Content Authoring
This system uses dozens of Drupal contributed modules and 3rd party libraries to enhance the content authoring experience.
WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) is the common term used to describe a rich text editor embedded on entity forms and is used when writing content.
As the user uses the WYSIWYG editor and drag/drops content, HTML is written behind the editor that draws whatever it is you build in the WYSIWYG.
This system uses an extension of CKeditor as its WYSIWYG. As an open source technology, there are many Drupal modules and CKEditor libraries available on the internet that we don't currently use. These could be added in to this system at any time for relatively tiny scope.
As a global practice, the body of all content is crafted using Drupal paragraphs. The paragraphs module provides a very flexible and capable means for building structure content.
We have the ability to define any number of fieldable paragraph types, such as:
- Text block
- Image slideshow
- Video
- Code snippet
When editing content such as an article, paragraphs of any paragraph type can be created, reordered, and configured in order to build the structure of the article.
So 1 article might have 10 paragraphs made up of text blocks, code snippets, and anything else.
Paragraphs are also re-usable across many sets of content or any entity type in the system.
There are 2 key states used to determine which content displays on the homepage and which content is available globally.
Featured (promoted)
The promoted property is used to denote which items appear on the homepage. This setting can be controlled in bulk at /admin/content and by checking the appropriate box on node forms under "Promotion options".
Published
By default, content consumed by feeds is currently created as published but not promoted. This means the content is available to the public, but is not displayed anywhere on the site currently. This is to allow the automated publishing of content to APIs.
There are multiple date properties to understand on content.
| Field Name | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Date | This is the visible date field visible on content forms. It is used when sorting and filtering on the public facing site. When items are imported by feeds, their published date is mapped to this field. It defaults to empty |
| Created |
This is the internal post date of the content and is auto generated by the system. It's found under "Authoring information" on content forms. |
| Updated | This is the internal changed date of the content and is updated each time content is updated. It can't be controlled from content forms. Admin screens use this by default for sorting so that items go to the top of the table when updated. |
There are multiple taxonomy vocabularies used on content that are important to understand.
| Vocabulary Name | Purpose | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Tags | Tag content with relevant terms. |
|
| Event type | Categorize events |
|
| todo | todo | todo |