By wmike on

Apologies if this has been answered.

I have spent the past couple of days trying to find the answer to no avail.

I'm looking to do something that should be simple - display a page listing articles - I want them to show just a thumbnail and a small part of the article text ( first paragraph or so). Should be simple - right. Not in Drupal 7. (Please note, I have used Drupal 6 in the past - I am trying to port a Wordpress blog into Drupal 7 to make use of it's extra power). With an article in Wordpress - you simply designate the image to use as a thumbnail and a short teaser - then, voila, in the article listing you get a nice thumbnail and the short teaser text.

I have spent hours trying to get Drupal 7 to do this - I've followed various suggestions using content types, etc. None of the suggestions work. Drupal also insists on displaying any images contained in the actual article, along with the thumbnail - pretty hopeless, really.

So, again, can anyone please suggest how I accomplish this - I have even tried Display suite - this seems to overcomplicate things even further.

This is what I'm looking to do - http://www.rnmedics.com/category/falklands/

Surely, this should be straightforward.

Thanks,

Mike

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

The river of news as shown in your list is a default feature in Drupal on the default front page.

create a content type
add a text area with summary where you limit the summary by the amount of character
add an image field for uploading of an image,
create image styles (thumbnails) and set the node display to use the image style you create
promote nodes to the front page

style as you see fit with css

if you don't want the front page to be this list, then you use taxonomy and use those default lists, or create a view with the views.module.

wmike’s picture

wmike commented

Sorry, that is not what I'm looking to do. I have article categories as defined through Taxonomy. I want to list the various categories on individual pages accessed from the nav menu.

Drupal 7 shrouds this in mystery. If I do manage to get a thumbnail into a listing it insists on showing images from the body of the article - not what I'm looking for.

I've tried content types, fields, display etc. None achieve the effect required.

Cheers,

Mike

vm’s picture

vm commented

http://drupal.org/node/774892 = under using taxonomy in menus

or http://drupa.org/projec/views and create your own lists

one point I'm confused about is where you expect images to come from if not the article?

wmike’s picture

wmike commented

Yes, I agree - the thumbnail should come from the article.

However, I've taken a close look at views - not clear how to achieve what I'm looking for.

By using the content-type for Article and making the changes to fields and how they are displayed- particularly for the teaser - these changes result in no discernible change to the article listing - certainly no thumbnail is displayed, regardless of the settings. Also the length of the teaser is very variable and haphazard - clumsy even.

My understanding is that even if I can, somehow get the content type do display a thumbnail correctly, the list will still insist on displaying any image it finds in the teaser, as is the case here. Seems no workable solution is available.

It seems that I will have to stick with some of the limitations of Wordpress. Drupal seems to be getting less friendly in subsequent releases.
It should be simple to setup for the end user and should not be so focused on the techie, in my humble opinion.

Thanks for you help.

Cheers,

Mike

vm’s picture

vm commented

wordpress is a good tool for blogging. If you are comfortable with it, and it suits what you want to do; by all means you should use it. It's been said that if you want to blog use wordpress, if you want to build a blog use drupal.

When asking for help it tends to stay completely on point with your questions and describe what you've done, how you've done it, and provide screenshots where possible. (a picture says a thousand words). Reading through unhappiness word dances makes it much more difficult for those trying to figure out what the issue is and how to aid you in finding answers to your questions.

_____

Based on your last comments and what I can actually pull out of it in question form:

it is important to note that teaser length is based on characters and the setting is not retroactive. Thus the content would need to be resaved to take on the new field setting. Many settings aren't retroactive and require resaving of the content. Thus can be done in bulk in administer -> content

It's difficult to discern what the issue is with the thumbnails, as you dont mention anything about image styles being used, or how you've set up much of anything in the manage display tab or how these "articles" are being listed. As this the default front page? a taxonomy list?

Is this article content type, the default content type provided by a standard drupal install profile?

