Assumptions

To get Drupal up and running, you will need all of the following:

• A domain

• A web host

• Access to the web host's filesystem

  or

• You need a local testing environment, which takes care of the first three things

For building sites, either a web host or a local testing environment will meet your needs. A site built on a web-accessible domain can be shared via the Internet, whereas sites built on local test machines will need to be moved to a web host before they can be used for your course. The process of backing up and moving sites is covered in Chapter 15, Backup, Maintenance, and Upgrades.

Note

In these instructions, we are assuming the use of phpMyAdmin, an open source, browser-based tool, for administering your database. A broad range of similar tools exist, and these general instructions can be used with most of these other tools. Information on phpMyAdmin is available at http://www.phpmyadmin.net; information on other browser-based database administration tools can be found at http:...