In the lesson Installing Drupal we installed the core Drupal package into the directory /home/public_html. There are 7 directories located in this path, two of which are 'modules' and 'themes'. We could just download and install new modules and themes into those respective directories, but it is not recommended. Later when we have to install a newer version of Drupal (for bug fixes and new features) you will see the ease of upgrade if we follow a different convention.

If you haven't done so already login to your console with an ID capable of 'superuser' (sudo). Once logged in change your directory to /home/public_html/sites/all. We need to create directories for the optional modules and themes. The Webserver group needs to own the directories with execute permissions.

user@getondrupal.com:/home/user$ cd /home/public_html/sites/all
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ sudo mkdir {modules,themes}
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ ls
README.txt  modules  themes
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ sudo chgrp -R www-data modules
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ sudo chgrp -R www-data themes
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ sudo chmod g+w modules
user@getondrupal.com:/home/public_html/sites/all$ sudo chmod g+w themes

Now that we have prepared the directories that will hold optional Drupal components let's move on to the next lesson on Downloading and Installing More Drupal Themes.