How Content is Managed

Trainer (00:00):
Before we jump into things, let’s learn how to manage content in Drupal. If you’ve used Drupal in the past and you know all of this well, you can skip this video. But if you are new to Drupal, I recommend that you stick around. The first thing we’ll learn is how to log in and out of Drupal. So here is my Drupal site, and I’m going to log in with the user account I created when I installed Drupal. You can log in by clicking on the log in link in the top right or you can go directly to /user/login. Both methods will take you to the same page. Some sites may not have a visible log in button, so it’s always good to know the direct path to the log in page. And to log in, I will enter in my user account, which I created when I installed Drupal. So let me just enter in the username and the password, and then I’ll click on log in.

Trainer (01:03):
Once we have logged in, we know we have logged in because we are redirected to the user profile page. Now of course, you can change where the user gets redirected when they log in. But on a standard site after you log in, you will get redirected to the user profile page. Now to log out, we have a few options. The first option is we can log out by clicking on the log out link here on the top right, or if you can see the toolbar at the top here, click on your username and then click on log out. And the final way you can log out is by simply typing in user/logout, and this will log you out straight away. This is another good path to remember if you need to log out, just type in user/logout.

Trainer (01:55):
Let me quickly log back in. And now, let’s learn how to manage content. Using the toolbar, click on manage, and then click on content. From this page, you can create and manage all your content such as pages and articles. But we can’t see anything because we haven’t created any. So to create content, click on add content. And from here, you can select a content type. Now, we only see article and basic page because these are the two content types that come with Drupal when you install it. But on most Drupal sites, you will have more than just two content types. Let’s go ahead and create a basic page. So, click on basic page. And this content type has two fields, title and body. You would enter in the page title into the title field and the rest of your content into the body field.

Trainer (03:01):
On the right hand side, we have other options as well. We can add a revision log message if revisions are turned on. We can also add this page directly to the main navigation by checking provide a link and filling out the rest of these fields. You can also add a URL alias, which will change the path to the page. This is the same as a permalink in WordPress. Then from authoring information, we can change the content author for this page and we can change the author on date. And from the promotion options, we can flag the page as being promoted to the front page or sticky at the top of lists. And then if we move to the left, we can see the published checkbox, which is above the save button. If you want this page to be visible and published, then make sure published is checked. If you want the page to be unpublished, then simply uncheck the published checkbox and save the page.

Trainer (04:05):
With the options on the right hand side, if your user account doesn’t have access to create menu links or URL aliases, then you won’t see these options. Drupal will hide what the user doesn’t have access to. Now that you have a good understanding of the options on this page, let’s go and create a basic page. So in title, I will enter in “About us” as the title. And I’ll paste in some random text into the body field. And then, I’ll click on save. And now, we see the basic page from the front end. We have the title and the body. And the URL to the page is node/, and then the ID of the page, which is 1 in this case. If you want a different path, then change the URL alias option when you edit the page.

Trainer (05:03):
So, we’ve created our first page. And if we click on content in the toolbar, which is under manage, we should see the About us page right here. Let’s now discuss the other features on this page. From this section, you can filter the content which is displayed in the table. You can filter by title, content type, published status, and also language. You can also run an action on your content. Think of it as a bulk operation on multiple pages. If you want to bulk delete, published or unpublished content, then simply select the page you want to run the action on, and then select the action, and then click on apply to selected items. From the content table, you can see the title, content type, the author, and status if it’s published or unpublished, and the updated date.

Trainer (06:05):
And from the operations column, you can edit and delete the page. You can also sort the page by clicking on the table headings. If it’s a link, then it means it can be sorted by the column. You can sort by title, content type, status, and updated date. You can also edit and delete a page when you are viewing it. Click on the About us page and you should see the following tabs, edit and delete. And you can also delete the page by editing it first, and then clicking on the delete button right here. So, that’s a quick overview on managing content. It’s not groundbreaking, but it’s important you have a basic understanding on how to create, edit, and delete content.