There are some basic foundational aspects of Drupal that are good to know when using the application for the first time. Download and follow the Getting Started #1 tutorial, created just for UCB Library staff. This tutorial also includes short videos and screen shots to help you with your hands-on work.
Tutorials and Guides
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A quick guide by Fleur Helsingor
In technical terms, Drupal Views make it possible to:
- Use multiple Node Content items on a page or in a block where you can control the selection.
- Use queries to create dynamic content to changes as new Node Content is added to the Drupal site, without requiring a detailed knowledge MySQL.
- Create a block that contains changing but targeted content.
In other words, you can use Views to create dynamic web pages such as a calendar of events, a list of tutorials and guides, or a targeted list of article databases, without having to add, update, or remove content by hand!
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Go to admin > site building, and select the Views option to display a list of all of the views currently available on your Drupal site. There should already be several default Views that were set up during your Drupal installation.
To create a new view, click the Add button.
Type the name of your new View in the View name field.
Type a short description in the View description field. This will serve as a reminder of what the View will actually do.
In the View type field set, choose the type of View to create. In most cases, you'll use the Node type.
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When the View control panel opens, begin by selecting a content type: page, block, etc.
Give your new View a title. By default, the Title field is set to None. Click on the word None — it's a hyperlink that will open up the Title dialog box. In the dialog box, type in your new title, and click the Update button to save it.
Update the Row style by clicking on the Fields link.
In the first Row Style dialog box, change the Row Style to Node. That way, each row in the View would contain a piece of node content, and the same engine that formats Node Content for a page display will be used to format each node in the View. Click on the Update button.
In the second Row Style dialog box, choose the display options. It's likely that you'll want to links, and possibly teasers as well.
In the third Row Style dialog box, check the Distinct checkbox so that each node would be displayed only once. This is especially useful if your View makes use of more than one criterion. Click the Update button.
The default Access setting is Unrestricted. You can set access limits, if desired.
Use the Header and Footer settings to create these content elements, if desired.
Use the Empty text setting to create a message to be displayed if there is no Node Content that matches the criteria that you have set up, if desired.
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Click on the + sign to make changes to the Sort criteria. This will open up a dialog box that contains a list of all of the possible sort criteria based on the content available on your site.
Choose from among the Groups to shorten the possible list of options.
A new dialog box will open, offering the options from the Group(s) that you chose. Select all of the options that you would like to use.
A dialog box will open for each sort option that you have chosen, and you can set each option in turn. For example, you can make the sort order ascending or descending.
You can also refine the granularity of the sort. For example, a date sort could be based on the second, minute, hour, day, month, or year.