Create an Article Directory Using Drupal 6.1

Warning
I'd just like to point out that many of the operations required to modify your new Drupal site so that it acts as a normal (albeit superior in every other way!!) article directory are extremely monotonous. You will be repeating similar modifications over and over, perhaps hundreds of times!! However stick with it, because it's worth the effort because the end result is a site which exceeds any other directory I've ever used.

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 cats like business, computers, entertainment. If you want to create a niche directory then you will know what categories to use. Don't worry about sub-categories I'll come to this later.

Click on the add content type and add the details (ie Business Articles etc) and continue untill 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 Drupals inbuilt tagging system.

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

When you have completed this process go to each individual cat within Taxonomy and add terms, these are your sub-categories. For example if the category is business your sub-categories will be something like marketing, PR and sales etc but remember all sites are different and the choice is ultimately yours as to what the categories and sub-categories should be.

Carry out this process for every category untill complete.

Linking Content
Now you've finshed most of the tedious work you can now link it all together.

As you should still be in Taxonomy start with the top category eg business & click on edit vocabulary. Scroll down and you will be presented with a list of items. Click on the relevant box ie if your in business click business.

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

What you are essentiially 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.

N.B. From experience I'd definately advise against allowing anonamus users to post as you'll recieve a lot of spam articles, and as a personal preference I wouldn't allow for editing or deleting either but the choice is yours.

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

Further info on Taxonews here

You can visit the test site which I am using to develope new modules etc to see how this looks when completed: Article Marketing Machine.

Further info via Project Wiki.

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.

As an example of this author preference visit my article directory, Article Heaven, click on a main category to see the huge amount of content posted here opposed to content posted to the correct sub-category.

Remember what you want is correctly classified articles because when you're receiving hundreds or even thousands of articles per day it is too time consuming to check for this, which is why Drupal is ideal as an article directory.

However Daves 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.''

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

As to permissions interface, I'll agree it is very long however I believe this is neccesasary to create a directory where articles are categorise correctly.