Overview
Everyone has to start somewhere. This section is for you, if you have little to no experience website building and website development. We recommend starting with an existing site before migrating into DIT Drupal Hosting environment. If you have any questions on how to get started, contact us at drupal@umd.edu.
Restricted Practices
As an expert user, you are aware that there are many different ways to solve the needs of the user. In order to ensure that your site is healthy and coexists well in our environment we have compiled of list of restricted practices (including restricted modules).
- Do not use the Text Format for PHP Filtering (the php module). In fact, just turn it off to make sure users are not tempted to submit code via the node edit interface.
- Do not use too many content types. This will confuse the content creators. Reuse and standardize the content types.
- Do not make new fields for every content type. This is a waste of resources and will drain performance. Reuse and standardize fields. Check your field report at yoursite.umd.edu/admin/reports/fields
- Do not make a new View for every list. Analyze any new View you create to determine if you can reuse a View you already have, and use Contextual Filters to render lists based on specific parameters.
- Avoid hacking core or contrib modules. Behavior will be unpredictable. Updating will be difficult. If core or contrib module doesn't do quite what you need, build a custom module using hooks to alter behavior.