Hi,
I would really appreciate it if someone could give me a bit of a steer.
I have to set up a site that provides access to committee papers.
I need to have a page that lists the committees, with links to a page for each committee.
Each committe page has a list of committee papers available for download - these are usually Word or PDF files
So far I have used the CCK and Views modules to create a "committee page" type with fields for some text info about the committee and a file upload field, and a view which gives a list of links to each committee page.
However, the only way to add or delete files is by editing each committee page, and this is more complex than I would like because it will be the secretarial staff who will be uploading and deleting the files.
Ideally, I would like something to click on each committee page where a user with appropriate rights can upload a file which is then added to the list on the page (and a similar option to delete files already there) - is there a way of doing this?
Another option I have tried is to create a content type "paper upload" which allows the user to pick the committee that they want to upload files for from a list, and upload the desired files - I thought I could then display this as a block on the appropriate committee page, but I cannot find a way to associate the files with their committee.
Many thanks for any ideas.
Comments
Taxonomy?
I think CCK and Views are a struggle, at first, but they really make for a powerful combination, and are definitely worth the time and effort you spend figuring them out (I still have lots to learn about what they can do together, I can tell...).
I wonder if you might be able to accomplish what you want to do by treating each committee as a taxonomy term (if you don't know about Taxonomy, you can learn more at http://drupal.org/handbook/modules/taxonomy [look for the links on the right to continue walking through the pages of the discussion]).
I think you're on the right track with your "Paper Upload" content type. That could potentially be a very simple content type: perhaps just a file upload field and a taxonomy field (though you could, of course, have whatever you wanted in there: information about the date of the paper, an abstract, what have you). If each committee is a taxonomy term, you could tag each "Paper Upload" node with the term for the appropriate committee in order to tie that paper to its committee. Your staff would then have to do nothing more than upload the paper and tag it with the term for the proper committee. (And you could easily assign a paper to a different committee or to multiple committees just by changing the taxonomy terms associated with a given "Paper Upload" node.)
If all you need is a page displaying the papers assigned to each committee, you can have Views take over the display of taxonomy terms, and then style the View of each committee's papers however you liked. If you need the pages for each committee to display more than simply a list of papers, you could have a "Committee" content type with whatever information you needed, tag each "Committee" node with the appropriate Taxonomy term, and embed a block View of all the "Paper Upload" nodes associated with that Committee by using (I believe) an Argument for the Taxonomy term ID.
Others may have better ideas...
Best of luck!
You should have two content
You should have two content types:
Committee Type
And another that's for the files like Committee File
The Committee File Type will have a Node reference to the Committee Type that its reference to.
Then you can build views with Relationships that can display the Committee with a list of it's Committee Files.
This is a little advanced if your new to views. I would search for "Views Relationships" there are many articles and screen casts that can help you understand.
Charlie
That was my other thought...
That would be another way of accomplishing what you want to do. There are several modules that help out with adding node references, which could provide an easy UI for your secretarial staff. I've found Node Relationships to work well for my purposes.
thanks, Benjamin and Charlie,
thanks, Benjamin and Charlie, your help is very much appreciated, I will investigate both your ideas. fiona.b