Articles related to website building are summarised in Creation.
As this is the first article to be published on the site, we have summarised an overview of the website, the background to our choice of Drupal, and a brief explanation of Drupal. In order to make the explanation of Drupal easier to understand, we have compared it with WordPress, which we used when we first started building the website.
In the second half, we have summarised the versions of the modules we are using, such as Drupal and Bootstrap5, and finally we have summarised Amazon Lightsail, which we are using for hosting, in brief.
The word ‘creation’ has connotations of imagination and production. When we talk about website creation, we mean web production or website creation. As it is, the words are too long to display in the menu, so I have chosen to use only the word ‘creation’ to summarise articles related to website construction.
The articles I will be posting in the ‘Creation’ category will be about the process of building a website using Drupal. I will also be posting articles here about things related to website building, such as setting up a MacBook environment and hosting services, which are necessary for using Drupal.
This website uses Drupal. Before using Drupal, I used WordPress to build websites. Although this site does not introduce WordPress features, I myself also use WordPress and have a strong attachment to it, just like Drupal.
Below, I will briefly summarise my own impressions of WordPress and Drupal. Please forgive me if my knowledge is inadequate and my writing is off the mark.
Even though it is the same CMS, WordPress has a very sophisticated interface and design. Depending on the theme and plugins you use, it is easy to understand the functions and to get a visual understanding of the finished image, so even if you are new to it, you can build a sophisticatedly designed website using almost all of the available functions.
There are many stylish design themes, and it is a CMS with an overwhelmingly large number of users due to its ease of use and excellent design. Because there are so many users, there are also many tutorials and how-tos available, and hosting companies are also actively adopting it in terms of infrastructure, so even complete beginners can use WordPress to publish websites.
Drupal also has an excellent interface that is on a par with WordPress, but by default the settings for its rich functionality are kept to a minimum. After installation, you will need to think about the site structure to some extent in the initial stages, and you will need to make the necessary settings for the structure you want to build. For this reason, it can be a little difficult to understand for those who are new to it.
Once you have a basic structure and settings in place, and your understanding of the functions has progressed, you will find that you can reuse the settings you have created in multiple places, and you can make more detailed settings in the places where you reuse them, so the degree of freedom in site structure is high, and once you get used to it, it is a CMS that is even easier to use than WordPress.
Drupal is not designed for beginners, and there are not as many tutorials and how-tos as there are for WordPress. In terms of infrastructure, it is not as widely used by hosting companies as WordPress, so you will need to have a certain level of knowledge and experience before you can publish your site yourself, rather than leaving it to the hosting company.
Both WordPress and Drupal are called CMS, and they use PHP and a database, and have a dedicated GUI-based administration screen, so you can build and distribute websites without having to worry about programming or code on the dedicated administration screen.
The site design for both Drupal and WordPress is called a theme. WordPress uses plugins to extend functionality, while Drupal uses modules. You can choose a theme with the design you like, and combine the necessary functions to build your website.
For example, after creating a general blog, you can add simple SNS functions or photo gallery functions as additional features, and then rebuild it into a photo gallery website with a posting function.
There are a huge number of WordPress themes and plugins available, both paid and free. Many of the well-known ones are packaged so that they can be used as they are after installation, and as there are many individual users, there are also many free versions with limited functionality, like smartphone apps, and paid versions with full functionality.
WordPress themes and plugins are also sold on a large market, and many of the well-known ones are developed by companies, so they tend to be sophisticated and feature-rich. Another of WordPress's outstanding features is its highly refined interface, which makes it easy to install themes and plugins via the GUI on the admin screen.
There are also a huge number of Drupal themes and modules available, both free and paid. What is different about Drupal compared to WordPress is that many of the themes and modules seem to be geared more towards corporate demand and developers than individuals, and there are many that are standalone functions. The feature of Drupal is that, by setting up the site yourself and combining several functions, you can create the functions and design you want.
The revenue structure of those involved with Drupal is more geared towards corporate demand than WordPress, which has a well-established market for apps that can be used by individuals, and in Drupal, where individual demand is not as great as it is for WordPress, the main source of revenue is often seen to be the provision of cloud services and large-scale development for companies. For this reason, there is not much individual demand for apps, and it is also a feature that there are not many easy-to-use packaged themes and modules.
As the modules are designed to be used within the user's own responsibility, they are mostly free of charge. This means that the degree of freedom in site construction is high, and if used by someone with knowledge, it is possible to construct a very sophisticated and highly functional site. Drupal has a very high level of functionality, and while there are only a few packaged themes and modules, there are also very high-functionality ones available in the form of distributions.
Although some themes and modules can be installed using a GUI, the basic method is to do it from the command line. For those who are familiar with it, it is a reliable and quick method, but for those who are not involved in development, I feel that the command line itself may seem daunting and they may be put off.
In many cases, you need to log in to the server from a terminal to perform operations, and you use SSH, but I feel that things like key authentication settings are also quite difficult for beginners.
WordPress is a package that allows you to build a website of a certain quality or higher without any knowledge, using the environment provided as it is, and there is also a construction environment that includes the infrastructure. This lowers the threshold for the knowledge and learning required, and even beginners can easily build something close to the desired website without getting frustrated.
Once you get used to WordPress, you will be able to do a lot of things, such as adding various functions and changing the design of the website you are building. In fact, it is used not only by beginners and individuals, but also by companies and large-scale websites, so it is an excellent CMS that can be used to build everything from small-scale sites created by beginners to large-scale sites.
Drupal is not that difficult to install and get up and running, but if you want to build a website in the way you want, you need to understand the basic structure and rules of the system, including the necessary functions, how to set them up, where to put the functions, how to write the settings, and understanding the terminology. For this reason, if you don't have a certain level of knowledge and a willingness to learn, you may give up before you've even started building something close to the website you want.
