Hello all, fairly new to drupal, sorry I missed the meeting the other night
I have a pretty basic question, that I can't find answered anywhere.
I'm converting and drupal-ising a video artist website http://www.soft-science.org/mayeri.html
How do I format the page layout?
This page: http://www.soft-science.org/stories.html - has images at the top, no problem, then a single column paragraph, no problem, then a two column area at the bottom with PRESS in one column and CREDITS in the other. I don't know how to do that.
This page: http://www.soft-science.org/primate.html once again has pictures at the top, then, since the text is pretty long, it's broken up with some pictures, which is nice.
I'll definitely be using views, but I can't think of how to have multiple column layouts and different image wrapping rules per . . . what's the term? 'body', I think.
Do I have to use panels?
OK, so maybe it's not a basic question.
I'll be super-appreciative for advice.
Jody
Comments
Take a look at Panels & Fusion
Panels is the easiest method for customizing layout without getting your hands dirty in theme template files (page.tpl.php, node.tpl.php, etc).
Panels UI is not very user friendly. spend a little time getting to know the interface and perhaps watch a tutorial like this: http://gotdrupal.com/videos/drupal-panels
Fusion is a new-ish theme that is grid based and has a lot of momentum and support (read: documentation) behind it right now - plus it takes advantage of a cool module called skinr - which can help with css code reuse.
In the past I would have recommended Zen (or simple) as the swiss army knife for theming... But Fusion has many of the same advantages, minus source order content, plus the advantage of skinr - which aims to streamline code-reuse and repeatable processes.
Good luck. And be sure to read - then re-read the documentation that's out there. Google is your friend. IRC is good too, of course.
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Dynamic node layout
I have to admit, I've never used IRC.
I get the feeling I should have asked this in the main Drupal board instead of here in the LA group. BUT,
OK, maybe I should have said dynamic node layout, not page layout. Not knowing proper terminology can make google not-so friendly.
Fusion looks supercool, btw.
I think I'm almost there with the module combination that Christefano did a presentation on in February. His presentation was on inline images, and I think will also solve my problem. http://groups.drupal.org/node/51958#comment-144013
It looks to me, after a lot of trial and error with panels, that it works on the whole page, and not within the individual nodes.
thanks
Try IRC in your browser
If you're interested in trying IRC, you can simply use your web browser. check out this post: http://groups.drupal.org/node/59788
Fusion will also work exceptionally well without panels and using just blocks.
Panels is extremely flexible. it will do all of the above and more. keep experimenting. panels can be used on a single page for your site (such as a homepage), or to help define more general layouts based on other conditions, like certain content types, or for users of certain roles, etc.
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mike stewart { twitter: @MediaDoneRight | IRC nick: mike stewart }
Check out Display Suite. It's
Check out Display Suite. It's a beautiful replacement for field display settings in CCK and I see it supplanting Panels in a lot of layout-specific use cases. If you can make it, I'll be doing a demo of it at the next Santa Barbara meetup.
About exporting panels
I think that exporting Panels and panel pages can be tricky. The problem is that the id's of panel instances are not UUID's but autoincrements. So it's easy to break page layouts. However, UUID support was recently added in Panels 3.4. Haven't got round to take a look at this yet so: YYMV if you're working with older versions of Panels / CTools / Features.