Well said David. The problem with coming from standard web site design is that it does not relate to CMS design. The trick is to realise that Drupal is, and provides, content management -- through the creation of content types, each of which handles a different part/sort/type of content be it form data, blocks of text, images, menus, etc.
All variations of that content, no mater what it is, can be displayed anywhere on one or two pages just by telling the cms what and where to display, to whom and when. Panels or Blocks can do that equally well but I find Panels much easier.
Maybe, instead of Navigation, use the term Menu. You can have as many different menus for navigating the content which in turn relate to the display of different content on the same small page set.
I have found that in Drupal, the term Navigation refers to quite a specific and predefined type of menu and I never use it. It like all menus and blocks can be switched on or off.
You have 60 pages. These will all contain similarities that you need to consider. Header,text, images, footer, dates, videos, etc. Have a read up on creating content types in Drupal.
I would strongly suggest not trying to create a finished cms as a beginner but have a sandbox development install that you can experiment with, add and remove modules and themes, learn panels and blocks and simply delete and reinstall if it all goes wrong. We all learned this way or some variation thereof. I have used Drupal for many years yet use a sandbox install for experimenting, sometimes I have a sandbox, a test setup and the soon to be live site. But that is still not the actual live site on another server.
Cheers Roger
Yes, I think many of us are saying the same thing here. Many people new to drupal are also new to database driven CMS's. It's best to stop thinking about 60 pages of content plus navigation and think about the different types of content you have, then see if you can create panels that override the node(page) views of the content, and/or or add menus / features as blocks to the sidebars of the theme.
It's hard to advise, because how you organize the content depends on how the navigation relates to the content… whether its a hierarchy (in which case taxonomies or books might be more appropriate… or wether it's a list of related popular content…. how much repetition there is in the navigation elements and how they relate to the content. Ultimately you should not end up creating 60 panels… that would not be sustainable, but rather create potentially a panel variant for each type of content, or panel(s) that house views of content or other features.
I don't know if this helps but definitely check out the tutorials mentioned.
On Nov 21, 2013, at 2:32 PM, Roger arelem@bigpond.com wrote:
On 11/22/2013 03:28 AM, vibanu wrote:
I am very new using drupal which you would know from my questions. Yes, I will seperate navigation from the content of the 60 plus pages. I understand this. Some one suggested to use panels for all these inside pages. I can use 2 column layout. Left for content and right for navigation. Question is in my understanding of this concept. This means should we create 60 such panel pages with 2 column layout? some content on left column is static and some comes from the views. OR should ww use 2 column theme and create 60 plus basic pages? I believe if we use pannels then I don't need a theme for inside pages. I have pge.tpl.php for the home page.
Not at all.
I do not understand separating navigation from content, Navigation is a menu structure, content is filler for the page and can be displayed anywhere on the page. I have not found a reason for 60 plus pages in any of my dev work, our largest site has 15 pages but this is because of users, roles, permissions and specific data entry that is required in that particular system.
You may need a few pages but Panels can render content onto a page, then with the click of a mouse render different content to that page and even change the page layout for each render. All on the one page or small set of pages.
Johan Falk, NodeOne, Scandinavia has done a fantastic set of 13 tutorials on using panels, they are an inspiration in how to rethink the way we use Drupal and Panels. I learned much and am in the processof redesigning our system accordingly and the best part, for me is that Panels uses our existing data and views and we can use the minimal Zen theme and we do not have to do any theming, Panels does that. A minimalist Zen works a treat for us.
But you can use any theme and switch off all of it's attributes so it's a blank page. I found this to be quite messy.
Regards Roger
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