March 22, 2010 - 10:41am
More than one right way
John,
The tricky part is that there's more than one right way to do what you're describing. In general, I'd say to set up the back end so that it makes the most sense to the person(s) publishing content.
I'm working on one site right now where we're posting PDF handouts for students. The math handouts are organized by course number, while the reading and writing handouts are organized by topic. At first it made sense to build the whole structure on taxonomy, but the display side became a nightmare, especially because we have a deeply nested hierarchy and we're also posting links to off-site resources.
We ended up building the whole thing on with Node References, using Nodereference URL and Views Attach to hold everything together.
The main structure of the site is page nodes with a Node Reference field added to them so they can identify parent nodes. The Handouts and Links content types can each have one PDF or one external link per node. Automatic Nodetitles reduce user entry and we use the description field (for filefield) and title field (for link fields) as the node titles.
These are then displayed at the bottom of each page with attached views.
In the screenshot, all three content types - page (for topics), links and handouts - have a node reference pointing back to this, the "parent" page.
I don't know if this sort of method will work for you, but the people posting content to this site (which is still in development) like it and have found it easy to work with.
Micah
Fao Drupal webmasters:
I am seeking some advice about optimum ways to display multiple pdf files and (sometimes) information attached to them within a node. I want to be able to expose the files within Views, obviously and then to display the various views in different sections of the website.
In the past, I have used filefield to upload multiple files within a single node, but I did not get further than this. Files uploaded this way can, I believe, be exposed differently within any number of views, along with other files uploaded within a different node? Is there any advantage in uploading each file within a separate node...?
I want to have a set of two to three primary 'sections' of the site: something like Papers, Projects and People.
Research would include a list of all the pdf, with accompanying explanation of the content, per node. Projects would group the papers, using views, according to the requirements of a particular project. People would be profiles, perhaps displaying pdfs uploaded by various users.
Can anyone offer advice on whether there is a need to get into 'contexts' and 'panels' in order to set up—i.e. group content in—the primary site sections? I know my way around CCK, Views but I've found Panels and Contexts unproductive so far and wonder if I need that level of complexity. Could it be done more simply with og? What about Display Suite?
Is there any equivalent to nodequeue that allows files (uploaded via filefield) to be exposed selectively in a block (i.e. not using a view, but ad hoc selection and sorting)?
I appreciate these are rather general questions and I may need to supply more info, but I'd appreciate any info that can be provided by folks who are more familiar with these kind of issues.
Regards...
(n.b. also posted at drupal.org; hope that's not considered bad form; was inspired to ask here because (a) this is for a Christian resourcing / educational website and (b) familiarity with these module, based upon podcasts)
shalom,
John