The best way to familiarize oneself with Drupal is to play around with a local deployment.
For those who are unfamiliar with client-server model, here is what a local deployment means.
Others can skip to installation directions.
- Install a server in your machine locally. This means, only systems, which are connected to your machine in LAN, can access the website.
- Install a Drupal application in the local server. Typically one server can have multiple instances of applications. By applications, I mean, different websites, which can be of different flavors like Drupal, Joomla or CodeIgniter.
- Once you are ready to take your site online, deploy your application on a public server.
- A public server can be obtained by buying it, or getting a static IP for your machine from your ISP.
