- I've set things up so that, when a News story is added, an image can be uploaded to go alongside it (as per the Web Visuals). Using the ImageCache module, this then resizes the image to the correct thumbnail size that I want for the home page, as well as producing a larger version of the image that fits nicely on a page.
- I think I'm finally getting to grips with Views, one of the most important Drupal modules. I managed to get the view for the News items (thumbnail, title, and summary of content), working unaided. A breakthrough for me!
The updated News view
-I've added the Pathauto module (http://drupal.org/project/pathauto) which is one of the most popular Drupal modules. This automatically creates a friendlier-looking URL when you add a new News or Date item, by incorporating some of the text from that item.
So, for example, prior to installing Pathauto, if I'd added a News story with the title 'Will it add 'news' to the url this time?', the URL for this story would end up as something like this:
http://www.sns/hackey.sch.uk/node/60
With Pathauto, it becomes this:
http://www.sns/hackey.sch.uk/news/will-it-add-news-url-time
Which shows both that it's 'news', and some of the title of the story.
Why is this useful? Well, aside from being a more 'human' thing to read/remember, it also makes our website more friendly to search engines, a la Google.
- Having set up my Taxonomy terms last week (allowing someone writing a News story to say which subjects it's relevant to, e.g. 'Mathematics'), I've worked out how, using Views, to display News items only relevant to Mathematics on the Mathematics page. I'll eventually get round to doing this with dates too, so that each faculty page has its own calendar.
News with the 'Mathematics' tag appearing in the Mathematics section
- I've added a fuller list of Taxonomy terms (all faculties/departments are now on there). I'll need to figure out at some point what else will require taxonomy terms. This shows the options available when adding a News item now:
New Taxonomy terms added for faculties and departments
- Added the Menu Breadcrumb module (http://drupal.org/project/menu_breadcrumb) which has fixed the slightly odd behaviour of breadcrumbs with the 'out of the box' version of Drupal:
Breadcrumbs now reading correctly
- I've created a favicon for the site (the little logo you see in your browser next to the site's URL). This required getting an extra plugin for Photoshop (which can't otherwise save .ico files, those required for favicons, out of the box). I used this link to help create it:
http://www.revolutionwebdesign.com/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=8B1F9EB1-D1B9-61C4-09F428DC29AF6230
Favicon
- Upgraded Drupal Core to version 6.12
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