Confused but trying
Hello.
Sorry to be such a noob, but I'm struggling with learning drupal. I spend my time in the support/tutor section but I find it somewhat disorderly. I wish it was more structured.
Anyways, here goes. I hope it is ok to ask some basic stuff.
I created my front page after installing drupal. When I created it, I used Page as the content type. According to everything I read, a Page is like a static document, yet the published Page on my front page has the Read More teaser link. Why? I thought a Page would display the whole document like a static html document while a Story had the teaser link. I'm confused.
How do I get the Page to display the whole document without the Teaser Read More link? Can I do it for each individual Page created or do I have to make a change that effects all Pages site wide?
Thanks for your patience and help.
"Page" is just another
"Page" is just another content type, with some different settings in the admin/content/types page ("not promoted" etc.)
All content types have teasers, which are only used in teaser-list pages. The size of the teaser is specified in admin/content/node-settings. The size is common for all content types, probably because teaser are intended to be used in lists of nodes of different types.
If you want to use a node of type "page" as your front page, you probably want to show just that page and not a teaser list. Go to admin/settings/site-information, near the bottom of the page, and look at "Default front page". By default it is
node(which is just a teaser list of recent posts which you have marked as "promoted"). Change it tonode/1, if node/1 is the page that you created. That will be a full node page, with no teasers involved.wow...I want to say thanks,
wow...I want to say thanks, but I must admit that sounds confusing. It makes me wonder if I will be able to learn drupal.
If you dont' mind, let me try to summarize what you said to be sure I understand.
1. All content type (page or story) have teasers.
2. I CAN NOT set in the admin per individual created Page or Story if it has a teaser or not. It can only be set site wide for all pages or stories?
I wish there was a way to turn the teaser on or off for each page or story created, but I guess not.
I will try what you said, even though I don't quite grasp it.
Thanks.
1. Correct, all content type
1. Correct, all content type (page or story) have teasers and you can configure globally how big they are. (They can be big enough to fit the whole node.)
2. Almost.
- You cannot set whether a Page or Story has a teaser or not, simply because of (1). They all do.
- It is up to you to decide whether the teasers will be used or not: A node listing page uses the teasers. A full node page uses the full post.
I don't think this is difficult to grasp. It is like getting a new machine and trying to figure out where the buttons are and what they can do. Then it seems natural (for that machine).
Also, if you install http://drupal.org/project/cck you have much more freedom. You can have nodes which don't even have a body, with only special-purpose fields. If you consider "teaser" to mean "that which is displayed in node listings", then you can have teasers with any fields you have specified, and you can display them with the http://drupal.org/project/views module.
Not quite...
1. If you navigate to admin/content/node-settings, you can set the "Length of trimmed posts", which is used to set the length of automatically generated teasers. As the help text just below the dropdown selector says (in D6),
So you can disable the site-wide automatic generation of teasers in the admin section (for all types of posts).
2. When creating a new content item (say a page or story post), there is a "Split summary at cursor" button at the upper right corner of the body text entry field. By clicking that, you can split your post into a teaser and the rest of the full post. If the post has once been splitted, you can also unsplit it again by pressing the "Join summary" button that appears for all splitted posts. And finally, while editing a post, you can also decide if the teaser is part of the full listing of the post or not. All these settings are stored (and can be edited) individually for each post. So you can control teasers individually for each post, but you do that while editing the post, not in the admin section.
Thanks to all
I want to say thanks to all who provided their help. I'll keep plugging away and hopefully someday I will be comfortable with using drupal. Thanks again.
Getting flexible with teasers
Marquardt, above, is correct about teasers: Assuming you're using Drupal 6, one click lets you manually insert the teaser break for each node you make, and that'll override the system-wide settings. So you can set it system-wide as a default, and then manually use the teaser break for any node whose teaser you want different from the default. (If the default is to use a teaser, and you want a node to *not* have a teaser, just place the manual teaser break at the *end* of the content. No teaser!)
Also, good news: There's at least one module out there that purports to allow setting the default teaser length *per node type*. So you could set a default of no teaser for a Page, a short teaser for a Story, etc. However, I don't know the module's status, or even recall its name...
For what it's worth, I've always found Drupal teasers to be somewhat tricky and inflexible; it's not just you scratching your head (see Drual 5-directed lamentation at http://www.drupalace.com/blog_entry_drupal_mystery_1_teasers_2007_06_25 ). It'd be great if there were a core ability to set defaults by node type, and then for any individual piece of content, quickly set a teaser to use the default, or no teaser, or a custom number of words, or use a manual break... And with the "read more" link not buried in an odd place... Honestly, there's probably more on my site about teaser troubles than any other topic. Well, Drupal makes progress quickly; maybe it'll all be perfect soon!
Finally, let me add that you may or may not find a little extra confusion in the overlapping use of the word "page". It means both the specific node type called "Page", and the generic meaning of a web "page"; there's no special connection between the two, and a page could be constructed from Page nodes or Story nodes or other nodes or any combination...
I'd like to see node types capitalized (per above) by standard practice, to distinguish "Page" from "page", but AFAIK it's just me that does so. : (
Anyway, keep at it. Some quirks aside, Drupal is mighty powerful stuff, built by some really smart people!
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reminds me of my first tries
reminds me of my first tries with Drupal. The learning curve is steep but once you get around it, you can do all that you want with Drupal.