Next week, I'll be presenting with three others on Drupal at the 2004
Computers and Writing Conference. My part will be to present an introduction
to Drupal and provide pre-configured versions of Drupal for the computers and
writing field, those teachers in English most concerned with the theory and
practice of writing with computers, electronic discourse, and the use of computers
in the classroom. It is my hope that by seriously reducing the learning curve
necessary to get a Drupal site up and running, Drupal will be more inviting
to the members of this discipline, and, indeed, other teachers and users as
well.

Thus, DrupalEd is a pre-configured Drupal install intended for an online writing
environment based upon my and others' experience teaching with Drupal this
past year. DrupalBlog is a general blog configuration of Drupal that I have
been using on my weblog and installing for others. Each contains Drupal 4.4.1
core and contributed modules without changes by me, except for the addition
of numerous Xtemplate skins (available
for download all together as a separate package). Each also contains a detailed
configuration guide that provides some basic instructions on initial site configuration.
The guides are built into the site within the collaborative book and included
in the distribution itself as a pdf. The install process is the same as for
Drupal with my database dumps and collections of files. However, the site uses
clean URL's, requiring that Apache mod_rewrite must be available to the .htaccess
file.

Note that the DrupalBlog distribution is not configured with education in mind,
but rather for bloggers in general. It would be suitable for anyone looking
to install and use Drupal for the first time, including the many MT users currently
shopping the web.

For those that are interested, you can download the DrupalEd
distribution or the DrupalBlog
distribution. Visit the DrupalEd
and DrupalBlog demo sites (feel
free to use the admin username and password listed in the installation section
of the guide). Or get the DrupalEd
Configuration Guide pdf and DrupalBlog
Configuration Guide pdf.

Thanks in advance for any feedback and suggestions. I do hope that at least part of this project will be useful for the site profiles to be included with the Drupal Install Wizard in 4.5.