It’s remarkably easy to get Drupal working on Vanderbilt ITS servers — easier than WordPress even. Here’s all I had to do:

1. Send in a form request to ITS to set up a new database. This is likely to take a day or two. Once it’s set up, hang onto the connections strings and….
2. Download Drupal (version 5.6 in this case).
3. Unzip and move the contents to the correct directory on your computer.
4. Read the install.txt.
5. SFTP all of the files to the server. (I use Dreamweaver for this).
6. Change the permissions (temporarily!) to the file /sites/default/settings.php, so the server can write to it. I do this using CyberDuck.
7. Manually add a “files” directory and set permissions on it so that it can be written to.
8. Point your browser to the base url of your soon-to-be Drupal website. At this point you should see the setup screen. As well as filling out the required fields, click on “Advanced’ near the bottom of the page, and then replace “localhost” with the host ITS supplies.
9. Voila! Drupal should appear. There are just a few minor housecleaning items left.
10. Change the permissions back on the settings file you altered in step 6.
11. Go to the status report (in admin/logs/status) and see if there are any problems. You’ll see immediately if there are. Probably “Cron maintenance tasks” is highlighted. Just run it manually for now.
12. Chances are you’ll want cron to work automatically in the future. ITS has to do this for you. (They don’t allow SSH.) Email ITS Partner (its-partner@vanderbilt.edu) and tell them you need a cron job that looks something like “0 * * * * wget -O - -q -t 1 http://exampledrumpalsite.vanderbilt.edu/cron.php” — replacing “exampledrumpalsite.vanderbilt.edu” with your own drupal URL. This example would run your cron every hour on the hour. If you don’t need it that often, tell ITS.

That’s it. Now go forth and build a fabulous Drupal site for VU.