Drupal Interview Questions and Answers

Answer: Drupal is an open source content management system offering a toolset. With integrated social media and e-commerce functionality, it provides unique value as part of your social media strategy.

Answer: A minimum base installation requires at least 3MB of disk space but actual disk space is somewhat higher. If you install many contributed modules and contributed themes, the actual disk space for your installation could easily be 40 MB or more. 

Answer: Drupal is often compared to a number of commercial content management systems including Crown Peak, Expression Engine, Clickability and Site Life in terms of capabilities. None of these systems offer the range of features that can be found in Drupal or the flexible, developer-friendly architecture that allows us to rapidly deploy dynamic web sites. In terms of sustainability, these platforms lack the innovative approach to development, with updates and new features continually being added to the platform. These systems typically do surpass Drupal in terms of out-of-the-box reporting and metrics tools, generally providing views of data that is...

Answer: Drupal is also often compared with other open source content management systems including Joomla, Plone, Scoop, Silverstripe, Typo3, Graffitti, Moveable Type and Wordpress. There are characteristic features to all of these systems that make them appropriate in certain contexts, and most of them compare favorably to Drupal in one category of operation or another. But few of them are capable of offering the balance between performance and functionality found in Drupal.

Answer: Drupal sites are used in very demanding scenarios, serving millions of page views a day. Drupal scalability and performance optimization is one of our core competencies, and we often work with existing web properties to find ways to improve their performance. 

Answer: A wide range of support services are available for organizations running Drupal sites. The Drupal community itself is an excellent resource for people looking to learn more about the platform or resolve specific issues that emerge using the system. Acquia offers an enterprise distribution of Drupal that includes uptime monitoring, email and telephone based troubleshooting support, and subscription plans for sites with varying performance requirements.

Answer: Drupal is the choice for many great web sites because it does a lot of different things very well, and allows different kinds of information to interact effectively through its flexible, open architecture. Drupal's feature set is far more economic and practical for most organization.

Answer: Here are some typical Drupal usages: Content management - Using a simple, browser-based interface, members can publish stories, blogs, polls, images, forums, etc. Administrators can easily customize the design of their Drupal installation. Hierarchical ordering- The Drupal classification system allows hierarchical ordering, cross-indexing of posts and multiple category sets for most content types. Access to content is controlled through administrator-defined user roles. A search option is also available. Weblog - A single installation can be configured as an individual personal weblog site or multiple individual weblo...

Answer: Here is a list of the Drupal benefits: Easy to install. Easy to use - no programming knowledge needed. It has lots of features including Search Engine Friendly URLs(SEF), categories, search function. It has lots of modules to extend your site's functionality. Flexibility - you can easily turn your Drupal installation into a forum, blog, wiki and many other types of web sites. It is free to use and it is open source. Drupal can be easily installed and modified to change the source code to fit your needs. Lots of users and a large community find it easy to find solutions to your problems. 

Answer: Drupal core contains settings that allow you to moderate comments. Drupal's user access controls allow you to specify whether or not users must already have an account before they can post comments to the site. You can also specify whether a user (logged in or anonymous) may leave a comment without approval. Comment moderation is made simpler via the contributed module called Notify. Notify will send an email to the administrator whenever someone leaves a comment on their site.

Answer: Drupal core has two key features that assist with the integration of rich media, the Upload module and embedding. The Upload module allows users to attach different types of files to node types of your choosing. This feature allows for very basic integration with media files. There are two limitations that you will deal with when using the upload module. The size of file uploads may be limited by your web host which could limit what types of media you can upload to the site. If you are able to upload the file you want the upload function does not provide any post upload processing or embed the media within your posts. Drupal core also allows ...

Answer: Drupal comes with a built in taxonomy system. The taxonomy system allows you to categorize the nodes on your site. The taxonomy system allows you to define vocabularies which consist of one or more terms. Vocabularies allow you to organize your terms into groups. Each term is essentially a category. There is no limit to the number of vocabularies you can create. There is also no limit to the number of terms that you can include in each vocabulary. Your vocabulary can also have free tagging. So instead of entering specific terms ahead of time users may enter tags freely at the time the post is written and those tags automatically become terms ...

Answer: Hooks in Drupal allows modules to interact with the Drupal core. Drupal’s module system is based on the concept of “hooks”. A hook is a PHP function that is named foo_bar(), where “foo” is the name of the module  and “bar” is the name of the hook. Each hook has a defined set of parameters and a specified result type. To extend Drupal, a module need simply implement a hook. When Drupal wishes to allow intervention from modules, it determines which modules implement a hook and calls that hook in all enabled modules that implement it.

Answer: Yes, you can use drush – drush is a command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal

Answer: The standard Drupal installation contains a sample .htaccess file which supports clean URLs. It is easy to miss copying this file, because of the leading “dot”. So before trying to enable Clean URLs, make sure this file exists in your Drupal installation. Drupal 6.x In Drupal 6, the installer tests for compatibility with Clean URLs as a part of the installation process. Drupal 5.x Goto the administer >> site configuration >> clean urls section of the administrative interface. Clean urls can be enabled by following the above two options in respective versions of drupal website.

Answer: Websites built using just Drupal core  are compatible with, and fully functional, in all modern browsers that support CSS and JavaScript. However, browsers have varying levels of compliance with Internet standards such as CSS 2, so there may be minor variations in appearance. Here is an incomplete list of browsers that are known to work well with Drupal core and support all of its features:Internet Explorer 6.x and laterFirefox 2.x and laterOpera 7 and laterSafari 1.x and laterCamino 1.x and laterGoogle Chrome It’s worth mentioning here that IE6 has an problem with loading more than 30 stylesheets, and it’s fairly easy to run...

