Introduction
Since Genova Città Digitale, an office of the Municipality of Genova, has started to produce itself his web products, it always used Drupal and Vivere Genoa (www.viveregenova.comune.genova.it), his last brainchild, is an online newspaper which talks about cultural happenings in the city of Genoa. The site features a smooth and clean visual design by Federica Scaraglio which reminds to a traditional newspaper style, while project development and implementation are due to Antonio Pastorino (http://drupal.org/user/686294) and Gabriele Arecco.
Major Features
Since this newspaper talks about cultural happenings, lifestyle and so on, editors of Vivere Genova need to be able to publish videos, photo galleries, audio contents and so on, including old-style files. Each of these contents can be related to traditional online articles. Capability to produce live news stream was also required.
Editors of Vivere Genova also need to be able to manage newspaper’s homepage regardless of the single articles. This home page administration is similar to that of Repubblica online newspaper and was advised by Genova Città Digitale’s contributor Massimo Razzi. Furthermore, editors needs to be able to produce homepages in advance, for example, each evening the next morning homepage has to be ready.
Homepage
As we said, homepage managing has to be unrelated as much as possible from produced articles. This goal is achieved through a particular technique that we called home page elements. We created a CCK node type for Home Page Element. Using this type, editors have the possibility to widely customize the way that articles and elements are displayed in the home page. For example it is possible to publish a collection of articles, a single video or a photo gallery instead of a simple article. Furthermore it is possible to publish an article with an image that differs from the one in its detail. Home Page Elements are mostly a collection on nodereference fields where editors place articles they want to put in the home page, choosing the way they are displayed.
This structure leads us immediately to another simple improvement. Through the mechanism of editions, it is possible for the editors of Vivere Genova to create home pages in advance. This technique is similar to that used by the New York Observer Drupal craftsmen (http://drupal.org/node/141187).
We also have a similar mechanism about the alternation of different site logos using glossy photo shoots, which strongly connotes the newspaper.
Panels Pattern
The site has an high number of pages each of which has its own blocks, views and so on. We decide to use massively the features provided by the module Panels. This module let us and other contributors from the editorial staff to edit and define templates in a WYSYWYG manner.
Panels module, furthermore, allows us to define template for each of our content types.
This approach provides several benefits:
- Development speed increased due to a WYSYWYG interface
- All development operation concerning the information architecture are made using the same interface, the Drupal GUI. Previously we had to modify the .tpl.php files located in the theme folder
- Also non php skilled contributor can modify template pages
Module highlights
We are very thankful to the wonderful Drupal community which provides us with these tasteful modules:
- Nodequeue. This module lets editors place articles, videos and photogalleries directly into slots in the home page. This solution is used when scheduling capability is not necessary.
- Pathauto. This useful module allow us to improve our Search Engine Optimization.
- CCK & Date/ Link/ Calendar/ Imagecache/ Imagecache Javascript Crop/ Embedded Media Field/ ImageField. This bunch of modules is a must-have for online magazine editors.
- Chaos Tools & Panels. This pair of modules lets us define our page templates in a WYSYWYG manner.
- Views. This module is a must have for every online Drupal website.
