Hi there.
Set up my first site using drupal for a friend's sports club. I've been adding content for them but need to hand it over. It needs control over the layout so it looks right and I've been formatting the pages using whatever means necessary - mainly tables, although I didn't really want to do that as I wanted to use style sheets to do it. However I needed a quick solution to get it up and running and that was the quickest for me... I now need to show some members of the club how to do some some of the administration - certainly adding content - but probably need an easier way than just html or even the wysiwyg editor modules as I still seem to have to edit the code to get satisfactory results. It's really just text with photos but getting it to look neat. I've just installed composite layout which I thought might help but where it says I should see the tabs and it should be common sense I'm seeing nothing - just the normal body field with nothing different.
Question(s) is(are) - should I be seeing something that I'm not with Composite Layouts and I've not installed it properly? Panels also sounded handy but it's still in alpha... Any other suggestions for the best way to do this? I'm using Drupal 6.x.something.
Cheers charlie
Comments
Can you point out the URL? I
Can you point out the URL? I can have a look at what you're trying to do and recommend the best way to do it.
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
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Hi David It's
Hi David
It's http://www.scorpiontaekwondo.co.uk
There's a front page and not much else at the moment (not my idea!). I'm anticipating most of the content will be along the lines of the 2nd story - 2008 British National Championships - follow the full story link - a mix of text and photos. The idea is as well to have pages for each member with their details, achievements, photos and videos on. And, well, what you can imagine from the menu categories that they want, and now need filling in. Of course I would have rather developed the whole site and then published but it's not happened like that.
I'm an Oracle developer, have done some web stuff, research suggested drupal was a reasonable way to go with this, but I've not had too much time to get to grips with it. Knocked up a few pages as design ideas and was asked to put it live. The pages that I've put up are a bit of a hack - so would like an idea how to do this easier / better, so 1. it's easier for me to admin it and 2. I can show someone not very techy to do the same...
Cheers
charlie
Try Admin modules
The administration area within Drupal is rather confusing to first timers. Try installing some of these modules, they make it all a bit more accessible.
http://drupal.org/project/admin_menu
http://drupal.org/node/32400
As for WYSIWGY I would recommend FCK Editor. http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor Install that and IMCE, its a great way to manage simple content like photos and put them into posts. Most people pick up on this combinations easily.
http://inletmedia.com
Hi Charlie, sorry it took me
Hi Charlie, sorry it took me a while to get back to you - glad Chris gave advice. Mine is pretty much the same.
Since you're already managing files "as files" and not nodes (as it would be with Image module), if you haven't yet, I recommend that you install the IMCE module. It's not perfect (particularly the UI has some rough edges) but it does the job pretty well, and for the moment (though there are a variety of things being developed) there's not really a "better" solution.
So far as the editor, it depends what your users need. If they want/need a full WYSIWYG then I second the recommendation for FCKeditor. Since you were already planning on having the site users edit full HTML, I'm suspecting it "might" be ok to skip on the full-fledged WYSIWYG editors and go with a code-helper editor. My recommendation if that's the case is BUEditor. Today I compiled all of my BUEditor tips, tricks, and tweaks here: Settings and icons for BUEditor
Among the BUEditor tips in the above link is how to get images to align to the right or left of content by just choosing the option from the menu, no tables or confusing code. You can do something similar with FCKeditor + IMCE if you go that route. In any case, I recommend you limit what options users have to a very small selection of important text/image formatting tags. Don't give them divs, tables, inline styles, fonts, etc as that will very easily cause the site layout to break when they get the code wrong.
Good luck.
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
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Hi David / Chris Thanks for
Hi David / Chris
Thanks for the replies. I have been using FCKeditor and IMCE but seem to have to tweak quite a bit to get the layout as I want it. I'll show the users who'll be creating content how to use these and see how they get on. It will only be a small number and I'll be around to help if problems arise. Maybe I could create some templates for standard page types they'll be likely to need.
Again thanks for the help - this looks a very useful forum!
charlie
If they are "standard" sort
If they are "standard" sort of templates (e.g. this goes here, that goes there, etc)... you could make a CCK type, add the fields required (just a bunch of textarea fields for instance... could call them by their position they will show at, such as top_right, middle, etc). Add a few optional imagefields (they use a few they need, can leave others blank) or even make 1 multi-value Imagefield which you can break apart into separate areas while theming (I believe you refer to them as [0] then [1] and so on). Lay it out in a node-your_type_name.tpl.php file and bingo, "advanced" looking layout without the user touching any HTML. And no need to worry about Panels or other advanced modules for this (sure you can't drag and drop the parts around in the UI or do fun things with arguments and other wizardry.... but that's probably not necessary for this). When one CCK type and layout is done, Clone it into a new type (export the type, and import with a new name), make any needed alterations, make a copy of the custom node template and rename it... and you have another layout for a different purpose.
Study my guide on CCK/Views to learn how to do this: http://www.davidnewkerk.com/book/18
In particular CCK theming: http://www.davidnewkerk.com/book/30
On the other hand, Panels "is" pretty stable in D6 besides the more advanced stuff, so you "could" try it out and see how it goes.
Hope this helps :)
-- David
davidnewkerk.com | absolutecross.com
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