Tours Website in Drupal 6.0

Wow. Thanks for the analysis! Great stuff...

I will hit that stuff as mentioned. Thanks so much...

I will get back to you when Im done!

jd

Hi Shanben,

To start off, Im pretty bad at PHP stuff, so most of the stuff is right from Drupal.

To make the enquiry form, I used Webform, CCK and Node Reference. (oh and Tabs)

Because most of the tours will have similar contact forms, but some might have specific forms (to match the details of the tours)... I allowed the client to create as many custom webforms as they liked and then allowed them to reference the form accordingly using a CCK Node Reference Drop Down.

I pass the tour path variable into the form through the URL and have a hidden field in the form so that she can tell where the enquiry has come from. Im sure there is a better way to do this, I just havent figured it out...

It is also dangerous (VERY) ... because if someone makes a mistake on the form, they are kicked out of the NODE and straight to the enquiry form itself.

I have temporarily got around this by making sure no fields in the form are mandatory... (and hoping for the best)... but this is DEFINATELY one of my biggest concerns regarding this...

If anyone knows how I can pass the path into a hidden form field? let me know, without having to create a variable (ie: ?key=tour/path )...

Ideally I would like to pass the date variables into the DATE drop down for the tour so that when she puts available dates into the tour, it will prepopulate the drop down and presto! But I havent got that far yet.

I managed to do a few tricky bits with the TABS, as I let drupal spit out the content templates by itself, I then stole the source and stuck it back into the custom content templates and I was given all the good stuff for the javascript tabs etc... (scripts, div ids etc)...

I then whacked in the content template variables under each tab and it seemed to work out.

Im pretty sure what I've done is pretty dodgy and anyone who knew what they were doing might cry if they saw it. But I usually just try and do things with the tools I got... and hope for the best.

Glad you like it. If you need to know any more, don't hesitate to ask...

JD

Hi Tom,

The basis of most of my Drupal work is usually by using what Drupal already gives me, as I am a pretty hopeless programmer and like quick results! I get paid by the job, not by the hour. So it's gotta be fast...

For this Drupal 6.0 site, I used heavy CCK (Content Construction Kit), Content Templates, Views (lots) and Image Cache.

Theme

I prefer to strip the theme right back (it was Bluemarine at one point) and let the Content Templates do the work as far as general layout was concerned. I usually pull all the extras out of the node.tpl , block.tpl and page.tpl and then put in whats needed in the Page, Story etc templates.

Content Organization

To start out, I knew the client was going to have hundreds of tours in various categories, and eventually they will want to be able to sort and filter. (When they get more tours posted). So I knew I had to get organized with the Taxonomy straight off the bat and I knew that the different Content Types would really help me with the views and with creating different styles for the different levels of Categories/Tours etc.

So I set up the Categories first and then worked on making some views that would allow the site to expand.

Views

I used mostly Views Arguments to make sure when the client adds sub categories and then adds a sub category description, a View will be created and any tour in that new sub category will automatically appear under the "Body" version of the sub category description. The only problem here is that when the client adds a new sub category, I have to get them to manually add the Sub Category under the manually created "Full Category" view... which is fine, because many times they will want to develop a sub category before making it accessible... but it isn't ideal because I tried my hardest to allow the client not to deal with any heavier admin stuff like this.

(I know there is something in Drupal with CCK Taxonomy Fields, and I have tried to use it before, but I couldnt figure it out to save my life. Im pretty sure that in there somewhere is the answer to my prayers here...)

Another feature I really wanted to be able to do, but couldnt figure out, was CCK (& custom templates) for Taxonomy descriptions...

Imagine this. The user creates a new Category and while doing so adds an image and description. The can also join this Category to a parent etc and it all does it's thing. Im pretty sure this is how it's supposed to work... but I couldnt figure it out.

So creating the other content type (SUB CATEGORY DESCRIPTION) is going to cause me trouble real soon, because I have basically made the views SORT the "quasi taxonomy descriptions", to the top of the view. But when it comes to FILTER I am going to end up with the search box above the description and not in between the description and the SORTABLE tours below.

I have got around this before, but it requires hard coding the filter boxes (and thats REALLY ugly).

Custom Content Templates

Probably my favorite part of making Drupal sites is the Custom Content Template stuff... It makes me feel like I know what I am doing, but it gives me all the variables right there.

I can then just grab the variables I need and use and abuse them however I like.

One variable I couldnt find, is the taxonomy.... So I have had to do this little hack. (which I know isnt pretty) .. to give me the taxonomy number required to make the link to the view...?!

<?php while($count<=200)
	{
	if ($node->taxonomy[$count]->tid) {  $taxo_num = $node->taxonomy[$count]->tid ; }
	$count++;
	} ?>

And then: 

<a href="/tour-category/<?php echo $taxo_num ?>/<?php print $node->path ?>?top=full">...View Tours.</a>

 

I have made it so that the content of this type only has ONE taxonomy value.. between 1 - 200... so this seems to get my by.

Anyone got a solution here?

Category Teaser Images

I used image cache to create smaller 300px wide images.. and then used the Content Templates to call the path of the Image Cached image into the background image of a PNG.

<a style="float: none; border: none;" href="/<?php print $node->path ?>">

<img title="<?php print $node->field_main_image[0]['data']['alt'] ?>" alt="<?php print $node->field_main_image[0]['data']['alt'] ?>" title="<?php print $node->field_main_image[0]['data']['title'] ?>" src="/images/images/frame.png" style="background: #999999 url('/sites/default/files/imagecache/tour_description/tour-images/<?php print $node->field_main_image[0]['filename'] ?>') no-repeat; border: 0px;" />

</a>

Definately not the ideal way to do this... but I always wanted to try it.

Im just worried Im going to get penalized for giving 1000 alt tags to the same image???

Other Modules

• SEO - Always Pathauto and Google Analytics
• FCK Editor for the big bits of text (allows more flexibility, but I only use this when I trust the client can handle it)
• Simple News - Newsletter admin tool, pretty cool so far.
• Views, Views, Views!

So there you have it.

Thats how I put together http://www.reefnoutback.com.au ... I open to all suggestions.. and I would love to be told any better ways to get around some of the sketchy stuff I have done...

JD

The select list is just text data.

I used CCK and added a Text Field with Select List, I then went to : http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists/english_country...

and grabbed the flat list of countries.

And cut and paste the countries list into the drop down select box.

And thats it.

JD