By Drupal_N00b-1 on

Hi. Being someone who's still just investingating making drupal my development platform, I'd like to know how some of the Drupal sites I see were created. In other words, what features/techniques/tricks did the developers of that particular site use to get the result they've gotten.

Reading docs can be helpful but for me I do much better if I see specific solutions to specific problems. I think this will help a lot of N00bs out.

We can just pick sites from here: http://drupal.org/handbook/drupal/gallery
or here: http://www.drupalsites.net/
or wherever else.

I'll start with this site: http://ltc.smm.org/buzz/

The top navigation is probably just the primary links.
Besides that I'm not really sure how they achieved the layout for the rest of the stuff on the page. :)

Is the front page just a "page" content type where the layout of those page elements are inserted into the body field? How are the different pages of the site able to differ so much as far
as what elements are there and how they are layed out? For example if you click on the "buzz" link at the top
you'll get a different list of blocks on the right than are shown on the home page. Is more than one theme being used on that site? Is that even possible?

Comments

rcross’s picture

rcross commented

You should look at the site recipes section in the handbook - plus a few other "tips/tricks" sections in various parts of the handbook for specific areas. You should also do a search within the forums which have a few other writeups. With that in mind, i'd definitely like to see more "how did you do that" answers in the handbooks/forums.

--Ryan

--Ryan
Ryan Cross
James Cross Construction Services
Project Management Software

Drupal_N00b-1’s picture

Drupal_N00b-1 commented

Thanks. I totally overlooked that section.

robertDouglass’s picture

robertDouglass commented

Is the front page just a "page" content type where the layout of those page elements are inserted into the body field?

Almost certainly not. This isn't a very robust way of making pages. Much better is to put things together at the theme level. In your phptemplate based themes you always have a variabe called $is_front, which tells you, true or false, whether you are on the front page. You can conditionally include elements - extra block regions, for example - based on this variable.

For example if you click on the "buzz" link at the top you'll get a different list of blocks on the right than are shown on the home page.

Each block can be configured to show up on different pages. The controls for doing this are very flexible and you can fully control which blocks appear on which pages, and thanks to being able to define block regions in 4.7, where.

- Robert Douglass

-----
My Drupal book: Building Online Communities with Drupal, phpBB and WordPress

Drupal_N00b-1’s picture

Drupal_N00b-1 commented

Thanks for the reply. I've been playing around with an installation of 4.6 and I knew about the the block/page settings. I guess I just need to see examples like this for it to really register with me.

I'll have to read about block regions. Just judging from the name it sound like you should be able to put blocks anywhere, not just on the left or right sidebars. Is that correct? I guess I need to install 4.7.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

See this thread for some commentary by the guy who implemented it.
http://drupal.org/node/56447

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Drupal_N00b-1’s picture

Drupal_N00b-1 commented

That's great!

Also, here's a similar thread I found that could be quite useful. I've only read the first couple of posts(and scrolled through the rest so far to get an idea of the feeback) so far but it looks like a good thread.

http://drupal.org/node/31896