GOPrising needs Drupal help

[J Free]

I am having an atrocious time trying to set up the most basic content/index structure for my GOPrising site using Drupal. There is nothing intuitive about this software at all and I am so lost with this I don't even know how to ask questions.

Does anyone have any familiarity with Drupal? In particular, the content management and the site building functions.

More specifically, the blocks, node, menus, themes, and taxonomy modules.

I've been keeping the front page "closed and under maintenance" but it is quite obvious to me now that I am getting nowhere with this. I need to open the various sub-functions up to people who know what they're doing. Otherwise, this site isn't going to be up anytime this century.

I do understand the users module so I can assign access roles correctly.

Please help if you have any familiarity with Drupal. I've opened up the front page and the comments functionality is open even for anonymous users. Please offer here or there.

[vertesc]

I actually host drupal sites for a living on a unix server I maintain. What do you wanna know? I'm inundated with projects at the moment so I can't set up a site from scratch... But I'd be happy to help!
best to email me: vertesc@uc.edu . My name is campbell.

[J Free]

Right now, I can't even figure out how to set up a content-based navigation structure on the left sidebar. for example:
About Ron Paul
a
b
GopRising Campaigns
a
1
2
b

The software seems to be full of admin navigation and the taxonomy stuff doesn't seem to do navigation and who knows what the blocks are if those require set up from scratch

How long does it take to set up the most basic blog-functionality via Drupal?

[me3]

Bump!

[vertesc]

it takes about 10 minutes to set up awhile site if you're familiar with the way drupal works... I know the learning curve is steep but bear with me.

All pages in drupal are called "nodes". A node can be any kind of content, from pictures to text to movies... Whatever. You create nodes by going to "create content", and choosing what kind of content you want. Page/story are really the same thing (they keep saying they'll get rid of one of them...), blog, image etc are self-explanitory. When you create the page of content, it will automagically be assigned an incremental node number and corresponding URL... Ie node 20 will get a URL of yoursite.com/node/20 . So create a couple of the pages youll want. For now just an "about" and "issues" or something.

Now to add the menu links. Go to administer, and one of the options is "menu". This is (surprise!) where you create and modify menus on your site. You will get a list of all the possible menu items that could show up for a visitor. Drupal filters these depending on the users' access permissions (set in the "permissions" admin menu). What you're probably looking for is "add new primary link". Technically you can add as many menus as you like, but "primary links" is provided for in the themes engine specifically. Basically, you add a new menu itdm, select its parent from a pulldown (you want primary links, except for submenu items), and give the site-relative url tp which the link should point, ie node/20 .

Hope this helps get you started. FYI, blocks are content boxes that you can position on the site. For instance, the basic navigation menu is a block, and you can position it in the header, footer, of on either side bar. Taxonomy is for freeform categorization of nodes, like tags. You can use a taxonomy "term" to bring up content of all types with that term association.

[vertesc]

sorry to split this up, but I'm writing on my iPhone and it was starting to choke on the long message.

Some other tidbits you should know... By default, urls are ugly in drupal. This is for compatibility... But if your config can support it you should enable "clean urls" in the admin menu of the same name.
Blogs are divided by user. To see a listing of all the blog entries on the whole site, go to /blog. To see entries by the admin user go to blog/1 etc. You can override these links with the path module (described below).

You may be interested in some other functionality that comes in drupal modules. You can download drupal modules from drupal.org.

- path and pathauto modules: path lets you set your own URL for nodes... Ie instead of site.com/node/20 it could be site.com/about. Pathauto lets you automate that process for things like blog posts, auto-generating nicer urls from node titles.
-CSS menu (I think that's what it's called) puts all the admin menus in a nice CSS rollover menu at the top of the page. Saves page loads and corresponding cursing.

Please let me know if I can help you any further. And please do it by email, the iPhone doesn't like me writing g dissertations in textfields like this. Email is way easier.

[J Free]

Thank you very much. That really does help.

[me3]

bumpity bump

[Elijah]

I am a Joomla guy and have just started the last of the learning curve.

Sorry, I can't help you but stick in there it is nice once you get there!! Very reqarding for future projects being set up, INSTANTLY!!

Stick in there.

[Bacon]

I've done Drupal plenty of times for clients, so if you need any help with it shoot me a PM.