Beginning Drupal®

Chapter 6. Content

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• What are nodes?

• Creating new node types

• Setting default node options

• Managing fields

• Content Construction Kit (CCK)

• Administering nodes including moderation

• Comment moderation

• Controlling spam

The heart, and purpose, of any website is its content. It may be videos or music uploaded by your users, news stories written by reporters, the products in your online store, or comments left behind by site visitors. This chapter covers two of Drupal's main forms of content; nodes and comments. Nodes are the most prominent pieces of content and, by default, include Pages and Articles. Nodes are limitless in options and can include videos, mp3s, blog entries, and more. Comments, often equally as important, are responses to nodes.

Drupal's vast set of contributed modules freely available on drupal.org contains many modules that provide other types of content for your site. For example the Twitter module (http://drupal.org/project/twitter) displays the tweets of your site's users on your website. Although this is content that can be placed around your site the tweets are not nodes and thus have different attributes than a node. A good understanding of the concept of a node and how it differs from other pieces of content is a vital piece to gaining clarity to Drupal.

This chapter reviews the node; walking you through the concept and purpose, creating your own custom node types, and administering your site's nodes. After a thorough review of the node ...