"What's a node?" I asked myself when first using Drupal. "Isn't that the taxi station they drop passengers off in some sci-fi novel?". Well, close, but not in Drupal-speak. A node is the "techie terminology" used by Drupal (and Drupal developers) behind the scenes.
The easier term to understand is Content Type. It all started back in the days of Drupal 4.7 with a module called CCK. Drupal 5 was the version which saw more adoption of CCK than 4.7 and future versions of Drupal will likely eleminate the need for a separate module. Although, you'll always have the option to extend what type of content you can manage within your defined Content Types - using add-on modules.
Still confused about Nodes, Content, Content Types and Modules which enhance your Content Types? Hopefully, this video will shed some light on the subject, and you'll be off to the {content} races in no time!
Hi Matt.
I just watched this video and I really enjoyed it. I have been using Drupal for a few months. Although CCK seemed like a cool thing to learn about, I had not yet looked into it since I had so much other stuff to figure out. Your video was a great intro to CCK and now that I know how to use Drupal (this probably means I will do something real silly to my site real soon!), it was easy to follow. Now that I know about how CCK works I have a few ideas of things I can use it for.
Another reason I wanted to write was to mention it would be really helpful if you posted the time of each of the videos somewhere with their listing. Sure I could click on them and see how long they were.......Anyway, this just struck me as something potentially easy to do and it could help you to get more video views once people found your site.
Thank you again for the excellent video. You a good teacher!
Thanks for the video. It was really helpful drupal beginner like me. My question is how would you add bulk data to Drupal. Let's say my website has 200 products (fields would be product_name, product serial no, description, price, product_category, product_image_path etc.) Now, is there are a easy way that i can add all 200 images together instead of submitting using new content type. Later clients can add products (one or two) via new "add_product" content type.
Again thanks for excellent CCK intro.
noussh.com
You'll find there are a few modules which provide this type of feature. I've not worked with them myself and I'm just providing the links here.
One of the ways to see if a module is more heavily used, supported and maintained is to look at both the issue queue for that module and the usage statistics - although you should be aware that usage is really only tracking Drupal 6 sites because it wasn't fully integrated until Drupal 6. Only sites using the Update Status module in Drupal 5 report back to Drupal.org.
Here are the modules I've found.
Note that some of these are Drupal 5 and have Drupal 6 versions in progress.
I tried "Node Import" as it is the only module support 6.x version. It could import some fields, not completely the way i wanted. It's just 3 days that i am working with Drupal, I am going through all core and important modules now to get an overall picture of the CMS.
Thanks for the info.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for all the great videos, they have been a tremendous help.
I'm still new to Drupal and I am having a bit of a hard time with one very important part of my site. I'm working on a Rock Climbing site that allows users to contribute to create a catalog of climbing locations consisting of Crags, Formations withing a Crag, and then Routes on the Formations. My question is would I make three different content types for Crags, Formations, and Routes? Or what?
If so then how do I make it so that when a user wants to add a Route or a Formation to a Crag they can chose a Crag or Formation that has already been created and do I just use Views Module to keep everything nested properly?
Thank you for your time.
Hi Matt -
Wow, I've learned a lot from your videos! I'm completely new to Drupal, but getting familiar with the environment very quickly, thanks to you.
I want to compliment you on your friendly teaching style and excellent use of examples; and offer a small housekeeping idea, which is to advise beginners which videos to watch first. I've watched 3 already, and am beginning to understand the order, but it's nice to get that extra support.
Keep up the good work - I've already sent your site info to another friend.
+1 for the idea of letting viewers know how long the video is before it starts.
Thanks -
Vicky
I agree. It would make sense to order the content in some fashion, if only "basic" "middle" "advanced"
Thanks for making the video. I found it useful.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the videos. They are very informative and you're teaching style is very easy to follow. Once suggestion that I would like to make when making these is to tighten up your presentation a bit. By that, I mean, you're video may be longer than it needs to be. I'm new to Drupal, thus why I'm here. I'm getting bogged down in too many details as your video proceeds and forget the main point of the video. Maybe you could do a two part video, where the first part covers the subject quickly, and they part two you come back to the details. For example, I don't want to get bogged down in "good programming practices, or how to name variables' as you do in the understanding CCK. By the time we come back from that side note, i've forgotten what the subject was. I think these issues are important, but detract from the main point of conversation and may be better served by putting them in part II of the video. Anyway food for thought and thank you again for the videos, they really are very good.
Jim