By john.kenney on

I'd like to tie about 6 of my regular nodes together in a loop using next / previous buttons at the bottom. I guess like a mini-book within a larger site with varied content.

I've already done this on handcoded basis using HTML, but very time consuming which discourages me from using in other spots where I'd like to do so.

Is there a relatively simple way to do this without creating custom content types and/or repackaging these pages in views as seems to be requried by Custom Pagers module?

Basically i'm looking for something where i can manually create a list of related pages/node ids, specify the order, and click save to implement.

Result would look not unlike what is done in Drupal.org handbook where selected group of pages are tied together. E.g. - http://drupal.org/node/262854. I'm not sure how this is done, but this sort of thing is about what I'd like.

If possible, I'd like to be able to specify additonal link text per page, so it would say [next + 'page-info'] where 'page-info' is some short snippet of manually entered text (page titles would be too long, so instead would want to add a 2-3 word short description which would be displayed along with the next-previous buttons).

And also if possible, would prefer to style as button rather than straight text, so hopefully would have enough CSS id's/classes to allow styling.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

nirbhasa’s picture

nirbhasa commented

I believe you are referring to the previous/next navigation provided by the book module.

Previous/next navigation occurs for book pages on the same level of hierarchy, so just create your pages as book pages and let them be children of the same parent.

john.kenney’s picture

john.kenney commented

yes, thanks for that suggestion. i looked into 'books' further and it looks like book module does include the previous / next type thing that i want ... but there are a couple problems.

my pages aren't book pages now, just regular 'pages', but i see that there are modules to convert content types - e.g., nodetype, node convert - so i could reassign these existing pages to be book pages,...

but then the 2nd problem comes into play - i stupidly appear to have deleted the 'book page' content type from my site. i am not sure how to retrieve.

i tried simply creating a new content type called 'book', but presumably this does not have all the normal fields associated with a real book page. i've been looking around for an hour or more to find out if/how to re-create a proper 'book page' content type with all the right fields, but am not finding anything to work off of.

any ideas how i could go about re-creating the book page content type correctly?

manop’s picture

manop commented

How about this module

Custom Pagers - http://drupal.org/project/custom_pagers

I use this module in one of my sites. It works fine to me. I don't know if it will fit your need.

john.kenney’s picture

john.kenney commented

thanks for this suggestion.

i looked at this module early on and got the impression that the pages needed to be Views generated which mine aren't - they are just regular 'page' type.

but re-reading now, it sounds like maybe the pages can be any content type. is that right?

the part that i don't follow is this:

"The Custom Pager module needs to have a proper list of nodes before it can figure out what comes after the currently viewed node, what came before it, and so on. In the 'Pager node list' section, you'll tell it how to get that list.

The easiest way is to use a View that you've defined with the Views module. Build it however you need to in the normal Views UI, keeping in mind that the order nodes appear in the view (via sorts, filters, etc) is the order that you'll be paging through them. Sorting newest-to-oldest, for example, will make 'previous' point to tomorrow, and 'next' point to yesterday. Tinker with it a bit before launching your site and posting to digg.com -- it's easy to forget."

i am not a very seasoned views user, so i don't really understand what this is saying and since current pages are not in any way based on Views, I'm hesitant with this module.

basically in my case, i've just created 6 or so pages (out of 70 or so total pages) that happen to be closely related by content - doesn't relate to dates or any other particular views type filter or sort. simply the case that the content on page B follows from page A based on how i structured and wrote the content.

so i need a way to say: 'these 6 specific pages are related to each other in this specific order just because they are'

can i do this with custom pagers module?

thank you for any further clarification.

john.kenney’s picture

john.kenney commented

i realized i actually tried using this module for something else not long ago and had it still in my system. while there is pretty good documentation, i still find it pretty confusing.

i tried again for this purpose and couldn't make work. i read this page - http://drupal.org/node/371358 - and don't see how to specify a specific set of pages as described above. i followed the steps to see what i'd get and couldn't figure out how to pick individual pages - just generic things like node type and published.

the 6 particular pages i need aren't identifiable via these types of selectors - but I'm no Views whiz.

only way i can think to do it is to simply select the specific nodes by path/url or by nid.

i couldn't actually get anything to print on the front end, so presumably was doing something fundamentally wrong cause i think i should have seen a pager on all published pages - i.e., every page on the site. but i didn't.

john.kenney’s picture

john.kenney commented

it helps to enable a module when you are trying to use it.

now that i've enabled book module, i think i've got the right stuff to make this approach work as a 'book' - once i convert the pages to book content type.

so thanks for pointing me towards that.