What Are Revisions?
FreeDrupal has had revisions for a long, long time. However, they have often been under-utilized. Understanding how revisions work and how the Content Moderation module works with them is important to for being able to take full advantage of the systems features.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Explain what the different types of revisions are
- Understand when, and how, revisions are created
By the end of this tutorial you should have an understanding of what each type of revision is, how they're created, and how to work with them.
The Workflows and Content Moderation modules allow an editorial team to put any type of content administered in Drupal through a customized editorial workflow and moderation process. Workflow states, such as draft, ready for review, or approved are defined using the Workflows module. The ability to attach moderation states to entity bundles -- a common example being content types -- is configurable by the Content Moderation module.
Both modules have stable releases and are perfectly safe to use in production.
In this tutorial we'll:
- Learn about the use case for Workflows and Content Moderation modules
- Define the role that each module performs
- Define some common terms you'll need to understand when working with these two modules
By the end of this tutorial you will have a good understanding of what the Workflows and Content Moderation modules are, what different functionality they provide, and the permissions made available by the modules.
What Is Drupal?
FreeTo learn more about how to get started with Drupal, also see our Introduction to Drupal guide.
In this lesson we take a look at Drupal, the open source Content Management System. We learn about the major components of a Drupal site and the library of constantly evolving tools available for working with Drupal. We find out how to see who uses it, by looking at DrupalShowcase.com and Drupal case studies on Drupal.org, among others. We look at Drupal's major features, such as Modules.
With this overview we have some context as we move forward into the series.
Additional resources
In this lesson we're going to break down the "Drupal stack" to understand what pieces are working here and how they relate to each other. We'll take a tour of the major components of Drupal itself, like nodes and users, and then have a brief discussion about ways of organizing content.
Additional resources
Before we jump into building our first Drupal 7 site, we should also take a look at the great resources you have out there to help you on your journey. Being an open source project, Drupal has an amazing community of people who have paved this road before you. In this lesson we're going to look at the free community resources that you can use to not only find answers to your questions, but also connect with thousands of people around the world who are working in the same space you are. -- We are going to take a tour of the communtiy documentation, various Drupal forums, project issue queues, where you can glean a lot of useful information and help, Internet Relay Chat, or IRC, for real-time collaboration, and getting in touch with user groups of like-minded people around the world.
Additional resources
Drupal.org Troubleshooting Guide
Drupal Answers on Stack Exchange
Drupal Groups Site (groups.drupal.org)
In this lesson we're going to start building our site for Mom and Pop, Inc. We're starting off by working on our content, to get things filled out a little. First, we'll create an About Us page with the basic info for the store, like address and opening hours. Then we'll create our first article, which welcomes people to the new site, and see how the two core content types, Basic page and Article, are different from each other. Then we'll tweak our main navigation so our tabs display correctly, and finish things off by looking at block management. We'll remove the "Powered by Drupal" block and add a new block to the site for our weekly specials.
Additional resources
This lesson offers a tour of some of the most basic tools for content management in Drupal. We're going to walk through and explain the following pieces:
- Content
- Comments
- Navigation
- Blocks
Additional resources
For this lesson we're going to get hands-on and play around in our administration area a little. We're going to review the site information for our new site, and then change things by setting the site name to match our case study.
Additional resources
In this lesson we're going to start off with the Drupal administrative interface. We'll take a tour of the major elements and get you oriented to what is where.
Additional resources
Modules allow you to turn on and off functionality within your Drupal website. There are two types of modules: core modules, which come with Drupal itself, and contributed modules, which are provided for free by the Drupal community and available for download from Drupal.org. In this lesson we're going to look at the module administration page, and walk through finding and installing modules. We'll wrap things up by discussing how you remove a module from your site, and the difference between disabling and uninstalling.
Additional resources
The easiest way to wrap your head around how modules work is to try installing and configuring a couple of them. This section will cover how to install, enable, and configure a contributed module called Using Drupal, 2nd edition
One of the most powerful features of Drupal is its rich, fine-grained access control system, based around the concept of users, roles, and permissions. In this lesson we'll explain what these pieces are, and how they work together. We'll also discuss the user profile and various user account settings we can manipulate.
Additional resources
When you open the floodgates for your users to become active participants in content creation, one of the inevitable things that comes up is the issue of content moderation—that is, ensuring that abusive, vulgar content and unsolicited advertising or spam is kept off the site and stays off. In this lesson, we'll look at using an automated spam detection, with Mollom, as well as manual spam prevention.
Additional resources
Drupalize.Me Guide: Using Drupal Book by O'Reilly Media
Note: Mollom is EOL (End Of Life). See this blog post by Drupal community member Jeff Geerling for alternative solutions.
Drupal’s built-in Search module offers powerful, flexible searching features and intelligent ranking of results. Behind the scenes, it’s silently building an index of all the words used in the site’s content. In this lesson we'll:
- Review the Search module settings
- Explain the importance of cron
- Discuss searching with Views
Additional resources
To transform the Product Finder page into a searchable index, we’ll be adding two new filters to the view: one that restricts the results by manufacturer, and another that restricts results to reviews that mention specific words. In this lesson, we'll:
- Add a filter
- Expose a filter
- Set permissions
Additional resources
We’re almost done! The only problem with our view now is that clicking the titles in the view links to Amazon.com instead of to our own website. Fortunately, Views provides a handy trick for just this sort of situation; we can “rewrite” the output of the Title field to create a link back to its referring node instead. In this lesson, we'll:
- Exclude a field from display
- Rewrite the output of a field
Additional resources
You've built the site that Bob and Sarah need to get their reviews going, but as always, there are ways to add more neat features. In this lesson, we'll look at a few modules you can look at adding down the road
- AdSense
- Display Suite
- Blog (core)
- Recipe
Additional resources
We’ve hit all of the major pieces of functionality that Bob and Sarah wanted. In this summary, we'll:
- Tour the Super Duper Chefs site
- Discuss our implementation points
- Review modules and resources
Additional resources
To get started, we'll need to create a content type to use for our product reviews. Based on the Super Duper Chefs requirements, in this lesson we'll:
- Create the Product Review Content Type
- Add a Field group
- Set permissions
Additional resources
Amazon.com is one of a large number of web-based businesses that have opened up their product information databases for other sites to access. In the case of Super Duper Chefs, we want to retrieve useful data like product photos, pricing, and manufacturer information for display on our own website. The Amazon module for Drupal allows us to do just that. In this lesson we'll take a look at the Amazon module, by starting with:
- What’s Included?
- Locale
- Referral settings
- Amazon keys