal Lite: Biography, General, and News/Blog. Each has a set of default fields and layout.
In Drupal Lite, you can add any page to navigation menu that appears at the top of a page.
To manage people on a site, you must have the Access Manager role. If you do not see People in the admin menu, contact the site owner.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
Only the Site Owner role has the ability to change the site name.
You can add a 'banner,' 'header' or 'hero' image to your Drupal Lite site by creating a Custom Text Block in the Featured region.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
There are three default content types in Drupal Lite:
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
A General Page is one of the default content types in Drupal Lite.
A News/Blog is one of the default content types in Drupal Lite.
Many sites on the internet publish their content as news feeds. In your Drupal Lite site, you can define a source for a feed and add it as custom content to a page.
A Google Doc can be embedded in a page. The Doc needs to be published to the web so that visitors can view the presentation on the page. Sharing does not need to be enabled.
A Google Sheet can be embedded in a page. The Sheet needs to be published to the web so that visitors can view the presentation on the page. Sharing does not need to be enabled.
In Drupal Lite, Folwell Components are configured blocks that use the Folwell design system.
To log in to your Drupal Lite site, use either:
[yoursitename].umn.edu/saml_login
[yoursitename].umn.edu/login
(where "yoursitename" is the name of your site)
This article contains information about:
Access to edit the display of a content type requires the following roles:
Breadcrumbs or a breadcrumb trail is a secondary navigation system that indicates to a user where they are within a site and how they got there.
Anyone that has the role Content Type Manager can edit the content types for a site. To remove a field from a content type, it must be removed from the layout editor for the content type first.
Anyone who has the Access Manager role can cancel any account.
This article applies to Drupal Lite.
When your site is created, it does not have a default homepage. You can set any page to be your site's home page.
Folwell Tabs Wrappers can be used to create a tabbed interface on a page. Using Tabs Wrappers can make the content easier to navigate.
Tables are used to organize and display data sets grouped in rows.
Drupal Lite has five default user roles:
Each content type has a default layout for presenting the fields. Using Layout Builder allows for the customization of any page. Layout Builder can be used to:
Tags are added to content to classify it.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal configuration.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise or Drupal Lite configuration. The ability to add users to your site is based on your role.
Configuration management involves exporting Drupal site configuration settings into yaml files that can then be captured in the site repository
Curious where your site's traffic is coming from or how people navigate around your site? You can add Google Analytics to your site to help monitor its traffic.
University units moving to Drupal will be able to hire consultants through University-wide contracts.
This article contains instructions for UMN Drupal site editors and site owners to perform URL redirects on their UMN Drupal site.
When you are ready to move a site in the University's Drupal Enterprise environment from development (DEV) to production (PRD), we recommend you use different branches for different environments.
There are four types of hyperlinks you can create when editing text in a field that has the formatting toolbar.
Paragraphs is a module in Drupal. It is included in the University's Enterprise Drupal 8.
Contributors can use the Editoria11y module to identify web accessibility issues with their content.
There are multiple avenues for assistance with your OIT-hosted Drupal site.
In this article:
The following instructions are for OIT Drupal websites that want to use a custom code repository.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise or Drupal Lite configuration.
The following instructions are for websites using the default UMN Drupal Enterprise or Drupal Lite configuration.
The Media Browser allows you to reuse existing media on your website, upload new media, or embed media from an external website. The Media Browser appears wherever you can add media to a page.
On its own, Drupal produces a brand new copy of each webpage every time that page is viewed.
This article applies to Drupal Enterprise and Drupal Lite. This action is only available to people with certain roles on the site. If you do not see the Content Type menu item, contact the Site Owner.
All media and documents uploaded via the Drupal interface are stored in your site's files. Because of this, you can easily reuse images and other media on many pages.
There are several ways to add images to a page. These instructions are for contributors who need to add an image within a field that has the HTML editor toolbar.
The Editoria11y module includes a Content Accessibility Issues report which provides a dashboard overview and allows you to export reports.
The UMN Search Settings module comes with default configurations on all Drupal Lite sites. There are also some configuration options available to customize the search experience on your site.
The UMN Search Settings module comes with default configurations on all sites that use Drupal Enterprise and Drupal Lite.
Curious where your site's traffic is coming from or how people navigate around your site? You can add Google Analytics to your site to help monitor its traffic.
You can use Pope Tech to perform an automated accessibility check on Drupal pages that require UMN Shibboleth authentication in order to view them.
Understand how TDX knowledge base articles are displayed and linked on the Technology Help (IT) website.
Since the Technology Help website (it.umn.edu) is hosted in Drupal, it is helpful to have a basic understanding of how URLs work in Drupal so you know what to expect.
IT Community Group
Accessibility Ambassadors is a group of University staff who are passionate about making U of M digital resources more accessible online.
The Digital Accessibility Community of Practice is charged with improving Digital Accessibility system-wide.
Drupal Lite User Group is a Google Group used for announcements to site owners and contributors on Drupal Lite.
Drupal UMN is a Google Group used for announcements to Drupal Enterprise site owners and contributors.
