By johnhanley on

I need to reproduce a large static web site hierarchy in Drupal. The current site consists of numerous primary, secondary, tertiary and quaternary pages.

Admittedly all of my time with Drupal up to now has been spent writing dynamic custom business and data modules for my clients and I am a novice when it comes to setting up Drupal web sites containing primarily static pages.

I suspect the first thing to do is to create the primary nav items as page nodes. These will serve as landing pages, each containing their own content plus sub-nav links and so on down to the forth level.

Once that's complete everything will need to be grouped together with taxonomy terms.

Bottom line, what's the best methodology for going about this? Thanks in advance.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 4.7.x

Comments

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

You probably want the category module, it's better suited to a traditional hierarchical website than taxonomy.

Overall though, you just create the pages and build a navigation menu. Or use a menu for each section, etc. The category module and taxonomy help with breadcrumbs (if you're using them), access control, default settings, etc, but the overall structuring of the site can be done without that. Drupal doesn't have directories, but you can still create your hierarchy with navigation menus and URL path's, and the visitors won't know the difference.

johnhanley’s picture

johnhanley commented

This is a belated thank you for your advice. You're right, the whole hierarchy can be constructed with a stock Drupal install although I might introduce the category module later on.

I ran into one small issue though. I am creating a bunch of tertiary pages and would like to hide the links in the nav menu, but show the breadcrumb parent link.

For example the breadcrumb would show

Home >> Projects >> Overview >> Project 1

yet the nav menu would only show

Project >> Overview

The Overview page content includes the link to "Project 1" and isn't suppose to appear in the nav menu.

Disabling the "Project 1" (from administer->menu) will hide the link in the nav menu (good), but also hides it in the breadcrumb (bad.) Is there a way to accomplish this without code?

Thanks in advance.

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

If you set the URL alias to the path you want, it shows in the breadcrumb if I remember correctly. I think there is also a breadcrumb path module in the downloads section somewhere.

-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

bioye’s picture

bioye commented

consider the import_html module and have a look at this thread:http://drupal.org/node/48371

johnhanley’s picture

johnhanley commented

The PM decided to go with another developer who's familiar with ExpressionEngine, which will be easier implement the site's complex multi-tiered navigation.

Thanks for the additional advice though. It's bound to come in handy for future projects.