Columns of content on the front page
Hi. I'm trying to put together a site with several columns of content, possibly with special boxes, with the columns perhaps representing different sections. I envision it looking some what like Outlook India. I tried looking through the forums, but nothing jumped out at me. It seems like an extremely obvious thing to want to do, so I figured someone must know something about it.
I've looked at a several approaches:
1. Do it at the theme level. Unfortunately, it looks like I would have to alter the content of the front page itself, which I understand is passed in from the node module. That seems pretty hackish and it would make upgrading a tricky business (though my adventures with xtemplate and moving up from drupal 4.4 show that may be unavoidable anyway). The assumption that you want at most two columns for "blocks" and one column for content seems to be hardcoded into the system in such a way that a mere theme can't change it.
2. Make some kind of customized front page (and section pages if necessary). For this, I've tried the front_page module, but when they say static content, they ain't kidding. It doesn't look like you can have any PHP in "front pages" made with that module, so that's a dead end. I also thought the "page" module might do it, but there doesn't seem to be a huge difference between a "page" and a "node" -- at least, not big enough that a "page" could serve as a front page.
3. Use blocks cleverly somehow. I can get three columns this way and if I play with my theme, it can almost look right, but again, it's a really lame way to go about it.
I have to think I'm missing something, because with all the attention to flexibility and such in the drupal community, it's hard to believe there is no easy way to make a site that has more than three columns. Is there an inconspicuously named module somewhere? Is there some way to change what gets fed to your theme when you view the front page?
I am trying to do the same thing!
Jello,
I am trying to do the exact same thing. I was thinkig your 2nd option would be the way to go. I am guessing you are going to want to have one category in one column and another category represented in a 2nd column and so on and so forth.
My guess would be to create a static page that you can manually create a link to in you menu.
Then in the page select the PHP option and build a table with the different columns.
Then in the columns add some PHP that makes a call to the "Node" table look for the records that meet your criteria. Sort by date create and write a loop to display the data.
I'll try it and let you know how it comes out.
alright.
maybe i missed something when i was looking at "pages." i'd be interested to hear how that works.
it'd be nice if there were a prefab set up packaged with the main distribution or a module that handles this kind of thing. i mean, a lot of sites have multi-column layouts, particularly online newspapers and magazines.
oh, sorry,
yes, your description is pretty much what i had in mind.
and thanks!
Collimator module?
How about trying Collimator module
I'm not sure if it satisfies your wants or not, though.
yeah, i saw that.
haven't quite figured it out. i'll try it, but reading the description, i was skeptical about it.
I would rethink that layout.
I would rethink that layout. It's a bit confusing, don't you think?
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http://creativebits.org
nope.
it's the layout i want. i want to be able to display a large number of articles on the front page without having them scroll off the screen. columns are the way to go. i also don't like having long lines of text because they're harder to read than short ones.
try collimator it's exactly
try collimator it's exactly what you want!
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http://creativebits.org
What template engine?
xtemplate can be a bit rigid, but have you looked at phptemplate? I've just started tinkering with it tonight, and it seems to have much more flexibility. Maybe it can work for you?
With phpTemplate, each theme works with its own node and page php/xhtml template files. It would seem to me that if you want to add more columns to tabular display, that would be an easier starting point than xtemplate.
If you want only your front page to have that funky display, then you could utilize sections.module (I believe) to assign the tricked out theme for the home page, and other themes for the other pages.
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mediagirl.org
okay, i'll check that out.
i mean, i guess if i could use a particularly theme for the front page only, i could just hardcode the whole setup into the theme and ignore the content passed in from the node module, or just deal with it cleverly. i didn't know there was a module that can do that.
thanks.
Old topic, but lack of node for columns still exist
I know this is an old topic, but the lack of a node for creating multiple columns still exist and it is almost November. I know the development team have other issue to tend to, but this is an extremely important feature for webmasters who operate news websites.
The current setup totally defeats the purpose and if drupal is to grow, it has to start coming up with some ideas on how to address this issue. Not everyone is a PHP expert, and very few people know about CSS.
I know enough to come up with a color design, but when it comes to creating columns, if someone doesn't do it themselves, I'm stuck.
I'm not one to complain without trying first. But after spending hours, days, and weeks, I have not come up with a solution to how to solve this problem.
Anyway, I given some great advise on how to create these columns, but when I apply these methods, I came up with nothing. Even the flexinode did not turn up any results.
My site is a little more simplier than the india site that jello is referring to. My site almost mirrors the BBC site. There is a picture by the summary, below that is the headline (5 of them). On both side are blocks.
Something that should have taken 2 days to do with a column module has turn into a nightmare.
Of course I could choose another CMS. But I have taken a deep look at what DRUPAL offers as of features, and I'm very comfortable with it.
This is the reason why I'm moving from my current CMS. it's too antiquated: no notification system.. members (in my case, writers) can not take a larger role in the development of the site.
This is what I like most about DRUPAL.
Now if someone wants to assist me in creating the two column format and tell me how much they will charge, I can negotiate.
This is a test website. So what ever I learn here will apply to my website once the work has been completed.
Thank you all for your time. I know I have mentioned this in another thread, but unfortunately, many of the methods you have responded to did not work.
So your help is welcome.
I created some barebones
I created some barebones code that does this for my website, AssignBlame. I posted the code I used to do it as commentary on the advertising post in the showcase forum at this post: http://drupal.org/node/33994