If you are curious about all the options in the Administrator menu, so you can distinguish what’s important to you, and what you can safely ignore - this is the document for you.  Basically, you really need to understand the Content Management area -- the rest you can safely ignore about 98% of the time.

Content Management

The whole reason for using Drupal is to make it easy for many users to add information to a web site, without having to know anything about HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and all the other things that make it difficult for most users to get started.  Drupal allows users to add content similarly to the way they are used to in MS Word or other publishing software packages.  And makes sure that it’s integrated into the site and looks like it belongs with the other content. 

COMMENTS -- Answers question:  “What do the viewers think of my content?”
Most sites will allow users to comment on site content, and it’s always wise to monitor comments so that spam or inappropriate content doesn’t make it on your site.  This area is where you go to monitor and approve comments that have been left on your web site.  Once approved, these comments will be published and show up on the site itself.

CONTENT --  Answers question:  “What’s already loaded on the web site?”
To get a list of every piece of content (or node) on the site, click here.  You can sort or filter based on what you are looking for, just like you do on your local computer’s search function.  If you forget to indicate which menu to place the content, this is how you find it to fix that.  If you need to get to “hidden” images, this is one way to do it.  This is a list of everything.

CONTENT TYPES --  Answers question:  “How do I categorize my future content?”
Drupal gives you a few default content types:  page, story, event, image, blog.  I personally have never used “story”.  I usually use “page” for most factual content.  Or “blog” for editorial content or opinion pieces.  A page is basically a web page.  Standard  content types are:
Page:  basic web page for factual content -- think newspaper articles
Blog:  editorial content / opinions / commentary -- many sites allow registered users to create their own blogs
Image:  every image needs it’s own place on the site and node reference.  Even if it’s used elsewhere in the site.
Event:  content announcing a calendar event -- with dates / times.  Placed automatically on the calendar. 
Story:  basic web page -- similar to page

Where the real magic happens for most websites is in the customization.  Custom content types are wonderful -- they allow you to tailor your site to meet your own specific needs.  For example, SDSolemates.com wanted a rotating slideshow of quotes.  We created a content type called “quotes” to let Coach Dan load them up for display via a slideshow view.  Other examples are Services, Newsletters, Races, Training Runs, Presenters -- basically anything you can think of to help you distinguish the type of content you wish to create.   Usually, customizations are variations on the above standard content types.

CREATE CONTENT  --  Answers question:  “How do I add content?”
This is the menu item you’ll use most.  It lets you do exactly what it says:  create content.  Step by step process can be found on page x.

IMAGE GALLERIES -- Answers question:  “How do I categorize my pictures?”
Image galleries are analogous to content types for images.  They are a way to grouping or creating a category for each image.  Think about how you put images in folders on your local computer -- Image Galleries function like those folders.

IMAGE IMPORT --  Answers question:  “How do I load lots of pictures at once?”
There are two ways for you to load up images.  One way is to load them up one-by-one using “Create Content à Image”.  The other way is to do a mass (or “batch”) import.  If you have a lot of images, batching them up is the way to go.  But it’s a multi-step process.  The process can be found on page xx.

POST SETTINGS -- Answers question:  “Are you seeing what you are supposed to?”
Drupal calls publishing a page or article “posting”.  If someone is having trouble seeing a piece of content you intend for them to see, and you have checked the user  permissions, this is where you rebuild the permission sets.  It’s also where you decide how long the “teaser” portions of each page are.  Also, each time you create content, you have the opportunity to preview the content before pressing “save” and making the content live.  POST SETTINGS is where you decide whether a user should or shouldn’t *have to* preview first before saving.  I never require this because it creates “lost data” situations where someone previews, thinks they are done and nothing gets saved.  I’d rather let everyone save and go back and edit if they need to.  Safer, easier, less frustrating for everyone.  Leave this radio button at optional, or you’ll live to regret it.  Somewhere along the way a control freak added this ugly option feature to the Drupal core set of requirements and didn’t even have the grace to toss it into “Site Configuration” which is where it logically belongs.  But I digress…

RSS PUBLISHING -- Answers question:  “What’s sharable on other websites?”
Basically ignore this for now.  This determines how many “teasers” get fed to Facebook or any other RSS feed that pulls from the web site.  

