Understanding Drupal

This section covers foundational concepts behind your department website. You do not need to build Views or configure taxonomy to edit a page, but understanding how Drupal stores and displays content will help you structure pages correctly, use Paragraphs effectively, and troubleshoot publishing issues.

Each topic has its own guide with full detail:

• Drupal CMS: How Drupal assembles pages from a database, how nodes differ from media, and why you reference files instead of uploading them into every page.

• Nodes: The core unit for pages, news, events, and profiles—metadata, Node IDs, content types, and what is not a node.

• Paragraphs: Modular blocks on Page nodes; adding, reordering, removing, and unpublishing components.

• Views: Automated news feeds, calendars, and directories; why unpublished or mis-tagged content may not appear.

• Taxonomy: Vocabularies and terms that control where content surfaces across the site.

Return to the Editing Manual for daily workflows such as linking, publishing, and the Media Library.