PRESENT PHOTOS LIKE A PRO WITH OUR BONUS MEGAPACK

We’ve curated a set of four image presentation tools that’ll make your best images look even better!

5CONFIGURE THE LOCAL HOST ENVIRONMENT Run the Acquia Dev Desktop installer and enter any required information. Start the software and select Start From Scratch. Use the suggested default for locating the codebase files on your system, enter the name of your site – we’re using drewpaulphoto.com for this tutorial – and accept the default prompts for the version of PHP (the scripting language that runs Drupal) and the database name.

6INSTALL THE DRUPAL DEMO SITE Click Local Site at the top of the window, then select ‘v8.9.1’ on the Drupal distribution page. Set the language as English. On the next page, select Demo: Umami Food Magazine. This will give us a useful introduction to how Drupal 8 works. Enter the requested details on the Configure Site page, including an admin ID and password. Click Save And Continue and the Umami welcome page opens.

7TAKE THE UMAMI SITE TOUR Structured as an online magazine, the Umami Food Magazine demonstration site showcases what Drupal 8 can do out of the box; the tools used to build this will also be key ingredients in developing a photography website. Helpfully, you can take advantage of a built-in walkthrough to become familiar with these. In the top-right of the home page, click Tour, next to the question mark symbol.

8CHECK OUT THE THEME’S SITE STRUCTURE Drupal 8 was quite a step up from previous versions, and introduced new features including Media Library (useful for photographers) and Layout Builder. These are built into the codebase, rather than having to be installed. Another handy feature is being able to mouse over content blocks while logged in as an adminstrator, then just click on them to access their configuration settings – very elegant.

9EXPLORE THE CONTENT TYPES THAT DRUPAL USES Let’s step behind the admin curtain. At the top of the screen is a tabbed white ‘Content’, ‘Structure…’ bar. (If you can’t see it, click Manage next to the hamburger icon in the top-left.) Click Content and you’ll see that there are three basic types of content on the Umami site: Article, Basic Page and Recipe. Click on an example of each one in turn to familiarise yourself with the different elements they contain.

10READ AND WATCH THE ONLINE TUTORIALS Some of Umami’s functionality goes beyond what we need for building a photography website, but it’s a still useful demonstration of Drupal’s potential for being customised; adding extra functionality like blogs and e-commerce will be pretty straightforward. For a deeper dive into Drupal, go to www.drupal.org/docs/user_guide/en/index.html. This is a comprehensive resource that also offers video tutorials.