You will gradually come to understand the structure and rules as you repeatedly perform operations on the GUI of the administration screen. As you will need to perform the settings yourself, you will become accustomed to performing detailed settings easily, and you will be able to experience the high degree of freedom that Drupal offers. When you reach this point, you will be able to build your website in the form you want.
I don't often see personal blogs built with Drupal, so I hope my articles will be of some use to people who are interested in Drupal as an individual. The content of my articles is mainly about the process of actually building a website and my random thoughts, with little programming, code customisation or tutorial elements.
As a result, it may not be of much use to those looking for a manual or tutorial on Drupal functions, but I hope that even those who are not developers or individuals with no technical knowledge will find it useful and interesting.
This is the version information for the Drupal Core, Theme and Modules you are currently using.
Bootstrap5 4.0.3
The theme used on this website is Bootstrap 5 4.03. Since the parts provided by Bootstrap 5 can be used and the minimum required Bootstrap 5 elements are included in the HTML tags by default, you can use Bootstrap 5 to create a page simply by writing a text-based article using headings and paragraphs in CKEditer.
This is the list of modules that have been installed. The modules that have been selected are ones that can optionally add Meta tags that are not set by default in Drupal, ones that can optionally set breadcrumbs, ones related to reCAPTCHA used in contact forms, and ones that can use external SMTP.
easy_breadcrumb 2.0.8
This is a module that allows you to freely configure the breadcrumb list. In the default layout for the theme, the breadcrumb list is placed at the top of the page, but by using this module you can place the breadcrumb list wherever you like. You can also freely set the hierarchy of the breadcrumb list links.
Metatag 2.0.2
When you create a page using the content function in Drupal, the Meta Description is not placed by default. This is a module that allows you to place the Meta Description using the content function. After installing, you can use it simply by specifying the content you want to use MetaTag for. It can also be used for pages created using Views, as well as content.
CAPTCHA 2.0.6
This is a module that enables the use of CAPTCHA functionality in Drupal. It can be used with Google reCAPTCHA v3 and v2. You can specify the CAPTCHA method to use and set the areas where the specified CAPTCHA is used in detail, so we use it for form mail and login on this website. The image CAPTCHA module is also installed by default.
reCAPTCHA v3 2.0.3
This is a module that enables the use of Google reCAPTCHA v3 with Drupal. As this is a CAPTCHA enhancement module, you will need to have a CAPTCHA set up. It is easy to set up, and you can use it by registering your site key and secret key, setting the threshold, and selecting the question format.
reCAPTCHA 8.x-3.4
This is a module that enables the use of Google reCAPTCHA v2 with Drupal. As this is an extension module for CAPTCHA, you will need to have CAPTCHA installed. It is easy to set up, and you can use it by registering your site key and secret key and setting the display format for the questions. I installed this module to use V2 if questions are required in V3.
SMTP Authentication Support
This is a module for using external SMTP when sending emails with Drupal. On this website, we use AWS SES as the external SMTP. You can use it by simply setting the port and authentication.
This is AWS, the famous Amazon cloud service. AWS divides the functions of a web server into server functions, cache functions, database functions, etc., and each of these is strengthened on a separate server, making it a service that can scale to handle large amounts of traffic without stopping. It is a very attractive service, but it is over-specced for individual use on blogs, and the budget will also be high.
I chose to use the Lightsail service to run Drupal, which is a reasonably priced service that comes with a full range of functions for running websites, and is suitable for the budgets of individual website operators.
The various functions that have been optimised and specialised for website construction provided by AWS are extremely high-spec, and there is a wide range of options available in terms of performance and price. When using them, it is difficult to decide which functions to choose and how much budget is needed, and for users like me who are not experts, it is sometimes difficult to decide on the system configuration.
Lightsail has the necessary functions packaged together, and like domestic VPS services, you can choose from hardware specifications such as the CPU and memory capacity of the virtual server. The advantage of this is that the hardware configuration required for the expected usage method is more or less decided, so there are not so many options to choose from, it is easy to choose, and the monthly fee is fixed, so it is suitable for individuals like me to use.
If you are running a website on Lightsail as an individual and your traffic grows, and you need to upgrade due to the Lightsail specifications, it is not too difficult to migrate to the specialised, high-performance resources provided by AWS, and you can take advantage of the original benefits of AWS, such as scalability and flexibility.
It may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I feel that one of the benefits of using AWS is that even individuals in Japan can experience the process that tech companies around the world use, which is to start small, focus on speed, and then grow big.
My Drupal uses a Drupal package that has been installed on the cloud, with Lightsail providing the Bitnami DB and Apache settings and having already completed the operation verification. This service is similar to the easy WordPress installation provided by domestic hosting.
Although the installation is easy, things like the SSL settings being done via command and the initial settings being all in English mean that it's not quite the same as the easy WordPress installation provided by domestic hosting. If you don't have at least a basic knowledge or willingness to learn when using it, you may get stuck at the very beginning.
We are currently using Bitnami's Drupal. After using it for a while, if there are no problems, we plan to continue using it as it is. As we have not yet grasped the range of things that can be done with Lightsail, we would like to verify things such as OS and PHP updates in the future.
In this section, we've introduced Drupal, which we'll be using on this website, and Amazon Lightsail, which we'll be using for hosting. From the next section, we'll be setting up a local environment so that we can use Drupal, which is the preparation for using Drupal.
Running Drupal on Mac.
I use a MacBook for my PC environment. In the next section, I will set up an environment where I can use Drupal on my MacBook, and try running Drupal on it first.
