Drupal Session Notes
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TOC
Overview
Planning/Learning Curve
Drupal is a very powerful content management system but it's pretty clear that beginners have a tough time using it, and the Drupal specific terms aren't at all helpful.
Definitions
What are nodes, pages, stories, blocks and all those other terms that Drupal is using?
- Content in Drupal is created in individual "nodes". For nodes of type "story", users can add comments to the node (comments themselves are not considered nodes). Depending on site settings, adding new nodes and/or posting comments might or might not be allowed. Also, nodes or comments might require approval from the moderators before the node or comment is displayed. Blog entries are another type of Drupal node.
- The default Drupal layout ("Theme"), consists of three columns. The center column is referred to as the "Content Column". It typically displays summaries of the most recently posted nodes in date order. If you click on a node summary, the full content of the node is displayed in the center column.
- The left and right side columns are referred to as the sidebars. The sidebars can display blocks of related information. Blocks often contain links for navigating to other nodes. For example, there can be blocks displaying the most recently posted stories, or the most popular stories. For new installations, the login block displays, along with a navigation block containing a menu of available actions. Different menu items can display in the navigation block depending on what you're doing and what privileges ("roles") you have.
- Blocks may or may not display depending on what you're doing and what privileges ("roles") you have. For example, the login block will not display if you're already logged in, or the "most recent stories" block may not display if there are no story nodes available. The administrator can enable/disable different blocks under the Administer >> Site building >> Blocks menu item.
- Nodes can be organized into categories, also called taxonomies. Forums are an example of content nodes organized by category. Categories can be hierarchical, where one parent category contains multiple child categories.
- New features in Drupal are often implemented as "modules". Once an administrator adds a module file to the "modules" subdirectory, the option to use the module appears in the Administer >> Site building >> Modules section. If the administrator enables that module in Administer >> Site building >> Modules, the features associated with that module become active. A module may define new node types, new menu items may appear in the navigation block, and new types of blocks may become available for display in the sidebars.
More on Taxonomy
Taxonomies:
Let's see what the Drupal handbook has to say about the taxonomy system:
Nodes can be organized into categories, also called taxonomies. Forums are an example of content nodes organized by category. Categories can be hierarchical, where one parent category contains multiple child categories.
Taxonomies are categories. The thing that makes them different from other category systems is that they can be used as tags (set them when you write a page) and you can have the same page in more than one category at a time (some content systems - Joomla... don't have this option).
The taxonomy module allows you to classify content into categories and subcategories; it allows multiple lists of categories for classification (controlled vocabularies) and offers the possibility of creating thesauri (controlled vocabularies that indicate the relationship of terms), taxonomies (controlled vocabularies where relationships are indicated hierarchically), and free vocabularies where terms, or tags, are defined during content creation.
insert pics
Hierarchy: Disabled
This means that categories do not have a parent-child relationship (sub-categories). All categories are on the same level.
Hierarchy: Single
Single Hierarchy means that your categories can have parent-child relationships. Each child can only have one parent category. For example, you might have a category called "Widgets", and then several subcategories called "Green Widgets", "Blue Widgets", and "Red Widgets". The subcategories could only be children of the "Widgets" category, and not subcategories of any other category.
Hierarchy: Multiple
Multiple Hierarchy means that your categories can have parent-child relationships and that each child can have multiple parent categories. For example, if you have two categories called "Cheap Widgets" and "Expensive Widgets", your subcategories, "Green Widgets", "Blue Widgets", and "Red Widgets", might be subcategories of both "Cheap Widgets" and "Expensive Widgets".
Related Terms
You can use this to choose related categories for each term, but I don't know if it has any use in Drupal's default setup unless you are writing custom PHP code.
Free Tagging
Free tagging allows you to enter categories on the node creation pages instead of choosing them from a list. Drupal uses AJAX to suggest possible categories that already exist in the database. This option is useful when you want to give your users freedom to define their own categories—for example adding tags to blog posts.
Multiple Select
This option allows you to select more than one category for a node.
Required
This option makes it so that you can't create a node without choosing a category for it.
Weight
The Weight controls the order that vocabularies (sets of categories) are displayed in.
After you have submitted the form as explained above, you will see something like the following screen:
Extending the Core
Favorite Modules
- Taxonomy - essential to build an intelligent site based on categories
- Pathauto
- CCK - This is an absolute must. Do you remember the shoe node example? Well CCK allows you to create custom node types. If you wanted to create a node with an image, price, shoe size, address, etc as fields in a node then CCK is your best bet
- Image - At some point you probably are going to want pictures on your site. Download the image module and you’ll be able to create image nodes.
- Views
- FlashVideo
- TinyMCE (wysiwyg editor)
- Poormanscron
- Image - allows users with permission to upload images
- Organic Groups
- CiviCRM
Setup
- Difficult the first few times
- Getting your “head” around how it works requires patience.
- Read the online tutorials! - http://drupal.org/handbooks
- Start with Site Configuration
- Then module configuration
- Then theme configuration
- Then user configuration
Sample Sites
Links to Tutorials
