Weekly update #4

[Days spent on website this week: 4]

- 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

Weekly update #3

[Days spent on website this week: 2.5]

A shorter week than normal this week due to the bank holiday and some urgent things at work, so only 2 and a bit days rather than 4 this time.

- Added dimensions to the Web Visuals of some areas on the Home page (required for the css). I've since decided that the Header (wiggly lines + logo) and the photo slideshow that appears just under the primary navigation are taking up far too much vertical space, so I've reduced this. Once web browser navigation is taken into account, and if you're looking at the site on a wide screen (such as that of the laptop I'm creating it with), the actual content of the page previously only began about half way down the screen!

Modified Web Visuals with smaller header and slideshow, some dimensions shown

- Looked at the 'Panels' module for laying out the Home page. I'll be looking into this more soon.

- Added 'Taxonomy' to the News and Dates content types. This is a way of categorising content, so that when, for example, a Date is added to the calendar, I can say what subjects this is relevant to. So if I was adding information on a school play to the calendar, e.g. Romeo and Juliet, I can specify when I'm uploading this Date that it's relevant to both 'Drama' and 'English'. Once I've got time after the initial 'alpha' version of the site in July, I'll hopefully be able to do clever things with this in terms of giving faculty pages their own calendars, which only show events related to the English Dept, for example.

- The default method of input for these Taxonomy terms in Drupal is ok, but it could benefit with being a bit more user-friendly. To get around this problem, I spent some time researching how best to allow input of this kind - this page on the Drupal site was helpful: http://drupal.org/node/212834. I opted to use the 'Content Taxonomy' module to add checkboxes for the available categories for News and Dates content, as this seemed to be the most popular module of its kind, and seemed to have more potential for customisation.

- Scrap that - I tried 'Content Taxonomy' out for a bit, and it didn't seem to integrate well with Drupal's core Taxonomy features. So I'm now using 'Taxonomy Super Select' which seems to do the simple job of providing checkboxes for Taxonomy terms, far better.


Taxonomy in action - notice how News items now have links to the subjects they relate to


When the Humanities link is clicked, the user is taken to a page with all Humanites information in one place (News and Dates)

- One of the problem's I'd intended to fix, seems to have fixed itself! (Not that I'm complaining). For some reason, until I checked yesterday, an error was occurring when a normal user added a Date to the calendar, this would get published immediately, without requiring moderation from an Editor, which shouldn't be the case (News items were working perfectly, however). Dates now go unpublished until an Editor allows them. Phew!

- I've started setting up News items such that an image can be uploaded to go alongside them. I'm currently trying this our with the ImageField and ImageCache modules, but it's quite possible I'll change my mind about these modules once I've seen them in action and start again using different ones!