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By theworldawaits on
Hey there,
I'm currently trying to implement Drupal for a Child Rights organization here in Kenya. The rough idea is here.. http://www.anppcan.org/refresh
I've successfully loaded MAMP to run Drupal locally... ported my CSS design to a working (somewhat) theme.. and have started loading content.
I have a few questions that I haven't been able to find answers for. Please let me know if you can help!
CONTENT STYLES
I was wondering about styling content. Do you always have to use HTML code to signify Subtitles and the like? I had always imagined Drupal would enable a simple way (for end-users) to style content... similar to a basic word processor. Being able to highlight and select from a menu that Text attribute (Subtitle.. etc). Is this possible? Does it require the use of modules? Any guidance would be appreciated.
FRONTPAGE/HOMEPAGE
I'd like to display a static welcome message with title/logo... and below have stories/teasers of the recent news. The first header (I stickied and published to front page) seems to be reading the 'padding-top' given to the Title attribute twice... and subsequently displays 25pixels lower than all the other Titles. It also is making the Title of the static PAGE (on the front) a link... any way to disable this?
LINKING WITHIN CONTENT
If you're linking within your site in the body copy... do you just link to or is there a better way? When I used that way it broke my alternating headers.
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
I don't want to go into deep details but just wondering if there's anything I should be keeping in mind as I build the site.
PICTURES AND PDFS
I'm having some difficulties displaying pictures the way I would like. I'm also trying to imagine Bernard (the guy here at ANPPCAN) who will be updating the site once I'm gone.... and I'm a little concerned.
What is the easiest way to display photos within body text? I usually use CSS/floats but unsure how that'd work with Drupal.
Also -- there will be lots of PDFs added to this site as resources to download. In my design I had a nice PDF icon with the name of the PDF to the right and also the size of the file in brackets. Is there possibly some sort of module to handle this?
I'm just wondering what's the best way to handle images within text and images that interact with text in the layout (PDF icon - text)
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Thank you for your patience and understanding. This is my first time using Drupal and I'm trying to do as much research as possible but it's difficult with the internet connections we have here. Last week we lost internet for a few days as the ISP was torched by angry rioters. First time for everything I guess.. :)
I am running this locally and I have the 'getting started' PDF guide. Any additional guidance would be deeply appreciated!
Thanks so much.
Comments
CONTENT STYLESI was
This is a huge source of discussion and debate. There are MANY "wysiwyg" type modules available for drupal. I would argue that none of them are perfect and none of them are truly "wysiwyg" because of the difficulties of matching up CSS. I've had experience with the tinymce and fckedit modules. Tinymce I found to be very buggy and problematic with it's code sanitizing (plus, it mangles image maps so if you're going to use those, tinymce won't work for you). I prefer FCKedit. However, neither is trully wysiwyg so that can tend to confuse nontechnical users when what they type sorta but not quite looks like what they get. However, with a little proper training, this can be overcome and I think the value of the modules outweigh the difficulties of teaching users html.
You can find discussions, reviews, and comparisons of the various editors at http://drupal.org/node/200332 and http://drupal.org/node/208456
Another option is to use a wiki type syntax module-- there's several of those also. If you're familiar with wikipedia.org, then you know how these work.
Without knowing what theme you are using it's difficult to troubleshoot CSS problems. But the first thing i would suggest is use Firefox with the firebug and webdeveloper plugins. You should be able to pinpoint the exact CSS that is not working as you would like and also test out fixes very easily.
What I did was use a static page for my static content (set at admin/settings/site-information at the very bottom of the page) and then added a block to list my news/announcment type items.
There's also the frontpage and panels modules to give you more control over the frontpage, but those are probably overkill for what you want to accomplish.
Not sure exactly what you mean here, but if you want to link to other pages you have to use (x)html hyperlinks (drupal is afterall, an xhtml cms). The wysiwyg editor modules I mention above all include a button for correctly inserting the hyperlink with proper syntax, but the user still needs to know the URL of the link they want. For simplicity sake, i just tell my users to copy&paste the link they want directly from the address bar and not worry about absolute or relative links.
For those few that venture into the filtered html format I have a quick reference page for the allowed tags.
This is a HUGE topic that is WAY beyond what should be addressed on drupal.org. Just google it-- there's BOOKS on SEO. With regards to drupal specifically though, the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is that if you use the PATHAUTO module, be careful about creating duplicate paths/urls for the same page--- search engines detest that.
