In this lesson Joe Shindelar covers all aspects of Organic Groups and access control. He describes how Drupal's access API allows for Organic Groups to function in such a way that certain groups and/or pieces of content can be hidden from users that don't have access to it. He demonstrates how you can add fields to groups and/or content types to have fine control over this access control on an individual basis versus the defaults. He also demonstrates how you can switch this control at any time to give a user access to content they may not have had access to at time of publication.
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In this lesson we give a tour of some of the views that Organic Groups and Organic Groups Extra created and are using. We give a brief understanding of how all the references and relationships can make Organic Groups a confusing thing to grasp.
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In this lesson Karen will go into more detail about how the Entity Reference and other group and reference fields work in Organic Groups. She will show how you can add more fields to the membership and display them in Views. Karen will also illustrate how to create additional membership types, like a membership that is intended to be temporary rather than permanent.
Note: This video was recorded using older versions of some of the modules. At the time there where 2 different og_reference* fields that you needed to handle. og_reference and og_group_ref_other_groups_ref, in current versions of the modules used there is just one og_reference field.
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In this lesson we take the approach of using the Organic Groups Extra module to spruce up our team pages with relevant content. By itself Organic Groups doesn't do a whole lot to display either a useful groups page or the relationships between a piece of content and the group itself. Instead it relies on modules that are geared towards that specific task like Panels or Organic Groups Extras. Joe shows us how we can use OG Extras to make the group page itself a bit more useful by displaying some additional information like a list of group members and the list of all the content that's been posted in that group.
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In this chapter, Joe Shindelar goes over all the necessary modules needed to get organic groups up and running. He also discusses that there are two methods using two different modules for viewing group information and content.
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In this video series Karen Stevenson, Michelle Lauer, and Joe Shindelar take a look at the Organic Groups module for Drupal 7. The series starts from the basics, goes through the various required modules used to build a site with Organic Groups, and then gets in depth with creating groups, adding content to groups, and dealing with group membership. In addition to the basics of creating groups, the series also takes a look at the various settings related to both access control and permissions and how you can combine them to create private and public groups. Next we show you how to use the OG Extras module to display more information on the main group page and then how to use the Panels module to display group content and other advanced Fields and Views configuration related to OG. This video assumes that you understand the basics of content, fields, and Views in Drupal. If you need a refresher on these topics, consider reviewing these other tutorial series:
Note: There have been significant changes to Organic Groups since this lesson was made. We use the 7.x-2.x-dev version from May 2012, or the equivalent of 7.x-2.0-alpha3, in our lessons. Though we would like to revisit and update this series, we have no current schedule to complete that. The best place to figure out what has changed and why, would be the Organic Groups issue queue on Drupal.org (http://drupal.org/project/issues/search/og).
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Overview of Views
FreeBack in the olden days of Drupal, we used to write raw SQL. Now, Views does all of this for us. Views allows you to create a list of only the content that you want, based on criteria that you define.
In this video we demonstrate the first things to do when creating a View: selecting our Base Table, specifying the Display, looking at Advanced Features to filter content, and specifying the HTML output.
Throughout the course of this series, we're going to start with the content types and fields that we created during the Intro to Fields for Site Builders video series. We'll continue the job board example, and create unique listings.
Our apologies! The audio on this video is really bad and hard to listen to because of some background hissing. On top of that, the transcript interface using the "T" icon is broken on this video. Double-boo! Here is the text of the audio. Note: You can also mute the audio and display the captions by clicking the "cc" icon on the lower right corner of the video player.
Views is the most popular contributed module. In the subsequent chapters, we'll show you step-by-step how to use Views.
Views is a query builder that makes lists of your content. But what does that mean? Let's pretend we're looking for a new car. And we want our salesperson to only show us green cars. No, let's make that blue cars. Or maybe, we only want to see trucks.
Think of all of your content as this giant parking lot. Views allows you to create a list of only the content that you want, based on the criteria that you define. And you can concatenate this criteria. You can say, show me all the content that is of the type, article and, authored by the admin user.
Back in the olden days of Drupal, we used to write raw SQL. Now, Views does all of this for us. To create a list of content on our site, we don't need to know anything about the database at all. Views will give us an administrative interface where we can click around to configure our criteria, and also how we'd like it to be output. The previous slide showed us that there are a lot of options to select from. But in basic terms-- Views sucks data in, fires off magic thingies, and then outputs hotness.
When creating a View, the first thing that we select is our Base Table. This is the pool of data from where we want to start creating our lists. Do we want to show information about nodes, or users, or comments, even. And then we can select what we'd like our first Display to be. Should our list to be a page, with a unique URL. Or a block, that we can place in any region in our site. For a Display, in addition to selecting the filter criteria, we can specify which fields we want to appear. And also, what order we'd like our content listed. Advanced Features allows us to filter content based on a current condition-- like the URL, or the logged-in user.
We also can gather information that is related to our current result. Views allows us to have multiple displays for each View. For each subsequent Display you create, it will inherit the configurations of your first Display. Although the new Display utilizes your previous settings, you can override that. Once we've selected our Base Table, and configured our Display settings, Views will also allow us to specify the HTML output. We can choose from a simple div structure, and ordered lists, or even a table.
