Building Web Sites With Drupal – Part 6: Installing a Rich Text Editor

By: Ray West on Thursday, September 11, 2008
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There are as many ways to build a web site as there are customers out there. What that usually means is that, as developers, we end up recreating the wheel over and over again. In reality, though, 80% of the customers you come across could likely be serviced quite nicely with relatively minor modifications to a basic site structure that includes the most common functionality. That is the concept behind a Content Management System like Drupal.

Drupal is a framework for creating web applications. As such, it has a wealth of advanced abilities like forums, newsletters, and RSS syndication. But it is also well suited for the building of simpler websites that just need to update their content on a regular basis. If you build sites for clients, chances are there is a portion of your business that could be handled more quickly and more profitably using Drupal.

In the last Drupal article, we covered adding some basic content to your site in the form of Stories and Pages. One of the shortcomings we noticed was the basic text area used to input the body area of the content. You are either expected to enter only plain text, or to hand code the HTML tags that will display your content. It would be nice if the body input area allowed a rich text editor to allow you to enter and format text more like a word processor.

The Building Web Sites With Drupal Series:
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 1: Introduction
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 2: Installation
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 3: Setting Initial Roles and Permissions
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 4: Adding a Forum
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 5: Creating Content
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 6: Installing a Rich Text Editor
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 7: Adding Polls
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 8: Personalizing Your Site
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 9: Taxonomy 101
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 10: Adding an Event Calendar
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 11: Customizing the Front Page
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 12: Getting Started With Themes
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 13: Cron Jobs
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 14: Taxonomy 201
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 15: Creating a Moderated User Group
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 16: Creating New Content Types
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 17: Setting Up User Blogs
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 18: Backing Up Your Site
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 19a: Theming Your Site
Building Web Sites With Drupal - Part 19b: Allowing Users To Select Their Own Theme

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