Drupal websites for YWAM Centers

From YWAMKnowledgeBase

Drupal is a great tool for building your YWAM Center's website. Drupal provides all the tools you need to grow your website and the flexibility to manage access control according to your needs. As of September 2008, Acquia now offers Drupal site management and technical support services for every budget, check out their services if you are new to Drupal or the open source community.

In the process of becoming acquainted with Drupal and building their first website, many people are frustrated with how complicated it seems. Drupal includes only basic functionality in the default or "Core" setup. Additional functionality is added by installing "Contributed Modules." The problem is that there are hundreds of contributed modules, and many different ways to accomplish any given task. This page aims to explain the process of building your first website and guide you in selecting and setting up contributed modules.

[NOTE] In the first half of 2008 there was much debate about which version of Drupal to use since several key contributed modules were not ready. This page is going to focus on Drupal 6.x since many of the new features may be extremely useful to YWAM Centers.
[Update] As of November 2008, Drupal 6.6 is the preferred version for building new YWAM sites. Key modules CCK and Views have reached their official 2.0 releases. Image module is still in alpha, but has proven stable for use.

To begin with, head over to Lullabot.com to download the video "Installing Drupal 6" by Addison Berry. This videocast will show you how to download and install Drupal on your web hosting server.

If you don't have a web hosting account yet, or you would just like to try Drupal 6.x on your own computer first, download the "Install a Local Web Server on Windows XP" video from Lullabot.com for instructions on how to use WAMP.

If you are looking for a web hosting account, begin by comparing the "shared hosting" options offered by various companies in your area. 1and1, a large international hosting company, offers reliable options for as low as $3.99 per month.