Hi Drupalers :),
I'm new to drupal and doing my first steps with the system and pages now. I use drupal 6.9 and the standard Garlant theme. I also should mension that I'm a blind computer user, but as far as I can say drupal seems to be very accessible and good to use with the special screenreader software I need to work.
To build a website I created new nodes of the type article and page. Both nodes appear on the startpage of my drupal site now and I can fully access them by clicking the "Read more" link. But what I like to do is to build a start page with a static section, maybe a little wellcome text, and a dynamic section like it is presented on my start page now (some kind of news with the "Read more" links). How can this be done with drupal. I played arround with the system but I was not able to setup this kind of page :(. Is it a matter of the theme I'm using or what do I need to do to build that kind of pages?
Thanks a lot for anny helpfull tips!
Cheers,
Christian
On Sat, Jan 31, 2009 at 6:27 PM, Christian Schoepplein chris@schoeppi.net wrote:
How can this be done with drupal. I played arround with the system but I was not able to setup this kind of page :(. Is it a matter of the theme I'm using or what do I need to do to build that kind of pages?
Yeah, this is a bit hard to find.
You can set the starting page by going into the menu Administer - Site Configuration - Site information Or, by URL: http://yoursitename/drupla-path/admin/settings/site-information
There's a field with the label "Default front page" And you can set the value of this field to an arbitrary node path (beginning with the base Drupal URL). So, you can create some node of your own and define it to be the start page.
The "node" that is the default here seems to be some automatism that I didn't find being documented somewhere, but I didn't search a lot.
There's also the "Frontpage" module that let's you handle this differently with a special module, but to me it looks as defining some existing, normal, node as default is much more "natural".
The place to configure this should probable better be in "Site building" or so - the start page to be used by the system is not "site information" in my opinion.
Henning
Find the file page.tpl.php in the directory of the theme you are using. Create a copy of this file called page-front.tpl.php. Then add a few paragraphs of text to this new file, and see what happens!
Fletch
-----Original Message----- From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Christian Schoepplein Sent: Saturday, 31 January 2009 6:27 PM To: support@drupal.org Subject: [support] Question regarding building a start page
Hi Drupalers :),
I'm new to drupal and doing my first steps with the system and pages now. I use drupal 6.9 and the standard Garlant theme. I also should mension that I'm a blind computer user, but as far as I can say drupal seems to be very accessible and good to use with the special screenreader software I need to work.
To build a website I created new nodes of the type article and page. Both nodes appear on the startpage of my drupal site now and I can fully access them by clicking the "Read more" link. But what I like to do is to build a start page with a static section, maybe a little wellcome text, and a dynamic section like it is presented on my start page now (some kind of news with the "Read more" links). How can this be done with drupal. I played arround with the system but I was not able to setup this kind of page :(. Is it a matter of the theme I'm using or what do I need to do to build that kind of pages?
Thanks a lot for anny helpfull tips!
Cheers,
Christian
-- Christian Schoepplein <chris at schoeppi.net>
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 9:19 AM, John Fletcher net@twoedged.org wrote:
Find the file page.tpl.php in the directory of the theme you are using. Create a copy of this file called page-front.tpl.php. Then add a few paragraphs of text to this new file, and see what happens!
Hmm, I'd always try to modify themes as less as possible, and especially keep any content away from them. Be it only for the reason that the contents edit otherwise can be changed much easier. More important, this will not persist when the theme is changed, and there's not internationalization possible when putting contents directly into the template.
I might have gotten the question wrong, so my hint is missing some bits, but still, there are ways to do these things without touching templates.
The standard thing in drupal to get some type of welcome message seems to me to set the "mission" field on the site information dialog. You only have to take care that the theme you use is handling it correctly.
If the theme is not supporting this, or a simple textual sentence is not enough for you, you can create a new page and define is as the frontpage (as I explained above), enter your html as you like, and if you want to get the same summary as it is on the default start page, you can add this php code:
<?php print node_page_default(); ?>
You must set input type to "php", for sure ;)
Henning
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:12 AM, John Fletcher net@twoedged.org wrote:
print node_page_default();
Ahh very nice, I didn't know that trick. I think your last idea is the best for this case!
Thanks :) I don't remember when and how I found that ;)
Another thing is the "frontpage" module. But as far as I see, it's not internationalization-capable...
Henning
Hi Henning, John and list,
On Mo, Feb 02, 2009 at 10:17:52 +0100, Henning Sprang wrote:
On Mon, Feb 2, 2009 at 10:12 AM, John Fletcher net@twoedged.org wrote:
print node_page_default();
Ahh very nice, I didn't know that trick. I think your last idea is the best for this case!
Thanks, very cool, I will try this.
Another thing is the "frontpage" module. But as far as I see, it's not internationalization-capable...
I've installed the module and played around with it a little bit. Maybe the module has some problems with Drupal 6 or I did something wrong, but I was only able to get a startpage for authorized users working only :(. Annonymous visitors of the page got an eror 403 or 404, the page wasn't accessible somehow.
Another problem is that I still not know how to build nodes with dynamic content. I'd like to build a page with an overview of the last 10 created articles or pages and put some static text below that overview. Such a node would be a good start page for my needs but as long as it is not clear to me how to build such a node the frontpage module can't help me really, because I also have to specify a node for my frontpage or put the right content (normal text and maybe php code) into the input fields for the body of the nodes that should be presented as front page. How can nodes with dynamic content as described above be created? Do I really have to specify php code into the input field of the node bodys or is there another possibility? Or do I have to use views or something simmilar?
Sorry for the beginner questions but that is one big point that it is still not clear to me. I started to read the Drupal Cookbook and hope that the understanding how drupal is working gets clearer to me then.
Henning
Cheers,
Schoepp
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Christian Schoepplein -
Henning Sprang -
John Fletcher