Which terms (and abbreviations), used in Drupal, can I find in posts on Drupal Answers?
What do they mean?
2 Answers
Anonymous user
An anonymous user is a visitor to a Drupal website who is not currently logged in. Drupal considers any such visitor as being the anonymous user, with the user ID 0, and belonging to the anonymous user role.
During the installation, Drupal adds an entry to the user database table; the absence of that entry could cause problems with Drupal or third-party modules.
Argument
A section of the URL for a page on a Drupal website. For example, in `http://example.com/node/180370), the first argument is "node", and the second is "180370". Some modules allow the use of "wildcard" arguments that allow a particular page to vary depending on context.
Block
Blocks are a method for positioning data within a page. They often contain lists of nodes or other navigational content and are frequently placed in the left or right regions of a page. Assignment to a region is specified through the administration settings. Blocks themselves are not nodes. You can specify that a block only appears on certain pages or in certain contexts.
Content type
Every node belongs to a single "node type" or "content type," which defines various default settings for nodes of that type, such as whether the node is published automatically and whether comments are permitted. Modules can define their own content types; the core Drupal Book and Poll modules are two examples of modules that define content types.
Callback
A callback is a string that references a specific function to be executed when a certain action occurs, usually to handle data processed by another function or hook. See also menu callback.
Custom module
Custom modules are any modules that are used to implement features specific for a site, or a group of sites. Those modules are not generic enough to be used on any site, and generally are not hosted on Drupal.org, with the exception of those modules that are used to run Drupal.org itself. Examples of custom modules are
- Drupal.org customizations, which implement most of the features seen in the drupal.org subdomains
- Groups.drupal.org, which implement code specific to http://groups.drupal.org
- Test driven development infrastructure, which handles the infrastructure for test driven development of Drupal core and contributed modules
Filter
Filters are used to strip out HTML, PHP, JavaScript, and other undesirable elements from content before pages are displayed. Other filters add formatting and features such as smilies. It is possible to create custom filters that allow or forbid only those tags you wish, or that change strings found in the text.
Input filter
See "Filter."
Input format
An input format is a collection of filters, arranged in a certain order, that defines the processing that happens to user-entered text before it is shown in the browser.
Menu
In Drupal, the term menu refers both to the clickable navigational elements on a page, and to Drupal's internal system for handling requests. When a request is sent to Drupal, the menu system uses the provided URL to determine which function needs to be invoked to obtain the output that will be returned to the visitors.
Menu callback
A menu callback is a reference in a menu definition that defines what function should be called given a specific URL path. See also callback.
Module
A module is the software that extends Drupal features and functionality. Core modules are those included with the main download of Drupal; contributed (or "contrib") modules are available for separate download from the module section of downloads. Similar concepts exist in other CMS's, and are sometimes called plugins, add-ons or extensions. When downloading a module to use on your site, be sure that the version of the contributed module you wish to use matches your version of Drupal.
Node
A node is a piece of content, typically corresponding to a single page on the site, that has a title, an optional body, and perhaps additional fields. Every node belongs to a particular content type, and can additionally be classified using the taxonomy system. Examples of nodes are polls, stories, book pages, etc. Nodes are accessible through URLs that follow the schema http://example.com/node/<node-id>.
Panel
The term refers to one of the pages output from the Panels module. See "Panels" for more information.
Path
Path is the unique, last part of the URL for a specific function or piece of content. For example, for a page whose full URL is http://example.com/?q=node/7, the path is node/7. Drupal can use "clean URLs" if the Path module is enabled, which would change the full URL in the example to http://example.com/node/7; the path would still be node/7.
Taxonomy
Taxonomy is a core module that allows your sites to use "terms," organizational keywords known in other systems as categories, tags, or metadata. In Drupal, these terms are gathered within "vocabularies." The Taxonomy module allows you to create, manage and apply those vocabularies.
Theme
A theme is a collection of files, which together determine the look and feel of a site. A theme contains elements such as the header, icons, block layout, etc. Drupal modules define themeable functions which can be overridden by the theme file.
User1 (or user #1)
It's the first user created on installation and that automatically gets all the permissions defined in a Drupal site, both from core and third-party modules. This user is referred to as the site maintenance account in Drupal 7.
View
The term generally refers to a page output from the Views module. See "Views."
Weight
Weight is the term used to define the priority or order in which a function is processed or a block/node is displayed; a lower weight value (-10) will float to the top of lists, while heavier (+10) weights will appear lower in lists.
CCK
A contributed module which permits site developers to define custom fields and content types. A variety of extension modules to CCK exist permitting specialized field definitions such as images, dates, and computed values.
Since Drupal 7, part of CCK has been merged with the Drupal code, and Drupal has now fields that can be assigned to nodes, users, and taxonomy terms. CCK still exist as third-party module, and the Drupal 7 version contains the code to update a site using CCK from Drupal 6 to Drupal 7.
Content Construction Kit
See "CCK."
Drush
Drush is a command line shell and scripting interface for Drupal supported by many modules, which allows to execute some time-consuming tasks on a Drupal site without using the user interface of a browser.
Path
The core Path module lets you optionally create URL aliases for your Drupal pages. By default, Drupal automatically creates web addresses like http://example.com/?q=node/67, which are not user (or search engine) friendly. Search engines will give better rankings to pages that have more human-friendly URLs, especially if they include relevant keywords (e.g. http://example.com/?q=all-about-tarantulas).
When combined with using Drupal's "clean URLs" feature http://example.com/?q=all-about-tarantulas becomes http://example.com/all-about-tarantulas, which is the ideal readable form.
Panels
The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout.
Pathauto
The Pathauto module automatically generates path aliases for various kinds of entities (nodes, taxonomy terms, users) without requiring the user to manually specify the path alias.
Rules
The Rule module allows site administrators to define conditionally executed actions based on occurring events. It's a replacement with more features for the trigger module in core.
Views
A contributed module which allows site developers a simple graphical interface for modifying the presentation of content. Views permits selection of specific fields to display, filtration against various node attributes, choice of basic layout options (e.g. list, full nodes, teasers), and other more advanced features. Many Drupal sites use Views extensively.