guide

You'll often want to make a page not from a single node, but from a list of several nodes. I haven't yet come across a technical Drupal word for such a page, so I'll call it a 'node-list page'.

There's not much to cover here. As already discussed, when you create a node, Drupal automatically gives it a path (like node/53), or you can give it a path yourself (like product_catalog).

To create a page from that node, then, you don't really need to do anything special. Just go to the node's path (presumably via a menu item you've created for the purpose), and Drupal will whip up a page centered around that node, surrounded by the blocks, graphical elements, footer, and other accountrements you've set up for the site.

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.

The Menus administration form is one place where you can create menu items (see Working with Menus: Administration Page).

There's another way to create a menu item: when you create or edit a node, you can create a menu item for it on the fly.

For example, you create a node with company information, and want a link to that node to appear in a menu called 'site menu'. You could create the node, head to the Menus administration form, and create a new menu item within the menu called 'site menu'.

Menus are the key to your site – they're the way by which visitors get at your content.

A menu is a list of links to content. Menus can appear in a horizontal line at the top of your pages, as with many web site designs. Or they can appear along the sides in blocks, another common design.

A specific link in a menu – a "menu item" – can link to a specific node. Or, calling on the full power of the database behind your site, it can pull up a list of nodes based on some criterion.

There's a big administration form for all menus on your site:

Links are how visitors get from one page to another. You'll probably put a lot of links in menus – a menu being just a list of links to other content. But you may also place links directly inside content text, or inside a block's text.

You may want links that point to a specific content item on your site, or a specific page on an outside web site. Or you may want powerful links that pick up and return a list of multiple content items from your site's database.

There's a lot you can do. Here's a basic guide to linking:

How do people get from one page on your site to another? Links, links, links!

But what is a link? It's just an instruction for the browser to jump from the current page address, to a new page address.

You can create links to any page whose address you know. So how do you find, or create, the address for a page? If you want to know, here's your guide. (And if you already know the address for your target page, and are ready to create a link to it, jump ahead to Creating Links.)

This is important stuff. One of the keys to grasping Drupal is to understand that creating content is just a small part of the picture. Creating a node is simple enough; telling users how to get to any node, via links in menus or elsewhere, is the start of building a site.

You can create whatever Terms you can think of a use for, grouped into whatever Vocabularies you like. There are infinite possibilities – which always makes it hard to get started.

General strategy

It's difficult to immediately envision all the ways to set up your taxonomy, and all the possibilities for using it. Here's a general suggestion for starting out:

Words about words

Tags are power