Regarding pictures, there's a few ways to address that. All of the wysiwyg editors I mention above have a button for adding the IMG tag, but as with hyperlinks, users will need to know the URL of the image. Some of the visual editors (like FCKedit or Tinymce with the IMCE module also) also have integrated facilities to assist the user with the UPLOAD part of the equation. But they manage the images as files-- not nodes or galleries. Another option would be to use the image module to have the images loaded into the site as nodes that can then be perused individually on pages or in galleries-- then you can copy&paste the URL for use with the image button in an editor. This is similar in the way that wikipedia handles images.
I guess it depends on how the images are used on the site-- are they "content" in an of themselves and thus should live as nodes, or are they just files to be included only on the content page they appear on? I ended up going with images managed by the visual editor as files simply because I didn't want them clogging up my nodes tables.
As for the PDF thing, I don't know of a specific module that would do that, but you can format the attachments list anyway you want in your theme. You'll have to read up on drupal theming-- time well spent in any case.
Sorry if my answers seem non-specific... but remember-- drupal is a framework, at any given time there are multiple "correct" routes to any particular goal. That's the beauty of it!
Hope that helps.....
Thanks.. your post has
Thanks.. your post has really helped guide me along this Drupal path.
WYSIWYG
I have installed the FCKeditor module but unfortunately it doesn't seem to be working for me. What I Type is not What I Get... no idea why... It might be having some conflicts with my CSS? I type some basic text on several lines but it all stays on one line.. it's been discouraging so far.. as this seems like a basic command.. you can see how it's typed in the image below.. but it all appears on one line.
It also has a transparent background in the editing panel... Could this also be a CSS issue..?
Here's how it looks... http://www.anppcan.org/refresh/bgproblems.png
This is the first module I;ve installed so perhaps I've missed something..
IMAGES
As for the images... I just need images within the body content. For example... an image within the body text to soften the page a little... so not content in and of itself. You can see an example here.. http://anppcan.org/refresh/ (the image on the right in the content).
I guess there's no way to just upload an image with the "browse" feature and place it within the content (similar to MS word?).
Also... all my images have a padded border. Can you apply CSS traits to images you upload in Drupal?
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I have many more questions but I'll be doing some trouble-shooting first. I'm really going to push to get this up and running by the end of the week. The situation here in Kenya doesn't seem to be getting any better so I'd like to complete this ASAP !!
Thanks again. The Search Engine link will come in very handy.
Peace and blessings..
Jason
I have installed the
Definitely seems like a css conflict. I'm pretty sure there's a way to tweak the editor CSS to better match the site CSS. Check the documentation and/or issues queue for FCKEditor. Unfortunately, this is a perfect example of the type of problems that occur when trying to use WYSIWYG on the web-- it's not a drupal only problem, and there's no easy answer.
Yes there is-- if you're using FCKeditor. Just click on the button that looks like 2 mountains and a sun-- that will open the image upload/insert dialog box which does have options to tweak the css for the image directly. It's very handy and the main reason I prefer FCKeditor. Without, using straight drupal, you'll have to type the html/css directly using standard html or xhtml syntax.
I must be really dense. I
I must be really dense.
I can't get the FCKeditor to work at all. It's loaded in and lets me format text and insert images... but nothing shows up after I hit submit. The text is displayed all on one line with no formatting whatsoever. The image doesn't show up either.
I don't think it's the CSS (i switched to BlueMarine and experienced all the same problems).
I'm thinking I might have botched up in the manual installation steps.
Drupal is definitely made for code-minded people!
As a designer... I feel really really lost.
hmmmm..... this may seem
hmmmm..... this may seem really obvious--- but what input format are you using? Filtered HTML is very limited if you haven't customized it yet. Try FULL HTML and see if that helps.
Wow... that fixed the text
Wow... that fixed the text formatting issue. The obvious often eludes me... I'm still learning.. :)
I also just figured out that my image issue was the result of incorrect file paths. When manually editing config.php I assumed I needed to set the file path relative to that file.... so with ../../../../../../../../files/ the image was still saying it was uploading but nothing would show. I just changed it to "files/" and it works fine. (i wonder why that's not default??).
The obvious is often so elusive when everything is new and confusing. I feel like a bit of a dolt right about now... :P
No worries.... we've all
No worries.... we've all been there. The good news is, once you grok drupal, it will be well worth it!
bit more info about a custom front page....
I also forgot to mention, that you can change the layout of your frontpage by simply creating a custom page-front.tpl.php (assuming you use the default phptemplate theme engine). If you haven't gotten that far yet don't worry about it, just keep it in mind for the future.
look what i just found....
I hadn't seen this before but for SEO check this out:
http://drupal.org/project/seo_checklist