User News

The User News module allows each member of your Drupal site to individually create and publish news articles, with each member having his/her own individual RSS feed. A block is also provided which collectively lists all the site's "Latest news articles."

If this sounds "familiar" to you, it'd probably be safe to say that you've been using Drupal enough to the point that you might be considered what some refer to as an expert (of course that's just my opinion, but nonetheless). The reason? This module's platform is based heavily on that of the Blog module which is one of the (optional) core modules that ships with every download of Drupal itself.

So... Why would such a module exist?

Great question.

While the answers are plentiful, I'll try to stick with the important ones.

• I personally have built and maintain multiple news syndication sites. As such, I've tried out the various contributed modules available for Drupal that have been designed with a primary objective of adding "syndicated-news" capabilities to a Drupal site -- each of which, in my opinion, having their own unique capabilities which in turn makes each one a (potential) extremely useful asset depending on the needs of the site. Some of these modules include
  • Innovation News
  • Simplenews
  • E-Publish, etc...

  In some many cases, however, all that's been necessary from my end has been to have the capacity to do what the Blog module does, with the secure scaffolding and versatility the Blog module has, but tailored so that it met the needs of a news/publication site.

OK... So why not just use the Blog module?

Another great question.

• Image
  • More often than not, I've found, when someone operates a news publication site, they want their writers to have the ability to write news articles rather than blog entries and a site on which all the "articles" end with "$user->name's blog" doesn't quite produce the (typically) desired effect(s) of a news syndication site owner/operator.
• Search engine optimaztion
  • In case you're not totally familiar with "search engine optimization" (aka "SEO"), one of the (many) keys to successful optimization is repetition. Another key is uniqueness. Combine the two, and--
    • Well, on a quick side-note, take my Drupal user name for example. Who ever heard of something like that? The history behind it is actually a whole other lecture, but if one were to search for "jerdiggity" using any search engine... ('nuff said).
  • Unfortunately, the words "news," "syndication," "article," etc., are not very unique. At all. And since we can't really "uniquify" those words, we play the hand that's dealt and make use what resources we do have: in this case, the ability to "repetitionify" those same words. _{--End of free advice-- :)}
• Security / coding standards
  • Hacking core is a "no-no" and the Blog module is no exception. Further, in order to achieve the above, one would either have to hack the Blog module to death, make a handful modifications to each Drupal install and/or apply an equal number patches to each install, or create a new module tailored to the needs as specified. I chose the latter.

All that aside, the (other) primary differences between the Blog module and this one can be seen on the user profile page, in the breadcrumb of the article currently being viewed, in all the links associated with each article (as rendered by the module), including what appears on a.hover, etc. Please see the attached screen shot for an example (differences are highlighted).

New features (as of 08 Nov 2009):

• Control the number of articles that appear in the block
  • Administer >> Site building >> Blocks; · click Configure next to User News - latest articles