These are priceless ruminations for me as a beginner. On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 9:02 AM, Ursula Pieper <dramamezzo@gmail.com> wrote:

Just expanding on David's suggestion: You can define a region with four sub-regions. The sub-regions would narrow enough so that four of them fit into your region, and when floating them left, you'll have the column look you are looking for. You then can populate the "columns" as David suggested with a node or a view. The node could then be put into that region with the option of only appearing on the front page. I did this recently for http://trumantechnologies.com (that's a zen sub-theme).

Ursula

On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 8:47 AM, Metzler, David <metzlerd@evergreen.edu>wrote:

...

Another idea would be to build the 4 column spots into the theme as regions that render gracefully if not present.. Then use views to create block(s) that drive each of the pieces of content into the regions based on your same concept of a field specifying the columns. In this way you could build other pages with similar layouts, and it might be more flexible over time, as you could build similar structures on different pages.

Dave -----Original Message----- From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Fred Jones Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 8:32 AM To: support@drupal.org Subject: [support] Custom Home Page

I have a new D7 site with a unique home page--I am migrating the entire site from static HTML. There is a top part which will be a View, and then four columns below. One of those is a View, but the other three aren't. They are static content but the client of course wants to be able to edit them easily. One has

Title, Text, Image, Video

and the other two have

Title, Text, Image, Link

So between them there's only 5 unique fields really. The layout is specialized, so if they can just edit those, I can do the rest. So I have a few questions:

1. My guess is that using Panels is overkill and I could just custom code a display for the home page. They have no plans to adjust anything beyond the content. Makes sense?

2. To let them edit the content I could either make a special content type and then have a field to assign one to column 1,2,3, but then maybe they will create two nodes for col 1. So I suppose I could setup a Rule that if they create a node and assign to a column that already has a node, then the rule will unset the existing node of that column. Then they could keep the old ones around. Or I could unpublish the existing node.

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks. -- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ] -- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]

-- [ Drupal support list | http://lists.drupal.org/ ]

-- *Anthony Stefan Maciejowski* *tony maciejowski** | analyst/programmer | websites | www.tony-mac.com<t_maciejowski@hotmail.com> * *Twitter: anntosh* | *Cell: 323.899.6206* | *Linked-In:* *Anthony Maciejowski* “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” --- Vaclav Havel

I really like the simplicity and elegance Nancy's solution! Will certainly add this to my bag of tricks.... Thanks! If you need the additional flexibility, You could also create view that will only ever return 4 nodes to populate the bottom region and css float them all . Extra fields or taxonomy terms to control selection and order. Dave ________________________________ From: support-bounces@drupal.org [mailto:support-bounces@drupal.org] On Behalf Of Ms. Nancy Wichmann Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 9:03 AM To: support@drupal.org Subject: Re: [support] Custom Home Page Something a lot of people fail to notice is that the Content area is a region; you can place blocks there. If that's not enough, many themes already have a Content Top and Content Bottom region; if your theme doesn't creating a sub-theme with those regions is not hard. I had a similar column issue with one of my customers. In this case it was at the bottom of the home page. So I stuck the three blocks into Content bottom and used CSS to float them so they ended up next to each other rather than stacked vertically. Nancy Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. -- Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. ________________________________ From: Fred Jones I have a new D7 site with a unique home page--I am migrating the entire site from static HTML. There is a top part which will be a View, and then four columns below. One of those is a View, but the other three aren't. They are static content but the client of course wants to be able to edit them easily. One has Title, Text, Image, Video and the other two have Title, Text, Image, Link So between them there's only 5 unique fields really. The layout is specialized, so if they can just edit those, I can do the rest. So I have a few questions: 1. My guess is that using Panels is overkill and I could just custom code a display for the home page. They have no plans to adjust anything beyond the content. Makes sense? 2. To let them edit the content I could either make a special content type and then have a field to assign one to column 1,2,3, but then maybe they will create two nodes for col 1. So I suppose I could setup a Rule that if they create a node and assign to a column that already has a node, then the rule will unset the existing node of that column. Then they could keep the old ones around. Or I could unpublish the existing node.