Alden Tech and Design

Please remember to create a copy of your photo and then resize the copy before uploading the copy to the website. Otherwise it can take a long time to download your page.

Images

When you click on the button you will have this screen come up in your browser. Remember that you will see the files on the web server (not your personal computer). To make images available to viewers of your web site, you have to upload the image(s) to the web site first.

The URL field is the one you use to show the image. Click on Browse server and it will take you to the window that is below.

I will give a short description of the rest of these fields.

Alternative Text: It is recommended that you give the picture an alternative text in case the user has disabled showing pictures or can't see them.

Width: The width you want the picture to have.

Height: Your specified height. The rounded arrow is used if you want to reset back to the image's original size.

Border: Specify width of border if you want one.

Align: Do you want the image to be placed on the left or the right in the content area (as I have done here?)

The window below comes up when you click on browse server in the window above. It shows you the files on the web server. If you see your image there, just click on it and it will take you back to the window shown above.

I normally like to create a folder for the topics that I am working on so that I can keep things organized.

I want to point out the Resource type on the upper left corner of the window below. Drupal organizes content based on the file ending.

If the image/file you want is not listed do the following:

1. Click on browse and select the file on your computer that you want to upload.
2. You will come back to the window below. Click on upload.
3. After you have done that, the file will show up in the list below. It is now on the web server and you can click on it to insert it into your document.

Now that you have chosen what type of content you are creating it is time to go through some of the most common choices that comes up.

There are two fields that will be common for almost all types of content: Title and Body.

• The title is one line and you can not customize the look of it as it is bound to the template of the site. The web master can change how it is displayed by changing the template.
• The body is where you will place your content.

Most web sites based on Drupal comes with a WYSIWYG editor that lets you work with the body/content as if you were using Word. Personally I prefer to use (F)CKeditor for editing content, but there are a couple of others for Drupal. The picture below shows the filtered toolbar for FCKeditor. To install it on a Drupal web site is a little difficult as you need to change values in configuration files, but the instructions are good.

As you can see this is very similar to toolbars in other text editors and it is very simple to use.

Input format

This is a choice for you to consider if it is accessible. The web master might have created other options as well. If you have only text and a few links, use Filtered HTML. If you need to display images, video or other multimedia, use Full HTML. Full HTML might not be available for you because of security. Talk to the web master if you really need it. Otherwise, contribute to the security of the site and use Filtered HTML.

Menu settings / Book outline

Menu and books are both used for organizing content on the site. Books are basically organizing larger amounts of content the way you read a book (as these pages) and you can go forth and back between the "chapters".

Menues are less flexible and you go to one or the other. They are great for one page content.

How these are used depends on the site and how they are configured. Most sites will only allow editors or administrators to add content to menues or books, but companies might decide to let people create and update books for their departments.

Meta tags

Meta tags like keywords, description and copyright is not so much used now as they were earlier, but internally on a web site they can be important in order to find content later.

Publishing options

This menu let you decide whether to publish the content you just created or not. You can also choose to place it on the front page or make it "sticky" on the top of the page. Very handy if you want to make an intro to your site and then have other content below it.

If you choose not to publish what you wrote, and you decide to go back and work on it, please go to content, find your master piece and click on edit. That way you can continue where you left off. I normally save what I am working on every 5 minutes and then go back in and continue.

Comment settings

You can decide if you want people to comment on your content or not, if you are allowed to decide this.

File attachments

This migth be available to you if you have the right to upload images or other files. The web master/owner of the site might have decided to say no unless you are an editor/staff/administrator of the site.

When I started to write this little tutorial I made a decision to only cover the basic choices that most users will use. What choices you have when you create new content is dependent on the site and what modules are installed. It also depends on what user level/access you have.

Drupal is security sensitive so every action can be set on node/content and user level if needed. This means that some of the options below can be blocked for you.

Choosing what content to create

To create content in Drupal you go to Create content in the menu and select the type of content you want to create.

The basic options are Book page, Page, Story, Blog entry and Forum topic. The first and the last two options will only show if those modules are enabled on the site. Other types of content can be image, project, product etc.

• Book page is for content that can go over several pages. You can organize the pages in an hierarchical structure the same way you would with chapters in a book. You might be able to use other content types than Book page in a Book. It all depends on the configuration of the site.
• Page is for static information. Most often content regarding the site and its use. A page is for content that will rarely be changed..
• Story is content that can change often and that you want the readers/customers to be able to comment on.
• Blog is a blog post.
• Forum topic is a new topic that you are posting in a forum. Forums are very convenient for exchanging thoughts and information between people.

The best way to learn how to create content is to do it. Personally I found that writing about 3-5 articles/blog entries and forum articles was my turning point on editing and working online.

The picture below shows an example of the filtered toolbar for FCKeditor.

As you can see this is very similar to toolbars in other text editors and it is very simple to use. I am not going through the most obvious like regret, select all, bold, italic and underscore etc.

