Hello All,
here I am reinventing the wheel to help my local TT initative (Berlin SO36) rework the website. The project you have started to create a Drupal "package" geared towards TT websites is excellent! It would be a very very useful thing to have. Since I installed Drupal for the first time just yesterday, there is not much to contribute from my side at the moment, but this will hopefully change. If anything, I could help with a German localisation.
Now one of the first concepts giving me (and a lot of people new to Drupal I guess) a headache is the Taxonomy/CCK Fields/Content Type stuff. Not sure if I really got the basic concepts right, but I would love to get comments, corrections or links to resources anyway. Now, trying to keep this compact...
What the site should provide (simplified/there is more but this should be sufficient as an example)
First idea
Create different Content Types for the above bullet types
Refine the Content Type with the Taxonomy System
Questions
This approach feels a bit odd though. On the other hand, unifying such tags and sort them out by content type could grow confusing as well, and presents the contributor with a (unnecessary?) big list of terms/vocabularies to choose from.
Comments?
Sorry to approach you this early in my learning phase, should you go RTFM I would appreciate a pointer to a more specific one ;)
Cheers,
Joschka
Comments
content types / taxonomy system
Hi Joschka,
I'm totally new to Drupal as well, but 90% sure going to migrate my TT site to this system, so we're in the same boat. I'm having a hard time processing the taxonomy system. In fact, I'm not trying to bother with that at all at the moment; it's all I can handle to just begin experimenting.
So, not sure I understand your intention, but at least the structure makes sense:
Except for the item:
What is this supposed to be?
As to the rest of this:
Could you explain a little more? Maybe this will be informative for me to try to understand, even if I can't help you.
-- e.m.fields
chapel hill, nc
Sample site
Chris has an information architecture that you may want to copy. He's got links to it in this group if you dig a little. And of course the IA team Jacob is leading is working on exactly the issues you are looking at so unfortunately I don't have a good answer to your questions (yet).
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com
Thanks for your comments!
Thanks for your comments!
@ e.m. fields
It thought about some Background Info pages for core TT topics like Peak Oil, Climate Change, Economic System etc. But indeed there is no reason for making it an extra content type, it should fall under "static TT Info pages".
I may as well be way off here, so don't take it to seriously ;)
What I am basically struggling with is how many different content types I should create, and at which point I should "switch" to taxonomy for structuring. I saw the points in the first paragraph as "Pro" content type, and planned to use the taxonomy system to further refine how content of a given type is shown and organised on the page.
Only today I realised the common question is actually about when to use taconomy vs CCK fields, which I (thankfully?) haven't even considered yet.
some pages I found usefeul:
Taxonomy System Talk
CCK Introduction
CCK Fields vs Taxonomy I
CCK Fields vs Taxonomy II
Content Type Rant
@ aangel
Seen the wiki page Chris set up, and copied some blocks - but my general question is more, how do you structure all this long list of different contents/"subpages" internally? in terms of content type / taxonomy / CCK fields or else? I am aware the IA team is working on a more easy to digest framework confronting similar questions, and will digg deeper in its backlog, but what can I do - we need the website overhaul badly, so I'll just have to plunge into this and see what I can come up with.
It would be a great thing to already have integration with other (future) initiatives in Berlin or on the national level in mind, but this is even more over our current resources really.
Information structure
Thank you for the response.
I understand now what you meant by "core themes", and this seems to make sense. I think simplicity is the law, and you do not add something new unless you are certain that it is necessary. So, I think adding another "content type" for background information pages of varying types seems unnecessary.
@ aangel
I've been looking through the information architechture pages from your backlog, aangel, and appreciate that they are there. Thank you for sharing. I am not able to gather a tremendous amount of help from reading this - I'm sure it would make more sense if I was participant in the original discussions, but harder to jump in at this point and retroactively filter through your notes. It's a complex project!
@ joshka
I'm with you on that you need to just jump right in and start building a structure. I'm in the process of rebuilding my own information structure, because it's gotten bigger and information has "sprawled" out into branches where it was not intended to be, so now I need to do an overhaul. And, as I said, I'm not able to gather much from the information structure notes offered by the Transition Drupal team at this moment - too much complexity to begin with; I'd prefer to just clean everything out, and rebuild from scratch. Clear everything away, get rid of the clutter, and start again from the ground up with a clear structure; then you can judiciously add items back in as needed.
If you'd like to communicate about the information architecture for your site as you're rebuilding it, I'll be working on mine this weekend - I could share / collaborate with you. As I said, my preferred model is decidedly, tyrannically minimalist and orderly, so it might suit your tastes or maybe not. =)
But if you would like to discuss, please message me.
-- e.m.fields
chapel hill, nc
"how do you structure all
"how do you structure all this long list of different contents/"subpages" internally?"
Your "pages" will come from the output of three main sources:
1. Views
2. Panel pages
3. Panel nodes
On those panel pages you will be able to position various elements, from blocks to calendars and records from the various content types you have created. A Transition site might have a half-dozen or more content types each for their own purpose. For instance, you might create an Event content type and a view that lists them chronologically.
You're at the very beginning and the best advice I can give you is to consider purchasing a book.
Here are some contenders I've heard good things about:
Drupal for Dummies
http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Dummies-Lynn-Beighley/dp/0470556110/ref=sr_...
Using Drupal
http://www.amazon.com/Using-Drupal-Angela-Byron/dp/0596515804/ref=sr_1_2...
Drupal Development, 2nd ed.
http://www.amazon.com/Drupal-Development-Second-John-VanDyk/dp/143020989...
Here is a book on Panels:
https://www.packtpub.com/drupal-6-panels-cookbook/book
Here is another book to be released soon that has the right focus (CCK, Panels and Views)...it might be available in ebook form before November.
http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9780321620354
Check on your favorite book site...there are many good books about Drupal now.
Plus some more resources:
Panels Documentation
http://drupal.org/node/496278
Videos
http://learnbythedrop.com/
Drupal Dojo
http://www.drupaldojo.com/
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com
book recommendations
wow, this is a goldmine of information. Thank you.
It's good to have a quality resources list
-- e.m.fields
chapel hill, nc
Capture as reference
Hi Andre,
What about to capture some of these kinds of reference notes here:
http://trac6.assembla.com/transition-initiatives-web
It has a reasonable wiki for this, I think better than the GDO wiki pages. Also maybe we could start to build up the taxonomy and other reference stuff?
Project Home
Though I'm not against posting there as a matter of my technical religion, in a conversation with David we had aligned on the project having its own custom site so that we could make it do whatever we wanted as time went on. Thus was born www.transitiondrupal.org and that's the current home of the requirements document.
During our conversation I was thinking of http://getpantheon.com but all the cool kids, er, open-source projects have their own site. I was hoping to bribe Chris and a themer to make a super good-looking template for the project.
The only drawback to this strategy is that the site should be in Drupal 7 from the get-go...but D7 isn't ready yet so the features available on the site are, um, lacking.
As an aside, the beta of D7 is right around the corner which is the milestone for module maintainers to start porting their D6 modules to D7. Still, my sense is that our starting gun won't go off for about another month.
Nonetheless, I've been updating that site with developer content and these extra links could go there, too.
What do you think of this strategy?
Andre Angelantoni
Founder, PostPeakLiving.com