Views is a powerful and highly-configurable list maker. Throughout the course of these videos, we're going to take the content types and fields that we created during the Intro to Fields for Site Builders video series. We'll continue the job board example, and create unique listings. The Views module contains so many configurations and settings. Through our practical examples, we aim to demystify it. So let's dive in.
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Each piece of content placed into a panel has it’s own configuration settings, covering everything from display style to access control. In this lesson we will take a tour through the settings for each pane.
This tutorial presents data types and the data selection method for input in Rules. This is the most important difference between Rules 1 (D6) and Rules 2 (D7).
- How to use data selection to explore available data and drill down to selected properties
- Using the data comparison condition
- Using the set a data value action
- That Rules recognizes different types of data, and verifies when necessary
- That Rules knows that not all data is writable, and verifies when necessary
- How to create composite tokens, extending the tokens listed in the replacement patterns
- Making field values accessible to Rules
- Using reference fields to access new data, such as tags on an article or nodes in a node reference field
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Rules guide (Drupal.org)
This screencast shows the awesome functionality of loading entity lists into Rules with help of VBO. As an example, a rule is set up that, once a day, removes any stick front page content that is older than one week. To do similar cools stuff yourself, the following steps may be useful:
- You need a view that lists the entities you want to work on in Rules. Note that you don’t need a display of the view – and it might even be better not to have one if you don’t want the view to be displayed somewhere.
- However, you need one bulk operations field. The type of bulk operations field determines what entity type will be sent to Rules. Note that you don’t need any actions enabled for the field – it is enough that it is present.
- You need a rule that, as an action, loads entities from a VBO. (This is available under the “Views bulk operations” group.) All view displayes with at least one VBO field will be selectable.
- The action provides a list of entities, that can be used just like other lists in Rules. Combine with loops, actions and Rules Scheduler to make awesomeness happen.
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Rules guide (Drupal.org)
This screencast shows how you can use Rules components in VBO, allowing much more complex and flexible actions than comes out of the box with VBO. The episode covers:
- How to create a simple Rules component.
- How component parameters are used by VBO – in particular that it is useful to have a single node as parameter if you want to use a component with a node view.
- Some words about what the provided variable option for Rules components means.
- An example showing how to use VBO to close (and hide) comments using VBO + Rules in combination.
- Some comments about creating more complex Rules components.
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List operations with Views (Drupal.org)
Understanding Drupal
FreeLearn the essential terminology of Drupal in this overview of content nodes, blocks, theming, menu system and modules. In Understanding Drupal, the first in The Lullabot Learning Series, the Lullabot team provides an overview of Drupal as a content management system, as a PHP web application framework, and as a developer community. Its documentary-style exploration covers all the terminology and fundamental concepts for both site administrators and developers. If you've ever been confused by Drupal or are still trying to wrap your head around the community and platform, then this video is a roadmap to accelerate your journey up the Drupal learning curve. Topics include:
- How content is entered and managed
- How users and user permissions are handled
- What blocks are and what they can do
- The concepts and capabilities of Drupal's powerful module system
- How Drupal handles navigation and its menu system
- How themes alter the site layout, design, and presentation
- Site configuration and administrative messages and settings
This video uses Drupal 6 for examples, however it is more focused on general Drupal concepts rather than version-specific how-tos.
In this introductory video we go over what you should already know to get the most out of this series. We also describe topics covered in each of the 13 episodes – over 2 hours in total.
Each episode covers just one concept, when possible, so you can get the most out of them without getting overwhelmed.
If you need to brush up on Views, you can watch our Intro to Views for Drupal 7 series.
This screencast covers the following topics:
- Setting up contextual filters with Views Content Panes
- Getting argument input (contextual filter value) to a Views Content Pane
- Embedding a Views content pane in a panel
In this first series of Panels videos on Drupalize.me you will learn how to use the Panels module to take your Drupal website to the next level. When you reach the limits of what Drupal alone allows you to do with its layouts, adding Panels to your site enables you to create more sophisticated displays of your content. Here are just a few things the Panels module makes easy:
- Divide the display of your content into multiple columns
- Place blocks into the center of your pages
- Use different layouts on the same page, under different circumstances
Because Panels works with the Page Manager module in ctools, you get all the benefits of the page manager, as well as complex control of your layouts. Page manager allows you to take over many of the ‘default’ displays in Drupal, including the display of content (nodes), profiles (users), category listings (taxonomy), and also the edit forms for each of these entities.
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In this lesson we cover how one can use view modes and display suite to allow multiple options of layouts for content display. This allows a user to have a different layout of the same content for different scenarios of the site. Combining this with views and you can start to see the power of display suite in action.
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In this lesson we cover the basics of using Display Suite to modify the layout of a particular content type. We cover all the potential templates, adding classes to regions, and lots of configurations to set to taylor the layout to your needs. We also discuss how you can create your own template files and layouts for your own customizations.
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Though Panels comes with several built-in layouts for you to choose from, you’ll find that these don’t always suit your needs. Fortunately, there’s also a layout designer that anyone can use to create a new layout with Panels. In this lesson you will learn how to use the Panels layout designer for rapid prototyping.
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A Lightbox brings content to the user's attention.
To decide which Lightbox module you should use for your Drupal project, think about what you will use it for. Do you need to handle images and video? HTML? Integration with other modules? Various browsers?
Once you choose one to meet your needs, we’ll show you how to go about using it.