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By AndriyM on
I would like to develop an organized and easily-updatable (by admin, but maybe eventually by users) iformation site. The main necessity is being able to classify, display, and search for "news" items by
mulitple categories and sub-categories (fields) such as geographical location etc.
The number of indentifying fields attached to each "article" would ideally be around 15 and some would be input (e.g. contact name, e-mail) whereas others would be selection (e.g. location, category/subcategory).
Can this be done in the Drupal CMS system without in-depth programming or database knowledge? I can do some basic work with PHP and MySQL, but not much more than that.
Comments
Yes
You will want to enable the seach module and the categories/taxonomy module.
andre
?
So this means it is possible? And I don't need the in-depth knowledge that I sadly lack?
Yes it is possible
You will want to create your categories with the category/taxonomy module. It may seem confusing at first (creating vocabularies and terms), but there is plenty of documentation on the drupal site if you search for 'taxonomy' or 'categories'.
When you or your users create news items - assign them to the categories you would like.
The search module should cover all of your search needs. Also listing items by category is also possible (if you want users to 'drill' down to news items in a sort of directory).
andre
> but there is plenty of
> but there is plenty of documentation on the drupal site if you search for 'taxonomy' or 'categories'.
There is? oh, I have been looking but have failed to find more than sketchy examples and NO examples where you may have hundreds or thousands of taxonomy terms.
If you have time would you mind linking directly to some articles that you think would help me understand the details of using taxonomy/categories?
THANKS
You can start here
http://drupal.org/node/299 - handbook
http://drupal.org/node/55 - early discussions about the taxonomy system
http://drupal.org/node/4101 - a thread about benfits
http://drupal.org/project/taxonomy_context - a module that might help
http://drupal.org/node/11058 - a thread about taxonomy
Sorry, the word 'documentation' was used loosly. There are actually tons of threads (forum discussions) about the use of taxonomy with specific questions and some answers contributed from users.
You will also get a good feel of how it works by trying it yourself. Then you can ask specific questions like "how do I ______ using taxonomy". Or you might find that others have asked those questions and have had them answered.
Hope that helps as a starting point.
andre
Defined Category Hierarchy & Input "Identifiers"
I think I've got the hang of taxonomy. My site's geographical labelling needs will be quite well covered by this.
In my original post, I was also asking whether it's possible to assign "identifiers" to news items that would be input ones. Some good examples of such identifiers would be contact information: name, phone number, email address. Obviously, you can't organize these into a "tree".
I'd like to add them to my stories in Drupal and not just put such info in the body of each story. Is this possible?
Flexinode
I am not an expert in flexinode (a contributed module), nor have I done too much work using it, but it sound like the tool for you. It allows you to create you own 'node' types and include extra fields that are tied to the content your are creating.
One again, I would suggest doing a search for "flexinode" in the forums. I'm sure you can find a bunch of information that may be of use to you. Also see the contribution page for flexinode http://drupal.org/node/5737.
Hope that helps.
andre
thanks
Flexinode seems to do the trick. I am wondering about the categories, however. Flexinode's categories are limited to one level, it seems. Taxonomy has an option of having subcategories. If I split the identifying fields between flexinode and taxonomy, how will this affect output and searching (if anyone knows)?
And the next version?
The develop of a site with Drupal is Happy!!! Drupal is well done, it can help you very well, you'll be fine with organized and easily-updatable site. But, and the next version of Drupal? I've done the upgrade from Drupal 4.4.2 to 4.5.2. The upgrade is not easy, after of it existing very problems. The next version of Drupal will be more easy?