This for me was the first huge hurdle! Its just not like installing other programs. I thought it would be easy – just like download the program and then drag it to the Applications folder. (I use an iMac by the way)
But it wasn’t that simple!
And in fact, I had already been through the whole process once before about 6months ago with my brother telling me step by step what to do. So I felt super stupid when I couldn’t do it for the second time.
Also to use drupal you will need MySQL database and also PHP and FTP (I was soo confused at first!). MySQL is the database that stores all the information and PHP is what allows drupal to use code on your website, or at least that is how I understand it. And the FTP is the ‘file transfer protocol’ which you need to upload the files to your website and get it online.
Because I use a Mac, and also because I want to work offline on my website before introducing it to the world, I downloaded MAMP for my PHP and MySQL. I would love to talk to you about how I did this but it happened 6months ago with my brother tutoring me so I have forgotten! ooops he he (off to a good start!)
MAMP is still good to go after all that time but drupal has been updated so I had to upgrade, so I downloaded the new version and read through the update read me file. It basically has everything in there that you need but I found it easier to follow this video tutorial as it is just so much easier when its there being done in front of my eyes! There is also a video tutorial there for installing the program from scratch.
I found it on the site Learn by the Drop which also has a guide for beginners, but to be honest I was kinda stuck by about page 10! The videos are better than the book I think personally. Still its a great site and now I wrote about it here I remembered about it again and I think I will go back there later today as there are some more things I have issues with.
So yeh basically now I have it set up so that I am working on the website using my computer as a local host and then when I am finished I will upload it to the internet. Every day I open up MAMP and then I open firefox and I have the address to my site (which is http://localhost:8888/drupal/ because its on my computer – when its finished it will be the web address) in my bookmarks. I just get to the site, use my username and password to log in and then the fun really begins.
To be honest today I am not really enjoying it, its just got really hard 😦
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