Answer: Content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based. The procedures are designed to allow large number of people to contribute and share stored data Control access to data, based on user roles. Reduce repetitive duplicate input Improve the ease of report writing Improve communication between users. In a CMS, data can be defined as almost anything – documents, movies, pictures, phone numbers, etc. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, revising, semantically enriching, and publishing documentation. Content that ...

Answer:  A Web content management system is content management system software, 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. A WCMS facilitates content creation, content control, editing, and essential Web maintenance functions. The software provides authoring tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of programming languages or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease. Most systems use a database to store content, metadata, or artifacts that might be needed by the system. Content is frequently, but not uni...

Answer: Drupal, Joomla,  Wordpress, TYPO3.

Answer:  There are three ways to interact with the search system: Specifically for searching nodes, you can implement nodeapi(‘update index’) and nodeapi(‘search result’). However, note that the search system already indexes all visible output of a node, i.e. everything displayed normally by hook_view() and hook_nodeapi(‘view’). This is usually sufficient. You should only use this mechanism if you want additional, non-visible data to be indexed. Implement hook_search(). This will create a search tab for your module on the /search page with a simple keyword search form. You may optionally implement hook_search_...

Answer: Every visitor to your site, whether they have an account and log in or visit the site anonymously, is considered a user to Drupal. Each user has a numeric user ID, and non-anonymous users also have a user name and an email address. Other information can also be associated with users by modules; for instance, if you use the core Profile module, you can define user profile fields to be associated with each user. Anonymous users have a user ID of zero (0). The user with user ID one (1), which is the user account you create when you install Drupal, is special: that user has permission to do absolutely eveything on the site. Other users on your si...

Answer: The Dashboard module provides a Dashboard page in the administration menu. The intention of the Dashboard page is to give administrators a quick overview of important information on the website.

Answer: Pages on your Drupal site are laid out in regions, which can include the header, footer, sidebars, and main content section; your theme may define additional regions. Blocks are discrete chunks of information that are displayed in the regions of your site’s pages. Blocks can take the form of menus, the output from modules, or dynamic and static chunks of information that you’ve created yourself. There are three standard menus in Drupal: Primary Links, Secondary Links, and Navigation. Primary and Secondary links are built by site administrators, and displayed automatically in the page header of many themes. Navigation is the catch-...

Answer: A patch is a file that consists of a list of differences between one set of files and another. All code changes, additions, or deletions to Drupal core and contributed modules/themes between developers are done through patches. The differences are presented in a structured, standard way, which means that a program (also named patch) can be used to apply the changes to another copy of the original file.

Answer: A node in Drupal is the generic term for a piece of content on your web site. (Note that the choice of the word “node” is not meant in the mathematical sense as part of a network.) Some examples of nodes: • Pages in books • Discussion topics in forums • Entries in blogs • News article stories Each node on your site has a Content Type. It also has a Node ID, a Title, a creation date, an author (a user on the site), a Body (which may be ignored/omitted for some content types), and some other properties. By using modules such as the contributed Content Construction Kit (CCK) module, the core Taxonomy module, and t...

Answer:  Comments are another type of content you can have on your site (if you have enabled the core Comment module). Each comment is a typically small piece of content that a user submits, attached to a particular node. For example, each piece of discussion attached to a particular forum topic node is a comment.

Answer: Drupal stores information in a database; each type of information has its own database table. For instance, the basic information about the nodes of your site are stored in the Node table, and if you use the CCK module to add fields to your nodes, the field information is stored in separate tables. Comments and Users also have their own database tables, and roles, permissions, and other settings are also stored in database tables.

Answer: There are two different "magnitudes" of upgrades. There are major upgrades and minor updates. A major upgrade updates Drupal from one major version. Because major Drupal versions indicate substantial changes, such upgrades are often time consuming, requiring many steps both before and after the actual installation of the software. Minor updates move from one point release to another newer point release. A point release is a software update that contains only bug fixes and minor feature changes. Its major version number remains the same, but its minor version (its point number) is incremented. Drupal's current major version number is 7, and it...

Answer: You can use your web browser to go to Drupal.org and download the newest version, or you can use any number of tools to do this for you. For example, you can use Drush, if you have it installed. (It is already installed and configured in the Vagrant profile). $ drush dl drupal The command will download and unpack the latest stable version of Drupal into its own directory. In the examples, though, I will assume that Drupal has been downloaded through a web browser or a command-line tool like wget, and has not yet been unpacked.

Answer: On any given Drupal site, at least several add-on modules and themes will be used. It is important to keep those up to date, too. On any of the sites, we can check at a glance whether or not there are newer modules available by going to Administration | Reports | Available updates. The process for updating modules and themes is largely the same as performing a site update: 1. Put all of the sites in maintenance mode. 2. Download all of the modules and themes that you want to update. 3. Unpack them and put them into their appropriate locations. We have been placing our contributed modules in sites/all/modules/contrib/ and our themes in sites/a...

Answer: Version control is a tool for tracking changes to code. It can also serve as great backup tool. Yes, we use Git.This is the best answer. Best because Drupal uses Git for it's own management, so they're more likely in tune with Drupal best practices. Yes, we use a SVN/CVS/Mercurial/etc.This is acceptable. I won't go into the different options here, but anything is a good sign. No. This is a bad sign. This means they're far from an enterprise company. It means thing aren't being done to what has become an industry standard. It means there is greater chance for things to go wrong, and a tougher recovery if they do.

Answer:  If you want to go deeper with Drupal, you should understand how information flows between the system's layers. There are five main layers to consider: At the base of the system is the collection of nodes—the data pool. Before anything can be displayed on the site, it must be input as data. The next layer up is where modules live. Modules are functional plugins that are either part of the Drupal core (they ship with Drupal) or they are contributed items that have been created by members of the Drupal community. Modules build on Drupal's core functionality, allowing you to customize the data items (fields) on your node types; set up...

