Get Started

Everything you need to go from zero to a running Drupal 11 site on your machine, and to know what you’re looking at once it’s running. Start here if you’re new to Drupal, or skim the project anatomy page if you’re coming from another framework. This section ends with a pathway chooser that routes you to the right track for what you want to build.

Drupal CMS or Drupal core

Decide this before you install anything:

• Drupal CMS if you are building a website for people to run, whether Drupal renders it or a JavaScript front end does: a marketing site, publication, or organization site. It ships with content types, an editorial workflow, SEO tooling, and add-ons you install from the browser. For a decoupled front end, Canvas Headless gives editors visual page building on top of it. Start with Install Drupal CMS. The module and theme tracks in these docs apply to it unchanged. The JSON:API pages in the headless track build on core’s Article example model, which Drupal CMS does not ship; on Drupal CMS, follow Canvas Headless instead.
• Drupal core if you are learning Drupal development, building a distribution, or building a site where you choose every module yourself. Every tutorial in these docs assumes core with the Standard profile. Start with Set up your environment, then Install Drupal core.

If you are here to launch a site, headless or not, start with Drupal CMS. If you are here to learn how Drupal works from the ground up, start with Drupal core.

In this section

Set up your environmentInstall a complete local stack with DDEV, Composer, and Drush, the standard toolchain used throughout these docs, and spin up a fresh Drupal 11 site.

Anatomy of a Drupal projectWhat lives in web/, what Composer manages, where core, modules, themes, and configuration live, and which directories are yours to edit.

Your first hour, no codeBuild a small content model with content types, fields, and views in the admin UI before you write a line of PHP.

Choose your pathwaySite builder, module developer, theme developer, or decoupled front-end developer? A short decision guide that sends you to the right track.

There are two more pages in this section once you have a site running: Essential tools covers the Drush, Composer, and Xdebug commands you reach for daily, and Debugging shows how to find the cause when something breaks.