By DallyBoy on

Hi all

I am returning to Drupal after a long break. I couldn't find anything better so I didn't bother using anything. 5.0 changed all that and now I am back in design mode.

For my site I plan to have a "structured" front page, divided up into regions showing nodes from different places. I will have 3 roles supplying the content - Registered Users, Premium Users that pay subscriptions and Media Representatives. The order of importance (for want of a better word) of these roles is as follows:

1. Media Reps will have the most exposure and their articles will take top billing.
2. Premium Members articles will follow, themed differently to differentiate them from Media Reps
3. Registered Members nodes will be listed with article titles and maybe short teasers, themed differently again from the two above.

So the stage is set for laying out the page.

Here's what is in my minds eye:

At the very top I will have a featured or important article, supplied via a Node Queue. I will manually pick this article and assign it to the Queue which will hold only 1 node at a time. This article will be from either a Media Rep or Premium user.

The next region will have nodes supplied by the Premium Members and will show the title, submission info and a short teaser. I will list between 5 and 10 articles in this region.

The main body of the front page will display the Media Rep articles and will be the main focus of the page.

Other regions will include various other info from different parts of the site.

Now, I plan to use Views Module to supply the content for each of the regions. I have already figured out how to restrict view content by role. I have alot more reading to fully understand how to use Views effectively, but I'll get there.

I do have some concerns. Am I using the right tools to accomplish what I want? I know little of Views at the moment and *think* I can do what I want with it. I basically want to "chop up" all content into these 3 sections and aside from a planned archive page, Drupal will not control what is displayed, I will (hopefully) via Views and Node Queue.

One other question if I may. As I want to use Node Queue to handle the Featured Article, how do I keep that article from displaying in other front page lists? I haven't quite worked out how to do that. Or, should I be doing this bit a different way?

I have alot to relearn as I get back into it. Any advice anyone can give me would be a great start and would help me on my way to getting my site off the ground once and for all

Cheers

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

StevenSokulski’s picture

StevenSokulski commented

As I want to use Node Queue to handle the Featured Article, how do I keep that article from displaying in other front page lists? I haven't quite worked out how to do that. Or, should I be doing this bit a different way?

For that just make sure "Promoted To Front Page" is unchecked for all of your content types in /admin/content/types by clicking edit for each of them and adjusting the default publishing options.

For the front page you will probably want to take a look at Panels (http://drupal.org/project/panels). It will allow you to easily break a page up into panels and add various types of content to it (nodes, views, even nodequeues I believe.)

Your use of the two aforementioned modules (views and nodequeue) seem pretty solid. This is basically the most simple way to look at it: If your lists are being built on some criteria such as role, date posted, username, etc. then you would use views. If your list is to be arbitrarily decided by an administrator or editor than nodequeue is the way to go.

DallyBoy’s picture

DallyBoy commented

Thanks

Good to know I have gone down the right road. I shall delve deeper into these modules to come up with a satisfactory outcome.

Cheers