Announcements: Special Notices for Your Site

This module creates an "announcement" content type and provides both node views and block lists.

This is an adaptation of the sample module writing article from IBM.

An announcement has the following fields:

Title: Self-explanatory.
Publication date: The first date the announcement will be displayed.
Expiration date: The last date the announcement will be displayed.
Abstract: An abbreviated description of the announcement. This will be shown in the block. Note: Only the abstract will be indexed for search if you use the Search module.
Body: The full text of the announcement.

Installation

Standard module installation applies. The module does have an uninstall function.

Settings

Maximum number of block announcements: The maximum number of announcements that will show in a block.
Default duration of announcement: When creating a new announcement, the start date will default to today and the ending date will default to today plus this setting's value.

Permissions

create announcement: Allows a user to create a new announcement
edit announcement: Allows a user to edit any announcement. Note: "edit own" is by default.

Menu Entries / URIs

There is one menu entry for "Announcements." This view of the announcements shows only the abstract and dates for the announcements.

If one appends 'view' to the URI (i.e. http://www.example.com/announcements/view), you will get a full node view.

Blocks

Announcements: Recent: Shows recent, active announcements.
Announcements: In xxx vocabulary: Shows the terms for the xxx vocabulary, which has been assigned to the 'announcements' content type. There may be more than one vocabulary show, depending on your configuration. Note: if there are no vocabularies assigned, then this block will not be shown.

Styling and Themes

The module comes with a starter set of CSS entries. View the code or use Firebug to discover more styling options.

theme_announcements_compact: Formats the main, compact view.
theme_announcements: Formats the full node view.
theme_announcements_block_list: Formats an entry for the "Recent" block.
theme_announcements_dates: Formats the dates for the announcement.
theme_announcements_abstract: Formats the abstract.

Comments

I'm trying to figure out what

Sunshiney commented 24 June 2009 at 23:23

I'm trying to figure out what is uniquely different about this module than what, I think, is easily done using cck and views in 6x? Not clear.

Well...

NancyDru

she/her/hers

English

Boston

commented 25 June 2009 at 01:31

To start with, the content type is already defined; the theming is already done. Then there's little things like automatic start and end timing. Plus blocks. Oh, and a whole lot smaller footprint than CCK/Views, which matters to the many sites on hosts that won't allow the memory required for them. And then there are many sites that just don't have CCK and Views.

Can it be done with CCK and Views? Undoubtedly. When I have time to learn CCK internals, I may switch it, especially considering Fields in core for D7.

NancyDru

Excellent answer. My

Sunshiney commented 2 July 2009 at 17:15

Excellent answer. My marketing side always wants to know "what's in it for me/us" so this is a helpful description. Thanks Nancy!

YW

NancyDru

she/her/hers

English

Boston

commented 2 July 2009 at 17:33

If your host won't allow more than 32MB of memory, you are going to be hard-pressed to run a robust CCK/Views set up on Drupal 6. On Drupal 5, I have actually run an 8MB site without them.

Content type modules, such as this one, are pretty much guaranteed to be much smaller than CCK and Views (Views is huge!), but if you have a lot of them there will be a trade-off somewhere.

The equation changes in Drupal 7, however, since Fields ("Son of CCK") will be in core. Many content type modules will have to be looking at a Fields implementation.

NancyDru

This Module for Drupal 7

keoni21230 commented 14 June 2011 at 19:18

Has the Announcements module been ported to Drupal 7? This looks like something that I need to post seminar announcements and have them expire on the day after the seminar without the contributor having to delete the entry.

Or...

NancyDru

she/her/hers

English

Boston

commented 16 June 2011 at 00:17

There is also the Scheduler module.

NancyDru

D7 Upgrade

bwill commented 20 July 2011 at 15:23

I would also like to know if there is a plan for a D7 version. This type of announcement module is exactly what I need to port a DotNetNuke site to Drupal. Would rather not do it with CCK/Views, and cobble together various other modules to expire the announcement. I'm not a PHP coder, but am willing to help out with testing/documentation/etc.