Adding some content

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There are different kinds of content, but start by creating a page, story or blog. After content has been published on the front-page, the original welcome-menu will dissapear, although it will be there again when you demote all your content from the front-page.

The explanation presumes that you have installed pathauto and fckeditor, and that you enabled these together with the core modules Blog, Comment and Menu (Administer>>Site building>>Modules).

Pathauto will create a nice path when you save your content, FCKeditor makes that you can work with HTML more easily when writing text, Blog that you can write a blog-post, Comment that people can post comments and Menu to provide navigation on your site.

Different content-types

The difference between a page and a story is not that big. While Drupal says that a page is used for information that rarely changes like an 'about us'-section, and a story more for announcements, etc., the only real difference are the default-settings of these content-types (which can be overruled). Both a page and a story can be put on the front-page, both can get comments, etc. So, if you want to keep a difference between the two, don't fiddle with the original settings.

A blog will concentrate on the user that created the post. When Filip and Ann both created Blog-entries, you will be able to see the entries from Filip or Ann seperately. And by enabling Blog, a block called 'recent blog post' is created automatically that can be displayed on every page of the site. Notice the word 'can', because Drupal is very flexible and a lot of default-settings can be overruled easily.

Creating content

To create content, click on 'Create content' in your Navigation Menu (that's the menu with your name above) and choose what kind of content you want to create. In all three cases a form will open. While reading this, don't be afraid to experiment. Content can be changed and deleted easily.

  • Title: The title of the content that will be displayed on your site. This field is required.
  • Menu settings: To create a link to a menu. We don't have to care about this now.
  • Body: The actual content. With FCKeditor you can edit text without you knowing HTML.  Clicking on 'code' on the top-left shows you the HTML-code that is generated by FCKeditor and ables you to change this.
  • Input format: If the HTML produced by the text-editor will be filtered or not. To enjoy the advantage of FCKeditor, the setting should be Full HTML by default. Change this setting if necessary in Administer>>Site configuration>>Input formats, and change the default to Full HTML.
  • Revision information: Not important right now, but interesting when different people can work on the same text
  • Comment settings: dissabled, read-only or read/write. Although you can change these settings for each individual entry, you can change the standard setting for each content-type.
  • URL path settings: If we enabled Pathauto, a nice looking link will be created automatically for us, although we can overrule this by unchecking Automatic alias, and write a path ourselves.
  • Authoring information: by who and when has the content been created. Both entries are filled in automatically and can be changed later.
  • Publishing options: Publish means that the content will be visible, promoted to the front-page that it will appear on the home-page, sticky at top of lists that it will appear on top.

Working with the Primary Link-menu

If you didn't promote a certain page to the front, you might want to display a link in a menu.

  • go to Administer>>Site Building>>Menus
  • Click on Primary links, then the label Add item
  • Enter the path. For internal links, it is the part of the link that comes after the domain (to link to http//my_website/about, you fill in about). There are some special codes you can use, like <front> if you want to create a link to your homepage.
  • Fill in the menu link title. This title will be seen by the user. Optionally you can fill in the Description. Save
  • The menu is displayed on the place your theme reserved for it. For the Acquia Marina-theme, the Primary menu is displayed on the top-right.
  • The order of the items in the menu can be changed by a drag and drop-feature. (Administer>>Site building>>Menus, and click on Primary menu)

Changing the default-settings of content-types

Under Administer>>Content management>>Content types you can edit the default settings per content types. Standard, for all these 3 content types you can change:

  • what appears next to the field Title and Body and it's description.
  • the Workflow-setting
    • if standard the content should be published immediately. If checked off, the writer of the content will be forced to go to the preview (draft) first.
    • if it should be promoted to the front page
    • if it should be sticky on top of your page)
    • if a new revision should be created
  • if you allow comments and the standard way of display if comments are allowed. Check settings for the permissions of comments if you want users to add them.

Settings for individual content can always be changed later. Also after it has been published

Managing content

You manage your content with Administer>>Content management>>Content. There you find a list of all the content that has been made. On this page you can filter, edit, promote or delete it. The update-button is a powerful tool to change the status of a lot of content at the same time.

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