Answer: Yes, you can use drush – drush is a command line shell and Unix scripting interface for Drupal

Answer: It is recommended that you run the most current stable release. This can always be found at the Drupal Project page. However, if there are no compelling features in the latest version, a contrib module that is important to you isnt ready or you don't have time, there is no need to rush your upgrade as long as security updates are available for the version you are running

Answer: There are really two answers here. At the code level, that's always what Drupal has been about: having your code run when a certain event happens. For example, the following code would send a tweet to my Twitter account every time someone logs in to the Drupal site (it requires the third-party Twitter Module to be installed to do the dirty work). function mymodulename_user($op, &$edit, &$account) {if ($op == 'login') {// Bring twitter-related functions into scope.module_load_include('inc', 'twitter');// Use t() for proper localization.$text = t('@username logged in', array('@username' => $account->name));// P...

Answer: When developers learn that modifying Drupal's core code is a no-no, they often have a panic moment. "How, then will I bend Drupal to do my will?," they ask. Easy: by writing a module. The first part of writing a module is writing a .info file, where you describe your module to Drupal. Here's an example from the Forum Module:  $Id: forum.info,v 1.6 2007/06/08 05:50:54 dries Exp $ name = Forumdescription = Enables threaded discussions about general topics.dependencies[] = taxonomydependencies[] = commentpackage = Core - optionalcore = 6.xThis gives Drupalenough information to list the module on the modules administration page, and to ...

Answer:  1. Aggregator Aggregates syndicated content (RSS, RDF, and Atom feeds). 2. Blog Enables keeping easily and regularly updated user web pages or blogs. 3. Blog API Allows users to post content using applications that support XML-RPC blog APIs. 4. Book Allows users to structure site pages in a hierarchy or outline. 5. Color Allows the user to change the color scheme of certain themes. 6. Comment Allows users to comment on and discuss published content. 7. Contact Enables the use of both personal and site-wide contact forms. 8. Content translation Allows content to be translated into different languages. 9. Database logging Logs and records...

Answer: No, it is not possible to disable the core required modules.      

Answer: 1. Block --- Controls the boxes that are displayed around the main content. 2. Filter --- Handles the filtering of content in preparation for display. 3. Node --- Allows content to be submitted to the site and displayed on pages. 4. System --- Handles general site configuration for administrators. 5. User --- Manages the user registration and login system.      

Answer:   The Views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists and tables of content (nodes in Views 1, almost anything in Views 2) are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes.Among other things, Views can be used to generate reports, create summaries, and display collections of ...

Answer: Posting video from mobile phone to drupal website via email requests from user to configure a mobile phone with smtp settings and reasonable Internet connection (3g). Costs depends from your mobile phone provider: at some networks you pay only for transfer volume, at others you might pay for "event" of establishing connection. On server side you will probably need to setup smtp server and provide access to it to users of your website. Transcoding of posted video employs ffmpeg, its standard software on proper hosting server.Process Overview1. Email with video attachment from mobile phone is sent to a defined mailbox2. Drupal website downloads...

Answer: • Activity • Advanced Forum • Advanced Profile Kit• Application Toolbar (Appbar)• Author Pane• Buddylist2 Package• Buddylist: list your social network• CiviCRM: manage community contacts, relationships, and activities• CiviNode and CiviNode CCK: Tools For Integrating CiviCRM Contacts Into Drupal Content• Comment Notify• FOAF: friends of a friend• Facebook-style Statuses• Family: Record, display, and analyze genealogical data.• Flag Friend• Friend• FriendList• Front: Show group membership and events• Gigya Socialize Module• Invite: send invitations t...

Answer:   To add regions for Drupal 5.xADD this code in its entirety to the bottom of your template.php file:/** Define the regions **/function framework_regions() {return array('left' => t('left sidebar'),'right' => t('right sidebar'),'content' => t('content'),'header' => t('header'),'footer' => t('footer'),'newregion' => t('new region'),);}Replace "newregion" with what you would like to call that region instead. Note that the name on the left before the = is the machine readable format, and cannot have spaces. the name after the = is the human readable format, and can have spaces, capital letters etc. You may add as many regi...

Answer:   Comments are another type of content you can have on your site (if you have enabled the core Comment module). Each comment is a typically small piece of content that a user submits, attached to a particular node. For example, each piece of discussion attached to a particular forum topic node is a comment.

Answer:  Download the theme. You can download drupal themes from http://drupal.org/project/themes, as well as some external sites likehttp://topdrupalthemes.net/, http://drupalthemesdownload.com/ , http://drupal2u.com/ ,http://www.sooperthemes.com/drupal-themes , http://www.rockettheme.com/drupal-themes ,http://fusiondrupalthemes.com/. Make sure the version of the theme matches your version of Drupal. Note that themes labeled "DEV" are in a development stage. They may be written for a previous/current/future version of Drupal, and they are considered unstable and should be handled with care. Extract the fi...

Answer:  http://www.economist.com/ http://www.howtodothings.com/http://leadel.net/http://www.cargoh.com/http://www.symantec.com/connect/For a comprehensive list of drupal success stories follow the below link on drupal.orghttp://drupal.org/success-stories

Answer:  Joomla only supports one Section and one Category for each content, while you can assign Drupal contents to several Sections/Categories. Joomla does not support multi-site setups, whereas drupal supports multisite setups. Drupal has built-in forum discussion, so you don't need to install additional modules. The term Blog in Joomla is not same as blog in Internet dictionary. 'Blog' term in Joomla is actually a teaser view of contents containing: Title, Introduction and a Read More link. So, in short, 'Blog' in Joomla terminology is not 'Weblog'! If one is asking if Joomla supports a 'Blog' by default, then the answer is yes, bu...

