Drupal: A Content Publishing Machine

The more Drupal sites we build at ISL, the more I think Drupal is best described as a content publishing machine. More than other content management systems, it allows for an organic relationship to content flowing in from two sources: traditional editorial staff, and actual site users. Managing a Drupal site is like sitting in the hub of a content exchange, with the ability to deploy bits and pieces where you want.

Rather than expensive-to-maintain ”hard coded” queries and page sections determining what information users see, templates and content can be adjusted when required to most effectively pull in and display what a user needs to see.

Drupal pages are means of re-arranging and peering into a database in real-time.

Some of the simplest but friendliest content controls are built into Drupal. The little box on the right, which appears at the bottom of every piece of Drupal content, lets you decide whether something appears on the home page and whether it should appear on top of lists. As you complete entry of a piece of content, another control allows administrators to assign content to different users and manipulate the date attached to a piece of content. This is very nice if you work on a piece for a while, but want it to be the newest item when you publish it.

Then there is the fact that the concept of a teaser is built into Drupal. For every content element with text and image, one can easily manage what gets shown as the "marketing invite" on roll-up and index pages with the tiny button on the right. This clever feature serves a content manager right when they need it. It also reminds the person entering the content that they need to consider the bait to what they are posting.

The Views module is the powerful configurable filter of Drupal’s content publishing machine. It lets you harvest your content, slicing and recombining it in every possible way on web pages and parts of pages. It can be intellectually challenging to manipulate views, even for experts, but it permits a motivated content manager to take a high degree of control over their own site without the need to consult engineers or manipulate HTML. The model of content as something distinct from its display is fully respected by Drupal, not as a barrier but as a means to provide enormous flexibility and control. Over time, experienced Drupal content managers can use Views to set up whole new sections of their site and ways of representing content in line with user input and new developments in their market.

Taxonomy (like Views) is another originally user contributed module now central to Drupal. Any content on the site can be classified under a larger inclusive term or set of terms. Taxonomies can also be deployed across different kinds of content, relating entirely different types of material together. Each taxonomy term automatically provides a page listing all associated items, which is great for the user experience and search engine optimization. It gives content managers a compelling means to weave threads linking content throughout an entire website.

For users not into the complexity of Views, Taxonomy offers a lite-and-easy version. Like other pieces of functionality in Drupal, it also gently prods content managers to think creatively about their content and "selling it" to users within their site while they are entering it.

Drupal does not only publish content generated by editors and end-users. Third-party content can be also brought in automatically. A wonderful module called Feed API permits your site to publish RSS feeds as pages on your site. For example, the job site like PharmQD incorporates an external job listing feed. Feed API and helper modules check for, read, parse, and sort the job postings into the respective fields, and publish them on the site. They show up just like normal job postings, and are fully search-able.

Finally, a Drupal site can be managed by a single person, or a whole set of managers, each with discrete tasks and responsibilities. Similarly users can be empowered to do things with very fine levels of control, down to specific users or types of user.

As with any powerful piece of machinery, one must take the time to learn how to pull the levers and steer the craft. Once a content manager or team of managers has taken control, there is no end to what they can do with their content through Drupal.