Leveraging Drupal®: Getting Your Site Done Right

Chapter 14. Deploying your Application as a Drupal Installation Profile

The goal of this chapter is to comply with the tasks and user stories outlined in the Deployment phase of our project plan. The best way to deploy a website application based on Drupal is by creating an installation profile, and by leveraging the Advanced Help module for context-sensitive help and training.

In the case of the On-Line Literary Workshop, the project you have been building by working your way through this book, I have actually created a downloadable installation profile on the Drupal site, as a way of giving back to the community, so that others may use and help improve the project, and, as always, as a way of obtaining feedback from the community on actual use and thereby enhance quality.

In this chapter, you will learn how to create an installation profile (a.k.a. distribution profile) for the On-Line Literary Workshop, how to use it as a deployment tool, and how to use the Advanced Help module as a way of providing on-line context-sensitive help for your users.

Leveraging the Advanced Help Module

You saw earlier that the Views 2 module, deployed in Drupal starting with release 6.x, optionally uses the Advanced Help module to provide context-sensitive help in the form of stand-alone HTML files accessible via a question-mark icon in all sections of its interactive pages.

Earl Miles, the creator of Views, Panels, and Nodequeue, did not artificially bind his new Help system to the Views module, but instead ...