Drupal modules tend to consists of 2 types of modules - functional modules and developer modules. The typical web site functional modules consist of such modules as blogs, forums, ecom, newsletters, etc. - modules which provide some core site functionality. Developer modules on the other hand do not provide a complete web site function on their own - rather they provide a tool for site developers to create custom applications.
Of all the Drupal developer modules the combination of CCK and Views is likely the most used and most important of these.
From the CCK project page: "The Content Construction Kit allows you create and customize fields using a web browser. The 4.7x version of CCK creates custom content types and allows you to add custom fields to them. In Drupal 5.x custom content types can be created in core, and CCK allows you to add custom fields to any content type."
From the Views project page: "The views module provides a flexible method for Drupal site designers to control how lists of content (nodes) are presented. Traditionally, Drupal has hard-coded most of this, particularly in how taxonomy and tracker lists are formatted.
This tool is essentially a smart query builder that, given enough information, can build the proper query, execute it, and display the results. It has four modes, plus a special mode, and provides an impressive amount of functionality from these modes."
This course will cover the basic use of these 2 modules and show how they can be used to create and display custom content types on your site. We will cover the following:
Day 1 (CCK):
- understanding nodes, teasers and full pages
- creating custom node types and why you would want to do this
- overview of some of the various fields available in CCK
- modifying existing node types
- using contemplate to theme your new nodes
- brief intro to taxonomy, nodereferences and Pathauto
Day 2 (Views):
- simply "a list of everything"
- page views and block views
- table, list and teaser views
- fields and filters
- sorting
- exposing filters
This course will consist of both lecture and practical work as well as some real project examples.
This course consists of 8 hours of in class training spread across 2 days (4 hours each day).
The student should be familiar with the basic set up of a Drupal site. They should know how to install and enable modules.
A knowledge of PHP is not required for this course.
External classes are provided on a interest driven basis. If you are interested in this course; please signup below and we will get in touch with you when the next available session is being offered.
For on-site training, please use the signup form below and we will get in touch with you within the next couple of days to make scheduling arrangements.
