There are three content types that can be used with one another to create a subsite for a publication. An example of this model in use can be found on the Sociology Newsletter site. The Spring 2007 Issue is currently the only one with individual Article nodes. Other examples can be found in the "Variants" section below.
Intended Uses for Content Types
Publication
The publication content type contains a description of the publication, a frequeny of issues, and an image. It generally describes the publication as a whole, rather than any specific content from Issues or Articles.
Issue
The issue represents one set of articles within a publication. An issue must have a publication date and publication to which it belongs. An issue can also have a description, an attached document (appropriate for a PDF version of the issue), and an image representing the issue.
Article
A single piece of content from an Issue with author(s), a "start page" which corresponds to it's location in the issue and is used for ordering the Issue's table of contents, author photo, and, of course, the article body.
Benefits
Once you have created a Publication and one or more Issues belonging to it, those issues will automatically be displayed on the Publication node. This is similar to the Event Series node.
Similarly, once you have created an Issue node with one or more Articles belonging to it, a table of contents is automatically created on the Issue node.
These automatic listings mean that all articles and publications don't need to be displayed in the menu because they create an alternative way of navigating content. Over time (if requested), the Web Guys can build variants of these views to include images, snippets of the body fields, or other interesting variations that may be more appropriate for certain publications.
Why not just use a PDF?
PDFs are a common way of distributing publications on the web (and heavily used on Grinnell's website). However, with the introduction of Drupal, this new set up provides some distinct advantages:
- Better search results
- More accessible to anyone using a screen reader
- More accessible to anyone using an older computer or one without PDF software
- You can send links to specific articles (rather than, "look in the bottom right corner of page 7")
It is appropriate to also include a PDF of each issue for printing purposes (this is what PDFs are best at), but using the Publication-Issue-Article model will allow for the benefits described above.
Variants
Currently, there is one available variant for the view of all Issues in a Publication and the view of all Articles in an Issue.
How to use a Variant
- Edit the Publication/Issue node that you want to change.
- Enter the variant tag (see below for tags) in the "General Tags" field inside the "Vocabularies" field set.
- Save the node.
- You should now see the change.
- To undo the change, simply remove the tag. Because the tag doesn't change the data that is being displayed, you can change between the default and variants at any time. You cannot combine variants.
Feature First Issue
For Use on: Any Publication node
What it does: Display the small image and body snippet from the first Issue in a publication (the most recent) and a table listing the rest.
Tag: Feature First Issue
Example: Grinnell Magazine
Feature First Article
For use on: Any Issue node
What it does: Displays the author image, body, and title of the first Article and a list of all other articles.
Tag: Feature First Article