A discussion list for University of Minnesota Drupal users, administrators, and developers.
Resources
A list of resources compiled by the W3C's Web Accessibility Initiative to help evaluate the accessiblity of a website.
The University of Minnesota's website covering all aspects of technology accessibility.
This article looks at the relationship between content strategy and other tasks like Information Architecture (IA) and some essential tools and processes.
This resource shows an inaccessible website and a retrofitted version that illustrates radical redesign is not needed to meet accessibility standards.
Brief article from a consulting firm outlining how to gather business requirements for a content strategy project.
This in-depth article from Buzzergy discusses the pros and cons of using curated content in a content management project, and also describes a three-step process for content curation.
The University of Minnesota Library's webpage on copyright issues, including the fair use evaluation tool.
Libraries staff experts consult throughout the University and provide training on topics related to copyright and intellectual property in research, teaching, publishing, and other creative contexts.
University of Minnesota students must be aware of the digital copyright compliance information linked below.
Article that covers top questions that should be asked before starting to create a website.
Smaller and local Drupal community conference
A dynamic and responsive group of Drupal users world-wide communicate regularly in the Drupal.org community forums.
Drupal Lite sites are automatically backed up on a nightly basis.
The Paragraphs module is a fairly new addition to the Drupal project, but when it comes to content creation, it offers a rapid and straightforward path towards improving the quality of yo
Acquia Dev Desktop 2 allows you to install, test, and build Drupal sites locally on your Mac or Windows PC.
This information pertains to groups that are planning to do custom development within Drupal. Custom development includes:
Information on the Drupal Conference and larger Drupal community
An introductory article from Smashing Magazine explainig what tone of voice is and why it's important to consider when writing text for the web.
This short article and template from Kapost covers the basics of using page tables for strategic content management.
For the required FAE login, use this link to login using your University of Minnesota Internet ID and password.
In your github fork, you need to keep your master branch clean, by clean I mean without any changes, like that you can create at any time a branch from your master.
This tutorial will teach you how to create two branches (master and develop) and how to merge code from the development stage to production.
Article covering financial cost of website upkeep, and why it is important to evaluate benefit of website compared with cost.
Get more information about higher educational institutions that have faced liability for inaccessible web content and technologies.
This article offers a great explanation of how disabilities can affect use of the web.
University Relation's website on University of Minnesota brand standards for web and print.
This site, maintained by University Marketing Communications (Marcom), provides downloadable files containing official University of Minnesota logos, wordmarks, seals, and other official branding elements.
University Relation's web page on University of Minnesota web standards, and usability and accessibility related to the Univesity of Minnesota web templates.
This site, maintained by University Relations (URelations), provides downloadable images for social networking services such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+; as well as common icons for RSS feeds and
Learn about United States laws that require that State and local governments (including the University) give people with disabilities an equal opportunity to benefit from all of their programs, services, an
This is a form/checklist to help you with your content quality.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Designated Agent Notification Procedures
Notification of alleged copyright infringement should be directed to:
Before completing the Drupal Site Request Form for a Drupal Enterprise site, please think through the following considerations.
University of Minnesota departments and colleges may use the University's Drupal Lite content management platform to publish and maintain web content related to conducting official University business.
Section 504 bars any entity that receives federal funding from discriminating against individuals with disabilities based on their disability status.
WebAIM (Web Accessibility in Mind) provides standards excerpted from Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.
Section 508 is important because it established the first web accessibility standard.
This article explains how the Web affects the lives of people with disabilities.
An overview of how to structure your content for online reading.
This rubric is intended for Drupal Enterprise sites. Testing should be conducted in the stage environment.
An in-depth article from Moz covering all the basics of Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
A brief overview from Kendall Copywriting on how to create effective links to improve Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
A short article from Velocity Agent on how to effectively organize your text content.
Themes make Drupal websites beautiful – and Themes are the bridge between the science of code and the art of design.
Provides information on US Copyright Laws.
Summary of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998.
Developers create the systems for publishing web pages. These systems could be a server and file structure or a content management system. They may also set up the basic template to be used with each page.
Headings communicate the organization of page content to everyone. Appropriate headings improve accessibility because web browsers, plug-ins, and assistive technologies can use them to provide in-page navigation.
Developed by WebAIM.org, this tool provides visual feedback about the accessibility of your web content by injecting icons and indicators into your page.
If you are a website designer. this simple checklist is a great reference that's worth posting in your workspace.
An in-depth article from Meet Content on how to effectively use web analytics in a content strategy project.
A brief article from About Technology on effective web analytic use for content strategy.
Utah State University's Center for Persons with Disabilities' WebAIM Program provides an impressive slate of accessibility tools.
This checklist is a simplified version of the full Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 for the layperson.
Self-Help Guides
This self help guide is designed to assist developers that are creating sites using the University of Minnesota's Drupal Enterprise platform.
This self-help guide is for building a site in Drupal Lite, including requesting and configuring your site, adding content to your site, and managing your site.
This Self-Help Guide is intended to assist developers that are going to develop within the University of Minnesota Drupal environment.
This guide is for configuring and using Google Custom Search Engine with University websites.