Answer:  To create content Administration >> Content >> Add Content Select the content type you want to create. There are usually one or more fields within each content type. We are providing an example of a page. Title and Body fields are found in most content types. Body is where you put the text for the page. "Input format" controls what code can go in the Body field. There are three (core) options: filtered HTML, PHP code, and full HTML. CCK allows you to change the name of this field; for example, you might call it "Product description." Use the log message to provide information that might be useful to other...

Answer:  Drupal has a feature called "URL Alias" that allows you to provide a more understandable name to the content. As far as browsers, servers, and search engines go, it is totally unnecessary. But for humans, it is nearly mandatory. This is why most consultants tell people to always turn on the Path core module, which supports URL aliasing. You can administer the URL Aliases directly on the node edit or add forms, or by doing the following:First, visit the page you created. In your browser's address field, you'll see its URL. On the end it will probably say "node/xxx" where xxx is some number. Write down that number. Now go to&nbs...

Answer:  The Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to custom content types using a web interface. In Drupal 5.x, custom content types can be created in Drupal core, and the Content Construction Kit allows you to add custom fields to any content type. In Drupal 7 and later, most of the functionality of CCK has been absorbed into Drupal core. Summary and purpose of CCK? Drupal comes with core content types like story and blog. For such a content type, go to 'Create content' and submit a new story or blog. That's sufficient for pages of pure text and with or without attachments. But what if your users want to be able to submit re...

Answer:  1. Administer 2. Build 3. Collaborate 4. Connect 5. Create 6. Design & Display 7. Extend 8. Organize & Find

Answer:     A short introductory sentence or paragraph about a piece of content that informs readers about the subject of the content. By default, the first paragraph or two of the content is used (there is a setting for how much), usually with a link to the complete node.

Answer:  This is just a way to tell how serious they are about the safety of your data. If they're not hosting your system, this is actually not their responsibility. Despite that fact, they should be keeping backups of everything they touch. Yes, we have automated backups running for your database (most important), code, files and server at least once a day (hourly is better). This is the answer you want. Less than once a day (unless nothing is happening on the system during that day) means the impact of a crash or a mistake could cost you days of work and data. Any longer than this shows an amount of negligence. Keep in mind that dependin...

Answer:  This might seem minor, but how a company moves files around says a lot about their workflow and astuteness. We use SSH/shell access. This is ideal. This is the most secure way to interact with a system. This means they're comfortable using command line. If they use a version control system and they're not using this... they're not using a version control system for the deploy. We use a deployment tool to stage and deploy sites. This is better than the above option. This is more enterprise, so it's a really good sign. It's also more expensive in general; to do this correctly you can expect to pay $200-$400 a month in hosting al...

Answer:  This is perhaps the smallest issue here for a simple reason: most good Drupal developers shouldn't actually touch the database on a site. Drupal is so powerful that you can build a very powerful system without ever touching the database. Nonetheless, the database tool of choice will help you gauge their technical astuteness in general. Also, a lack of technical astuteness in this area in particular begs the question: "What happens if there's a problem with my database-driven site then?" We use SSH/command line to access the database. This is best, as with the previous question; this demonstrates a comfort with a more powerful tool....

Answer: The Most Customizable, Adaptable Drupal Release Ever, Drupal 8 will set a new standard for ease of use, while offering countless new ways to tailor and deploy your content to the Web. Easily customize data structures, listings, and pages, and take advantage of new capabilities for displaying data on mobile devices, building APIs, and adapting to multilingual needsImportant Points -·         Mobile in its DNA·         Multilingual Capabilities·         New Configuration Management·  &nbsp...

Answer: The drupal panels is a module in drupal which allows a drupal website administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout. Integration with other systems allows you to create nodes that use this, landing pages that use this, and even override system pages such as taxonomy and the node page so that you can customize the layout of your site with very fine grained permissions.

Answer: A section of the path for a page on a Drupal website. In the path /node/937 the first argument is “node”, and the second is “937”. Some modules, most notably Views, allow the use of “wildcard” arguments that allow a particular page to vary depending on context.

Answer: The set of links, usually near the top of the page, that shows the path you followed to locate the current page. For example, it might show Home > Drupal > Current Events > News Articles, meaning that you started at the home page, clicked on “Drupal” in the menu, then selected “Current Events” in the sub-menu, and finally selected, “News Articles.” The term breadcrumbs is borrowed from Hansel and Gretel, who left crumbs of bread along their path so they could find their way back out of the forest.

Answer: modules, triggers typically result from some characteristic change in an entity maintained by a module. Some examples of triggers are: deleting content, adding a comment that a user has logged in, or adding a term. In addition to the triggers provided by the Drupal core modules, triggers may be added by installed contributed modules.

Answer:  Theme A file or collection of files (PHP, INFO, CSS, JPG, GIF, PNG), which together determine the look and feel of a site. A theme contains elements such as the header, icons, block layout, etc. Drupal modules define themeable functions which can be overridden by the theme file. There are additional themes available in the themes section of downloads.theme engine A set of scripts that interprets code and makes theming a site easier. These scripts take the dynamically generated content and output it to HTML. Drupal has three theme engines in addition to being able to write a theme that bypasses the theme engine. The default theme engine ...

Answer: A Base theme is a well-written set of CSS and template files that a theme developer can make use of in a new custom theme. Theme developers can make sub themes to override the default base theme. Some of the popular base themes include Zen, Omegaand AdaptiveTheme

Answer: The core Drupal cache stores assembled pages and blocks for anonymous visitors in the cache tables in the database. Other popular Drupal caching options include boost,memcache, and authcache.

Answer: Objects that can have hierarchical relationships, such as menu items, book pages, taxonomy terms and so on. A “child” menu item, for example, is nested under another menu item, which is referred to as the “parent” menu item

Answer: A URL that does not contain code. By default, Drupal uses and generates URLs for your site’s pages that look like “ http://www.pcds.co.in/?q=node/83.” By enabling  clean URLs this will be rewritten to http://www.pcds.co.in/node/83

Answer: A command scheduler that executes commands or scripts (e.g. scripts to backup a database) automatically at specified time and date intervals. Drupal uses a “cron job” to perform periodic tasks that help Drupal to run smoothly and efficiently

Answer:     The code that is run when serving a cached page.

