Site building

Using Stanford Feeds for easier content maintenance

Caryl J Westerberg — Tue, 08 Sep 2015 16:30:00 +0000

Would you like to display courses on your website? How about events or links to people profiles? The Stanford community provides a variety of web feeds which provide data or content that your Drupal website can leverage.

Frequently the content you need on your website is already published on another website. Rather than adding this content manually to your website, you can use a web feed to import this published content from the source website and display it on your website.

Adaptive Architecture: Leave Room to Evolve

Zach Chandler — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 14:55:45 +0000

All forward-thinking technologies share one attribute: the original designers intentionally build in opportunities for future users to innovate. It requires humility and a belief in the creativity of others. This is true for buildings, computers, networks, and other tools.

Hard vs soft configuration: Designing your distribution

Shea Ross McKinney — Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:30:23 +0000

In this article we are going to talk about what hard and soft configuration is and how to decide between the two when creating a distribution.

Designing for Archivability

Nicholas Taylor — Mon, 20 Oct 2014 15:56:24 +0000

Web archives are a great way to reference or recover deprecated site content. You can help to ensure that old versions of your website will be faithfully preserved by designing for archivability.

Create a Page Title From the Views Exposed Filter Term

Caryl J Westerberg — Mon, 10 Mar 2014 15:18:30 +0000

Suppose you're using taxomomy terms in exposed filters, and you want the resulting page to display one of the the terms as a title. Taxonomy term pages will give this to you very easily, but sometimes the taxonomy term page is not the right solution. Here's how you can display the taxonomy term as the title of your views page.

Views Exposed Filters Multiple Field Search

Shea Ross McKinney — Mon, 17 Feb 2014 17:07:57 +0000

Views offers the ability to expose filters to the end user so they may filter and sort through a views listing to find what they want in a large list of content. If you have used exposed filters before you will be familiar with exposing a filter on a specific field, such as the title field, for example. But what if you want the end user to be able to search in multiple fields at the same time?

Drupal Sitebuilder, Citizen-Engineer

Zach Chandler — Wed, 27 Nov 2013 21:15:00 +0000

Either we shape the the technologies that we use, or they will shape us. Stanford’s commitment to the Drupal CMS enables more of us to think like engineers, embrace the Maker ethos, and craft our own tools.

Importing Courses from ExploreCourses

Caryl J Westerberg — Tue, 13 Aug 2013 15:21:12 +0000

Do you have courses on ExploreCourses that you’d like to appear on your site? Are you adding these courses by hand every term? If so, check out the Stanford Courses module.

Using Context to Add Blocks to a Region

Caryl J Westerberg — Mon, 08 Jul 2013 16:00:00 +0000

You may be asking yourself, how do I add a block to a sidebar or other region, and how do I get it to display on the correct page? In this post I'll explain how to use the Context module to do just this.

Menu Tricks #3: Automating Virtual Menu Position for Specific Content Types

Linnea Ann Williams — Thu, 27 Jun 2013 16:00:00 +0000

As a serious navigation advocate, it drives me crazy to have an active "Blog" or "Calendar" link in my main menu when I'm looking at the overview pages for that section, but then the active link goes away when I look at a specific Event or Blog Post. Am I in the Calendar section or not?

Enter one of my favorite Drupal modules: Menu Position.

Using Display Suite to Place Node Fields in Blocks

John Bickar — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:25:18 +0000

Have you ever looked at a page layout and thought, "Hm, that sure is one long list of fields. It would be nice to be able to place some of that information in a sidebar (or in the footer, etc.)"

In this example, we want to move some of the "Contact Information" fields of an Event node into the first sidebar.

You can do exactly that with the Display Suite Extras module, which is available on Stanford Sites. Here's how.

Menu Tricks #2: Automating Page URLs Based on Menu Position

Linnea Ann Williams — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 20:48:13 +0000

In my last post on Menu Tricks, I outlined a module called Menu Block, that made it possible to use just one giant main menu to manage your site navigation, while still displaying lower level items in different regions of your design and on different pages on your site.

Menu Tricks #1: Improve Site Navigation with Menu Blocks Module

Linnea Ann Williams — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 22:59:04 +0000

The main menu in Drupal is a very powerful tool when partnered with the right modules and configurations. The menu can be used to automate URLs, build breadcrumbs and create secondary navigation.

In this post, I'll be walking through a module that can help you use the main menu to automate all of your menus and simplify your secondary navigation.

Importing Events from events.stanford.edu

Caryl J Westerberg — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 02:46:49 +0000

Have you checked out Stanford's Event Calendar at http://events.stanford.edu? It has featured events, events from departments and student groups, and events by subject or type. It's a great place to find out what's happening around campus.

Setting Up Accounts, Roles, and Privileges for sites.stanford.edu

Caryl J Westerberg — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 17:26:19 +0000

Getting a new Drupal site set up takes a few steps before you can begin building your site. Also, Stanford Sites is a little different than other hosting environments. One of the first things to tackle after creating your new site on Stanford Sites is setting up the accounts, roles, and privileges.