Is the issue with thumbnails that you are using a multivalue field, thus multple images are being uploaded and you are trying to limit the teaser to only show a single image?

Looking again at the link you provided, you don't need display suite to do this. However, display suite does provide funcationality for creating custom layouts for the display of content.

Here's a quick run down which assumes you've done nothing
add an imagefield to the content type in question using the manage fields tab for that content type (thus you should have a, title field, a body field, and an image field.)
adjust the fields using drag and drop to order them as you want them to display on the content form

use the manage display tab on the content type
edit the settings for the body field to set the teaser length
edit settings for the image field to set the thumbnail to one of the default image styles, or to one you've created.

submit a piece of content
promote it to the front page

Use css to float the image left so that the text will wrap the image. Add any needed padding or margins to the image to prettify.

If you've accomplished these steps, please state how, or provide a link to the site in question or a screenshot of the site in question with a statement of what isn't to your liking.

patty.fresonke’s picture

patty.fresonke commented

I'm also trying to modify the teaser - sounds like this almost gets me where I want to be - although I have multiple thumbnails (from Brightcove videos and larger images) and I want to display only one thumbnail per teaser.

vm’s picture

vm commented

In D7 you have the ability to create a different display for teaser than full node in core.

To expand on that you can use display suite.module

or investigate modules like http://drupal.org/project/field_multiple_limit

else you can create a custom tpl.php file for your teasers

ScottProck’s picture

ScottProck commented

My own searching for a solution has brought me here, and since I have come from a Wordpress development background I understand exactly what the OP's question was. I too would like to figure this out.

I'm not new to Drupal, and have a good grasp on developing with it and here's my understanding ...

Wordpress has the ability to take an image that is in the body field, and use it as the thumbnail. That's the base for this question.

Sure setting up a content type with an image field will insert your image into the node, and allow you to do all sorts of great stuff i.e. thumbnails, auto-resizing, etc. but it requires a manual upload of said image. In addition, using an image field for your content does not allow you to insert the url of an image (in case that image is already loaded into sites/default/files)

An ideal situation, and the one that will answer the OP as well as mine ... I want to use an image that is already inserted into the body field as the thumbnail. So to be completely clear, we have the default content type with no additional fields added ... title - body ... we insert content into the body field including an image, either by html, or a wysiwyg editor with image uploading (still allows for the image url to be modified/known). Then the image that was part of the body can be used as the thumbnail.

One benefit to this approach is when converting a Wordpress blog over to Drupal, you can automate the process using the built in aggregator and the rss field from the Wordpress blog, import all the content. The body field will contain what ever images, and the first image will become the thumbnail.

Another benefit is the image can be swapped out, or modified by changing it's url in the body. This can not be done if you use an image field to insert an image, there's no where to modify or enter a URL.

I hope this has added some clarification ... and bottom line ... can an image that is already part of the body content be pulled out and used as a thumbnail ??

Thanks ... Scott

vm’s picture

vm commented

http://drupal.org/project/insert is as close as I think one can get to that type of desire.

ScottProck’s picture

ScottProck commented

hmm ... the insert module looks like it will solve half of the issue ;-) at least the part of being able to insert an image that is already uploaded to the site.

I'm just baffled I guess, with all the power that I have become used to with Drupal, something as simple as this has not been implemented.

The main reason I have been looking for this (maybe there's a different way) is to grab an image that is pulled in via an RSS from aggregator or the feeds module.

I have tried just about every combination of modules related to RSS and haven't been able to figure out a solution.

I tried to use feeds_imagegrabber but can't get it to work in D7 ... even after applying all the patches I have come across.

I can get images to pull in with the aggregator module, but the images are various sizes. I want to be able to set thumbnail rules to the images. If I knew something about php programming I would just modify the feeds module to recognize the img tag and pull in an image so it could be mapped to a content type.

Any ideas ??

Thanks

(sorry my posts are so long)