Key Drupal Taxonomy: Part 2

Part 2:

In our previous blog post, we gave a brief intro to some terms that we believe are necessary to understand the basics of Drupal.   Here we have what we believe to be the next round of terms that we consider necessary to understanding those basics. Recently, we had the opportunity to assist Matrix AMC in migrating from Drupal 6 to Drupal 8.  They were unable to use their website because of the version of Drupal that their website was hosted on was out of date and no longer supported by the Drupal community. While these specific terms are consistent across Drupal versions, they are crucial to understanding the importance of being up to date in with your version of Drupal.

Key Terms:     

1. Block – the boxes visible in the regions of a Drupal website.
   1. Most blocks (e.g. recent forum topics) are generated on-the-fly by various Drupal modules, but they can be created in the administer blocks area of a Drupal site.
2. Region – defined areas of a page where content can be placed. Different themes can define different regions so the options are often different per-site. Basic regions include:
   1. Header
   2. Footer
   3. Content
   4. Left sidebar
   5. Right Sidebar
3. Roles – a name for a group of users, to whom you can collectively assign permissions. There are two predefined, locked roles for every new Drupal installation:
   1. Authenticated User- anyone with an account on the site.
   2. Anonymous User- those who haven’t yet created accounts or are not logged in.
4. WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get; An acronym used in computing to describe a method in which content is edited and formatted by interacting with an interface that closely resembles the final product.
5. Book – a set of pages tied together in a hierarchical sequence, perhaps with chapters, sections, or subsections.  Books can be used for manuals, site resource guides, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), etc.
6. Breadcrumbs – the set of links, usually near the top of the page, that shows the path you followed to locate the current page.
   1. The term 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.
7. Form mode – this is a way to customize the layout of an entity’s edit form.
8. Multisite – a feature of Drupal that allows one to run multiple websites from the same Drupal codebase.
9. Patch – a small piece of software designed to update or fix problems with a computer program or its supporting data.
   1. This includes fixing bugs, replacing graphics and improving the usability or performance.
10. User – the user interacting with Drupal. This user is either anonymous or logged into Drupal through its account.

Refer to Drupal.org for any other questions!