Answer:     DrupalCon  The semi-annual conference dedicated to gathering Drupal practitioners. It alternates between a North American location and a European location. Druplicon The Drupal mascot. It is a neologism formed from joining the words “Drupal” and “icon”.

Answer:     A version control system used by Drupal code contributors to coordinate their individual code changes. Git records everyone’s changes to a given project in a directory tree called a git repository. Git is a distributed version control and source code management system which Drupal development community uses to manage all the revisions of every file that makes up the Drupal system. If you are unfamiliar with Git, check out the Git reference or the official Git tutorial before reading this. There are also many handy Git cheat sheets, containing lists of commonly used commands for easy reference....

Answer:     Defined areas of a page where content can be placed. Basic regions include: Header, Footer, Content, Left sidebar, Right Sidebar. Different themes can define different regions so the options are often different per-site. Content is assigned to regions via blocks. They can be ordered by weight within regions to define the order in which they display.

Answer:   Drupal uses search indexing using content type, classification information from taxonomy system and the content meta data. Drupal treats its content as fine-grained semantic information that Drupal knows about can be used to fine-tune search results. Also, you can tweak and override the search system to adjust the user interface, the way content is ranked, and the way results are displayed. That said, Drupal integrates well with external search engines such as Apache Solr, Xapian, and Sphinx if the built-in search does not meet your needs very easily.

Answer:     ·         System requirements ·         Step 1: Download and extract Drupal ·         Step 2: Create the database ·         Step 3: Create the settings.php file ·         Step 4: Run the installation script ·         Step 5: Set up cron Step 6: Configure clean URLs

Answer:     Before every official "x.0" stable release of a new major version of Drupal core, there are usually a handful of alpha releases, beta releases and release candidates that are made available. These releases are not yet stable enough for production use, but are essential milestones on the way towards the official release. They allow a much wider pool of users to test the latest code and provide feedback before the official stable release. These releases should only be downloaded and used by developers very familiar with Drupal or those wishing to help find bugs in the software. The...

Answer:     Drupal release versions Starting with Drupal 5.0, the "5" indicates the major version of Drupal, and the .0 is the minor version i.e. the bug-fix release or patch level. That means that 5.0, 5.1, 5.2 and so on all have the same underlying structure. Collectively, these versions are often referred to as "5.x". Modules for 5.x are generally all compatible with each other and with any Drupal 5.x version of core. However, modules written for Drupal 6.x or 7.x will not work with 5.x and vice-versa. The newest version in each series fixes problems that were discovered since the previous version, and these fixes sometimes include criti...

Answer:     Drupal has a very good track record in terms of security, and has an organized process for investigating, verifying, and publishing possible security problems. Drupal's security team is constantly working with the community to address security issues as they arise. More information about this process can be found in that section of the handbook. Anyone using Drupal should subscribe to the security mailing list (by editing your account profile) in order to automatically keep up to date with the latest security advisories of all types (see below).   Is open source software secure? The short answer is ...

Answer:     An entity type is a useful abstraction to group together fields. Entity types are used to store and display data, which can be nodes (content), comments, taxonomy terms, user profiles, or something custom developed. Read more about Entities in the Entity API documentation.

Answer: A new bug or issue is assigned a priority based on its severity, frequency, risk and other predetermined factors, borrowed from medical term triage.

Answer:     The bootstrap is the CPU (central processing unit) of Drupal. In other interactive software environments this is sometimes called the event loop. Drupal's core is a bit like that. It sits around waiting for a path request, and then starts processing that request.

Answer:  A term used by Drupal to define the priority or order in which a function is processed or a block / node is displayed. From Drupal 6, the weight field is adjusted dynamically using a drag-and-drop interface. Note: A lower weight value (-10) will float to the top of lists, while heavier (+10) weights will appear lower in lists.

Answer: Server basics ·         Verify Clean-Urls in Apache. Confirm AllowOverride All is in effect, and mod_rewrite is available. ·         Ensure that when you uploaded, the Drupal .htaccess file went up as well. On some systems this file is hidden. ·         Check DB support via phpinfo D7 requires not just MySQL but pdo_mysql as well. ·         Check GD image toolkit support in phpinfo, or in ...

Answer: The purpose is to 1.       Check your site's status 2.        Configure your site information 3.        User management 4.        Add additional functionality 5.      Customizing the site appearance  6.      Posting content

Answer:  No matter how easy it is to modify core files to make Drupal do what you want it to do, resist the temptation. ·         Doing so will make it complicated, difficult or near impossible to apply site updates such as Security and bug fixes. ·         You will make it difficult for those that come after to maintain the site. ·         You could possibly leave your site vulnerable to exploits. The Drupal core has been designed to be modular, so there should be no reason to hack it. ...

Answer: 7.27 / 16 April 2014 Development status Active Written in PHP Operating system Cross-platform Size 11.4 MB (uncompressed core) Available in Multilingual Type Content management framework, Content management system,Community and Blog software License GPLv2 or later Website drupal.org

Answer:  Drupal is based on less publicized but still widely used architecture Presentation Abstraction Control, or PAC. The menu system acts as the Controller. It accepts input via a single source (HTTP GET and POST), routes requests to the appropriate helper functions, pulls data out of the Abstraction (nodes and, from Drupal 5 onwards, forms), and then pushes it through a filter to get a Presentation of it (the theme system). It even has multiple, parallel PAC agents in the form of blocks that push data out to a common canvas (page.tpl.php).

