Beginner question on Drupal - php

I am new to PHP and am doing some research on Drupal system to set up a website for my church.
Just want to know how to development a module on a page that display a list of articles? eg. display the article by category or tag etc.
Is there any template I can use or I will need to develop the template myself?
Thanks in advance!
Chris

Check out the views module. It lets you define your own rules for viewing articles (or other content types), by tag, category, or any arbitrary conditions you can think of.

in complement to #DanSingerman good answer For category and tags you should have a look at Taxonomy and also SimpleView to get some less advanced user interface when building your views.

If you're only displaying articles, you should go with Wordpress. Most Drupalistas would probably recommend Wordpress over Drupal for this usage.

Related

Jooma 3.1 Templating - Tutorials/Documentation?

I am to develop a Joomla 3.1 Template. The template should consist of a static header and footer, as well as multiple pages, all of which need their own styling. Further, the client would like to be able to add 'events' to a specific listings page. Customers should be able to book said events via a simple form.
Thanks to some really basic guides, I have the header and footer down, as well as some simple template options. However, I am now running into some problems;
How would I approach the content section? Ideally, a page would consist of multiple, editable sections. The client would be able to edit said sections in the backend without having to deal with or accidentally changing the layout or styling of the page itself. Since there are multiple pages, I obviously need different views/containers for each of them. Is this possible and if so, how?
Another problem is the documentation, which I found to be very lacking. Even google only got me so far (basic structure, index.php, templateDetails.xml and so forth). Are there any other resources I may have missed or do I really need to refer to other templates (most of which, obviously, aren't free) and use var_dump all the time?
Writing this, I just realized that I could theoretically build a template for every single page but ... that surely can't be right, right?
If someone could provide a basic outline or at least tell me how you personally would tackle a project like this, it'd be very much appreciated.
All the best
Edit;
I just found some video tutorials but since my bandwidth is limited, I cannot watch them. Please take this into account when writing an answer. Thanks.
I have only one word for you :
GANTRY :D
gantry-framework.org
Joomla revolves around menu items that point to components. For each menu item, you can assign modules to different positions within the template to create a unique page. You only need one template if you really understand how Joomla templating works.
Joomla has very good documentation here - http://docs.joomla.org/
Few things to remember -
Component - this is a type of content or app of sorts. A component will define what content is and how it is displayed. This can be anything from blog articles and categories to an event registration system to a message board or social network. Menu items generally will point to a view in a component.
Modules - these are used to display additional content around the component output. This can be a menu, or a login box, or a weather widget or anything else you can come up with. Modules can be assigned to or excluded from the various menu items on your site.
Plugin - plugins are used to change the final output on a site. They can be used to insert Youtube videos, or forms within content, or even to alter the meta tags on a page.
Understanding how extensions work is an important first step. Once you get how those work, learning how templates and template overrides work will give you most of what you need to know to build a basic Joomla site.

Simple PHP CMS with internationalization, static website, and blog capabilities?

I would like to know if there's a PHP CMS which makes things like editing a block of text easy.
It also should let the user separtare content in columns.
I'm using Wordpress right now, but it seems like the only way of letting the user add content is in form of posts.
Any suggestions?
Take a look at MojoMotor it's different from the standard CMS packages and is based off CodeIgniter.
Joomla is the Answer. It has all the properties you mentioned
Wordpress allows adding pages too. These live outside the blog and are not automatically shown in the blog index.
If you decide to drop WordPress after all, you could take a look at 9 alternatives to WordPress.

What kind of website news posting methods are there?

I have a custom made website and right now each time I want to put some news on the front page of my site I have to edit the HTML and then re-upload via ftp.
I'm trying to find a simple feature/program that will allow me to post news to my site without manually having to edit the html and possibly allowing it to have comments.
I've tried wordpress but that seems to have too many features. For example it makes me pick a template, which I don't need because I have a custom website. And it has categories, archives, etc. I don't need all of that.
Any suggestions?
wordpress is quite lightweight imo, but if you think it's too big, you might want to use one of these: http://web.appstorm.net/roundups/self-publishing/10-ultra-lightweight-cmses-for-simple-projects/
Develope your own. Shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.

php joomla template (how-to?) the proper way

Greetings all,
I just wanted to know what is the proper way to do template's in Joomla?
If i have four boxes in footer (4 columns) how can i automate them in the template so their content inside can be managed from the back-end?
So far, i have seen custom html block modules and using those. But wouldn't it be funny if there are loads of such blocks and than managing them from modules individually?
Now suppose if i have a slogan/tag line for my website; and i want it to be managed from backend.. Do i need to create that custom block even for such single line?
May be i am going to wrong direction. Can someone guide me please?
Regards,
Jhon.
A Joomla template is simply a map the outlines the various positions that available to put modules in. These positions are built around the component display area. You can load basically anything you want in to a module position. You will probably need to download some modules from the Joomla Extension Directory, there are tons of options.
The Custom HTML module is appropriate for simple content that is not going to change very often. This would be good for a company tag line that doesn't ever change. There are various modules that would allow you to load content from the latest Joomla articles based on section or category. There are modules for login forms, stock prices, RSS feeds, weather, all kinds of stuff.

best approaches in designing for wordpress a theme, need some advice

I'll be building a Wordpress theme and would be needing some advice in implementing it. here's the outline of my design. I will using 960.gs for the css layout.
Now my worries is what approach will i be using to the services(1,2,3...)? Will I use widget fort hat? Those boxes should be easy to maintain and update. (I've been a Joomla user so, So if I had code it in joomla I had used module for that approach. Is there a similar approach to Wordpress? that you can easily turn on/off the boxes? )
How can I change the look for each page? Some services will not be render in some pages (example, service 1-4 will not be avialabe for 'about page')
Thanks! :)
Download Free ‘Starkers’ Wordpress theme at Here
and following the instructions from Chris Coyer of CSS Tricks at Here
This really did help me. The screen cast from Chris is a three part series and you would love it.
Update One:
After you do this. I would advice you to get free themes online and see how things are done in different templates. I will help you improve a great deal.
Update Two:
To prevent some widgets from showing on different pages, you would to remove the function that creates that widget from that particular template. Every widget is like a plugin and a function is used to render it on screen.
Hope this helps.

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