Where data is stored in drupal for content

By Desert-Rose on 31 Jul 2008 at 07:45 UTC

Hi,
I have installed drupal6 and made a page with blog and polls.
For a newbie like me, can any one tell me where the content for a web page , say a quote or blog title when enterred by a drupal CMS interface is finally stored so that the data is shown in web page.

On the home page, from where the quote content is fetched and stored.
Also when clicking how the details is fetched and displayed by ( /?q=node/2 )
just for curiosity and for customizing the page , I need to know this.

Please reply ,

Comments

data storage

johnhanley commented 31 July 2008 at 07:56

All the content is stored in a database. Depending on the content type, the data can potentially be stored in multiple database tables. In your example, the '2' is the row ID of the node data stored in the node table. You don't want to go poking around in the database unless you know what you're doing.

That said, you don't really need to know any of this to customize the layout of your web site. Drupal has many "levels" and the only one you really need to pay attention to is the theme level. The theme controls the look/feel of your pages.

Customize layout

Desert-Rose commented 31 July 2008 at 08:31

Thanks for the reply.
I was really wondering where the data is stored in the 53 tables.

And regarding Layout change in a page, ie changing the look and feel of a page, at first the look, how can it be done for a newbie like me. In a tutorial it was mentioned to start work on a copy of an existing theme by renaming it .
But when i created a copy of default theme folder garland and renamed to mygarland and pasted in the
sites/default/themes ie i created a folder themes in sites/default and pasted theme folder mygarland
now my path is sites/default/themes/mygarland for Customizing work

But the problem is , now i cannot view/see the mygarland theme in admin in Site building->Themes

Same i tried in sites/all folder
ie But when i created a copy of default theme folder garland and renamed to mygarland and pasted in the
sites/all/themes ie i created a folder themes in sites/all and pasted mygarland
now my path is sites/allthemes/mygarland

Here also I failed to view the mygarland theme in admin in admin in Site building->Themes

What went wrong .Please help.

When i directly placed the mygarland folder in themes folder , then also i cannot view in admin in Site building->Themes the renamed mygarland theme.

I tried to keep the mygarland theme seperated from core theme garland assuming that drupal will pick up any new theme automatically.

So can u help me in customizing a layout in a simple way for a newbie.

Thanks

Nancy

adding a theme

johnhanley commented 31 July 2008 at 17:28

Hmm, adding a theme should be as simple as copying the directory to /sites/all/themes and enable it.

Customizing the layout can be achieved in a bunch of different ways. Drupal allows you to move blocks around and you can use modules like views and panels to display the data in different ways. Customizing the actual style and page layout requires some theming and css knowledge. You'll need to learn how to override the default theming.

it's not that easy any more

VM commented 31 July 2008 at 17:31

it's not that easy any more in 6.x

themes now have a .info file
you have to go into the that file and make changes and after doing so, goto administer -> performance and clear the cache when necessary.

garland is a great theme. However, not the easiest theme to start hacking away on because it is already so customized.

good catch

johnhanley commented 31 July 2008 at 17:36

I failed to notice she's working with 6.x. Without adjusting the .info file she's just adding a duplicate garland theme and the system won't recognize it as a separate theme.

...

zirvap commented 31 July 2008 at 17:46

I recommend you customize Zen (http://drupal.org/project/zen) instead of starting with Garland. Zen is made to be easy to modify, and is very well documented.

Theme building customization

Desert-Rose commented 1 August 2008 at 07:39

I did Zen customization as per (http://drupal.org/project/zen) for drupal 6.3.
But that doesnt really cater my exact needs.
Iam a newbie in drupal 6.3.
My requirement is :
I have a home page with a index.html and a folder having images.
It has a header, a navigation bar, a left side bar, a content area , a right side bar and a footer
just like a normal web site. It is made in div with css and is table free.
I have to convert it into a drupal6.3 theme from scratch.
Please help me with tutorial links in doing the task.
The http://www.gomediazine.com/tutorials/create-a-killer-band-site-in-drupal... gives information on Drupal 5.
But I need a useful turorial link similar to this which helps me in building a drupal theme/ site in Grupal 6.3.
Help Needed

Thanks

Nancy

theme guide

johnhanley commented 1 August 2008 at 15:49

A good place to start would be to read the Theme guide (Drupal 6).

...

zirvap commented 1 August 2008 at 16:04

I don't know if that kind of tutorial exists for 6.x yet. There's the theming handbook at http://drupal.org/theme-guide, and you might find something useful in http://drupal.org/node/136502.

There's also http://www.blkmtn.org/Quick-and-dirty-OSWD-theme-to-Drupal, which is written for 5.x, but might still be useful as it gives a very clear and concise overview.

Oh, and here's a handbook section on Converting 5.x themes to 6.x. If you look at that, together with a recipie on theming for 5.x, you'll hopefully be able to figure things out.

---
(added) Ah, I see Bacteria Man answered with the most important link while I was writing :-)