About nodes

All content on a Drupal website is stored and treated as "nodes." A node is any posting, such as a page, poll, story, forum text, or blog entry. Comments are not stored as nodes but are always tied to one.

Treating all content as nodes allows the flexibility of creating new types of content. It also allows you to painlessly apply new features or changes to all content.

Behind the scenes, the nodes module manages these nodes. This module is what lets you:

• list, sort through, and manage all the content on your site;
• set norms for how all posts are displayed; and,
• list and configure the "content types" for your site, and create new ones.

Offering "content types" is a way Drupal allows you to have different kinds of nodes for different purposes. For example, a "story" is one kind of node, a "book page" another, and a "blog entry" yet another. You can also create new content types of your own.

You can:

• search for content at search;
• administer all nodes at Administer > Content management > Content;
• administer workflow and other default settings for individual node types at Administer > Content management > Content types;
• configure the number of nodes to display on the main page and the length of trimmed posts at Administer > Content management > Post settings; and,
• set access permissions for various node types at Administer > User management > Access control.