Create an Article Directory

Caution
Many of the operations described below to modify your new Drupal site so that it acts as a normal (albeit superior in every other way!) article directory are monotonous and highly repetitive. However stick with it, because it's worth the effort and the end result is a site with a much improved directory.

Creating Categories
Log into the administer section and click on content types. Here you will be presented with a couple of options, usually story and page, and if you've enabled the blog and forum modules these will appear here too.

This is the location where you will be creating your main categories, for example if your intention is to create a general directory you'll be creating categories like "business", "computers", "entertainment". If you want to create a niche directory then you will know what categories to use. Sub-categories are described later.

Click on the add content type and add the details (ie Business Articles etc) and continue until all your categories are created.

Creating Sub-Categories
If you haven't already done so, enable the Taxonomy module via Administer > Site Building > Modules, then return to Administer > Content Management > Taxonomy. From here you will be creating the sub-categories using Drupal's in-built tagging system.

From the Taxonomy menu (which should be empty if the site is new) you need to add a vocabulary and you are recreating your main categories again (eg "business", "computers", "entertainment" etc).

When this is completed, go to each individual category within Taxonomy and add terms: these are your sub-categories. For example, if the category is "business", your sub-categories will be for instance: "marketing", "PR" and "sales".

Carry out this process for every category until complete.

Linking Content
Now you've finished most of the work, you can now link it all together. As you should still be in Taxonomy, start with the top category, for example "business" and click on Edit vocabulary. Scroll down and you will be presented with a list of items. Click on the relevant box, eg if you are in "business", click "business".

Scroll down further and click the bottom box (required) which will then force authors to choose a sub-category which is always useful as most authors prefer to submit article to the parent category because it is usually more visible to potential readers.

What you are essentially doing here is tying Drupal content types to taxonomy and creating both Categories and sub-categories.

Permissions
From Administer > User Management > Permissions: edit your users permissions as required for each article category.

Tip: do not allow anonymous users to post content when your site is highly visible in public, as you will receive a lot of spam.

Show Categories on sidebars
To enable quick viewing of content you'll also need to show your content types on the home page. For this you will need to download and enable the module Taxonews.

This module allows you to use Taxonomy or the created categories in your article directory and thus place links to these on the site pages.

Further information can be found on Taxonews.

Project Goals
I am currently developing software that will give Drupal Article Directory users the option to receive content/articles via a community distribution system.

Comments
Thanks to Dave for the following advice:

''Simply create a taxonomy with relevant terms and sub-terms (and related terms etc) and then associate them as a required select for one content type (like 'story' or blog or article or a single new content type) regarding the use of sub-terms in taxonomy opposed to creating individual content types.''

I would point out that using taxonomy alone to create both categories and sub-categories allows for an author to post an article to the main category.

My experience of authors is that in general they prefer to post articles to the top/parent directory as it is more visible when visitors use the category links when searching for content, particularly at sites with thousands of articles.

The goal is to have correctly classified articles and when you are receiving hundreds or even thousands of articles per day it is too time consuming to check for the correct classification, which is the reason behind an article directory.

Dave's method works well if you are not particularly concerned where authors make posting and as he rightly adds:

''That not only will the 'create content' link lead to an overwhelming interface and permissions management will be burdensome for admin and that screen will be two miles long.''

The 'create content' link only leads you to the main article categories, so this will be site dependent. At my own site, which is intended as a general directory, there are only 22 content choices as I have disabled the usage of story, blog and forum for ordinary users.

As to the permissions interface, even though it is long, it is also necessary to create a directory where articles are categorised correctly.