Source is an interesting one choice. When you click on it, you will see the HTML code that make the page look the way you want it to. Click on source again and it will come back to WYSIWYG editing.

There are three icons for pasting on the top left. The first will paste whatever is in the clipboard. The second will paste plain text. That is the one that I am using if I have written something in Word or similar. The last is to be used as a minimum when you have written something in Word and want to paste it in to a web site.

The anchor is for creating a special point within the web page. Often used when you have one page with frequently asked questions on one page. Then each of the questions (down the page) will be marked as an anchor and you link to them from the top of the page where the questions will be listed.

Tables are one of the most used functions to display groups of data and you work with it in Drupal the same way as in desktop programs.

Horizontal lines are important on many web pages to separate content.

What is a modern website without the possibility to create a smiley?

Very often you want to insert special characters on a web site and there is a table for it, but it is no fun. This is a fast and easy way to get the most important ones.

Images, flash and links will be in separate chapters.

Drupal is a content management system (shortened CMS) that is used for web sites when the owners have huge amounts of data or need/want to do frequent updates on their own directly on the website. It is used on all kind of sites from small personal blogs to huge web sites like whitehouse.gov. Drupal is very modular and flexible and can be configured for most needs. You can set it up to function as web shop, blog or forum just by activating modules and configure how they should function.

On the following web pages you can read and learn more about how to use Drupal once it is up and running. Originally I developed these web pages as a way of showing my customers how to do editing on their new web site. Not because it is difficult, but because it is a little different in thinking from desktop editing.

Unless you have an automatic installation option with your hosting company or have some experience with FTP, I recommend that you leave the installation to someone that knows what they are doing. However, there is a quick guide about the Drupal part of the installation in this little guide. I have not included a guide for installing and configuring modules as that is out of the scope of my pages. Just go to http://drupal.org and do some research and pick the ones you need. I normally check the list of outstanding bugs that are reported and how many web sites are using it when I decide.

After setting up Drupal, most users like to style it the way they want it to look (using a template). There are many templates for Drupal that you can just download and then change them the way you want to. For some of these templates you need knowledge of PHP and CSS in order to create/alter them to your taste, or let me do it.

Please contact me if you want more information.

When I started to write this little tutorial I made a decision to only cover the basic choices that most users will use. What choices you have when you create new content is dependent on the site and what modules are installed. It also depends on what user level you have.

Drupal is security sensitive so every action can be set on node and user level if needed. This means that some of the options below can be blocked for you.

Choosing what content to create

To create content in Drupal you go to Create content in the menu and select the type of content you want to create.

The basic options are Book page, Page, Story, Blog entry and Forum topic. The first and the last two options will only show if those modules are enabled on the site. Other types of content can be image, project, product etc.

• Book page is for content that can go over several pages. You can organize the pages in an hierarchical structure the same way you would with chapters in a book. You might be able to use other content types than Book page in a Book. It all depends on the configuration of the site.
• Page is for static information. Most often content regarding the site and its use.
• Story is content that can change often and that you want the readers/customers to be able to comment on.

There are two fields that will be common for almost all types of content: Title and Body. The title is one line and you can not customize it. The web master can change how it is displayed by changing the template. In a separate post I will show more about how to work in the body field.

Editing the body

I have created a separate post for editing the content, but I wanted to mention it here. Most web sites based on Drupal comes with a WYSIWYG editor that lets you work as if you had Word open. Personally I prefer to use FCK-editor for editing content, but there are a couple of others for Drupal. The picture below shows the filtered toolbar for FCKeditor. To install it on a Drupal web site is a little difficult as you need to change values in configuration files.

As you can see this is very similar to toolbars in other text editors and it is very simple to use.

Input format

This is a choice for you to consider if it is accessible. The web master might have created other options as well. If you have only text and a few links, use Filtered HTML. If you need to display images, video or other multimedia, use Full HTML. Full HTML might not be available for you because of security. Talk to the web master if you really need it. Otherwise, contribute to the security of the site and use Filtered HTML.

Menu settings / Book outline

Menu and books are both used for organizing content on the site. Books are basically organizing larger amounts of content the way you read a book and you can go forth and back between the "chapters". Menues are less flexible and you go to one or the other. They are great for one page content that fit on one page.

How these are used depends on the site and how they are configured. Most sites will only allow editors or administrators to add content to menues or books.

Publishing options

This menu let you decide whether to publish the content you just created or not. You can also choose to place it on the front page or make it "sticky" on the top of the page. Very handy if you want to make an intro to your site and then have other content below it.

If you choose not to publish what you wrote, and you decide to go back and work on it, please go to content, find your master piece and click on edit. That way you can continue where you left off. I normally save what I am working on every 5 minutes and then go back in and edit it.

Comment settings

You can decide if you want people to comment on your content or not, if you are allowed to decide this.

File attachments

This migth be available to you if you have the right to upload images or other files. The web master/owner of the site might have decided to say no unless you are an editor/staff/administrator of the site.