Answer:  Release dates   1.0      15 Jan 2001   2.0       15 Mar 2001   3.0        15 Sep 2001   4.0       16 Jun 2002   4.5        16 Oct 2004   4.6       16 Apr 2005   4.7       16 May 2006   5.0      15 Jan 2007    6.0      13 Feb 2008   7.0      5 Jan 2011   7.26    15 Jan 2014

Answer: Performance · Go to Site Configuration -> Performance and within the Cache area enable Cache pages for anonymous users and Cache blocks by clicking in the checkbox if necessary. You should see checks appear. · Within Bandwidth Optimization enable Compress cached pages, Aggregate and compress CSS files, and Aggregate JavaScript files. · Turn off unnecessary modules, such as Devel. User Interaction · Protect your forms against spam and attacks. · What kind of forms are anonymous and authenticated users able to access on your site? · Have you enabled CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, or an anti-spam service such as...

Answer: Read Here https://drupal.org/node/30334

Answer: Programming best practices   https://drupal.org/node/287350 Best practices (drupal)    https://drupal.org/best-practices

Answer:        · Installation profiles are what a developer creates as the basis of distributions. They define installation steps (such as enabling modules, defining content types, etc.) that run after Drupal's base installation when you first install Drupal. One or more standard installation profiles are included in the Drupal Core download; developers can create custom profiles that set up Drupal for specific purposes, and optionally release them for community use on Drupal.org. It is not always easy to attempt to use an installation profile directly, if it requires non-core modules, themes, or libraries -- you would have...

Answer: · Usability Aspects of the Drupal 6 administration interface were seen to be confusing and intimidating to some, particularly for new administrators. According to Dries Buytaert, Drupal 7 addressed 90% of the problems identified by Usability tests conducted at the Universities of Minnesota and Baltimore. To achieve this, Acquia(the company founded by the project lead of Drupal) hired user experience designer Mark Boulton to work with the Drupal community to design an improved user interface for Drupal's administration interface. The majority of his team's design work has been implemented by the community in Drupal 7. The 2011 usability...

Answer: People often wonder what kind of hardware drupal.org runs on. Throughout the project history this has been a tough question. For a while it was a server in a random office building. That server eventually died and required a fund-raising effort to replace (the funds were raised in 24 hours!). The critical infrastructure is all configured to share the load and be redundant. For example, db1 and db2 are configured to be master-slave most of the time to provide for better performance and allow the slave to be promoted to master if the master fails. What hardware does Drupal.org run on? People often wonder what kind of hardware drupal.org runs on...

Answer: Drupal provides methods for implementing JavaScript. Using these methods will help to keep your code clean and to ensure compatibility with the way other modules implement JavaScript. A couple of simple principles guide Drupal's JavaScript approach: · All pages should be perfectly functional without scripts. JavaScript provides alternatives or supplements - not replacements - for standard elements.· No JavaScript is hard-coded into pages. Rather, actions are attached dynamically to page elements--and only if the needed JavaScript support is present.

Answer: Drupal stores its information - the individual pages, the registered users, and so on - in the database. The database forms the back-end for your Drupal site. At this time, Drupal supports MySQL (or an equivalent such as MariaDB), PostgreSQL, and in Drupal 7, SQLite.

Answer: Every element of information is called node. At the base of the system is the data pool which is the collection of nodes. Next are the modules that are functional plug-ins. Modules may be drupal core or a contributed item. Blocks and menus form the next layer of drupal. Blocks are output tool. A user can configure blocks to create a display that he wants and show only a few pages. In the next layer, user permissions are determined to the type of users who would be allowed to work on the database. Template, which is the theme of the site, is the last layer. It is made of a combination of XHTML, CSS and PHP.

Answer: Following drush commands are use useful while development.Drush cc – clear cachepm-disable (dis) Disable one or more extensions (modules or themes).pm-download (dl) Download projects from drupal.org or other sources.pm-enable (en) Enable one or more extensions (modules or themes).pm-info (pmi) Show detailed info for one or more extensions (modules or themes).pm-list (pml) Show a list of available extensions (modules and themes).pm-refresh (rf) Refresh update status information.pm-releasenotes Print release notes for given projects.(rln)pm-releases (rl) Print release information for given projects.pm-uninstall Uninstall one or more modul...

Answer: This suite is primarily a set of APIs and tools to improve the developer experience. It also contains a module called the Page Manager whose job is to manage pages. In particular it manages panel pages, but as it grows it will be able to manage far more than just Panels.

Answer: The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout. Integration with other systems allows you to create nodes that use this, landing pages that use this, and even override system pages such as taxonomy and the node page so that you can customize the layout of your site with very fine grained permissions.

Answer: The features module enables the capture and management of features in Drupal. A feature is a collection of Drupal entities which taken together satisfy a certain use-case.Features provides a UI and API for taking different site building components from modules with exportables and bundling them together in a single feature module. A feature module is like any other Drupal module except that it declares its components (e.g. views, contexts, CCK fields, etc.) in its .info file so that it can be checked, updated, or reverted programmatically.

Answer: Singleton Design pattern is used in Drupal.

Answer: Doctrine is the ORM.

Answer: A patch is a file that consists of a list of differences between one set of files and another. All code changes, additions, or deletions to Drupal core and contributed modules/themes between developers are done through patches. The differences are presented in a structured, standard way, which means that a program (also named patch) can be used to apply the changes to another copy of the original file.

Answer: Use form alter hook and use this “‘#required’ => TRUE”

Answer: Use profile module. In drupal 7 Profile is in core.

Answer: use update.php or drush command (pm-update)

Answer: Use the captcha and recaptcha module.For Image slider which modules are required in Drupal?Ans: use Views slideshow, nivo slider modules. there are other modules also.

Answer:  Taxonomy, a powerful core module, gives your sites use of the organizational keywords known in other systems as categories, tags, or metadata. It allows you to connect, relate and classify your website’s content. In Drupal, these terms are gathered within “vocabularies.” The Taxonomy module allows you to create, manage and apply those vocabularies.