TAXONOMY --  Answers question:  “How do I make sub-categories to my content?”
n. 1. The science or technique of classification -- Random House Webster’s College Dictionary
Basically, this allows us to create sub-groups to our Content types.  For a site that does regular conferences, we created a content type called “Presenters” to allow input of conference presenters.  Since there will be many conferences and workshops moving forward, we used TAXONOMY terms to further sort the presenters into their respective conferences or workshops.  The cool thing is that a presenter can represent as many of these conferences or workshops as needed.  “Image Galleries” is a frequently encountered  example of a taxonomy term.

Site Building

BLOCKS --   Answers question:  “What’s featured here?”
These are the building blocks of your site -- basically little snippets of content that can be placed strategically around your site to make it look cool and add useful information.   An example:  the login block, or side navigation, or the little calendar, or the “Upcoming Events” block.   Picture Slideshows and Views are typically placed in blocks.

MENUS --  Answers question:  “How am I arranged?”
Menus allow you to arrange your content into logical areas to make it easy for users to find content that interests them. 

THEMES -- Answers question:  “How do I look?”
Themes are what Drupal calls the GUI (Graphical User Interface) or the look-n-feel of the web site.  It includes how the pages are laid out, where the blocks are located, where the logo and slogan are.  Basically, the background, header, footer and display of your web site are handled by the Theme.   You shouldn’t need to change the theme, once the site is launched. 

MODULES -- Answers question:  “What do I do?” or “How do I work?”
This is where the software feature sets of your website live.  All the cool things your site can do, like event calendars, or slideshows, or e-commerce, or invoicing, or wysiwyg text editing … basically, the sky’s the limit.  Drupal has core modules that allow it to be the powerful content management platform that it is, and also a huge (and growing) collection of functional add-ons to make it possible for you to have your web site do whatever it is you want it to do.  These have been tailored to the needs you identified.  As new needs arise, more can be added.  The growth of your website is limited only by what’s useful to you.

URL ALIASES --  Answers question:  “How do I announce myself?”
These are here specifically for SEO optimization, and to have the URLs look appropriate to human users instead of using the Drupal default “node/23”  indicators to get to a page.

VIEWS -- Answers question:  “How do I show off more than one item at a time?”
Views create cool things like image slideshows or conference presenter lists or list of quotations or list of races or list of users… basically anything that manipulates a “list” of some kind. 

Site Configuration

There’s a lot here, and a lot of ways to get yourself into trouble.  I strongly recommend that you ignore this section completely if you are a beginner.  There will be further lessons in this once you’ve gotten comfortable adding content, if you so chose.  Once you are launched, most of this stuff is already taken care of.

User Management

ACCESS RULES -- Answers question:  “Do I (user) belong on this web site?”
This is where you can deny access privileges to people who have abused their privileges on the site or limit access to only those you wish to have logging on to the site.  In the case of the Essene church, only the principals are allowed to login and create content.  In the case of the running group, everyone with a username can add content, have a blog, add images.  You decide who belongs on your site, and here is where you can control that.

PERMISSIONS -- Answers question:  “What am I allowed to see or do?”
Listing of various types of content with boxes to determine what anonymous users / registered users (or any other type of user) gets to see or do.  Perhaps you’ll let a user create a blog and edit / delete their own blog but not be able to add / edit / delete for anyone else but themselves.  This is where that is set up and determined.  It’s an advanced feature, I’ll do it for you to start out.

PROFILES --  Answers question:  “What do I want you to know about me?”
Users can provide information about themselves -- this is where you decide what type of information you want to encourage them to provide (or not provide). 

ROLES --  Answers question:  “What role do I play in adding to this website?”
Some people will get to add and edit everyone’s content and access the Site Configuration and Site Building portions of the web site.  For security reasons this type of access is severely restricted to one or two Administrators of the site.  Next, you

USER SETTINGS --  Answers question:  “Who can do what on this website?”
This is where you determine who has what types of user privileges.  User privi

USERS --  Answer question:  “Who are my registered users?”
List of site users -- those who have registered and have an account with the website.  This is also where you can add users, if you don’t allow users to register for themselves.