Placing Content on pages

Here I'll cover how to place your nodes – your Story nodes, Page nodes, Blog Entry nodes etc. – onto a page in your site.

Hmm? Isn't it a little late in the manual to be writing about putting content on pages? And haven't we already covered the topic here and there?

Yes, there's been some discussion already, such as how to create a Story node or Page node, and how to "promote" these to the site's front page. But there's more to the story.

First, it's good to review the ways to build a page from a single node, versus building a page from a list of many nodes. There are more ways to do the latter than have been presented so far.

Second, to make things even more fun, there's the big Drupal truth that you need to wrap your head around: despite the convenient wording used above, you don't actually "place" nodes on a page; rather, you tell Drupal to create a page that picks up and lists your target nodes (and adds other content as well).

The basic concept of a CMS (content management system) like Drupal, is that you don't create pages as a whole. You create bits of content and other elements (nodes, blocks, header, navigation...) and you configure the CMS so that it puts your page together on the spot.

Whether you find that a big shift in thinking or not, absorbing it is a key to making great stuff with Drupal.