Using Drupal

I’ve been working on a website for the Northamptonshire Bird Club which nominated committee members could easily manage themselves. I decided that a Content Management System would be be best way to achieve this, and being a fan of open source I finally settled on Drupal. I liked the modular approach to the software and I hope this will provide me with the scope to alter the website functionality as the Club’s needs changed.

The scope for customization in both the information architecture and presentation is huge in these systems, and I have to admit I was pretty shaky on where to start. I read blog posts and watched video tutorials, most of which were excellent, but I have often found that personal experimentation is the best way to find things out.

I started be using taxonomy to link content together. I customized the default content types to present a range of taxonomy terms from which the users could select to define the nature of the document. I’ve found that this leads to a patch association and presentation which is pretty hard for inexperienced users to follow. Basically, it’s a bit of a mess!

I’ve subsequently installed the Content Construction Kit (CCK) module and I’m impressed with its flexibility. I don’t think it’ll handle some of the more complex content types that I’ve in mind, but these would be best implemented as separate modules anyway.

The CCK module allowed me to define customized content for each type of blog post, article, or sighting report that the Club needs. What’s more it creates an input form for each, allowing members to simply select the form they need and fill in the blanks. Much easier to control and far less confusing.

I’ve also discovered the Views module, and I’m hopeful that this will provide a far better way of ordering the website architecture than the old taxonomy driven solution. This module should allow me to really leverage the new content types I’ve defined and produce just about any content presentation I want.

I’ll post how I get on, but right now I’ve got a video tutorial on Drupal CCK and Views to watch.