Default content types and publishing options

May 12, 2008 16:07 GMT  ·  By

Drupal CMS (content management system) allows you to manipulate information over the web by publishing or editing various content types. The publishing mechanisms will be different, according to a certain type of content.

In Drupal CMS any type of content is located in a "node". As a consequence, the content is classified according to nodes types. The default nodes types are page (used to publish static content that rarely changes) and story (used to publish time dependent information like news, announcements and more).

The difference between these two types of nodes (content) is represented by the fact that, by default, pages cannot be promoted on the homepage and also do not allow users' comments as compared to stories. By enabling certain modules, supplementary content types will be available. They can be seen by selecting Administer - Content Management - Content Type in Drupal administration panel.

The default settings for every content type can be easily edited: for example, if you do not want to allow the stories to be published on the first page, the default selected option for Workflow settings corresponding to Story must be only Published, while Promoted to front page option must be disabled. Any type of content can be published by selecting the Create Content menu and then the type of content such as page, story, blog and more, depending on the types of content available due to various modules activation.

If you want to publish a page, the title and body (can contain text, images, multimedia, HTML code and more) fields must be filled in according to your needs. Then, the menu link must be setup. Because the user comments and "publish to the front page" options are not enabled by default, their corresponding checkboxes must be checked in case you need these features to be available for the new page. In the same manner, any type of content can be published. The "submitted by Username on date" text can be disabled from the Themes configuration section.

Images and multimedia content can be added if you install certain modules or an advanced WYSIWYG HTML editor. In ensemble, the definition of new types of content and the publishing mechanism selection is very flexible in Drupal content management system.