Going live
When you're ready to go live, you need to edit a couple of files. First find Apache's .htaccess file and add these lines. If your Drupal installation is not in a directory named drupal, then use your directory's name.
RewriteEngine on RewriteRule (.*) drupal/$1 [L]
Then find Drupal's sites/default/setting.php file. This will probably be read-only, so change its permissions to 0644. Then look for the Base URL section. This snippet shows what mine looks like with a bit of context:
* It is not allowed to have a trailing slash; Drupal will add it * for you. */ $base_url = 'http://www.bratgrrl.com'; // NO trailing slash!
So all you have to do is find the $base_url = line and enter your own base URL, so that visitors see your pretty Drupal site at www.example.com instead of www.example.com/drupal. Then change the file permissions back to read-only, 0444. Do not forget to do this! See Taking Your Site Live to learn more.
Now you are well on your way to building a wonderful site with Drupal.The motherlode of all Drupal information is Drupal.org, so always visit here first for documentation and help.
This story, "Crash course: How to make a website with Drupal" was originally published by ITworld.