Answer: Use following:Navigate to administer > site building > menusSelect the Add menu tab itemFor the title enter Example menu and select to return to the menu list view

Answer:  .info (declares the theme features) and page.tpl.php (defines the layout)

Answer:  MODULENAME.info and MODULENAME.module file are required for creating the module.

Answer:  Views, Panels, Ctools, Token, Pathauto, Webform, Rules, Features, Strongarm, Date, view slideshow, Drush, Entity Reference, QuickTab, Libraries, Google Analytics, Display Suite, Context, Module Filter, CSS Injector, etc.

Answer:  contextual filters were called arguments in Views and a lot of documentation, tutorials and Views-compatible modules still use that term. If you see the term argument, it should be interpreted either as a contextual filter, or the value provided to a contextual filter.

Answer: File_HtAccess provides common methods to create and manipulate Apache / NCSA style .htaccess files. These files together with accompanying password files are used to protect webserver directories. Since File_HtAccess does not provide any means to manipulate or create password files you should use it together with File_Passwd.

Answer:  ALTER is a DDL (Data Definition Language) statement. Whereas UPDATE is a DML (Data Manipulation Language) statement. One is used to update the structure of the table (add/remove field/index etc). Whereas UPDATE is used to update data.

Answer:  A responsive theme (as the one used for this website), is an approach to web development that allows a website to break itself down smoothly across multiple monitor sizes, screen resolutions, and platforms, be it a computer, tablet or mobile device. It allows the developer to create a site that is optimized for each platform, both in navigation, readability and load time.As you can see when resizing the window (if you are viewing this site on a computer), the layout of the page shifts depending on the size of the screen; with different layouts for content depending on viewing area. Themes (or layouts) such as this, allow for a single si...

Answer:  Use db_drop_table method in install file

Answer: Simple using print_r or var_export , you can debug code within Drupal.   $node = node_load(123); print_r($node);?> Drupal devel module provides dsm and dpm functions to debug code within drupal.   $node = node_load(123); dpm($node);?> Drupal latest version provides debug inbuilt function to print errors, notices and warnings as well.This could be in the page or in the logs depending on how php is configured.For example,  $node = node_load(123);debug($node);?> The full options for debug function are: debug($data, $label, $print_r); The $data is pretty self explanatory. It can be anything you could pass through print_r o...

Answer:  Allow the use of different database servers using the same code base.Drupal provides an abstraction layer with the ability to support multiple database servers easily. The intent of this layer is to preserve the syntax and power of SQL as much as possible, while letting Drupal control the pieces of queries that need to be written differently for different servers and provide basic security checks.Most Drupal database queries are performed by a call to db_query() or db_query_range(). Module authors should also consider using pager_query() for queries that return results that need to be presented on multiple pages, and tablesort_sql() for...

Answer: Drupal caching system allows customized settings to speed up website using different configuration with page caching, block caching and lifetime for cached pages.Page caching:If enables, page caching will only be used for anonymous users.If you enable page caching, the entire HTML of each page will be stored in the database. This significantly reduces the amount of queries needed.This automatically means that blocks will also get cached, disregarded their own cache settings.If Varnish is configured, this will also enable varnish cachingThe page cache max-age will be used (see below) for each page.You can check the “X-Drupal-Cache”...

Answer: Views – This module is essential in every website I build. It makes displaying lists of content very easy. If you want an image slideshow, a list of blog posts, a list of products, etc., views is the best place to start. Panels – Panels gives you the ability to create custom pages easily. These custom pages can have multiple regions of content. For example, you may want to create a home page that has a Slideshow on the top, and a two column layout below. Ctools – On its own, Ctools does not seem to do a lot. However, it is actually a very powerful framework if you begin developing your own modules. I have used Ctools in the ...

Answer: Symptoms: An authorized Drupal user loses "edit" access to nodes they've created, even if they have appropriate node (or other module) access permissions. Or, user cannot edit a node that should be editable by them, based on access control or node access settings. No errors or warnings are presented to the user. Nothing in the Drupal watchdog log. Possible Cause: The user does not have permission to use the input filter currently assigned to the node. (An administrator or other privileged user may have changed the input filter settings, or, input filter permissions may have been changed to exclude the node author since the node was created. A...

Answer: Another common alternative platform to Drupal is Ruby on Rails. We really don't have much to say about Ruby except that it is a framework moreso than a platform. There are some characteristically challenging web development tasks that are quite easy to do with Ruby, and there are others which are infinitely more complicated than they should be. One big difference is the fact that Ruby lacks the refined data object model found in Drupal that ensures interoperability between various aspects of the system, such as adding new modules to modify the operations of others. Whereas Drupal offers a self-generating database schema for many modules and u...

Answer: Drupal is also often compared with other open source content management systems including Joomla, Plone, Scoop, Silverstripe, Typo3, Graffitti, Moveable Type and Wordpress. There are characteristic features to all of these systems that make them appropriate in certain contexts, and most of them compare favorably to Drupal in one category of operation or another. Few of them, however, are capable of offering the balance between performance and functionality found in Drupal.

Answer: Be it a media, image or article content that we want to manage in our website based on Joomla, Drupal or other CMSs, the most typical way is to categorize them as Sections and categories. Again the categories can be based on any aspect of the content ( for example the blogs have publication month as common category). The Sections include the different categories and each categories usually have the content list directly linked. The flexibility that we get with the categorization and management differs across the different management systems.

Answer:  It depends on the learner’s previous experience. Someone who used to build sites with traditional HTML has to understand that there are essentially three different systems to control: the main content area (via nodes), surrounding areas (via blocks), and general look of the site (theme). Someone who’s only had a MySpace page could be overwhelmed by Drupal’s openness. The biggest hurdle for everybody, I think, is installation. There’s only so much a Drupal instructor can do about that: The problems are related to how the Internet works. Getting a domain name, selecting a web host, moving a site from your local mac...

