Basic Drupal and website terms

Here are a few key Drupal terms used in Drupal documentation. The full Drupal Glossary has more than 100 definitions.

Breadcrumb: A navigational aid on a website that shows users the path from the homepage to the current page. It helps users understand their location and easily navigate back to previous sections, enhancing overall site navigation.

Business Owner (Website): At UCSF a website business owner is a person who is responsible for their site adhering to UCSF policies. They also may determine overall site strategy and who has permission to develop, edit, or publish.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS): Predefined styles that tell your web browser how to render the visual components of your website.

Component:  A building block used to create and manage content and functionality on a Drupal site. Components include elements like text blocks, accordions, steps, and other UI elements that can be customized and combined to build pages, layouts, and interactive features. They help ensure consistency across the site and streamline the content creation process, allowing for a flexible and modular approach to web development.

Content Management System (CMS): Server-based software that allows you to manage and edit your site without any special software on your own computer, abbreviated CMS.

Content Manager: A UCSF term for someone who creates, edits and updates content on a website on a regular basis.

Content Type: Most of the time different content types have different data fields, layouts and workflows associate with that content type. In Drupal, each item of content is called a node. Each node belongs to a single content type, which defines various default settings for nodes of that type.

Day-to-day Technical Support: At UCSF this is the person who routinely updates a website. They may be in a communicator position or maintain a website in addition to other work.

Drupal Developer: A Drupal developer at UCSF is someone who uses PHP, HTML and CSS to build Drupal modules for University websites.

Drupal: Website-building software common in the U.S. education industry, including University of California campuses. The platform supports content management systems, web experience management, and team collaboration. It is based on HTML and PHP code, the LAMP stack, object-oriented core files, and customizing modules.

Dynamic content: see 'Views.'

Feed: A feed is a stream of regularly updated content, such as news articles, events, or social media updates, that is delivered to users in real time. It allows people to see the latest information or posts in one place, without having to search for each individual update.

Information Architecture (IA): The way we organize and structure information on a website or app to make it easy for users to find what they need. It’s like creating a clear map or menu that guides users to the right pages, sections, or content without confusion.

Landing Page: A key content type designed to serve as a gateway to specific content or sections. In Drupal, a landing page uses various components like cards, headings, and overview text to organize and display content in an engaging and structured way. These components can be arranged to highlight key information, guide users to important sections, and improve overall navigation. A well-designed landing page provides a clear and intuitive pathway for users, helping them quickly find the information they need.

Node: The node is the computer's core unit of storing information. It is often a file identified by a file number. If you're inputting and saving content, you're probably saving it as a node.

Pages: Pages are static content types on your site that include custom content generated by your team (e.g. 'About' page).

Path: The URL to find a web resource. Drupal has methods of creating automatic paths to content.

Role: A grouping assigned to user accounts that gives all the user accounts classified in that way the same set of permissions.

Taxonomy: A taxonomy is a collection of organizational keywords known in other systems as categories, tags, or metadata. It allows you to connect, relate and classify your website’s content.

Views: A powerful tool that allows you to create, display, and manage lists of content on your site. Views enable you to customize how content is filtered, sorted, and presented, making it easy to create dynamic displays like grids, tables, or lists based on specific criteria. Taxonomy plays a crucial role in Views by allowing you to categorize and organize content, enabling you to filter and display content based on these categories, tags, or other taxonomy terms. This makes it easier to create targeted content lists and improve user navigation.