[support] How to insert links to other pages on the same site?

[Metzler, David]

Sounds like what you're looking for is a classic web publishing tool.  

Look at products of the Macromedia Dreamweaver ilk. 

Happy hunting.

-----Original Message-----
From: support-bounces at drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces at drupal.org] On
Behalf Of cl at isbd.net
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 1:23 AM
To: support at drupal.org
Subject: Re: [support] How to insert links to other pages on the same
site?

On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 04:47:15PM -0600, Larry Garfield wrote:
> On Sunday 28 January 2007 4:01 pm, cl at isbd.net wrote:
> 
> > I was hoping to avoid HTML by using Drupal (or another CMS), I
thought
> > the point of the exercise was to make it easy for non-techie people
to
> > enter web content.
> 
> I think a lot of this boils down to the question of what you mean 
> by "content".
> 
> If your "content" is a list of names, phone numbers, scores, or other
small 
> bits of content, then you are best served by using CCK to have lots of
little 
> fields of primitive content (plain strings, numbers, etc.).  Then your
uses 
> aren't writing HTML, but get a stock layout that you define in the
template.  
> This is closest to the "Access forms" example.
> 
No, it's nearest to the *result* of designing an Access form, I want
to create my site with something like the forms design in Access.


> If you want them to be able to define "freeform blobs of text", then,
quite 
> simply, any program that claims to let you do that without HTML
(either 
> hand-written or code-generated like TinyMCE) is lying.  It has to be
HTML 
> when it gets to the browser.  Somewhere between the user's brain and
the 
> print statement that sends it to the browser later, it has to get
converted 
> to HTML.  That can be something the user does himself or something
TinyMCE 
> (or any other markup assistance utility) does, but it has to happen 
> somewhere.
> 
Yes, and I think my issues are fundamentally here.  Creating the HTML
in a textarea (which is fundamentally what you have to do in a browser
based system) is inevitably rather feeble.

I think what I'm after is a more integrated system where the HTML
entry is part of a single web-site creation utility.  This is *very*
difficult in a browser because of the limitations of the web
protocols.

Take the browser/on-line requirement away and it becomes easier, what
I'm after is a 'better NVU' if you like, an NVU which gives you more
control over the site as a whole as well as the individual pages.


> Even using something like the internal link module (which lets you
specify a 
> link to another page on the site by its path, like so: [node/5]) gets 
> rendered down to HTML eventually.  That is unavoidable, no matter what

> publishing system you use.  If you want to format something, you need
a 
> formatting system and syntax and you need to know that system and
syntax.  
> That's the case even in word processors.
> 
> Perhaps you can give a better example of what sort of content your
users will 
> be adding?  That would make it easier to recommend something to you
(Drupal 
> or otherwise).  
> 
I want to design a web site!  :-)

By that I mean I want a tool that will make it easy for me (and one
other person probably) to create from scratch a small, static but
professional looking web site.

To my mind to do this I need control over all (or at least most)
aspects of what the site looks like from one place.  I want to be able
to approach it something like as follows:-

    Add some blocks of text and headings to an empty page.

    Then do a bit of layout, e.g. change the background colour, maybe
    add some menus across the top or in a sidebar.  Save these as
    site-wide defaults.

    Add some more text and sub-pages, tune the colours, menus, etc. as
    I go and as I find more thngs I need.

    Continue adding content and tuning the layout as the site
    develops.

The requirement to go into totally 'other' areas of the CMS to simply
change a background colour for example makes the above sort of
incremental (and integrated) approach to creating a site rather
difficult.

Most CMS systems seem to be aimed at the situation where the creation
of the site framework and structure is a sort of 'sysop' role and much
of the content comes from lots of 'outsiders' (which may of course
include the 'sysop' with a different hat on).  This isn't where I am,
there will be one, or two, or three people involved and they will all
be doing a spread of tasks across the system.

-- 
Chris Green (chris at halon.org.uk)
-- 
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