Answer: The Content Management Systems are usually developed in the idea of giving the best and optimized solution for content management. There may be at times that you have to deal with the code yourself and that is when standards come into picture. The setting up of the CMS in the right way and configuring it rightly most often will help you in getting a pretty much clean code in the back end. The generated code mostly are modularized and the CSS based ones are divided as objects clearly, and html and w3 standards are mostly compliant in the pages. This does not include the third party extensions or plug-ins though.

Answer: The input filters are access control that are established for nodes that come into existence. The user may be given the privilege to create the nodes. But not always does he get the permission to edit it. This is not always indicated explicitly. The administrator alone has the right to change the input filter settings pertaining to the different nodes that are created by the user.

Answer: There are many Drupal websites which are maintained with over millions of views every day. The Drupal has grown very much towards the optimization factor and Drupal is easily scalable across higher bandwidths with efficient and stable platform for management.

Answer: Drupal is an open source CMS that has almost all the features of commercial CMS packed into it with customizations that are readily available from the community of users. You just have to tweak in the right add-ons with the help of a Drupal Expert. Once this is done the maintenance is much simple that most other CMSs. Main advantages of the Drupal are:1. More than 7,000 modules that are on offer.2. Active user community ready to help you in development and design oriented changes.3. Many marketing and campaign friendly components and add-ons will make overall website maintenance very simple.

Answer: Some of the SEO modules available in Drupal are Pathauto Meta tags/ Node words Service Links Google Analytics Related Links Search 404 Site map Url list

Answer: The term Drupal weight is used to describe the priority or order in which the function is processed, or block/ node is displayed. A heavier (+10) weights will appear lower in lists while a lower weight (-10) will float to the top of lists.

Answer: Drupal stores its information in the database like individual pages, registered users and so on.  For your Drupal site, database forms the back end; it supports MySQL /MariaDB, PostgreSQL and in Drupal 7, SQLite.

Answer: To execute commands or scripts automatically at specified time and date intervals, you have to use Drupal cron.

Answer: This suite is a set of APIs and tools, and it makes easier to handle AJAX requests and tell the client what to do with them.

Answer: The files required for Theme: style.css , page.tpl.php , template.php, block.tpl.php Module: modulename.info , modulename.module , optional modulename.install

Answer: To drop the table you can use db_drop_table in install file.

Answer: Drupal is translated into all popular languages including Catalan French Hungarian Dutch

Answer: Like with all open-source projects there is no commercial support available. Though, there is a vast online community for Drupal available via Forums and IRC online chat who are more than eager to answer your queries.

Answer: Drupal is a Content Management System (CMS).  It’s an open source content and free CMS framework written in PHP.  It enables you to organize, manage and publish content with ease and comes with a variety of customization option.

Answer: Using content construction kit Drupal allows you to create multiple content types without any programming skills. And for each content type it allows customize theme template. You can have an article, story, slideshow, content type and so on.

Answer: There are two key features of Drupal Upload Module: It enables users to attach different types of files to node types of your liking. Embedding: It enables to embed media within nodes that are hosted on your websites.

Answer: Through caching Drupal allows to speed up website using different configuration like page caching, block caching and lifetime for cached pages. Page Caching:  It enables the entire HTML of each page to be stored in the database.  It reduces the amount of queries needed Block Caching:  You can set the cache setting for a block in views, when block created by views Minimum cache lifetime:  It is the amount of time before the page cache is cleared. On each cron run, page caches are cleared. Expiration of cached pages: It only applies for an external mechanism, for example, your browser cache or varnish

Answer: PDO means PHP Data Object; it is a lean and consistent way to access databases. It allows developers to write portable code with ease.

Answer: In a database Drupal stores information, and each information has its own database table.  For example, the basic information regarding the nodes of your site are stored and kept in the node table, and if you use the CCK module to add fields to your nodes, the field information is stored in a separate table.

Answer: Some of the commonly used PHP are Drupal Joomla WordPress TYPO3

Answer: DRUSH is a command line shell and UNIX scripting interface for Drupal

Answer: Modules are like plugin for your site.  It allows you to add different functions to your site such as polls, contact forms and search fields.  Some of the modules recommended are   Views Token Ctools Quicktabs Pathauto

Answer: Distributions are full copies of Drupal, which includes Drupal Core, along with additional software as modules, themes, libraries and installation profiles. You can use distributions for Evaluating Drupal Demoing Drupal Learning Drupal Quickly binding Site

Answer: If you want to override a theme function not included in the basic list (block, box, comment, node, page), you need to tell PHPTemplate about it. To do this, you need to create a template.php file in your theme's directory. This file must start with a PHP opening tag but the close tag is not needed and it is recommended that you omit it. Also included in the file are stubs for the theme overrides. These stubs instruct the engine what template file to use and which variables to pass to it.

Answer: Backing up your Drupal site is now very easy, you just need to download and install a module called Backup & Migrate. To install the module click on the Administer » Modules check the Backup and Migrate module and enable it and save the settings.   Then navigate to the Administer » Content Management » Backup and Migrate then do the following settings. ·         Exclude the following tables altogether: select the table which you dont want to take backup. ·         Give the backup file name. ·    &...

Answer: Migrating Drupal On your OLD host: 1) Backup your whole home directory from your ftp access using an ftp client like filezilla. Make a folder on your local harddisk and download the complete directory to that local folder. 2) Backup your mysql database on your old host using phpadmin, select your mysql database, usually something like "name_drpl1". Select all fields, click "export" and save the database to your local harddisk. Leave default options enabled. You will receive a file similar to "name_drpl1.sql". This is your mysql database   On your NEW host:   1) Upload your folder with the complete drupal installation to your home-di...